V brance Vlasta Burian – Vápenka Ivan (2011)

This book explores a lesser-known period in the life of Vlasta Burian, the king of comedians, whose films are especially associated with the Christmas and New Year season. Few people know that he was also an all-round sportsman who excelled in tennis, cycling, motor racing, horse riding and other sports. Football was his greatest passion, and he was an outstanding goalkeeper for the first-league AC Sparta Prague team. Burian was a member of Sparta from 1914 to 1922, when his acting career took priority. The book documents this period through numerous photographs and written records, although Sparta’s documents up to 1934 were destroyed in a fire at the club’s grandstand in Letná. Ivan Vápenka, a collector, writer and lifelong Sparta supporter, describes Burian’s entire football career, including his time at Sparta and at Slavia, where Burian had his own eleven. The publication also covers Burian’s activities as a referee and presents a number of episodes from the life of this famous comedian, whom Sparta’s sporting secretary Ferdinand Scheinost described as one of the celebrated figures of Czech football and a lifelong Spartan at heart.