Jiří Píša, a tour driver, is one of the „legends“ of Hradec Kralove football

He has been behind the wheel of the tour buses of the Hradec Králové City Transport Company for 17 years. Since 1994, however, he has been an inseparable member of the Hradec Králové A-team as a striker.

Jiří Píša has played football competitively since he was a child. He and his teammates even became national champions in the junior category and were second in the Czechoslovak federation. „I played football competitions until I was 28 years old, that is, until my achilles ruptured during a match in Libišany. Then I was afraid to go into fights on the field. As a trained carpenter I worked in a joinery workshop. After 1989, a friend from Libišan bought a moving truck and a bus and I started to drive for him. Among other things, we drove the A-team of the Hradec Králové „Votroks“ and other football teams to games. That was after 1994. And I was right there when Hradec won the Czech Cup in the 1994/1995 season. They drew against Viktoria Žižkov and then secured participation in the Cup Winners“ Cup on penalties," he recalls his beginnings with transporting footballers.

And it is from the match at Viktoria Žižkov that he has another lifelong experience. When the second goalkeeper Tomáš Poštulka came to him before the match, saying that he had a lot of stage fright, the driver Píša replied, „Tomáš, you can't even go to the bench. But do you know how it will turn out? The goalkeeper Standa Vál will break the tie and you will go to the penalty box and it will be ours. And that's what happened!“

He has this unique memory on video to this day, he even stood in the dugout where he high-fived the whole team when they went to get the cup. They even hung about eight medals around his neck. He didn't take the winner home to Hradec Kralove, just the technical escort and the winning trophy. The footballers stayed in Prague to celebrate. „But the Hradec fans recognized the bus when it arrived in the city, honking their horns, waving at us, it was a beautiful ride,“ he recalls.

The Hradec Králové team advanced to the second round of the Cup Winners' Cup, where they were eliminated by Russian team FK Dynamo Moscow in the second match after extra time and penalty kicks. However, Hradec Kralove forward Petr Samec managed to score a total of nine goals in the cup matches and became the top scorer of this year's PVP.

Article continues in magazine Dopravák