A coach secretly filmed his women players undressing – yet he can still work in football
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It was when the police officer called that it really hit Kristyna Janku.
The Czech Republic international was asked to go to the police station to identify herself in video footage and photos taken between 2019 and 2023 by her former coach, Petr Vlachovsky.
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Janku could not believe what she was watching.
Using a miniature camera hidden in his backpack, Vlachovsky, who managed first-division side 1. FC Slovacko in the Champions League and was once voted the Czech Republic’s best women’s coach — recorded 15 players, the youngest aged 17, showering and changing in various locker rooms before and after practice and matches.
Janku, 31, had known Vlachovsky, former coach of the Czech Under-19 women’s team, for a long time. She thought she had a good working relationship with him, was friends with his wife, and knew his children. Janku and other players had been invited to a party before his wedding, yet this man invaded their privacy at a club that Janku called “home”.
“You never think something like that can happen,” Janku, who spent 13 seasons at 1. FC Slovacko, tells The Athletic via a video call.
“When I saw the videotapes, he was really thinking about what he was doing. I could tell he was really good at it. It was not just by accident. He was professional about football. When I saw the tapes, I could tell he was professional about this, too.”
She says players only learned they had been secretly filmed after Vlachovsky’s arrest in 2023. Some vomited when they found out, some needed to leave the club, and others sought psychological help. Janku, who now plays in Poland, says she is always vigilant when visiting new places and hides slightly when changing.
The court awarded 20,000 CZK ($940) in compensation to 13 players for the harm suffered, but the impact on those players will last, in Janku’s words, a “lifetime”.
In May 2025, a criminal court, without a public hearing, also handed Vlachovsky a suspended one-year prison sentence and a five-year domestic coaching ban, and he was found guilty of possessing child pornography material on his computer. European governing body UEFA could choose to remove the coach’s licence, but at the moment, there is nothing stopping Vlachovsky from coaching outside of the Czech Republic.
Janku calls the sentence, which the players could not appeal against, “ridiculous”. FIFPRO, the global players’ union, is calling on FIFA, football’s global governing body, to hand Vlachovsky a worldwide lifetime ban. A FIFA spokesperson told The Athletic: “FIFA takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously and has a clear process in place for anyone in football who wants to report an incident.”
Following Vlachovsky’s conviction, the Czech football federation did not take further action and did not have the power to sanction him further because he is no longer a member of the federation. The Czech players’ union, CAFH, has recently submitted proposals for new regulations to the federation’s disciplinary code regarding sexual abuse and abuse of position. The federation, 1. FC Slovacko, and Vlachovsky had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
“It’s important to name it for what it is,” FIFPRO legal counsel Barbara Mere Carrion, along with other FIFPRO representatives, told media last week. “Despite the fact that it’s non-contact sexual abuse, it’s still sexual abuse. That helps players and everyone be aware of its severity.” The Czech players’ union also says it is pushing to change national law.
FIFPRO director of women’s football, Alex Culvin, argues the lack of proactiveness from football’s governing bodies means it falls on players such as Janku to speak out publicly to try to enforce change. Not every player, however, has a union to call on, with only 70 spread across football’s 211 member associations.
FIFPRO’s legal counsel also warns that if governing bodies do not impose a stronger sanction on Vlachovsky, it may discourage other players from coming forward.
But Janku wanted to speak out. “If there is a chance to make football safer for women and younger girls, I want to try to do something,” she says.
FIFPRO secretary general Alex Phillips believes what happened to Janku and her team-mates is “the tip of the iceberg”. He adds: “Abusers move to unregulated spaces where they know the risk of getting caught or punished is very low and where they have power — picking the team, for example. If nobody is checking your power, you can abuse it. That’s why the sanctions must send a message.”
The Czech players’ experiences also reflect how football values women’s players, according to FIFPRO. The footballers were not considered 1. FC Slovacko employees, for example, because they were not fully professional. “The players are just not high enough up the food chain for anyone to give a s**t,” says Culvin. “It is not a lack of capacity, it is a lack of will.”
This case exposes a system which, according to Culvin, is “not set up for players”. FIFPRO says the problems include:
No legal obligation for national federations to report such cases to FIFA at international level
No global database to check whether an official is an offender
No necessity for all coaches to complete a compulsory safeguarding course
A lack of signposting about how to report alleged abuse, with FIFA’s reporting mechanisms not familiar to everyone.
FIFA’s website says young people over the age of 18, women, and people with disabilities are “especially vulnerable groups who must be safeguarded” in football and has a confidential reporting platform. FIFA’s independent ethics committee can also investigate alleged breaches of the organisation’s ethics code, including safeguarding concerns or sexual assault. FIFA says it has put in place “an extensive safeguarding programme, including at FIFA tournaments, and has made significant investment and resources around safeguarding education in football”.
A FIFA spokesperson told The Athletic: “As a general rule, please understand that the independent ethics committee does not comment on allegations it may or may not have received, or whether or not investigations are underway into alleged cases. As usual, any information the ethics committee may like to share will be communicated at their discretion.
“Nevertheless, anyone who wishes to report allegations or information related to abuse in football can do so via FIFA’s confidential reporting platform, with all information that is submitted to FIFA handled in the strictest of confidence.”
“Federations have a conflict of interest,” argues Phillips. “They are not incentivised to investigate their own coaches or officials because those people are part of their system, which keeps them in power. Similarly, on an international level, FIFA and UEFA are not incentivised to sanction their own members because they are the ones that will vote them back into power in those elections next year, for example. That governance structure has never changed over many, many years. It’s still the same as it always was.
“Why would you report to the federation when the federation is in charge of employing a coach? Until we have properly independent bodies in football, then this will always come back.”
Last month, the FIFA Council approved its first comprehensive safeguarding policy, a summary of processes, standards and reporting mechanisms. FIFA, unlike confederations, is not responsible for issuing coaching badges, but offers a FIFA guardians safeguarding in football diploma — in 2026, FIFA says it recognised 123 graduates from 100 FIFA member associations — and their optional coach educator diploma includes a mandatory safeguarding module.
The UEFA coaching convention, meanwhile, introduces safeguarding at the first level of coaching, and UEFA maintains that all national associations are required to educate coaches on safeguarding, either by following their own national policies and programmes or by using UEFA’s safeguarding toolkit.
“You will find many certificates, courses, workshops and conferences about safeguarding,” said Phillips. “But if you ask how many individuals have been sanctioned for abuse over the last five years, I don’t know what answer you will get.”
According to the FIFA disciplinary and ethics report, the disciplinary committee received 3,445 cases relating to matters such as payment distribution in the transfer system and match-related incidents between 2024 and 2025. It resolved 97 per cent of cases and received a further 115 requests to extend sanctions to have worldwide effect. The report, however, does not identify the number of cases related to abuse.
“There is probably a black hole in understanding just how many players are affected by different forms of abuse,” adds Culvin. “Not only that, but a report mechanism and a response… Who’s going to listen to these players?
“It reminds me of when the MeToo movement started. Just believe players, that is the fundamental backstop of all these different exacerbations of what you see in the National Women’s Soccer League (referring to the Yates Report) and Spain (referring to the Luis Rubiales case).
“Unless governing bodies act, players are going to feel inhibited by the system.”
For Janku, however, her reason for speaking out about Vlachovsky is clear.
“It’s not comfortable to speak about it but it is needed,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to solve the problem, don’t be silent about it. When something like that happens, don’t let him coach again.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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