The general director and owner of football Pilsen, Adolf Šádek, experienced a day that, according to him, cannot be surpassed by anything. First, his daughter was born in the afternoon, and then in the evening he celebrated the promotion to the group stage of the Champions League with the West Bohemian club.
Viktoria will play the main stage of the elite competition for the fourth time in history, and Šádek called this year’s victory the most important. He enjoyed it all the more because the Czech champion recently had financial problems. Šádek admitted that he felt “dead” because of this, but thanks to the security of more than 400 million crowns, he is currently “alive”.
“For me, this is the day that will never be surpassed. This is the day we progressed to the Champions League group for the fourth time. That means a lot in the world of football, it means a lot to me and the boys . It was still a day when my daughter was born in the afternoon. I thought: wouldn’t it be great if she had an upgrade that day? The boys were amazing, they took it to the next level . They made that day a day I’ll never forget,” Šádek told Premier Sport 2 after the 2:1 win against Karabakh.
He called this year’s promotion to the Champions League group more important than the previous three participations in the main stage in 2011, 2013 and 2018, thanks to the complex financial situation of the club. . According to the media, the club is troubled by debts.
“Honestly, for me, this is probably the most important process. For the last two years, I have been struggling with the situation in general. I was already dead for a while, then half-dead, now I am alive for a while. . Pilsen football does not deserve to die for the way we work and the way we do it. You can see that we operate as a club a little bit different than others, that it’s not about money . This is about the third additional value. I’m very grateful for how the players handled it. We can still breathe,” said Šádek, who did not say whether the club did not plan to keep the promotion.
“I strongly believe that we will beat the boys from Prague, not our opponents, but our rivals, and we will improve the quality of Czech football as a whole. I am very happy that Czech football will once again have team in the Champions League. Slavia held the flagship in the cups in previous seasons, now we have taken it for a while. I strongly believe that the Czech clubs will manage it on Thursday (European Conference League rematches) and the three of us will continue to the cups,” Šádek demanded.
He admitted that he was nervous at the end of the rematch with Karabakh. “I was trapped alone in the office, number seven, number eight jumped. It was quite challenging. I believed in the boys, but the quality of the opponent was too great for us to score the second goal and we could go to extra time. But we did it thanks to the boys who took it in the last 20 minutes and didn’t let the opponent get a sniff,” said Šádek. “I’m emotionally beaten,” he added with a smile.
He said he still found the strength for a small celebration. “I think I can still manage two or three hours, but to a reasonable extent. I’m someone who doesn’t know how to celebrate right away, it always happens to me little by little,” said Šádek.
“I’ll absorb it and say I’m happier that I had a daughter or that we got promoted. The girl doesn’t have O2 Premier Sport, so I’d say I’m happier that we got promoted to the Champions League. Sleep he, doesn’t care that he won’t say,” laughs Šádek.
“The faculty (hospital) is far away, when we scored a goal, it woke my son up twice. I am very happy that we advanced to the Champions League for the fourth time, in a few seconds it beat the my joy in the afternoon. ,” jokes Šádek. The daughter was named Sofia. “I would find Victoria embarrassing,” he said with a smile.
He doesn’t have a dream opponent for the group. “It would be sad if we get Barcelona or Paris and then they disqualify them for a breach of financial fair play. I hope UEFA doesn’t disqualify them and we face them. I have no wish about our opponents. We are in the fourth basket, for the fans of Pilsen and Czech football, I want the opponent to be like that so that we have a chance to advance to the spring part (of the cups),” added Šádek.