Filip Jícha

“I have no idea why they picked you.”

While I was playing in the youth category, I got my first national team invitation. And the quote above is what our coach, Miroslav Moulis, told me while handing me the invitation.

Of course, it hurt. We had just won the national championships and I was proud to play an important role in that success. I even won the MVP award!

There was more to it, though. Mr. Moulis knew how to make me angry. He knew how to make me work even harder. I wouldn’t be where I am without him. He instilled our whole team with such great fundamentals, mostly because he was an old-school coach, a perfectionist, a coach like the one Rocky had. He lived and breathed handball and his preparation tactics were precise and perfect for our age. He coached every detail and we just couldn’t get enough of him. Personally, I got a taste of what a professional attitude looks like.

That national team camp had 35 players. After a few practices, that number was cut in half. There were just 18 of us for the first tournament in a jersey with a lion on our chest. I was one of them. That fact alone was enough for me, but in that first tournament, I was also named the MVP, which I was also named at the next nationals, despite suffering a sprained ankle. To stay in shape, I had been cycling a lot, but I fell and grazed my arm so badly that I actually got sepsis; blood poisoning. I was out of practice for three weeks and I still managed to get healthy enough for the tournament, which we won.

When our year moved up to another category, our coach gave a speech. He congratulated us and thanked us for achieving the goals that we had set. To me personally, he said that I was fine, but, “You could play much better. You should know that. Don’t think that when you got chosen as an MVP that it couldn’t have been better. It could have.”

At first, I was disappointed, but then I realized he was right. The measurement isn’t an award or someone else’s admiration. Your measurement of success should be your own feeling about your performance. I’ll tell you some more about it once we get to the part where I was chosen as the best handball player in the world.

When I was a little kid, I always wanted to be an ice hockey player. What else would I have wanted, growing up in Pilsen? But my dad, who used to play hockey, said no because he didn’t want to get up at 5 in the morning for practice. 

In Starý Plzenec where we lived, there was a handball court right next to our house. I was a hyperactive boy. I’d spend my days outdoors, running around with a ball, always trying to come up with some new games. Basketball, ball hockey, handball. Our neighborhood was small so everyone knew each other. The club was led by my uncles and some other family relatives, so one day I arrived at an official practice.

I was immediately drawn to the net. I always have been. Even today, every time I get a chance, I try to get in goal, but back then the coaches pushed me to the court. I guess it was a good decision, but it didn’t seem like it at first. You should have seen me – a little boy with skinny legs. I got placed at right wing where I more or less just wandered around and didn’t care about the game that much. Sometimes, even the bugs behind the sideline were more interesting.

I finally realized that handball was in my blood when I tried to force my mom to let me play soccer. You have to understand, I wanted to play soccer because all of my friends were playing it, but the soccer field was on the other side of our village and you needed to cross a railroad to get there. I was not allowed to cross it on my own.

Soccer would be just a hobby, I tried to persuade mom.

“But you play handball,” she said. “You have to make a decision – it’s either soccer or handball.”

I didn’t have to think twice about it. My sport was so much cooler and no one else was playing it. But it was slowly ending in our village because there were just not enough kids. So I gathered my courage one day and asked my teacher, Svatopluk Pavelka, a former handball national team player and now a coach of Slavia Pilsen, if I could play for them. 

I got accepted. It was my first big transfer.

It wasn’t that simple, though. Other kids were making fun of me for coming from a village. It was the first time in my life I had to buckle up and battle through some discomfort. I wasn’t that eager to play at the time because I had no friends at practice. I wasn’t even that good. That came a few years later when I suddenly grew to almost two meters, even though I was still really skinny.

Once I moved to juniors, I could see myself being better than others. I felt that they were relying on me, which always made me the happiest – when I could help the team. I wanted to move forward but unfortunately, the A-team was very strong at the time and no one cared about some 17-year-old. They told me I still needed a year or two more to get to their level. Imagine hearing that when you’re 17. Two years seem like an eternity.

As I was getting offers from other clubs, Pilsen tried to hold onto me with an offer to practice with the A-team and some extra Adidas gear. ‘Alright, I’m done here,’ I realized. So I signed my first professional contract with Dukla Prague. They made me a left halfback. Poor Dan Kubeš, my good friend, had to move to the wing. But professional sport is like that – unforgiving.

Did you know that they play handball in Saudi Arabia? I didn’t. Definitely not in 2002, when I was approached by Dukla’s general manager Orság with an offer to play for three weeks with the local team. They were preparing for the Persian Gulf Championships in Dubai.

I had no idea how they found me but why not? To travel to a different part of the world in my 20s and get a payment of $4,000 was a crazy amount at the time. There was no way I would reject it. My club got a nice sum as well.

At the tournament, the management asked me to stay for a whole season.

“I can’t. I have a contract in Dukla,” I said. But after my return, Mr. Orság called me again and said: “Filip, we have a playoff ahead of us, but we can’t miss this. This will help us financially for another whole year.” So I packed up and hopped on a plane to Qatar again. Another adventure, bring it on.

One week after I said no to their manager, he welcomed me back.

My apartment was filled with the smell of Arabian perfume. The smell was so strong I can smell it even now. My luggage got lost somewhere along the way so I was just standing there with my backpack, thinking how hard it was going to be for the next four and a half months in a different country where I was all by myself. I realized that with that other Arabian team I at least had some form of tournament regimen – breakfast, practice, everything with the team. But what now? I didn’t even know how to call home.

The weight of this realization made me tear up. It would have been easy to turn and run away. I started fighting instead.

I realized that this trip was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. In a foreign environment, in an entirely different culture, I learned independence. Wherever else I went, I would never be able to cut myself from my mom’s service like here. I had been so lazy that I traveled home from Prague even three times a week and always had a bag full of dirty clothes because I knew my mom would wash it much better than I ever could.

In Qatar, which wasn’t the rich center full of skyscrapers back then as it is now, I found Andrej, a Slovakian who invited me into the community of Europeans working for Qatar Airways. A door opened for me to a whole new world of people I could spend my free time with, practice my English and get to know how things work.

The level of handball there back then was terrible. My teammates were semi-professionals who earned a salary, but they could only practice in the afternoon after their regular jobs. At least we won the most important championship for which I was hired, and to ride in an open bus through the main road decorated in our team’s colors – that was an unforgettable experience.

Qataris also know how to party! Tea and shisha (a hookah). I don’t smoke, so I was left with only the tea.

What I remember most from that time is the heat. Imagine waking up at 12 or 1 in the afternoon when the heat is at its peak. Fifty degrees Celsius is a standard. Literal hell. My day usually began with me going downstairs with two car keys: one to turn the engine on so I could leave the air conditioning running; the other key to lock the car so I could go back upstairs, shower and put on some clothes. Twenty minutes later when I returned, the car was cooled enough for me to drive in it.

I lived mostly during the night. Our practice began at 8 in the evening and when I say at 8, that could mean anything between 9 and 9:30 for Qataris. At my first training camp, we should have departed from the hotel at 10. At 10 minutes before 10, I was there, ready, waiting. The first teammate arrived fifteen minutes after 10, surprised to see me there so soon. If it was a good day, we would depart at 10:50.

I remember how I forgot my practice shoes once. As a professional, I always arrived sooner than everyone else and did my own prep. I was sipping on some fresh juice when I realized I had forgotten my shoes. It took about 40 minutes to get back to my apartment so I immediately got going and arrived at 9:30 to a practice which should have started at 8. I wasn’t even the last one.

We usually ended around midnight. On my way home, I always called around to see who among my new European friends was where and with whom I could meet. We really knew how to enjoy ourselves, especially since some of them were allowed to buy alcohol, which is taboo in Qatar, although they weren’t allowed to store it in the Qatar Airways spaces. 

My flat became a base of operations. It had three rooms and I only needed one where I could sleep. The rest served as a bar, an island of Europe, open nonstop. People would come to my place to have fun. I didn’t drink that much, just an occasional glass of whiskey. I preferred beer, but that was insanely expensive. The best thing about this group of people was the fun we had together. We planned numerous trips, visiting the desert and whatnot and I realized that I was happy. I had learned how to live in Qatar and knew that I could do it anywhere now. I had won my independence, and even though my job was handball, I realized that there were other values off the court that made me who I am.

Growing up, my life was filled with practice, workouts, running, and other things I had to do to become a professional athlete. I also had to sacrifice my studying ambitions and the student life. But I experienced a slightly shorter version of that in Qatar. I saw what real life looks like and it was an enormously valuable lesson for my personal growth.

Qatar also showed me this was not the path I wanted to continue. The salary was nice but it was just too easy. I had seen other players choose this path. Many handballers from the Czech Republic chose this – in my opinion – easier path, but my ambitions were different and I believed I had what it took to go to another level. I wanted to return to Europe. The game quality was a higher priority than my salary. I wanted to challenge the best players and push myself further. If I failed, I could always return to the Middle East. I had made some contacts and the doors there were not entirely closed.

Fortunately, I never needed to walk back through them. I started the next phase of my career  in Switzerland and never looked back.