The Czech Republic was a fiasco in the World Cup.
And the championship has been far from painless for the national team.
Blesk reports on internal fights and players who didn’t want to play.
Two losses, a cross and a return home already after the group stage was the result of the Czech Republic in this summer’s WC. Directly after the exodus, superstar Patrik Schick, 30, stated that he ends up in the national team and when he resigned, he sharply criticized Czech football.
“Czech football has so much more to offer. It’s time to face the truth and change a number of things that have not worked for a long time,” wrote Schick Instagram.
And he doesn’t seem to be alone in that opinion.
Players didn’t want to play
In the Czech Republic, the national team is sawn at the ankles after the last place in the group. “A flop, a humiliation, a fiasco. A slap in the face,” writes the Czech newspaper Blesk in an article where they list several by national team captain Miroslav Koubeks, 74, “sins”.
According to Blesk, Koubek allegedly made “scandalous” changes, cultivated a losing mentality in the team and became “incoherent” – which led to the players ceasing to believe in his vision.
A source told the newspaper that it went so far that some players did not even want to be selected for the matches because of Koubek’s tactics.
When the national team returned to the Czech Republic, team captain Ladislav Krejčí, 27, addressed the Czech press corps. Krejčí read aloud from his diary that he wrote during the World Cup and also pointed a finger at how Czech football is run.
Nedvěd is sawn heavily
– I hope that this will be a turning point that brings in new people, new financial resources and new energy, so that you can start building a new generation of coaches. A generation that gets the opportunity to be educated by foreign experts who live and work in today’s football and follow the latest trends, said Krejčí.
In addition to national team captain Koubek, former superstar Pavel Nedvěd – now the Czech national team manager – also has to endure harsh criticism.
Back home in Prague, Nedvěd determined that Koubek continues to have confidence as the national team captain – which Blesk writes can only be due to “sunstroke, mental collapse or voluntary blindness and deafness”.
