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August 22nd, 2008
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Ousted from Eden?

Slavia Praha battles rock band for rights to stadium

By František Bouc
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 23rd, 2008 issue

Photo courtesy of MARTIN MALÝ, SLAVIA.CZ
Slavia Praha forward Goče Toleski (right) in action against Jablonec in the first league game at the new multipurpose stadium.
Someone scheduled an unusual opponent for Slavia Praha to kick off the new soccer season — Iron Maiden.
The legendary heavy metal group is set to perform at the new Slavia Arena in Prague 10, also known as Eden, Aug. 8 at 7 p.m. Slavia plans to square off against Marila Příbram to open the Gambrinus liga season at 6:30, the same evening.
Completed in May, the arena has hosted both concerts and soccer games. This is the first time, however, the two collide.
Kristýna Svobodová, marketing director for E Side, the facility’s owner, said the concert had been planned since late 2007, when the stadium was still under construction. The teams settled on the game date only recently.
Slavia was scheduled to take on Příbram Aug. 10. But the club is also fighting for a spot in the prestigious — and lucrative — Champions League, with qualifying rounds set for Aug. 12. So Slavia spoke with the Czech Football Association (ČMFS) and agreed to move their Gambrinus liga opener.
All parties involved hope to come to a compromise, said Petr Doležal, Slavia’s general secretary. Rescheduling the concert seems unlikely, but the club could swap home and away legs with Příbram, if the ČMFS gives the go-ahead. In that case, the first meeting of the two teams would take place in Příbram, with the return staged at Slavia’s home ground in the spring.
Neither Doležal nor Svobodová would speculate on the outcome. They insist, however, that all sides are determined to reach some sort of an acceptable decision.
Sound of silence
With their first Gambrinus liga title in 12 years on the line, Slavia urged for Eden to be completed by early May so that the team could christen the new stadium in style — a season-ending, title-clinching draw against Jablonec.
The club returned to their traditional home after an eight-year asylum in aging Strahov, during which time its outdated 1948 pitch was revamped. While the site’s developer, E Side, owns the gleaming new 21,000 seat facility, Slavia owns the land itself. Both parties have a loose and silent agreement granting the team preference in scheduling matters.
This is clear, Doležal says, “especially given the fact that we’ve put the land into this project.”
“We bear in mind that the arena serves mainly as Slavia’s home field and that it’s a privileged partner,” Svobodová adds, seeming to confirm the unofficial agreement.
The team marked their territory with an exhibition game May 7 against Oxford University AFC, a revival of Slavia’s first international match, also against an English team in 1899 — intended to acknowledge the new stadium as another landmark in the team’s long history.
But since their season ender against Jablonec, the facility picked up a curious jinx. In a friendly before Euro 2008, the Czech national team hosted Lithuania at Eden in the game famous for a mix-up in national anthems. As the visitors from the Baltic state lined up, the sound system blared out the Latvian anthem. During the first major concert at the arena — a performance by Metallica in early June — fans destroyed about one-third of the pitch’s surface, causing management to scramble for replacement turf in time for the Czech Super Bowl.
In the American football finale, rosters handed out to fans appeared under the wrong team logos.
And now this.
Svobodová reiterates that while both arena management and the Slavia organization continue to work on a solution to the stalemate, no one is ready to make an announcement yet.
“There’s no point in speculating as to whether the concert will be rescheduled or whether the soccer club will yield,” she explains. “But we will certainly reach an agreement.”

František Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com


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