“I regret the most that I did not see the matches against Slovan and Nitra directly in the stadium. I have covid and I am lying at home in bed,” sighed the president of HC MIKRON Nové Zámky FRANTIŠEK SUCHARDA. The people of Novosám are the most pleasant surprise at the beginning of the Tipos extraliga hockey season. They have 27 points and are only one point behind leaders Slovan Bratislava. Sucharda also talks openly about how much money he invests in the club from his companies, how his love for hockey came about and why he changed coaches like on a treadmill until last year. You have been the head of the club in Nové Zámky for over 10 years. Why did you decide to support hockey? My first contact with the club was in 1998 as a parent. I used to take my son to practice. He was four and a half years old then. Little by little, the younger son also started training. I joined the youth club, later I became the vice president. I went through all the youth categories with him. In 2007, I became the president of the Lokomotiv Nové Zámky club, which we managed to get into the First League. Then came the economic crisis. Since I was the only supporter of the club with the city, I left in 2009. However, I saw that it was not going in a good direction and in 2011 I founded the current club. When did the turning point occur and you said to yourself that you are going to build a club for the highest competition in Slovakia? Probably when I left and the club fell into II. leagues. I didn’t like it. After my return in 2011, we managed to take over the winter stadium. We had to significantly renovate it so that it could be played at a higher level. We wanted to play in the I. league, which they did not allow us, so we signed up for the multinational MOL league and the II. leagues. We gradually worked our way up to the extra league. You put a lot of money into the club every year. Do you take him as your “toy”? I told myself that as long as I can, I will support the club. I don’t spend money on yachts, nor do I go on hunting trips or expensive vacations. I don’t like waves, just a little bit. So you can say that the club is my hobby. I definitely found myself in it. However, it should be emphasized that I don’t make a living from hockey, it only costs me money. How big is the difference in financing the club in the extra league and in the lower leagues? When we played in the Hungarian MOL league, I financed the club practically by myself. The city then gave us 1,500 euros. That was a mess. Even then, we gradually started looking for sponsors and partners, without whom we would not be able to do it at the moment. According to your statements, four years ago, the hockey club had a budget of about 800,000 euros. You received one hundred and fifty thousand from the city, you collected one hundred and fifty thousand from the entrance fee, and two hundred thousand were contributed by sponsors. You paid the rest, around 340,000, from your companies. What does the club’s financing structure look like at the moment?