Vladimír Coufal

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out!

I can hear my every heartbeat and the distant turmoil of fans.

It is just a few minutes before our match with Manchester United. We are in our stadium’s tunnel, with maximum focus. For me, this match is special.

“I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They fly so high, nearly reach the sky. Then like my dreams they fade and die.”

Sixty thousand fans at a sold-out stadium start to sing our club hymn, and we walk out. I watch the bubbles all around us. I watch them and feel like I’m one of them. The bubbles are a signature part of West Ham’s home match. They represent the dreams of us all and I’m living in one right now.

Twelve years from the time my first club almost destroyed my career, I walk into another Premier League match. The bubbles around us fly high, they’re almost touching the sky now. They’re just like my dreams thanks to which I’m here today. The only thing we hear on the pitch is the turmoil. I’m the only one with goosebumps because I know where I must look next. I turn my attention to the stands, looking for my dad.

He is here.

He watches me play live in the best league on the planet for the first time. He is moved. And so am I.

This moment is a reward for both of us. For what we’ve been through. For the obstacles I could never have overcome without him. For who I am today.

I will tell you everything.

I love the movie Goal!

The story of Santiago Muñez who made it from nowhere to the famous English club.

My wife and I watched it at home recently.

I’m not going to lie; I know the movie by heart. Thanks to it, we already knew in our childhood what the Premier League was truly like. As a small boy, I dreamed I would be like Santiago. Today, older, I know I wouldn’t like to end up like him.

I guess I could wear Louis Vuitton jeans and Gucci shoes and park a new Bentley in front of you. I guess I could go to a party in some London bar after a game, sweep the dancefloor at VIP parties in some private apartments and enjoy the attention of my surroundings. I could party like this every day. I could enjoy the attention of all those brown-nosers and listen to them telling me what an amazing player I am.

As a player with a contract in the Premier League, I could probably do all that. I even think some players in the league live just like that. But why should I want any of that?

Many people probably think that’s exactly what the life of a professional football player in England looks like. My apologies then because I won’t tell you a story like that. I will offer you a view of a man who decided to grab his chance from a different end. No fancy cars and extravagant lifestyle. No hunger for fame, definitely not here and now.

Just sweatpants, TV and chill.

Are you getting bored?

But that’s really what my usual evening looks like. I spend it at home with my family, often with food from delivery. Just like you. It was my dad who would always tell me to watch carefully during the evening Premier League. He used to tell me one learns the most from watching. He always advised me well. And so, I watch.

Thanks to watching, I know Sterling goes right for a shot once close to the penalty area. Grealish does the same. Zaha pushes for the middle as well, but he plays more from the side than them. Once he gets on the edge of the penalty area he goes for a feint and tries to back off to the side for a center pass.

You don’t have to search for it.

I think I saw about every Premier League game from last year like that — at home, with family. I needed to see them. I needed to be ready for what was waiting for me on the pitch the week after against those exact players. If they behaved like this in six games, why would they behave differently in the seventh against me?

I’ve done this analysis with every possible matchup in the league and it bears its fruit. So I watch my surroundings even in games.

Once again, I am in the tunnel before facing Manchester United. Again, I turn left and again I see Cristiano Ronaldo. A guy who can have anything he wants in life. He can buy an island in the Caribbean, a yacht on which the island can float, or any of the most expensive cars which will be then parked in the villa there. I see his smile which we all know from the ads all around the world. Everyone loves him. But isn’t this kind of… shallow?

I look down at the ground and back at him. Now I see a phenomenal athlete. A star that works just as hard toward the end of his career as at the beginning. A player who had won all the trophies in the world, a forward who scored more goals in competitive games than I did in my whole life, practice games included. And yet we have something in common. I know we do. I know we’re partly the same.

We both want to be the best. That’s it!

I walk on the pitch beside him, and I have a reason to have faith.

Not even for a second have I ever thought in England that I cannot do more. I’m crazy and you may laugh at me, but one day I want to win the Premier League. I want to raise the cup with big handles above my head. That’s why I am here. I won’t be lulled to sleep by the feeling of success from my work here which I’ve been doing for 20 years. I’m still more hungry than satisfied. And I can’t let it be otherwise.

I’m not in the Premier League to make good money and show off. I play in the English league for my sportsman legacy. I’m here for trophies, wins and records that no one can ever take away. My motivation is not money. My motivation is the experience so that when my children ask about it one day, I can tell them amazing stories.

“Sir, you only care about your son, not the club,” heard my dad.

And what the fuck else should a father of 16-year-old boy care for? What do parents get from a club? How is it even possible that coaches in the Czech Republic can talk like this with parents? I still can’t understand it and I don’t want to accept it.

I’ve heard numerous times from my dad what happened years ago at Bazaly stadium. He and the managers and coaches of the youth of Baník Ostrava were shouting at each other like crazy for at least half an hour. He said he was close to starting a fistfight. I can’t blame him.

We can laugh about it now, years later, but… I still don’t find it that funny. I still must ask: How many boys’ careers were destroyed in Czechia like that? How close was I to quitting football?

I don’t know if I have the strength to change something in the Czech sports environment with my story. But I do know that I would just be hiding if I didn’t use my position to talk about things like that. We need to speak publicly about such things.

My uncle is a huge Baník Ostrava fan. Even today, he goes to see every match. My dad brought me to Bazaly for the first time when I was 6 years old. I looked around, amazed by those big stands. From the very first moment my main motivation — my first childhood football dream — was to play a competitive game at this legendary stadium.

Can a young football player from our region want anything else?

It’s the irony of fate that I played at Bazaly eventually — in the kit of Liberec. I could just move on and say I don’t care about Baník Ostrava now, playing in the Premier League, but I can’t. I still care about Baník.

Even though the club has a different owner and is led by different people, its logo still reminds me of times when I hated football. I feel it should have not ended like that, but the injustice that the former management and its coaches caused me is so deep that I simply cannot get it out of my head.

I’m grateful that I could play in Ostrava at least in our national team kit. I played there in front of my family, my friends, and the fans of Baník as well, whom I respect and appreciate. I know they don’t like me very much for how I act every time I play there as an opponent. But I know how amazing they are. The best ones, together with Slavia Praha fans. They stood by their club even when it fell into a second league and it’s incredible how much they travel even on the other side of the republic for a game. One can’t say a word against them.

Despite all that, I will never play for them. I will never wear Baník’s kit in my life. I know I couldn’t fight in it as much as I did for Slavia or as much as I do for West Ham now.

I just can’t. I don’t have it in me anymore.

I had no problems when we were pupils. Pretty much every year the team was built around Coufal. Once I got older, we got a new coach, Vojáček was his name and I suddenly stopped playing. I was too small in his eyes; he had a different game plan. In a cabin full of 15-year-old boys, we had 11 players with a height of over 180 centimeters; a height I don’t even have as an adult. Baník just wanted to kill all their opponents.

We arrived at Sigma Olomouc and while they were going 1-on-1, trying to squeeze passes through narrow gaps, we were just kicking them. I remember we won a game 3-0, because the much better but also smaller boys were afraid of us. Our game had nothing to do with football, but the management was happy.

We won, what’s the big deal?

And I envied my teammates. Envied that they could play. Envied that they were sought after by agents. Envied when they received new cleats every three months and first basic contracts for 6,000 Czech crowns. I envied all of this and as a young boy, I just couldn’t get over the fact that I’d lost all this because I’m not as big.

Plus, I wasn’t even part of the team anymore. When we won, only those playing were cheering. Us others were just dirt to them. The team was terrible, we were quite rude to one another. Yeah, it wasn’t nice.

That’s why my dad went to Bazaly that day. He told the coaches his son was not happy in Baník, that he would like to leave. They reacted by spitting insults at him, trying to belittle us.

I left for Hlučín.

Not because someone wanted to do us a favour. Baník owed everyone around and Hlučín was willing to cut off some of their debt for me.

“Maybe one day you’ll make it to England,” dad tried to console me.