CAGLIARI, Italy — Jakub Jankto just wants to play football, like he always did.
The Czech midfielder sits by his locker in the dressing room at Unipol Domus, Cagliari Calico’s temporary home while the Stadio Sant’Elia silently awaits reconstruction next door. A small red-and-blue shirt cut from cardboard marks his place, with No. 21 printed on it. To the right, Paulo Azzi; to the left, Nicolas Viola, a leader who is always impeccably dressed. Jankto arrived on Sardinia this summer, his life forever changed in the two years since he was last in Italy, so he didn’t get to choose — the kitman does that — but it has worked out well: good players, good friends, he says.
It’s quiet now, empty. A Thursday afternoon after an early-morning gym session alone and the team training at the Crai Sport Centre, 13 miles north. Two figurines look over the room — the Virgin Mary on one side, Sant’Efisio on the other. A message runs round the walls: a land, a people, a team. On the way out, past manager Claudio Ranieri’s room, is another from Sugar Ray Leonard: you have to know you can win, you have to think you can win, you have to feel you can win. This place is sacred. Fun sometimes, too. It can also be unforgiving. And it is where he always wanted to be.
“I dreamed of being in a dressing room like this,” Jankto says.
Born in Prague in 1996, the son of a car mechanic and a shop assistant, Jakub Jankto — nicknamed Kuba — joined Slavia Prague at 6, although he spent last year at their rivals, Sparta, across the Vltava River and a deep sporting divide. He grew up watching and admiring Pavel Nedvěd, Ballon d’Or winner in 2003. And Jan Koller. And Tomáš Rosický.
Mostly, Jankto played.
“He was a natural; he could flip the switch,” says David Broukal, the Dynamo Ceske Budejovice defender who grew up with him and watched him leave home at 18, heading for Udinese’s academy side.
“And that’s when it gets serious,” Jankto recalls. “As a kid, you play for fun, but dream. When I go to Italy everything changes. I was young, but I always had in my head that if I say something, I do it: I just said to my dad: ‘I take my luggage and go.’ He said: ‘OK, we’ll support you.’ Udine to Prague is only six hours, so it’s not like I was going to the United States.
“I pushed myself, hard,” Jankto continues. “I had the most incredible mentality — I wanted to build a new history for myself. I left behind my friends, my family. It’s hard, but you have to leave something behind for football. And I think I did pretty good.”
A league champion with Sparta, Jankto’s senior career began on loan at Ascoli (an Italian football club in Marche) when he was still just 19. He has played 234 games at six clubs in three countries but mostly in Italy: at Udinese, Sampdoria and now Cagliari. He has lived victories over Real Madrid and Juventus. He is an international player with Czechia, a European Championship quarterfinalist in 2020. He has 45 caps for his country.
“I am not one of the greatest ever,” he says. “I am not Messi, but I am a pretty good football player.”