PL: Go home if you don’t like it! – Zoltán Gera on Boxing Day

– Boxing Day – or football at Christmas in England. How do you remember these game days?
–Wholeheartedly – said Zoltán Gera, the 42-year-old head coach of the U21 national team and a former 97-time capped national footballer who was a player for West Bromwich Albion from 2004 to 2008, then from 2011 to 2014, and Fulham from 2008 to 2011.

–Wasn't it weird to play football during the holidays?
– No, because I knew the customs, and like most people, I arrived in England during the summer transfer window. Therefore, I had time to prepare for it.

–It must have been unusual, though.
– Indeed, but I really enjoyed it. At home, it was customary that the fall season ended at the end of November, or the beginning of December. We rested during the holidays, then in early January, we started afresh with foundation work and training camps – weeks, months passed without matches. But I felt good when one game followed another, and I'm sure I wasn't alone. Instead of the usual winter break, there were often two or even three matches between the holidays, and I liked that. Less so for my wife.

–Oh, yes. What did the family say?
–When I arrived in Birmingham, we were a newlywed couple almost on our honeymoon in England, and my wife obviously found it harder to be alone during the holidays. Then it worked out as family members, parents, my brother, and friends visited us. We were together for Christmas, they came to my matches, often to the away ones, too.

– What memories do you have of the Boxing Day matches?
– Luckily, I played a lot in 10 years. The away game against Manchester City comes to mind from the first year.

– Your memory is pretty good, as, on December 26, you lost to Liverpool at home to 5-0, but on the 28th, City was indeed West Brom's guest, and the result was 1-1.
– Christmas in England is not on the 24^th, but on the 25^th. Children find their gifts under the tree that morning. We trained on the 24^th because of the matches, but we spent Christmas at home in the evening: duck was always on the table, we made a Christmas menu. In the morning of the 25^th, we headed to training – this was the harder one, especially for the English players, if they were already fathers because no child waited for their father to come home from training. After waking up, they were looking for their gifts. The players were often left out from the unboxing of packages, but after the training, they rushed home to be with their families. The next day, the 26^th is Boxing Day, when everyone goes shopping or watches the matches. Our lives were adapted to this, and of course, it did matter if we were playing at home or away at this time of the year, and if we were away, how far, and when the match started. Birmingham has a good location in this respect, because we could go to most opponents in two or three hours. London was different, though: we took the train to Manchester from there, and if we had to play farther up north, we flew there – it also affected whether we had to leave the day before the match. If we didn't have to travel very far and played in the evening, it was enough to leave in the morning, but typically the matches started at 3pm that day. It happened one time that after the morning training on the 25^th, everyone went home, but in the afternoon, evening we met again and headed to the next day's away venue.

–Did you mention by train?
– Yes, that's a very convenient, quick solution... if we ever got to the station, because in London, it took an hour and a half. The club rented an entire wagon, so we traveled comfortably. If it fit in the time because the game was early, we went home by train as well. If not, we took the team bus.

– Festive atmosphere: January 1, 2005, Bolton-West Brom 1-1, the goal scorers were El Hadji Diouf and Zoltán Gera. You can't start the year any better than that.
– Luckily it didn't bother me if we had to spend the night before the match in a hotel and it was the last day of the year because, on the first day of the next year, we played a league game: I didn't like the New Year's Eve parties, the drinks. We just survived the loud midnight fireworks, then I slept to be relaxed the next day.

–December 26, 2009, Fulham-Tottenham 0-0. December 28, Chelsea-Fulham 2-1, but in the fourth minute, the guests led - with your goal. Did you enjoy these games?
– I always enjoyed playing football, and those were really busy days: league games, let's say, on Saturday and Monday? Isn't it much better than running miles in training camp in the winter? I had no problem with that, even though there were foreign players who were smarter than everyone else and whined: why do we have to play between two holidays, on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day? There's no football at home during this time, this is not good – sometimes we wanted to say, “Go home and play football there if a footballer's life is this bad in England!” We went there, we had to adapt, it was self-evident, and Boxing Day is a decades-long tradition. It's a good thing that I got to experience a lot of Christmas and holiday matches.

DECEMBER 26, SUNDAY
PREMIER LEAGUE
ROUND 19
4pm:Burnley–Everton
4pm:Manchester City–Leicester (TV:Digi Sport1)
4pm:Norwich–Arsenal
4pm:Tottenham–Crystal Palace
4pm:West Ham United–Southampton
6.30pm:Aston Villa–Chelsea (TV:Spíler1)
9pm:Brighton–Brentford (TV:Spíler1)
Liverpool–Leeds United – postponed
Wolverhampton–Watford – postponed

Translated by Vanda Orosz.