PRAGUE PAPER REVIEW | With Czech-based Irish journalist Ian Willoughby | Eoin Sheahan & Stuey Byrne | Off The Ball

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1:01Listen, I'm, you know, hopeful as anyone. You know, we're all working as hard as we can to, you know, go out and train and do really well. You know, whatever team the manager picks. You know, we are all rolling behind us whether we're playing or not playing. We need to be ready. Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at offtheball.com for its last joint. Right. Myself and Jerry Burn have officially touched down in Prague. We have wandered over to a beautiful little park where we are meeting an Irishman named Ian Willoughby. Who you might have seen on other Irish media over the course of the last couple of days. Ian, good to see you. You are officially the Irish in Czechia correspondent for the entire Irish media at this point. Well, so it seems there are no other Irish journalists here as far as I know. Maybe one or two, but I guess I'm a little bit more visible. So yeah, I've got the great task of speaking to people like yourselves. Where are we right now? We're on a place called Slavansky Island. We're just by the Voltava River behind us is Prague Castle.

2:01Anybody who's been to Prague will definitely know the castle. We're just near the National Theatre. It's very much in the heart of Prague. Okay. We should say as well that there's a number of dogs around here having their walk. Pixie, your own dog here as well. She's very welcome. I'm delighted for her to make her off the ball the day of beauty this afternoon. What's your story? How did you end up here? How long have you been here? Tell us the whole, the whole spiel. Well, I've been here for 33 years. I came here in the early 90s, first on holiday. And then I was on the dole as well. A lot of people in those days, nothing going on. And I thought I'd come here for a year to teach English. And then I just liked it here so much that I stayed. And now I'm married. I've got a check son. And this is very much home for me. Also, I got a check citizenship some years ago. Simply because I've been here so long, I wanted to vote. Of course, I kept my Irish citizenship. You can have a dual citizenship. I wouldn't have given up my Irish citizenship. But I'm glad I did that.

3:03I think I'm here for a very long haul. Why check you in the first place? Well, because the buddy of mine from school was studying history and Trinity. And he took a year off and came here and basically wrote me a letter saying, it's very cool here. It's cheap. The beer is great and cheap. The girls are lovely. And I was on the dole. So, of course, all this stuff is extremely attractive. And it was amazing in those days. I mean, a beer cost. I don't know what it would cost in today's euros like 20 cents or something. It was really, really cheap. And everything was colorful. And it was really exciting being here. It was just a couple of years after the fall of communism. And also, it's just a really easy place to live here. Everything works really well. Healthcare, which I didn't care about in those days. But now it's more important. Education, public transport is amazing. Also, what I like about here a lot is it's really safe.

4:05Checks are they just don't fight. They're not aggressive. I always say that they're passive aggressive. But that's my favorite kind of aggressive. Because I won't get a black eye. They'll give you the shit eye. But they won't. All I've seen here in 30 years is a little bit of handbags. Okay. Honestly, it's just safe here. Except maybe around the train stations at midnight. Otherwise, I wouldn't look over my shoulder. Ever. It's really safe place to live. Which counts for a lot, I think. Have you seen a whole heap of change then in the course of three decades? I guess every place changes in three decades. But particularly considering you came here not so long after the fall of communism. Yeah, a lot of change. I have a lot of change. Basically, they kind of caught up here with the West. When I first came here right in the city center, there were loads of empty spaces and buildings. Like grand buildings. But in a state of disrepair. For example, when I first lived here, we used to go to a nightclub, right in just off the West's last square. And this building, that was like a palace.

5:06It literally was a palace. It had been used by the SS during the war. It was in a bad state. But because it was before a restitution, which was one of a lot of people who had their properties seized by the communists, got it back after 1990. And all these buildings were between, kind of between owners and between before renovation. And the center of Prague was like our playground. We went from one amazing building to the other. Now all those buildings are really grand, as they probably should have been, you know, except for communism. And they wouldn't be used in this way. But I and all my friends had the opportunity to enjoy those brilliant places. And yeah, of course, I'm older myself now. So I don't go out as much and everything like that. But even still going out is very reasonable here. Costs like three euros for a beer. It cost one euro. It feels like not that many years ago. Then it was two. Now it's three.

6:07But it's still, you know, still acceptable. Yeah. You certainly haven't lost any Irishness, given that the way in which you judge the quality of a place. It's how much the alcohol actually costs. Three euro beers here. I think we're pretty sorry about that, right? Yeah, I was actually going to ask, have you keep in touch with home? Much at all. Like, you know, because a three-year-old beer or a beer, it sounds like, yeah, probably late 80s sauce. Yeah. No, of course I go home often enough probably like twice a year. But I must say after so many years away, I mean, Dublin has changed not as much as Prague, but it has changed a hell of a lot since I left. And yeah, going out at home for me is just like shocking the prices. And I'll do it. But, you know, I feel the pain in the way you guys might notice or might not feel. And, you know, I'm in touch with home, but not as much as I used to. Like, I follow Irish news a bit. Not that closely. Sometimes, for example, I get asked by Czech media, will you go on our program and discuss something in Irish news?

7:10And I will just say no, because I would have to study it myself. I don't follow it that closely. I couldn't talk about what Brexit means for the North or something. Without spending like a long time or a couple of hours probably studying it. Because I'm not that, and I don't follow Irish news that much. You mentioned there that Ireland has changed so much. I'm like living in Ireland. I'd actually agree with that completely. Like, you know, it seems to be changing probably a little bit too much and too quickly. But is that the appeal of this place? You can get the sense that there's very much, it feels like a place that evolves naturally and slowly. Is that the appeal of somewhere like Prague? You know, architecturally, you can see it's stunning. It's stunning because it hasn't changed. And there isn't that much diversity in the buildings themselves. Well, I don't know about that, but I keep saying the same thing. It's just an easy place to live here. You can get around a public transport so easily, everywhere is half an hour walk anyway. The public transport, if you've got a year's pass,

8:10it costs three euros a week. And you can set you watch by the trams here, the buses, the metros. It's simply amazing. I remember trying to catch buses in Dublin. And it was just like a lottery, you know. You'd have to always be early, like really early. And then none would come and then three would come. And I know things might be improved now with the Lewis and everything. I've never even been on that before. It's after my time, rather. But yeah, it's just an easy place to live here. And of course, I know a lot of Irish people here and I have a lot of international friends, I have a lot of Czech friends, I have a Czech wife. And I'm very kind of integrated here. And I've had a pretty nice kind of working life here. I mean, I left because I was on the dole. And I probably would have found something comparable, maybe would have found something comparable anyway. But for me, it was definitely felt like a second chance being here. And I know a lot of foreigners, Americans, Brits, Irish, had a similar experiences here that they came in their 20s

9:10and they were kind of drifting, weren't sure what they wanted to do with themselves. It's not much going on at home in the case of Ireland anyway. And you know, they found something for themselves and made nice lives here. And yeah, I know a lot of people like that. And I personally am very glad that I came here. And also, I always say the same thing as well. If I loved Ireland so much, I wouldn't have left. You know, I had other reasons to leave. For example, what I left to was very religious still. Now that's changed a lot. But I remember one time being in Rothmines and a Sunday evening walking down the... Sorry, Ranela. What was it, Rothmines? One of them walking down the street. Dublin Sixth. Yes. And a chapel let out on the evening, like Sunday evening, six o'clock. And it was all these young people coming out of the chapel. And I thought, this isn't for me. I don't want to be in a place like this. It was also after the referendums. You know, before a lot of the change that has come and at a very fast pace, I think, for Ireland. And yeah, when I came here, you wouldn't see a priest or a nun.

10:11You know, it was really kind of refreshing from me in that regard. And yeah, it's very secular here. They say this is the most atheistic nation, the checks of the most atheistic nation in Europe. And it feels like that. I mean, outside the Prague, it's a bit different, especially in the west of the country. It's a bit more religious. But here, yeah, it's very secular, which appeals to me a lot. Okay, that's fascinating. We're here to talk about football by and large today. But I understand maybe football isn't your chosen subject here. It is more maybe the front of the newspaper, or more current affairs that your journalistic subjects will be, right? Yeah, I cover, I mean, I work for your product international. It's pretty small. So we do a bit of everything. I do some sport. Right. But also arts, history, social affairs, a lot of politics. Which is great for me to, you know, have my ore in so many different areas. But I follow the sport to some degree. Of course, yeah. And I'm a football fan as well, so. Yeah, well, what degree is that moving the needle this week?

11:14Because back home, the football kind of is the needle this week. There's nothing bigger in the country. Full stop, never mind comparing it with other sports. The Tri-Paradachic last November against Hungary was one of the biggest moments of the year last year. Full stop, not just in sport. So what degree is Czechia and Prague going through a similar sense of fever this week? Well, the fever, I think, is just arriving off all the planes at Prague Airport because the fever was not here, isn't here among the Czechs. Right. I mean, of course there are Czech football fans. But no way are they as football nuts, as Irish people or British people, not at all. I mean, soccer isn't the top sport here. That would be ice hockey. They're biggest success. In the last few decades was when they won the Olympics in ice hockey winter Olympics in 2007, I think it was, yeah, if they get into the World Cup, for example, which that's what they don't, then they will be interested, but not nowhere near as much as you would get at home. And also one aspect of the World Cup is that there's a Czech community in America,

12:20but it's tiny compared to the Irish community in America and the Asperer. So that's one thing I keep thinking as well. One reason I mean, I would support Ireland anyway, but I think if they were to get through, it would mean so much more to so many people than if the Czechs went through, which I don't see happening in any case. Okay. So I went into a shop not so long ago and the woman behind the counter started to speak some Czech to me. Obviously I've got no words of Czech and she was bemused and laughed out loud uncontrollably when my purchase was nearly half a dozen newspapers. She was thinking, what on earth is this ignoramus doing reading Czech literature today? These are for you because you're going to help us translate some of the headlines today, Ian. So I'm just going to go through some of these newspapers. This newspaper is called Sport. So I can guess what, this newspaper tends to be about. It's a sport daily, but on the front of the newspaper we've got clearly stories of the match-pixing scandal here. So scandal with a K is the headline here.

13:22Talk to us about what's going on. Yeah. Well, scandal is an international word and this is like the kind of Czech equivalent of the keeper something is not as good, but that's what it is. It is the main Czech sports daily. Yes, scandal, gigantic scandal before the playoffs. And this is about a match-pixing scandal in Czech lower league football that blew up yesterday. They said it was the biggest ever police action of its kind involving football in this country. It's mainly in the east of the country it seems like and they have arrested something like 50 people and the UEFA are involved. The Czech FA have been working with UEFA on this and I guess it must have been sometime coming and it's only a coincidence that it has blown up right now, which is a kind of crazy coincidence just two days before the big game. And this is a big deal for Czech sport, Czech football. And to be honest, Czech football, especially in the lower leagues, people say it's rife

14:22with corruption and a lot of bribery even in kids football, local football. You hear about refs getting barrels of beer and stuff like this. Like crazy things or, you know, salami, I'm kind of exaggerating. But there's a lot of corruption in Czech football and I stopped watching Czech first division football because there was a big scandal, Jesus, the best part of 20 years ago. And it was so deep and it was so horrible. And also you watch games where some big club, let's call them Sparta Prague, would get a penalty like five minutes after full time, you know, after the 90th minute. And that didn't make any sense and it really just sank. And the level of course is not that great either. They produce good players, of course, because you got them, you know, so checking all these guys going to the Premier League and in the past many more better players than him. But yeah, I don't follow that closely. But the big story right now is the Scandal, the gigantic scandal before the playoffs.

15:27This broad sheet then, they said, denic.cz, I don't suspect there's any football on the front there. But on the back we have a football scandal. Again, what's interesting to me here is that there are two stories in the back. One is the Scandal, but the second one is Ice Hockey here. So that the National Football team isn't even getting on to the main page in the sports section this morning. Yeah, I think for ice people though, we're very surprising. You know, the Scandal is huge. But as you say, the second story is Ice Hockey. Why isn't it the lineup for tomorrow or something to do with the big game itself? It is weird. And it does say something about the level of excitement or lack of it in connection with the game tomorrow. But yeah, football as a scandal acquires concrete shape. And yeah, there's a club called Carvina implicated here there in the west of the country in the city of Ostrava, the third biggest city here. And yeah, so again, it's the Scandal. Okay, it's on the front page of this newspaper as well.

16:28D-ness, is that what you call us? And then the sports section on the back has a referee showing a red card. So again, it doesn't look like there's much emphasis on the national team here, but do you correct me if I'm wrong? You know, again, no emphasis on the national team. The headline here is, yeah, first it's on the main story in the front page, the back page, help football again in the mud. Cannot be cleaned up is the question mark. Okay. And of course, usually if you see a question mark in a headline, the answer is no. I mean, maybe it can be cleaned up. So journalism, no matter what the language is, it's always a no. We have this newspaper here called AHA, which feels fairly glossy, but I think we can officially say if we turn to the back that Megan Merkel is making more back page headlines here than the national team of Czechia. So I don't suspect this is your bread and butter sports publication. No, it's just a tabloid, pretty crappy tabloid at that, I must say. I get it, yeah, they do have the football scandal though.

17:29The headline is kind of hard to translate, but it means like, disgusting mess of the century or something like that. Right. Because it really is huge. I mean, this is something that's been talked about for years. And now it has blown up in an enormous way. And also it has got quite a lot of international attention. I've seen a lot of headlines all over the place in the athletic and elsewhere. And then finally, then we have a proverb which leads with the police investigating corruption on the front. It can probably tell by a lot of the shared language there. And on the back, that's the same story here as well in Provo. So this is an utterly dominant. Is it going to distract from things over the course of the next 48 hours? It's totally separate, right? It's totally separate. I can't see it distracting from the game. I mean, the timing is not good if you're the Czech FA. Obviously that's a bad look to have all these Irish fans and delegates and the team and everybody here for this huge, huge match. And they're dealing with this. But as I said earlier, they were involved in this investigation with you.

18:35It must have been on the cars for a long time or planned for a long time. And it's got to be just coincidence that they decided to move this week and make all these arrests. It's unfortunate, but I don't see how it would distract from the game itself. So I mean, I have a League of Ireland background. So at home, we would have had how would have put this maybe sort of an historical sort of idea of how maybe the country thinks about League of Ireland football. Because of the strong J.A. background and so on and so forth. But trying to get it is that I would have thought there were, you know, and still do think that there's a certain element of society, government, whatever. That kind of frown upon the game. I'm getting the sense, is there something similar going on here? Like football is the bad boy of sport. What exactly do people actually think about the game here? I wouldn't say it's seen as a second-class sport or a bad boy of chess sport.

19:38There's just less interest in it than there is in other sports. And I saw he used the number one sport by some distance. For example, when the Czechs won the Winter Olympics, every family was watching this on TV. And it may sound sexist, but all women were interested in it. My wife would watch a Czech ice hockey game. She wouldn't watch football game if you paid her. And it's just more popular. And football was never the top sport here as far as I know. And also their kind of glory years are a long way behind them. I mean, they got to the World Cup final twice, but, you know, best part of the century ago. They won the European Championship in 1976, of course, with the Pananca, the original Pananca penalty scored by Antonin Pananca. They did okay in the 2000s. Of course, they got to the semi-finals in Euro 2004. They had a great team in those days. But now they are... There's a couple of well-known players, but very few of them would be known to the general public.

20:42There's not that much interest. There's certainly not a gold generation these days. There are some of the big clubs, like Patrick Schick at, I guess he's at the Liverpool's in. A few others. But it's not like in the days of Frosetski and Patrick Schick, of course, he's still huge here. Yeah, it's just not a great era for Czech football. And even if it was, though, I think the Czechs in general wouldn't be getting so excited about it. I mean, what can we expect atmosphere-wise, so in the game? You've totally trolled me. I am now going, I don't know what to expect tomorrow night. Is it going to be hostile? Do they have an ultrasound element that gets noise going? What do we expect? Well, they do have ultras here. That's for sure. All the clubs have their own ultras. I don't think it'll be hostile. Also, I think a lot of Irish fans will be getting into the Czech sectors.

21:43The Czechs are pretty peaceful people. Maybe if something dramatic happens in the game, there could be some aggro. I just don't really see it happening. Pavel Netviad, who was one of only two Czech players to get the European player of the year, he is now the general manager of the Czech squad. And he said recently that he knows thousands of Irish are coming. They're very welcome to Prague, have fun and Prague. But he doesn't want them getting into the stadium. He said we have to make sure that they don't get in, that there's only the thousands who have the allocated tickets. I think there'll be a lot more. How many, obviously, couldn't say, I can't see trouble. I hope I'm right. Of course, I would be very surprised. Does that sort of message from Pavel Netviad include you? Well, actually, I'm not going. I almost always, if I apply for accreditation, I get a ticket. I guess there's too much demand this time. I'd have kept checking my email. I even checked it today. I hope against hope.

22:45But I will get it like the day before the game. But no, I'm not going, unfortunately. I'm sad to say. Surely, with all the Irish media contacts you made over at the last couple of days, somebody can bundle you into the press box, come 745 or 845 tomorrow evening. Well, that would be amazing, but I don't see that happening either. Just one last thing. You mentioned the fantastic nightclub that you attended and frequented during your early years here. What's the modern version of that? The Irish people who are looking for a little something different after hours. Asking for a friend. Well, that's a man of a certain age. I couldn't tell you what's the best nightclub. But what I would say to fans who are here is there's so many pubs. Although, 5,000 people without tickets, if that is the case, that's going to be a lot of pubs. It's going to take a lot of pubs to accommodate them. But I'm sure everybody will find a place to watch the game. I can't see how that wouldn't happen. The Czech landlord, pub landlords will be laughing all the way to the bank.

23:45And I think people will do great to just stay in the city centre and their fans and pubs. A couple of years ago, in 2023, the final of the conference league was here with West Ham and Fiorentina. And there was a lot of West Ham fans with no tickets. And somebody, I guess it was UEFA, must have been, had the idea of creating this kind of fan zone in a park with a huge screen. And a lot of West Ham fans there looked brilliant, actually. But I thought when this game was on the cards, I thought somebody should do the same. But then I realised that game was in June. Imagine tomorrow night the temperature. It's going to be cold. So you couldn't be outside for many hours. Because that would have been really great, but it doesn't make any sense. People will have to be indoors, but they'll definitely find some cozy pub. It's been a pleasure spending some time in your company. Thanks a million for the introduction to Prague and to Czech football as a whole.

24:45Very best to your country, the Republic of Ireland. Tomorrow night, thankfully you don't have to like Richard as they say. Good luck to Czech here or anything like that. And if you do get into the stadium, hopefully it's enjoyable. Ian will be. Thank you. Cheers, thanks a lot. Cheers.