Hello and Dobry Den!
It is a beautiful spring day,
and we are back in the Czech Republic.
And this time we’re in the gorgeous medieval centre of Brno,
the second biggest city in the country.
And today we’re going on a 15-minute walk north of the gorgeous medieval centre
into this slightly less gorgeous part of town
because there is something big at the back of this car park.
- [Tim] “should be just here…"
- [Andrew] I see a stand!
- [Tim] No idea if we can get in…
- [Andrew ] Give it a go…
What we’ve come here to see is one the largest abandoned football grounds in the whole of Europe.
But it’s also the story of a man with a mullet who went from hero to villain,
a team who were ripped out of their home in the heart of the city,
and a club captain who missed the old place so much
that he brought it back to life for one final match.
Welcome to the Stadion Za Luzankami.
This is what was once by the biggest stadium in the Czech football league,
and the former home of local club Zbrojovka Brno,
until they were forced to move out in 2001.
In the 1990s, they used to get bigger crowds here than any of the Prague teams,
or anyone else, really.
In fact, these crumbling old stands still hold the record
for the highest ever attendance at a league game in the Czech Republic,
when over 44000 people squeezed in here on an October afternoon in 1996
to watch their table-topping team bag a late
equaliser against reigning champions Slavia Prague.
But only 5 years after that goal went in, the ground saw its last competitive match.
The league had ruled that the stadium was no longer up to their standards,
the owner could no longer afford to update it,
and Zbrojovka had to move out to a new temporary home.
Two decades on, they’re still there.
Some of the fans still dream of returning one day to what they call the “Luzanky”.
But first, they’ll have to find a way of getting inside it.
- [Tim] Think they’ve sealed off the stadium bowl itself haven’t they?
- [Andrew] I think they've just welded the top bits.
- [Andrew] Oh. Apart from this bit!
- [Tim] Apart from this bit!
- [Tim] That’s a proper concrete bowl isn’t it?
- [Andrew] It is.
The stadium was always a bit bigger than it really needed to be.
Put it this way, when it first opened back in 1953,
Zbrojovka were still in the Czechoslovakian second division,
so in order to get a big crowd down to the opening game,
they invited two other teams:
Dynamo Moscow,
who were one of the best teams around at the time
and featured several star players from the Soviet national side,
and Czech first division team Banik Ostrava,
who were available.
And an estimated 40,000 people turned up to watch
- easily beating the previous record attendance for a Czech football match.
And side note, playing one of his first games for Dynamo that day
was a promising young goalkeeper
by the name of Lev Yashin.
It’s fair to say that Zbrojovka hardly needed such a grand venue for their second division games,
but just like your first badly-fitting football shirt,
they eventually grew into it.
- [Tim] This is VERY open…
- [Andrew] Yep. This is where we saw the people from the other side earlier on.
- [Tim] Yeah. Oh, these are the posh seats.
In the 1970s Zbrojovka saw their real glory days,
first winning promotion to the top flight
and then going to become champions of Czechoslovakia in 1978,
a title that they celebrated in front of a heaving crowd at the Luzanky.
Admittedly by the mid-80s they’d already been relegated back to the second tier
and they were beginning to struggle financially
but at the dawn of the 90s,
the good times looked like they were about to arrive again
in the shape of this absolutely magnificent mullet.
It belonged to a man called Lubomir Hrstka,
better known to his friends as “Boby”.
He was a local ice hockey legend from the 1970s,
but was now enjoying a second life as an entrepreneur
running a chain of fitness centres.
And in 1992, one of his friends,
- a guy called Karel Kroupa, who was himself a legend from the 1978 Zbrojovka team -
asked Boby if he would be willing to step in with some cash and help out the struggling club.
And if you’ve ever watched one of my videos before,
you might be able to tell where this is going.
Zbrojovka Brno fans woke up the next morning to find out that Boby had bought the entire club,
and not only that, he had renamed it for commercial reasons,
and they were now called "Boby Brno".
Next he borrowed some more cash,
bought a patch of land in front of the stadium,
and built a giant leisure complex,
with a hotel,
restaurant,
casino,
fitness centre,
and what my source material refers to as "a huge disco".
He called it the BobyCentrum.
And just like the stadium next door,
it was probably a bit bigger than it really needed to be.
For the fans though, it was a time of great optimism.
Boby was pumping money into the club,
new signings came in who improved the team,
and before long, Boby Brno were challenging at the top end of the table.
Home games in the mid-90s regularly attracted 20 or even 30000 fans to the Luzanky
– still not quite filling the place,
but pretty impressive for a league where the average attendance was only 7000.
Unfortunately for the fans though,
it was all about to go very badly wrong.
Boby had borrowed so much money to build his Boby empire
that by 1998 he owed his creditors an estimated 700 million Czech crowns.
He had no way of repaying the debt, and well, you know what happened next.
The whole business collapsed,
there was no money available to repair the ground,
the club were forced to move out,
and Boby ended up spending 5 years in jail
with a lot of regrets.
- [Andrew] These look like... player showers? Or...
Oh, urinals for sure.
- [Tim] Yep.
- [Andrew] Yep. Now suitably graffitied everywhere.
- [Tim] And the current drama is that a lady has lost her dog in there somewhere.
* Woman calling dog *
* Woman calling dog * x2
- [Dog] WOOF WOOF
The team have now - perhaps understandably - renamed themselves back to Zbrojovka Brno.
But after two decades, is there any chance they could ever come back here,
and fans could once again fill the stands of the Luzanky?
Well actually, for one special day a few years ago...
they already did.
This is Petr Svancara.
In 2015, he was the captain of Zbrojovka Brno,
and at 37 years old, he was coming to the end of a career
that had seen him play nearly 200 games for his home town club.
But before hanging his boots up, he had one last dream:
to play one final match at the old abandoned stadium.
Word got around,
and suddenly dozens of fans appeared at the Luzanky to help clean everything up,
volunteer workers came down to repair the cracked old concrete structure,
and someone relayed the entire pitch for free.
On the day itself, 35000 fans packed into the stands
and they could have sold 50,000 tickets.
There is a video of it on YouTube, it is incredible,
and I’ll put a link in the description.
And since then, Svancara has continued leading the campaign
to try and bring Zbrojovka back home permanently,
but 8 years later, it still hasn’t happened.
Frankly, I’ve lost count of how many old newspaper articles I found saying
“A renovation is planned for next year”
Basically, the Luzanky has had more false dawns than a French and Saunders lookalike competition.
But fundamentally... it’s still here.
Despite several attempts by the city to have it all torn down and replaced with apartments,
and despite Svancara’s campaign to get it renovated and bring Zbrojovka back,
what’s actually happened is neither of those things.
At least, not yet.
- [Tim] I think that might be the Czech for “please do not go inside”.
But I can poke my camera in, right?
- [Andrew] I’m not fluent, but yeah…
But one thing has happened since that day in 2015.
Although the old concrete terraces have fallen quiet once more,
the pitch itself is now back in use.
There are youth teams who play on the grass during football season,
and in the summer, they have live music festivals here.
And...
sorry, wait,
there’s a 1990s music festival in this stadium?
In September?
I wonder if I can make it ba…
Sorry, I’m going to have to wrap up the video now because, erm,
are you all ready for this?
If you’d like to visit the legendary Stadion Za Luzankami,
it’s a 10-minute tram ride from Brno central station plus a 5 minute walk.
And it goes without saying,
in its current state it is not the safest place in the world,
and any exploring is at your own risk.
But bear in mind,
the legal negotiations between Svancara and the city are still ongoing
and by the time you’re watching this video,
it could be a shiny newly-renovated stadium,
and it’s also possible the whole place might have been demolished.
But for now, thank you very much for watching,
and I’ll see you soon.