Draft:Marie Ševčíková

Marie Ševčíková

Marie Ševčíková at the 1970 World Cup
Personal information
Full name	Marie Anna Ševčíková
Date of birth	(1947-11-20)November 20, 1947
Place of birth	Lobzy u Ošelína, Czechoslovakia
Date of death	June 28, 2010(2010-06-28) (aged 62)
Place of death	Glostrup, Denmark
Height	1,80 m
Position(s)	Right wing
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1966–1968	SK Slavia Praha
1968–1970	Femina BK
1971–1974	ACF Fiorentina Elettroplaid
1974–1975	U.S. Città di Pontedera CF
1975–1978	Femina BK
International career
1969–1970	Denmark
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Marie Ševčíková (20 November 1947 - 28 June 2010) was a Czechoslovakian and Danish footballer who played in attack on the right wing. She won silver medals at the 1969 European Championship with the Danish team and won the 1970 World Championship with the Danish team. In August 1969, Ševčíková was the first ever female footballer from Czechoslovakia to be offered a place in the Italian league.

Club career

She started playing football in the autumn of 1966 in Slavia Praha, and at the end of October of the same year she won the 1st edition of the tournament "The Heart of the Young World". Slavia repeated their triumph at the tournament a year later. The Slavia team went from victory to victory not only at home but also abroad. In July 1967 it won the Torneo di Riccione tournament in Italy, in which it successively defeated the teams of Fiorentina, Bologna and Ambrosiana Milano. In June and July 1968 Slavia also defeated the Danish team Femina BK twice (2:0, 3:2).

After the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, Ševčíková and another Slavia teammate Jana Mandíková decided to leave Czechoslovakia and applied for political asylum in Denmark. They both started playing for Femina BK, a club they knew well from recent friendlies. In July 1969, the Danish club played several friendlies in Italy, during which Ševčíková dazzled with her performances to such an extent that the leading Italian club Real Torino offered her a professional contract. Before the contract could be fulfilled, however, the Italian league competition split into two at the beginning of 1970, and Ševčíková's engagement was cancelled.

Ševčíková returned to Denmark, where she again played for Femina BK. However, she did not disappear from the Italian clubs' radar and in May 1971 she went to Italy again, where she started playing for the first league club ACF Elettroplaid Fiorentina. She reaches same year the final of the Italian Cup, but falls short to ACF Roma (0:1).

International career

At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, Femina BK, for which Ševčíková and Mandíková played, represented Denmark at the first European and World Championships. At the 1969 European Championships in Italy, Denmark reached the finals, where they won silver medals after losing to Italy. With the same team, Ševčíková and Mandíková won the World Cup title in Italy in July 1970. In the final, Denmark defeated Italy 2-0 when Ševčíková scored the decisive goal with a beautiful shot from distance two minutes before the end. When the next World Cup was held in Mexico a year later, Denmark had already decided to make a selection from all Danish clubs and only from players with Danish citizenship. Ševčíková and Mandíková, who were still Czechoslovak citizens at that time, lost their participation in the tournament this time.

Personal life

Ševčíková was born in the agricultural settlement of Lobzy near Stříbro, where her parents came shortly after the war, following the expulsion of the original German population. After a few years, the whole family moved to Rokycany. Ševčíková started playing tennis for Kovo Rokycany, where she managed to break into the top 20 players in the whole country as a teenager. She continues to play tennis after her arrival in Prague in 1966, when she plays for the club TJ Motorlet (now 1. ČLTK Praha). However In September of that year Ševčíková accepted an offer from Slavia coach Vilém Marzin and began her rich football career.