Czechoslovakia

The Czechoslovakian championship started with something unusual: instead of two teams relegated, as it was traditionally, only one club was relegated after the end of 1977-78 championship – the last placed ZVL Zilina. Inter Bratislava was 15th and should have been relegated too, but it was not. Correspondingly, only one club was promoted – the champions of the Slovak league, one of the two Second Division groups. The champions of the Czech league did not go up. Why this happened is unknown… The possible explanation was in that two Slovak clubs ended in the relegation zone – perhaps the idea was to keep geographical divide, but such distinction was not observed before or after that season. It was still possible to relegate a Czech club – Sparta (Prague) ended at 14th place. What was fair and what not is impossible to tell – Inter stayed in the league, Sparta stayed too, although, there was no reason for them to go down anyway, and the champions of the Czech Second Division were not promoted. But the Slovak Second Division champions were… May be maintaining a balance between the two parts of the federate state was the reason – the decline of Slovak football was obvious and keeping clubs in top flight was becoming difficult. May be something else was the decisive factor, but it was unique event. Lucky Inter – they remained in first division. Unlucky winners of the Czech league too – they did not go to play first rate football. Thus, the only newcomer for the season was ZTS Kosice – a return to their rightful place under new name: they played as VSS Kosice until the end of the 1977-78 season and changed name for the new season. The change of name meant change of their industrial sponsor, the factory the club officially belonged to – for the fans it did not matter at all. ZTS Kosice came back to their familiar first division position – mid-table, which made them the third best Slovak club in 1978-79 – they finished 9th. As for Inter, they recovered and climbed up, ending 6th: the best performance of any Slovak club this season.

The club which should not have been playing among the best at all – Inter (Bratislava) 1978-79. Crouching, from left: Kamil Payer (?), Lubomir Zrubec, Jozef Bajza, Miroslav Kovarik, Jan Postulka, Emil Luptak, Frantisek Kalman, Rudolf Ducky, Ladislav Hudec.

Second row: Marian Novotny, Jozef Stipanic, Karol Brezik, Ladislav Petras, Jaroslav Simoncic, Michal Vican – coach, Ladislav Jurkemik, Ivan Kruzliak, Peter Polacek, Peter Michalec.

Most likely the reason for such a sudden revival was the arrival of the great coach Michal Vican. Otherwise, the team was not much – a typical example of the crisis looming in the Slovak football: the stars of few years earlier were either moving elsewhere or retiring, and the youngsters were not at all of the same class. The generational change was painful. Petras, Jurkemik, Novotny, Kovarik, and Bajza were the remnants of the strong team of not long ago – of them, only Petras and Jurkemik were real stars, but it was clear that they reached their peak already. The few strong players, who established themselves a few years back were all gone – and no classy player arrived from other clubs to replace them. None of the young players was really promising. Inter went up this year, but it was clearly accidental and momentary rise. With this squad, even Vican was not to be much help.

The other team on the rise this season was Sparta (Prague). They suffered terribly since 1970, even went down to second division. True, they returned immediately to top flight, but remained dangerously close to relegation. They were 14th in 1977-78 – but climbed up to 5th place in 1978-79. Still, there were no signs of returning to a leading position: Sparta largely achieved a step from the small fry, constantly living in fear of relegation, to a solid mid-table club. The task for the near future was to stay among the mid-table clubs, so it seemed. But they had much more promising squad than Inter. The fairly equal Czechoslovak league did not outline distinct internal division – Sparta finished a point above Inter and a point bellow Bohemians (Prague). Bohemians, lead by Antonin Panenka, were the club really rising – carefully recruiting new players, having a few well respected, if not top stars, players of their own, they were becoming slowly a strong team, perhaps able for something bigger, if they kept improving. Forth this season, a bit behind the top three, but getting closer. Bohemians and Sparta were the good news of the season.

The bad news was the Slovak clubs… Slovan (Bratislava) ended 10th. They experienced the same problem their city rivals Inter had, only on bigger scale: the great team of the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s was aging. Start retiring, moving elsewhere, and getting inevitably older anyway, needed to be replaced – but the newcomers were not even close to the old players. The inertia was keeping Slovan afloat roughly since 1975, but aging players were less and less able to keep the team strong. Slovan was no longer among the best clubs in the country – it was going down.

Even worse was the predicament of the other great Slovak clubs of the 1960-s and early 1970s – Spartak (Trnava) was in steady decline, slipping deeper and deeper down the table. They finished 12th this year.

‘White Angels’ going to hell – that much was clear, for Spartak aged earlier than Slovan and by now hardly a single player of quality remained in the team. Neither old, nor young. Relegation was just a matter of time – short time, at that. Trnava, a smaller city with more limited resources than Bratislava, was heading towards disaster.

The rest of the Slovak clubs in first division – save one – were in similar situation, trying only to escape relegation. Dukla (Banska Bystrica) was 8th, and Jednota (Trencin) 13th, but neither club showed any promise. They were lowly clubs anyway – the difference between them was 3 points, but Jednota finished just a point better than the relegated 15th. Which was also Slovak club – Tatran (Presov), one of the eternal ‘unsettled’ clubs, fluctuating between first and second division. More or less predictably they were going down again, distinguishing themselves with the worst attack in the league this season.

Bellow them was only one club: Sklo Union Teplice finished last. Never a strong club, they had a few good season, but in general were a mid-table club, more likely to occupy a place near the relegated than near the leaders. This year they were really weak and it was not a great surprise. One Slovak and one Czech club ended in the relegation zone, so no real or imaginary problems – back to normal, two clubs relegated and two promoted.

The winners of the Slovak Second Division were familiar somewhat: they played top flight before, one of the constantly moving up and down clubs, representing the city of Nitra. At a glance, the name was unfamiliar…

Plastika (Nitra) was unheard of name – but the club was the same. It was just a club changing its name frequently and this was the newest, but… it was not to last either. Well. Plastika for the moment… and nothing else to tell about the newcomers.

The winners of the Czech Second Division differed from Plastika only slightly: they played in the first division before, sometimes even well, but sunk down in the 1970s. At last, they were coming back.

Ruda Hvezda (Cheb), with their logo, typical of the clubs from Communist countries – a big, red star. In their case, rightly so, for the name means precisely ‘Red Star’. It was a strange relic of the 1950s in Czechoslovakia – back then clubs were named and renamed like that, but all that ended in the 1960s and in the 1970s the clubs had either their original names (Sparta, Slavia, Bohemians), or used the name of their industrial sponsor (Skoda, Zbrojovka). For some reason they kept the symbolic Communist name in Cheb – and changed it in 1980s.

Automatically, one expects a club named ‘Red Star’ to play in red, but they used blue and white. Anonymous team, which was happy to win promotion – and really concentrate on the next season, when survival was pretty much everything Ruda Hvezda and the city of Cheb could realistically dream of.