A Legend Calls: The Slavia Prague Dossier.

Two possible scenarios here: We either go out to Slavia and everyone bemoans the opportunity missed against “someone we definitely should have been beating”, or we utterly pummel them and there’s a sense of “aye, I always knew we were way better than them anyway”.

No. Wrong. Don’t. Just don’t… ever. You need to know who we’re playing here. You need to know it’s not just a random eastern European side with a decent home record for the last couple of seasons. For the sake of properly contextualising any result Rangers get tonight, you need to know about Slavia Prague.

When I continually go on about "European club competition" I am, of course, referring to the three competitions, all begun between 1955 and 1960 open to clubs from every European association (and maybe the odd Israeli league here and there). Among the many factors paving the way for the European Cup (now Champions League) the Cup-Winners’ Cup and the Fairs cup (later the UEFA Cup, now Europa League) were technological developments in floodlighting and air travel.

But, more than that, the template had been set by other, regional, cross-border competitions. The most famous of these was the Mitropa Cup, contested by sides from central Europe. Begun in 1927, Slavia Prague reached the 1929 final and won it in 1938. 

Considering that, in between times, Slavia provided eight of the Czechoslovakia side who lost the 1934 World Cup final to Italy, in Rome, after extra time, we can be sure the Mitropa Cup was tasty. As far as I know it was never sponsored by Petrofac Training or Irn Bru. It was, in fact, sensational.

Clubs from Italy, Yugoslavia, Hugary, Austria and Czechoslovakia: Players who’d scored in the final and the semis of the three World Cups played in the 1930s – the first three World Cups; players who were bringing continental Europe up to speed with the British game a lot faster than we wanted to know, were contesting this competition in front of huge crowds in iconic stadiums.

Slavia’s best run in European football as we currently know it was reaching the 1995-96 UEFA Cup semis. There they lost out to young Zinedine Zidane’s Girondins Bordeaux, but helping invent such competitions ensures Slavia’s legend is embedded in them as deeply as Rangers is. Contesting a Uefa group stage in eight of the last fifteen seasons means their 21^st century form should also give us pause.

You see, the Czechs are like the Danes. Their league can’t hold onto its home-grown stars because football isn’t the biggest thing in their lives like it is for us. The Danes have hygge, the Czechs have ice hockey. And none of their clubs have ever reached a European club final while Scotland, with a third of Czechia’s population, has had four cubs in nine finals. Yet their national teams are sensational.

I was at Wembley for the Euro 96 final, lost on a Golden Goal by the Czechs to Germany. There were five past or current Slavia players in the side, including Patrik Berger (of Borussia Dortmund and later Liverpool) and Karel Poborksy (Manchester United, Benfica, Lazio). Vladimir Smicer – him of the long-range goal in Istanbul compounding the comeback our manager started against Milan in 2005 – began and ended his career at Slavia.

So, from one knock-out round to the next, Rangers have gone from an opponent you perhaps had to be told once reached a European final to one you might be surprised to know never has. We may sometimes accidentally call them Sparta but, in the way we maybe weren’t so familiar with 1993 European Cup-Winners’ Cup runners-up Royal Antwerp, we had all heard of Slavia Prague; as a name, an institution – a club with probable pedigree but undeniable mystique.

If, last Thursday, those 300 Czech health workers creating that strangest of things in a 2021 football stadium, an atmosphere, sang their own lyrics to the tune of Sloop John B I didn’t hear them. But it wouldn’t have been the catchiest song anyway:

Some young men - probably medical students - had a dream,
To start a sports club and a literary and debating society to encourage the Czech language,
They had much brains, bikes and books but not one single ball:
It was another six years before they started a fitba team,
But the Austro-Hungarian empire were suspicious because they favoured the German language; 
Twenty or thirty titles… depending on your opinion on the legitimacy of the leagues they won around the First World War and after the Communists took over in 1948.

Yeah, Czech history doesn’t really scan with ours. I feel old because I remember Czechoslovakia, when the Czech Republic was joined with Slovakia as one country. They split up peacefully on the last day of 1992, having previously done so, much more darkly, during the Second World War. Our opponent in this Thursday’s Last 16 Europa League second leg has lived in only one city but seen their country given a few different names. 

Slavia, twenty years younger than Rangers as an organisation (their only sport initially was cycling), go back to the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s rule under the Habsburg dynasty. Add to that the fact Slavia themselves have been one of the leading lights in Middle European football in the 1920s and 30s then ended up going through some seriously lean years, and ten name changes - and a few temporary stadiums - then we can’t even beat them on the “from the top to the bottom and back” angle.

That strip, eh. It’s a cracker. The white and red halves and the big red star denoting Slavic nationalist roots. And the stadium, Eden: Yes, it has too many connotations of “Paradise”, and indeed Slavia’s on-field legend was formed by Scottish coach John Madden, who played for Celtic in the Victorian era (long before winning the Superbowl with the Oakland Raiders).

But, depending on what source you read – and I’ve hit everything from Simon Inglis’s The Football Grounds of Europe to The Rough Gide to European Football 1999-2000 to Wikipedia - the prelapsarian ground name derived from a nickname derived from a neighbouring restaurant, or just plain sarcasm engendered by the then condition of the area of Prague Slavia were forced to move to in 1953 by the Soviet-controlled government.

For over half a century Eden, the stadium, was a bowl of basic terracing with one even more basic wooden stand. Joe Lewis’s ENIC group, them perpetually rumoured to be getting involved at Ibrox during David Murray’s reign, were perhaps the worst of the owners in the post-Communist period who continually failed to redevelop the stadium, forcing Slavia into a few tenancies in a city which is, luckily, one of the ground-hopping capitals of the world.

Well, now it’s the best football stadium in the country. It hosted Craig Levein’s innovative 6-4-0 formation when Scotland lost 1-0 to the Czechs in a Euro 2012 qualifier and, more entertainingly, Bayern beating Chelsea on penalties in the 2013 Super Cup. It’s maybe not Eden but if it’s what UEFA now see as a Super Cup kinda venue - modern, attractive, and seating 20,000 spectators – it’s conclusive proof Slavia have finally made home less hellish.

Since 2015 Slavia are owned by Communist China, initially through their energy conglomerate and now the CITIC investment group. But if Rangers eliminate this proud, proud club, the glory will be about more than simply reaching a European quarter-final. As we now know, you don’t own a legend – you just enjoy being associated with it.