“I was also pretty good at hockey... so at one point I was thinking whether I should play hockey or football, but I went for football... I think I did well.”
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František Kunzo, a former Slovak soccer player and Olympic champion, was born on September 17, 1954 in Spišský Hrušov, one of five children, in the family of a local miner. There was only a year difference between the parents, father Jozef Kunzo and mother Žofia, who was unmarried Šofránková. Both of their families came from Spiš. Since his father was also involved in football, it was only a matter of time before he himself became interested in this sport as well. He attended elementary school in his birthplace, Spišský Hrušov. František’s involvement in football gained weight only in high school, at the local Technical School of Mechanical Engineering, where he chose the field of auto mechanics. It was a three-year school, which he finished successfully in 1972, already in Rudňany, precisely because of football and an important transfer. When he was sixteen years old, he joined the team in Rudňany, where the Regional Championships were currently taking place. In Spišský Hrušov, he played a lot of matches for pupils and also for a year as a teenager, but the transfer was more than important. They noticed him and he found himself in Spišská Nová Ves, already in the third league. However, the representation of Spišská Nová Ves was not the only one. František also worked in the youth national team, which he joined in 1972. He worked in both teams until 1973. As for the youth national team, after successfully overcoming the preparatory matches, the team reached the UEFA Champions League in Italy. The change occurred in 1973, due to the aforementioned mandatory military service. František, as a Czechoslovak representative, got into the Dukla Banská Bystrica team after a meeting of football players in Tachov. After a year, a contract came, so František officially worked in Dukla Banská Bystrica from 1974 until the winter of 1982. In 1977, the team made it to the first league. František also became a part of the twenty-one team, that is, the Czechoslovak national team, and also part of the Olympic selection, in 1977. After successfully overcoming the preparatory matches, which took place from January 1979, they made it to the Olympics themselves in 1980. After wins and draws in the group in Leningrad, they made it to the quarter-finals with Cuba and then to the semi-finals in Moscow with the former Yugoslavia. In the final match, in which they met the GDR, they ended up winning narrowly 1:0. They returned home as winners, which was the first time for Czechoslovakia. After finishing his work in Dukla in 1982, František found himself again in the Spišská Nová Ves team for a year. In 1983, he transferred to a better team, the Košice Lokomotiva team. He played for them for four years, but after relegation to the second league he had to change his place of work again. He found himself in Austria, as Pragosport agreed to Hainburg’s request for his entry. Although he already played lower competitions, the conditions were more than good. He worked like that for two years, but after learning that Lokomotiva were relegated to the third league, he returned to them for some time until they got higher. Then he chose Austria again. František was active in the game until he was fifty, that is, until 2004, while he ended his career in the team of the sixth league, in Hungary. Later, he found himself in the role of youth coach for Košice Lokomotiva. After moving to Spiš, he stopped any activities.
