Hello and dobrý deň!
It is August 2023, and I’m on a bus,
heading to a small town in central Slovakia.
Because this small town in central Slovakia
is a place I’ve been wanting to go since forever.
I’m sure most of you have seen the viral clip of that amateur football team
who have a steam train running through their home stadium;
and if you haven’t, here it is.
But I know a lot of you have seen this before,
because you keep sending it to me and telling me I should go there.
Well today, we are going there!
And we’re not just going there,
we are going to their biggest match of the season.
But we’re also going to try and find out:
what’s the story behind this magical place?
How did a railway end up going through a football ground?
And will we have more luck seeing a train than Ellis from AwayDays,
who filmed this classic episode a few days before?
- [ELLIS] We've been here an hour Ben...
there's not been a train.
Well, there’s only one way to find out.
Welcome to the most famous Slovak sixth division football team on earth:
this is Tatran Cierny Balog.
I’ve got off the bus in a place called Čierny Balog,
a town of about 5000 people,
that has become famous on the internet
because of its football team, Tatran Cierny Balog.
And we’ve arrived just a few hours before their biggest match of the year.
- [TIM] Er, so this is what the whole town is talking about…
Tonight, 5 o’clock, in the Slovakian Cup second round,
the local heroes of Tatran Čierny Balog
against first division Železiarne Podbrezová
(I think!).
Yeah, big team, first division.
Although, we came through there on the way down…
- [OFF CAMERA] Mmhm
- [TIM] (That’s Andrew saying "mmhm")
- [ANDREW] Yep!
- [TIM] ...and if anything Podbrezova was smaller than Čierny Balog.
So I think they’re doing quite well to be in the first division.
But yeah, big match!
- [TIM] Oh Andrew’s here.
The back of Andrew’s head is here.
As usual.
This way!
- [ANDREW] That way?!
I didn’t realise, but at the time we were filming this
Podbrezova were actually joint top of the Slovak first league.
Ok, it’s only 4 games into the season, but still!
Tatran, meanwhile, are an amateur club who play in Slovakia’s regional sixth league,
and they were only just promoted last season from the seventh.
So if Tatran can get a result tonight,
we could see one of the greatest shocks in the history of Slovak football.
But of course what we really want to see is a train.
So we’ve arrived here nearly three hours before kick-off,
because if I’ve timed this right…
I have timed this right!
Now, if you’ve seen Ellis’s video, you’ll know this is already a good start.
We’ve only been here 5 minutes and we’ve already seen a train.
But I think we can still do even better.
The real holy grail here is to see the train go through the stadium during a match.
Incidentally, while I was filming these scenes,
(and looking like a massive tourist),
we predictably caught the attention of some of the locals.
We got chatting to them,
and long story short, a man called Peter,
who had been planning to spend the afternoon sunbathing in his back garden,
is now going to be hanging out with us instead.
You’ll be able to tell who he is:
he’s the absolute legend who spends the entire video in his Bermuda shorts.
- [TIM] So were they... when…
in the 1970s were they in a higher division?
- [PETER] Mmhm.
- [TIM] They were in like the…?
- [PETER] I’m not sure in which division they were,
but I think they were much, much, much better.
Starting in completely different conditions.
What I remember, they didn’t have this grass, but something like…
[gravelly noises]
- [TIM] Oh ok!
- [PETER] This kind of playground, you know?
- [ANDREW] Gravel, yeah.
- [PETER] It’s called gravel?
- [ANDREW] Yeah.
- [TIM] This is gravel, yeah.
At this point we’re interrupted by a loud toot,
and for once it isn’t Andrew’s bottom,
it’s the train coming back the other way.
In the summer holidays, trains run through the stadium four times a day.
And normally this one,
going back into town at about quarter to three in the afternoon,
is the last one.
So, with Tatran’s home games usually scheduled for 4.30 or 5pm,
normally, you don’t actually see trains going through the stadium during a match.
But today is not a normal day!
- [ANDREW] Oh that’s a proper steadycam that is…
- [TIM] Yeah, the professionals are here!
Tonight’s match is being broadcast live on Slovak television
and apparently it’s the first time Tatran are going to be on live TV
in the history of the club.
And I get the feeling, if the cameras are here,
we might just get a few more trains.
Anyway, by now a few away fans have started to arrive at the stadium,
and it’s not long before the official Podbrezova team bus appears at the gates.
But something’s not quite right.
If this is the team bus, shouldn’t there be some footballers on it?
Where have they gone?
That was Podbrezova’s manager, Roman Skuhravy,
cousin of former Czech international striker, Tomas Skuhravy.
I’ve just been "dobry denned" by the manager of one of Slovakia’s top football teams,
who've just arrived at a stadium on a steam train.
Frankly my den could not get much dobryer,
and the match hasn’t even started yet!
- [TIM] I think this is good right?
We’re on the halfway line and we’ve got like the away ultras here...
- [PETER] Yeah and these are actually really nice seats
- [ANDREW] This is a pretty cool view from a stadium for a match, I’ve got to say.
- [TIM] Like, even without the railway, this is a nice view.
- [ANDREW] Yeah.
- [TIM] Railway adds an extra little extra.
I don’t know an “extra little extra” is but anyway,
the teams are about to start their warm ups,
and see if you can spot which ones are the professional top division footballers
and which ones are the amateur sixth division ones.
Meanwhile the refereeing team are doing their little warm up too.
(Brings a whole new meaning to “running the line”...)
And finally, it is time for the match to kick off.
And I know us YouTube people sometimes like to exaggerate things,
but like I said,
if Tatran can get any sort of result today
it would be one of the greatest shocks the sport has ever seen.
They’re probably not going to - I’ve seen both teams warming up -
but that’s the beauty of the game, you never know.
If they can just stay in the match early on,
and keep it tight at the ba...
- [TIM] It's not a great start.
Ok, let’s watch the replay
and try to analyse what went wrong tactically there.
Yep, I think it’s the bit where they leave three attackers
completely unmarked in the middle of their own box.
I love this team already.
I haven’t seen defensive positioning like that
since someone called Tim played inverted wing-back for the British Insititute.
And for context, I wasn’t supposed to be inverted.
Or a wing-back.
But to be fair, Tatran are a better side than my university team was,
and they actually manage to mount a few attacks...
In fact, Tatran are almost pressing for an equaliser
when Podbrezova score a second.
So yeah, 2-0 down already, less than twenty minutes gone,
I think a lot of smaller teams would switch to all-out defence,
and just try to park the bus.
But here, they don’t just park the bus!
- [TIM] What are we now, half an hour in?
- [ANDREW] 2-0, 19 minutes.
- [TIM] 19 minutes in, 2-0, and there's been a train.
- [ANDREW] Yes.
- [TIM] ...and now we can continue the football match!
Now I’ll be honest, despite the tactical masterstroke of literally parking a train,
Tatran’s defending doesn’t get any better.
But never mind that,
do football grounds get any better than this?
Is there anywhere else you could see an actual steam train
running between the pitch and the stands?
Well since it’s this channel,
we’re actually going to have to answer that question.
As far as I know this is unique in current league football.
But it’s not quite unique in history.
There’s another small European team that used to have railway track going through their
ground,
and I hope I’m pronouncing their name right...
Manchester City!
Yep; before the Etihad, and before even Maine Road,
they played a ground called Hyde Road
and as you can see from this map,
it had a railway going through it.
Anyway it’s now half time, and Tatran are already 6-0 down.
And apparently this is the cue for every schoolkid in the stadium
to invade the pitch for a kickabout.
- [TIM] I think the half time entertainment is half the town coming onto the pitch!
And as if that wasn’t enough, we’re about to get yet another train.
- [TIM] I guess THIS is the half time entertainment.
- [ANDREW] Looks that way!
And let’s be real for a moment:
forget the score, this is BRILLIANT.
The whole town has come out today to have a party,
eat a few burgers, drink a few drinks, toot a few whistles…
it doesn’t matter if Tatran are losing,
- of course they’re losing, they’re in the sixth division! -
but this is what football is all about.
Or at least it should be.
And you never know, maybe the boys can launch a stirring comeback in the second half.
If Podbrezova scored 6 in one half,
then maybe so can Tatr...
ok I got a bit carried away there.
- [TIM] That was so preventable that I didn't even film it.
I thought it wasn't going to be a goal.
- [ANDREW] The defender was calling for the keeper to come out and claim it,
the keeper didn't move... [trails off]
[TIM] Sorry, can you say that again?
[ANDREW] No.
[TIM] Yeah. That... probably shouldn't have been a goal.
Right.
At what point do we start questioning whether the scoreboard can handle double figures?
Fair play to the Podbrezova ultras by the way,
they haven’t stopped making a racket all game.
I mean there hasn’t really been enough time for them to shut up in between all the goals.
The only real question now is how many they’re going to get.
- [ANDREW] Now we see… will the scoreboard tick over?
- [TIM] Can the scoreboard tick over?
Does it have a ten?
- [ANDREW That’s the thing…
Podbrezova have officially broken the scoreboard.
I think it’s fair to say, they have been the better side today,
and they deserve to go through to the next round
and there’s really no need for them to score any more
It doesn’t matter how many more you get lads,
It’s not going to make any difference to the scoreboard...
Eventually the ref decides he seen enough,
it ends 12-0 (officially)
and Tatran are out of the cup.
- [TIM] Do you think the pressure of having the TV cameras here…
- [ANDREW] Strange, I just thought that! That’s weird.
- [TIM] Did you not feel like they were in it until about the second minute?
- [ANDREW] It was a competitive game throughout.
But the quality showed through with the away team.
I guess for Tatran, there’s always next year.
But wait a minute, we still haven’t answered the question;
how DID a railway end up going through a football ground?
Well we asked Peter,
who asked one of the guys on Tatran’s coaching team,
and the short answer is:
it was never supposed to be like this.
The railway was here long before the football team,
but then the railway closed down,
and that’s when the football team came along and built the stadium.
- [TIM] Ooookaay, so... they thought the train was never going to come back.
- [PETER] Yep, yep.
But then it did come back!
And for more on that story,
we might just have a cheeky bonus video
where I take a ride on the railway itself.
So stay subscribed to the channel, and that'll be along soon.
But first, someone's going to have to remove me
from a place that has lower league football,
a quirky railway,
AND what you could almost call mountains.
Good luck with that!
If you’d like to visit Cierny Balog,
it’s is a short bus or taxi ride from the main line station at Brezno,
which has direct trains from the capital Bratislava.
The best time to come and see Tatran
is when the football season has started, but the steam trains are still running;
so basically: August.
Entry to the match we went to was 3€,
but we were very lucky to see so many trains;
if you want to know what it’s normally like here,
I recommend watching Ellis’s video as well.
Meanwhile a massive thank you to Peter for such a warm Slovak welcome,
thank you all for watching,
and I’ll see you soon.
- [TIM] Andrew is having an actual good time!
- [PETER] Yeah, in Cierny Balog!
- [ANDREW] This is cool!
- [TIM] Right, I'll leave you there.