Pavel Verbíř

* 1972

  • "Mr. Pešice, who is no longer with us, he coached me back then in the youth in Sparta, when I was actually... We had morning training sessions instead of school, so he knew me from there and we talked that it would be nice if he came to Teplice. He went through Sparta and Slavie. In the end it worked out and we spent three wonderful years here, it was under his leadership that the best season was, and I personally did well. Of course, there were more coaches, but I would probably highlight his name the most."

  • "I remember it very fondly because playing Dortmund here... At that time it was a European or world team. Full of well-known good players and our balance with them was such that everyone predicted we would get a lot of goals. But in the end we played two even games with them and lost 1-0 and 1-0, so I think we went out with our heads held high. The games in the European Cups is why a player wants to play those games. Of course our first league is good too, but the European cups have a much bigger following, there are better stadiums. You also look around the world, stadiums like in Kaiserslautern, in Rotterdam or at Celtic Glasgow, in Dortmund. That's something amazing. You fill a lot of experiences and you still remember it to this day."

  • "In the past, both the material security and the training area... We used to have natural grass and the substitute pitch was cinder. Few people remember that nowadays. Nowadays we have a grass surface with artificial grass, which serves us even in winter when the grass is frozen and you can't train on it. With clubs now investing in artificial grass, it has gone up tremendously from that point of view. That's kind of the biggest change because before you had to play on cinder because you couldn't play on grass. So the conditions have improved every year and nowadays the players have conditions such that in the winter time, when there is maybe a metre of snow here, they fly to Turkey or Cyprus where the conditions are excellent in terms of preparation and training. And here you can't actually train because there is nowhere to train."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Teplice, 18.03.2025

    (audio)
    délka: 47:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Football clubs from Stuttgart and Nuremberg were interested in me. I stayed loyal to Teplice

Period photograph by Pavel Verbíř, 1980s
Period photograph by Pavel Verbíř, 1980s
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Pavel Verbíř was born on 13 November 1972 in Obříství. From an early age he was involved in football. He started his football career in the football club in Lobkovice and then represented the local football team TJ Sokol Obříství. Later he moved to Spolana Neratovice. He graduated from the sports grammar school in Prague and in 1987-1991 he represented the club Sparta Prague as a youth. In 1992 he moved to Football Club Teplice, to whom he remained loyal throughout his football career. German clubs were also interested in him, but the transfer always ended in failure. For most of his football career Pavel Verbíř wore the number nine shirt. His most successful season came in 1998/99, when he played 28 games and scored a remarkable 13 goals. He retired on 28 May 2011 after the last league match of the 2010/11 season against Slovácko. Now (2025) he works for FK Teplice as a manager. He lives in Teplice.