New owner in Liberec: Kania has completed the purchase of the club, Nezmar is also returning to it

Businessman Ondřej Kania became the owner of Slovan Liberec when he bought 75.65 percent of the shares. At the same time, its former player and official Jan Nezmar is returning to the club, whom the new board of directors elected as general manager. The seventh team of the first league table reported about it on the website.

Kania acquired the club from Ludvík Karel, who joined Slovan in the mid-1990s and helped him out of financial problems. During his era, Liberec won three league titles in 2002, 2006 and 2012. It also reached the European Cup several times, reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup in 2002.

“It is a great honor for us that we can become the majority shareholders of such an important Czech football club as FC Slovan Liberec. Our clear goal for the coming seasons is to return the club to where it historically belongs, i.e. to the highest ranks of the Czech league and to fight in the preliminary rounds for participation in the basic groups of European cups,” said Kania, who took over the club through his company Pembroke Manor.

Slovan informed about the upcoming change of owner already in December. The 31-year-old Kania, chief executive of JK Education/Consilium, which deals with education and runs a network of private schools, among other things, had until May 15 to exercise the buyout option. At the same time, he sought Nezmar’s return to the club from the beginning.

“The first step towards achieving our goals is the appointment of Jan Nezmar to the position of general director. Further steps will follow and will be transparently communicated with fans, partners and the football public,” stated Kania, whose wife Petra became the chairman of the board.

Nezmar won league titles with Liberec as a player in 2002 and 2012 and subsequently worked successfully in the role of sports director. He also held the same position in Slavia. He finished at Eden in 2020, after which he was a sports advisor at the Polish club Podbeskidzie Bielsko-Biala. He also worked for the consulting firm Deloitte CR or the hockey team White Tigers Liberec.

Slavia Prague also changed hands during the season, which was bought by billionaire Pavel Tykač from the Chinese company CITIC Group. Viktoria Plzeň has had a new owner since June. The Austrian-Swiss business group FCVP GmbH acquired a majority share from Adolf Šádek, who remained in the management of the club.

Business card of businessman Ondřej Kania

Date and place of birth: December 19, 1992, Brno

Family: married

– founder and majority owner of the American Academy network of schools and the company JK Education, which focuses on mediating study stays at boarding high schools and universities in the USA, Canada and Europe

– comes from a modest background, after elementary school he applied for a scholarship to four hundred private American high schools and succeeded in one

– after returning from the USA he started a business at the age of 20, he and a former classmate started arranging study stays at American high schools and three years later they already bought the first Czech high school

– also got involved in politics, ran unsuccessfully in regional, parliamentary and municipal elections