I know it's 5-0 but wow I feel hard done by every single goal. After watching the replays, their first goal was offside too.
Yeah to be honest we've played more like a team that should lose by 2 goals, but every bounce went their way and our chances have all gone just wide. I don't feel as bad about this as the last few matches under Jarolim where we were run out of the stadiums by teams with equal talent, but we really just don't have enough players to compete against top teams.
This team made it abundantly clear we are no where near England's level which is a shame because not too long ago, I thought we were better than England. 5-0 is a flattering scoreline to England, but that is a rough first game for us. We will be dead last in our group, and really need to show up against the other teams.
Eugh. That result is a horrible sight. Very harsh for us as we simply did not have any luck tonight. Not that losing would disrupt our goal of second place, but by this margin, it can be tough on the players and really screws with our goal differential. Hopefully, if anything, this inspires some urgency in our next matches where anything less than three points is unacceptable. This, in hindsight, was a very stupid thing to say on the eve of England. Now he may have a chance to reclaim that against Brazil.
England got much better and we got a little worse. The question for us is how did so many players that showed promise in their early career never get better if not get worse. Schick is on track although still inconsistent with Roma, but where is Barak? Krejci? Cerny (I realize injury)? Kadlec? What happened to the Jankto that Sampdoria spent 15 million on last summer? We had a few youth teams in the past decade that looked strong, but it just hasn't come together at the senior level. Of course we have Hlozek, Sadilek, Kral, Matousek, etc that have potential now, but who knows what will happen.
Silhavy plans to make four changes to the team that started against England. Based on the subs made and the individual performances in that game, I'd guess something like this: ----------------------Schick----------------------- -Vydra---------------Kral---------------Masopust- ----------Pavelka-------------Soucek--------------- -Selassie----Suchy----Celustka----Kaderabek- --------------------Pavlenka---------------------
3 defensive midfielders and 2 wing/forward hybrids so that may work more like a 4-3-3 than an actual 4-5-1.
Would give Kral a bit more freedom to operate as well in a slightly more advanced position. Having seen his highlight clips, he almost looks too skillful to be a CB (at this stage in his career anyways), but we have more than enough options in central midfield (considering Sadilek and Sacek in the near future hopefully) than in central defence. Seeing as how idiotic Kalas can be, a playmaking CB with composure on the ball would be plenty useful for us.
We need some young centerbacks to step up, sadly Kral is looking more like midfielder and the other youth defender of note Lischka has health issues with an uncertain footballing future. In other news England beat Montenegro in Podgorica 1-5 so at least one other team had their goal differential thrown off. Also, Montenegro's fans were awful making racist chants at English players, so f*** them.
Yep, and I imagine Kosovo will be no different, if not worse. They drew 1-1 with Bulgaria today so another good result for us. Honestly, this group is pretty light outside of England. While there's no minnow to boost the goal differential, the other three teams are all relatively on the same level and I'd even say Kosovo, from pot 5, are the most dangerous. Six points from the doubleheader (both home) in June is a must and would put us in good position
We should comfortably finish 2nd in this group. The england match was a serious downer though. If we could have kept it tight, then I would have at least had some optimism for this team, but bad luck aside, we looked so poor. We've gone through quite a few managers in the last few years, so now I think we have to look at these players and hopefully have them step up. Most of our players play for mid table Italian or German teams which is still fine. That should be enough to make us competitive.
The luck was bad, but shouldn't overlook that we also came out completely timid from the beginning. England are better, but it was still way too defensive minded. The talent gap was comparable to when Slavia played Sevilla, but in that case Slavia still attacked and used their physical strength to even out the match... although it helped massively that Slavia can sign international central defenders.
I don't get why our defense is so shit. Starting Kalas and Čelůstka is crazy. What is crazier is Suchy is our best defender and he plays in the damn swiss league. We have basically no one in that position even with potential at the moment.
The next youth defender of any note after Kral/Lischka U-21 pairing is David Heidenreich, currently of our U-19 team (who just qualified for their European Championship) and some middle or lower tier Serie A academy.
Pavlenka - Coufal, Celustka, Suchy, Novak - Soucek, Pavelka - Masopust, Darida, Zmrhal - Schick No Vydra or Kral and two extremely average Czech league players on either wing.
I'm sort of okay with Coufal playing since I think he is our third best fullback (although like 1 and 2, who he is far behind, he is a right sided player). Some people on twitter are complaining about Suchy starting because he hasn't played much, but I'm glad to see him back after how Kalas played in England. The rest is just whatever, and there will probably be a lot of subs... It's also a friendly so I don't really care.
I think we should be playing with a 5-3-2 type of formation. Our defense is terrible and our wings really aren't that great either.
Definitely a 4-5-1 in theory, Masopust/Zmrhal are purely offensive minded wings although the former is pretty good at pressing the back line as a forward (Masopust from what I've seen is a lot of workrate, but average skill). That said in the absence of a true play-maker the offensive plan looks to be kick far and run.
5 minutes in and I can tell we are going to concede at least a few goals. Defensively we are all over the place.
Unable to watch, so can only base impressions off of match tracking. It doesn't read like we are completely inept so far... well that is until the ball gets into attacking position a lot of things that roughly say "Masopust played it poorly, but off a defender for a corner..." "Darida did well, until he didn't..."
My guess would be because England keeps the ball moving fast and direct, which decisively hit our defensive weakness. Brazil tends to be a bit more likely to slow things down and look for openings, perhaps even more so in a non-competitive match, which lets our midfield position to cover. Hard to say with much confidence when I am not watching though
Don't want to say it, but we look like the better team. Our team looks determined with everyone running hard, and winning the ball. The best chances of the game have belonged to us.
Does it get more Czech National Team than bumbling when it counts then playing with heart when it doesn't?