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Czech soccer in turmoil

Officials to vote early for association chief

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 19th, 2008 issue

There are more questions than answers in the Czech soccer community these days.
One question is whether to call the season a success for the national team, which made an appearance in Euro 2008 without advancing to the knock-out round and also kicked off the 2010 World Cup qualification rather poorly. Another outstanding question is when the Czech team captain Tomáš Rosický will make a comeback for the national team. And, last but not least, there is also the pending question of who the new leader of Czech soccer will be.
On Nov. 13, the Czech Football Association (ČMFS) gave first signs of an answer. ČMFS will vote June 27, 2009 for its new leader, four months before the expiration of the four-year mandate of the current executive board headed by Pavel Mokrý.
“We’ve agreed on the date of the preliminary elections because there was pressure from regional organizations that we could not ignore,” Mokrý said.
Originally, the vote was slated for next October, but as many as 42 out of 72 regional soccer organizations submitted an appeal to the ČMFS executive board requesting an earlier voting session.
Regional leaders cited poor communication between ČMFS governors and regional organizations, the lack of transparent financing of Czech soccer and sloppy management by the ČMFS executive board as reasons for requesting the early round of voting.
Many of the regional leaders confirmed they were ready to vote for Ivan Hašek — a former Czechoslovak international player who currently works as a coach in the United Arab Emirates — to head up Czech soccer. Hašek lost his previous run for the ČMFS presidency to Mokrý. Hašek’s defeat has long raised controversy as Mokrý’s victory was backed by members of the previous board, which was tainted with several corruption scandals.
Initiators of the early ČMFS board elections, chairs of regional soccer associations in Jablonec and Uherské Hradiště — Ladislav Čičmanec and Ladislav Vacenovský — said in September that they would travel to the United Arab Emirates to meet with Hašek and discuss his candidacy. Hašek has neither confirmed nor denied that he will once again run for the ČMFS presidency.
In the meantime, ČMFS board members are locked in a dispute over the audit of the association’s financial operations. Representatives of the Moravian branch of the board say a special general meeting should be called in January so that financial issues are settled before the presidential voting session.
“We should enter the elections with a clean slate,” says Jiří Kubíček, one of the ČMFS board members. Bohemian representatives in ČMFS management insist that the financial matters should be discussed during the voting session in June.

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


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