Helena Jindáčková

“We were in a great shape. When we went on the pitch, we did a warm-up like before a match. The girls [in Fiorentina] went kicking the ball straight away, but you can rip a muscle that way, no real sportsperson will do that. Girl football was just starting out [in Italy]. We already had a few years under our belts at Slavia at the time. We were better in that sense. Before we went to Italy, [our coach] had us practice hard – running round the pitch in heavy, winter tracksuits. There were buckets of water prepared around the pitch. We were red hot, and we could wash. It’s hot in Italy and he was preparing us for everything. Some work was being done at Slavia at the time; there were heaps of gravel with snow. We had to run up the hills, holding hands and wearing rubber boots. When one of us slipped the others had to hold her. The practice was murderous, but we were in a killer shape. We were successful. I was the team’s beautician. The coach said that guys would come to see women playing football. Guys’ matches are different, but when they go watch a women’s match, they want to see women. I had to make sure the girls didn’t have dirty fingernails. We had to be groomed; we all had matching clothes and suitcases.”

“When we went to Western Germany, we were silly and asked a technician first. When sportspeople went abroad during the communist era, there were eleven players and twenty people accompanying them, because they wanted to go abroad too and they were also meant to keep an eye on us. We told one technician that we wanted to stay there. They grabbed us by our hair and took us back to the team. From then on, we knew we could not ask. When we came to Italy we were not prepared. All we had was a suitcase with clothes for a week, football shoes and a hair drier. The hair drier was the first thing I didn’t have to buy. We weren’t ready. – “Why did you do it?” – “To have a different life. There was no freedom here. I was not one of those who would settle for that. I needed to learn, move, do something. You couldn’t go abroad, so finally you fled. If it can’t be done by fair means it will be done by foul. See, you are aged eighteen or twenty, you see foreigners driving fancy cars on Wenceslas Square and wearing different clothes. You keep on dreaming about living a better life, being able to buy things… All that was here was the Tuzex shops and endless queues. If you were lucky to have the Tuzex vouchers you could buy something out of the ordinary; that was great – a different blouse than those available from usual shops, all in grey or that liver colour, that ugly purple… Our stockings were coloured like café latte. When you see others who can have it, how do you not want it too? Well, maybe not everyone, but I did. I wanted to travel and see things. We had been to Germany and seen something. A different country; different colours. So when I had the first opportunity…”