The Czech capital’s fierce sporting rivalry tells a tale of politics, history, and class divisions spanning more than a century of shared history.
In 311 matchups since 1896 between the country’s two most successful football teams, AC Sparta Praha has notched up 138 victories to 97 for their rivals SK Slavia Praha, but to the Czechs, the Prague Derby means much more than just a game.
As Prague local Marko Zurri puts it, “The passion and desire to become the ‘ruler of Prague’ fuels the two camps’ hatred of one another.”
Local mythology tells that Sparta’s working-man mentality clashed with the middle-class, intellectual bent of Slavia supporters, fostering a rivalry that transcended mere sports. And while life in Prague runs on a different track these days, the Prague Derby legend shows no sign of fading.
Slavia’s Identity
Slavia Praha initially emerged as a cycling club founded by students at Charles University in the late 19th century, according to Slavia’s records.
But the club’s legacy can be traced back to a literary group founded decades earlier that espoused pan-Slavic, nationalist sentiments in the wake of the 1848 revolutions. The cycling club later adopted the pan-Slavic five-pointed star as its symbol.
Slavia Praha’s football (soccer) club was founded in 1892 in Vinohrady, then as now an upscale neighborhood of elegant architecture and a vibrant cultural scene. As a result, the club attracted students and professionals and boasted two Czechoslovak presidents among its fans, according to The Athletic’s football reporter Tom Burrows.
Today, this generalization does not reign entirely true; however, some Slavia fans still tout themselves as a higher class of supporter. In football writer Neil Frederik Jensen’s article, “Champions: Sparta Prague Clinch the Double,” he recalls seeing fans at a Slavia home game hoist a banner “claiming the club was ‘the intellectuals.’ ”
Zurri says that as a fan he has noticed that Slavia’s deep cultural roots and invested fan base “unite people from across the spectrum of Czech society.” He went on to say that Slavia’s historic roots and legacy “play an important role in Czech cultural history” and aim to better Czech society today with “many fundraising activities, such as aiding Ukrainians damaged by the war.”
Slavia’s fortunes ebbed and flowed with the tides of history, from the bright hopes after Czechoslovakia’s independence in 1918 to the tense atmosphere of the 1930s, Nazi occupation, and four decades under totalitarian rule.
In 1948, according to the club’s website, the club began construction of a new stadium to replace the one deliberately burned down by German forces during the Prague Uprising in May 1945, but just two years later it was demolished to make way for the Stalin memorial on Letna plain, rising over Prague’s Old Town, an in-your-face symbol of the new communist regime. In 1953, the team played its first game in the new Eden stadium across the Vltava River – still their home although since rebuilt.
Despite the club’s decline, Slavia was still able to maintain its identity and served as a beacon of national pride. Slavia club records both report that Slavia players refused to play a league match in November 1989 in support of the nationwide student strike that quickly morphed into the Velvet Revolution that toppled the communist regime.
The end of communism brought a flood of private investment across the country’s economy. In his book Vecna Slavia (Eternal Slavia), Czech writer Vitezslav Houska describes how Czech-American businessman Boris Kobel invested the equivalent of about $7 million with the intention of building a strong football club in Czechoslovakia that would compete with the big European clubs.
Sparta’s Roots
Sparta Praha sports club was founded in the same Vinohrady district as Slavia, just a year later, where the club expected generous support from City Hall. But with another club already nearby, that wasn’t in the cards. And so a rivalry was born.
In an interview, Sparta Academy trainer Michal Vyslouzil said, “Being a Spartan is a matter of pride. We are like one big family united by our support for Sparta and our passion for football.”
But first, the fledgling team needed a permanent home. After trying several temporary venues, Sparta built its first proper stadium – just a stone’s throw from Slavia’s ground on Letna.
The club’s style of play and burgeoning working-class fan base soon earned it the nickname “Iron Sparta.”
However, “The class division is not as significant today as it was in the past,” Slavia fan Zurri said. Tom Burrows, writing in The Athletic, offered a similar sentiment: “there is no obvious class distinction today.”
To Sparta Praha fans, matches are not just sporting events; they are social gatherings that bring people from all different walks of life together.
“Sparta is the team of my life, I feel an indescribable emotion toward Sparta,” said enthusiast Ella Joskova. “It means so much to me to support a club that has such strong ties to the community and such a deep history.” As the winningest team in Czech football history, most Czechs either love Sparta or hate it, she opined.
Sparta, like its main rival Slavia, fell into difficult times during communist rule, with the threat of relegation in the late ’50s. Sparta was even forced to change its name to Spartak Praha Sokolovo for a 13-year period, because, as Sparta Praha’s official website states, “The communist regime did not like the ancient name Sparta.”
The club’s fortunes rose again with the arrival in 1959 of the “Spartan of the century,” midfielder Andrej Kvasnak. With the worst repression of the hardline Stalinist regime fading, the club won two Czechoslovak league titles and a Central European Cup over the next decade.
Slavia’s Political Whirlwind
Slavia Praha also struggled under the previous regime. “Our club and communism do not match,” the club boasts. Some then found it surprising when the giant Chinese company CEFC Energy acquired the team in 2015, though the deal did save the club from financial hardship. In 2018, Chinese state-owned investment house CITIC Group took over CEFC’s share.
“To be saved by communist money is hard for some,” Czech sportswriter Michal Petrak commented, as quoted in a 2017 Deutsche Welle story.
Slavia is “proud of its educated fan base and anti-communist stance,” Petrak said.
Chinese ownership was able to deliver results, though: with four league championships and four runner-up finishes between 2015 and 2023. This despite more political shenanigans when Prague withdrew from a sister-city agreement with Beijing in 2019 because China refused to remove wording stating that Prague must respect the “One China” policy, which claims Taiwan as an inalienable part of China.
The club returned to local ownership in December 2023 when Czech entrepreneur and lifelong Slavia fan Pavel Tykac acquired it for a reported 2 billion crowns ($85 million), according to Brno Daily.
“The Czech jewel is finally back in Czech hands again,” Slavia fan Karel Libochovic celebrated on social media.
Sparta’s Scandals
Sparta’s fervent fans (and not only Sparta’s) have been accused of crossing the line into extremism and racism on numerous occasions over the years. Sometimes poor performances arouse their anger, as when fans attacked the team bus with rocks and bottles after an away loss in 2013.
The team has been sanctioned several times by sports authorities for chants aimed at opposing players and teams, and fans have been accused of aiming anti-Semitic chants at Slavia “to associate their traditional foes with supposed Jewish links,” according to The Guardian.
2021 marked a nadir for Sparta fans’ reputation. In September, the team was fined 75,000 crowns ($3,200) over racist abuse of an opposing Viktoria Plzen player. But that paled in comparison to the allegations of racist chants directed at players for big foreign clubs. European football authority UEFA ordered Sparta to play a game against Glasgow Rangers behind closed doors for fans’ abuse of AS Monaco player Aurelien Tchouameni at an earlier match. When Sparta offered to fill the stadium with children, UEFA agreed, only for Rangers’ Glen Kamara to claim those very kids aimed insulting chants at him every time he touched the ball.
The backlash led the club to defend its child fans, accusing Kamara’s lawyer of “inciting xenophobic tendencies and verbal attacks on defenseless children.” Two weeks later, UEFA cleared Sparta, citing insufficient evidence of bad behavior on the part of the young Spartans.
Incidentally, Slavia’s Ondrej Kudela had already been hit with a 10-match ban for racially abusing Kamara that spring.
Matchless Matchup
A new Czech football season is underway and it is too early to predict whether the Prague “S” teams will tussle for first and second place come next spring, as they have in 21 of the past 30 years. With two matches played, Sparta tops the table, with Slavia in third, and both sides are looking ahead to the next derby on 5 October. Whatever the result, what can be guaranteed is that the Prague Derby will rouse echoes of historic social divides between two clubs on opposite sides of the city. Slavia and Sparta may represent distinct cultures, histories, traditions, and values, but both clubs certainly have identical Czech pride.
As Dutch Slavia fan Robin Dekker said, “Being a fan is like a lifestyle. The people are fully into it. The atmosphere is unmatched.”
Joskova agreed: “For Sparta and Slavia fans, it is the most anticipated and heated moment of the season – it means everything to the city of Prague.”
As Sparta’s Vyslouzil put it, “To us fans, the derby is the highlight of the season. The hatred between the two camps leads to more than a battle: it leads to a war both on and off the pitch.”
…
Kaden Buss is a journalism and political science student at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and is currently an editorial intern with Transitions.
