Czech League football 2016 and on

I'll be posting a few thoughts on the season as a whole in coming days. Several things went very well this season, attendance gains in recent years are holding and the league is financially better than its been in the past. While like most UEFA leagues we very much so have massive gaps between the big clubs and the rest, the level of physical conditioning and pace of play seems to be increasing throughout the league.

Some old problems are still there, and especially in light of what happened in the Karvina-Jihlava and Pribram-Brno promotion matches the spectre of corruption in the FA is back on the front pages.

Overall, we have managed to spend the last several seasons ranking between 11-13 in UEFA coefficients, which is actually quite remarkable for a country our size and resources when you see some of the countries we are ahead of. It essentially means in international performance, our league is probably in the top 15-16 leagues depending on where you hypothetically place Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Although, this is muted a bit by the global trend of an ever widening gap forming between the Big 3 -5 (depending if you want to still count Italy and France as the same level) and everyone else.

General Updates:

The transfer window is already looking active, and Plzen especially has been active as they attempt to rejuvenate an aging lineup (Daniel Kolar and Marek Bakos both retired as players and took jobs with the club) signing Adam Hlousek from Legia Warsaw, Lukas Kalvach from Olomouc, Ondrej Mihalik from AZ (1 year loan, buy option unsure), and Christian Herc from Wolverhampton (2 year loan with option). Filip Nguyen to Slavia is more or less confirmed which creates a keeper battle going into next season, and Sparta have signed Libor Kozak as well as Andreas Vindheim a Norwegian defender from Malmo.

 

No problem, although I possibly won't be updating quite as often next season.

I've seen the Stanciu rumor but sort of doubt he goes to Slavia, considering he went to Saudi for money, I think it is more likely he ultimately goes to MLS or China for an inflated paycheck. If it does happen it would definitely annoy Spartan fans though.

 

Transfer update 2:

Sparta look likely to sign Travnik for 2 Million Euros, very good player, but plays a similar role to Dockal.

Sparta also signed Brno's Ladislav Krejci (different younger player than the sometimes national team player), probably our best young player this year. Can't fault him for moving since we didn't get promotion.

Season Review part 1: What went well, (starting with good news)

1) Slavia and Plzen in Europe. Slavia's deep run and competitive performance against the eventual Europa League winners definitely is freshest in peoples minds, but Plzen in Champions League managed 7 points in a group with CSKA, Real Madrid, and Roma despite losing Krmencik after their first match. The money they earned from Champions league plays a big part in....

2) The league's rich are richer than ever. Yes, so called "modern football" is widely hated by many fans, but it is reality that this is a now a money game. Leagues are only as good as their best teams and unlike many 2nd tier European leagues with one rich club; we have 3 that all have financial stability for now. (Sparta's owner seems to know nothing about football though) While we will never compete with the Premier league for signings, but this gives our top clubs a lot more options in recruitment as we increasingly see players from Romania, Scandanavia, and even Belgium leagues being signed.

3) More matches, better matches/broadcast quality, more attendance. While the average attendance this year was more or less the same as last season, the additional matches meant about 200,000 more spectators than previous seasons. There was concern about football fatigue, and in some cases there may have been, but overall attendance held up well all season long.

In general the league is in much better shape than during the first decade or so of this century when our finances were terrible and coefficient slowly declined each year to about 20. We have more or less been 11-15 place for the last 5 years and look set to remain so for the near future. Being top 15 is significant for additional Champions League access.

Best Player:1) Tomas Soucek, 2) Nikolai Komlicenko, 3)Michael Ngadeu-Ngadui
Best Transfers (for impact on this season): 1) Alex Kral (Teplice -> Slavia), 2) Joel Kayamba (Opava-> Plzen), 3) Ibrahim Traore (Zlin -> Slavia)
Best Young player: 1) Alex Kral, 2) Adam Hlozek, 3) Jan Matousek
Best Manager: 1) Jindrich Trpsovsky, 2) Pavel Vrba, 3) Vaclav Jilek

Part 2 will be : What is okay for now, but potential problems on the horizon followed by Part 3: what still sucks about Czech league football

 

Part 2 of season retrospective is probably the most subjective, it is things that aren't necessarily bad or good, but that I have concern about or feel could improve.

1) Rich club moneyball being taken too far?: While it is an overall benefit for our biggest clubs to get richer, it seems that they increasingly put the money towards preemptively signing any player from a smaller club the moment they put together a few good weeks. The biggest offender this season was Slavia, who seem to be setting up a loan factory of sorts, they purchased Matousek (Pribram) and Jusuf (Bohemians) on very short runs of form just to add to their loan factory for the season - although at least Pribram received a decent fee. On the other end teams like Opava lost all worthwhile players for nearly nothing. I'm all for top teams being pipelines in which our domestic players go there, compete in Europe, and then the best of those go to top 5 leagues; I'm not too crazy about the potential of a league in which top teams sign everyone that had a good match and loans them out to prop up clubs that prefer doing business with them.

2) The Superstructure: While the superstructure in many ways seeks to address two of my longest criticisms of the league, too few matches and even more so too few quality matches, I do think there needs to be some additional changes made to the system (if it is in fact not replaced by reducing the league to 10 - 12 teams with 4 rounds... which I prefer). I do like that our superstructure allows teams to retain their full season point total as opposed to the Belgian system where it is halved, additional matches shouldn't punish teams for a successful start to the season.

The first problem I have is the Europa League Cup that the middle teams play, while it gave us one of the best matches of the season with in Zlin-Olomouc, it overall is a very strange concept creating a cup within the league. It also provides an additional path beyond the cup for a top 5 team to lose their place in European competition (as happened this season with Mlada Boleslav beating Banik Ostrava).

The 2nd problem is the changes to promotion and relegation that accompanied the relegation group; in general first division and second division clubs operate in different realities and changing from "2 up; 2 down" to "1 up; 1 down, and 2 playoffs" seems to only lock teams out of promotion. I would prefer a return to 2 promotion 2 relegation or 2 promotion plus a playoff for a third team.

The last issue really should be fixed with better scheduling, but as of now even with a shortened winter break the Czech first division runs from mid-July to the first week of June. That means teams get about 7 weeks between seasons to rest, reinforce, etc. While correlation isn't causation, the increased pace of play combined with extra-matches seemed to make this an injury plagued season. I would like to see the scheduling condensed so the league runs from end-July to late-May. Some teams like Plzen are already back into full training.

3) VAR: Overall VAR is good for the game, and there were some very good uses of it this season... There were also some very bad uses of it, largely wrapped in the overall issue of league officiating (to be discussed further in Part 3: What sucks about Czech football). One problem this season was that the available infrastructure for VAR differed greatly depending on where the map was played, and many officials weren't well trained in it.

I could probably say a few more, but seems like a good stopping place. Most transfer updates are fairly minor so far, but one piece of news is that Plzen including Krmencik are back in full training. Right now Plzen has made the most interesting off-season moves and have a few promising youngsters coming up as well.

 

Travnik to Sparta is official, that's their biggest signing so far but I still feel that team is fair bit behind Plzen and Slavia in overall talent. Lischka is expected to sign from Jablonec as well, hopefully his heart surgery was just temporary setback.

Slavia's transfer window is strangely quiet on official news despite lots of rumors, but it is sounding like Simon Deli may stay despite some initial interest from French teams, although still a lot of time for additional offers and change of mind. That would be a bigger win for Slavia than just about any signing as quality defenders are in short supply (and it is still presumed that Ngadue-Ngadui is leaving after the African Cup of Nations where he is the captain of defending champions Cameroon).

I think Plzen have more or less built the team they want already so wouldn't expect much more.

Among weaker teams, Teplice are making some loan signings from the Russian league. I feel this happens with a mid-table team each year, sometimes you get a Komlicenko other times you get a player that is never heard from again.

 

Yeah, the record-breaking contract for Soucek was rumored for a while but still somewhat surprising if the rumored numbers are accurate (2 Million Euros/year). I don't think it changes too much on the transfer side of things other than confirm that the clubs offering the most money aren't satisfactory for the player (presumably its Spartak and Fenerbahce were the 12 Million offers... the German press were fairly clear that Koln's offer was too cheap). This contract has a set exit clause of 15 Million that takes effect January 1, so the added implication is Champions League, which I understand the reasoning, but am wary of the risk for club and player.

It also sounds more possible that Stanciu -> Slavia could happen than I initially thought, but would still be surprised.

 

My final season retrospective is a bit delayed due to a large amount of travel in June. I will hopefully have it before the next season starts in a month.

In the meantime a few teams (the ones entering in 2nd qualifying rounds) have had their European competition drawn, most noticeably Plzen's first Champions league test will be Olympiacos of Greece. Not an easy match, but certainly doable.

In Europa League
Jablonec will play either Pyunik (Armenia) or Shkupi (Macedonia) - while Jablonec have lost their best player they should not struggle with that competition

Mlada Boleslav will play either Ordabasy (Kazakh) or Torpedo Kutaisi - Should be easy except the travel

 

My understanding is following Stanciu's leaving the Saudi team in May they more or less just fired him. I think Slavia (or any other club) is more or less free to sign him at this point minus maybe some sort of compromise fee, but it will be much less than the 10 Million he was sold for in January.

I don't know, I realize Stanciu is talented but he seems like a headache, but with Stoch sold Slavia will want to sign a new top offensive talent.

 

Finally: Part 3 of season respective: what still sucks about Czech football

1) Officiating - it would be one thing if this was just a matter of training resources, but its impossible to discuss officiating in the Czech league without mentioning corruption. Teams with owners that are friendly with Berbr and by extension Pelta and Malik still get disproportionately favorable officiating even though they are nominally no longer in control. The clubs that support power change have a strange history of receiving trivial red cards and fines. VAR is a good move, but it was not immune to this.

2) While our rich have got richer and better, we still have a lot of bad teams in our first division. Our league basically ran the gamut this year from Slavia Prague (A team that could finish mid-table in the very top UEFA leagues) to Dukla Prague (a team that would struggle against relegation in the English or German 3rd tier). There is no money, interest, or value to having so many small clubs in the top flight and with little threat of relegation it deincentivizes club owners and town councils from investing in...

3) Infrastucture. There are some wonderful stadiums in our league from the modern (Slavia) to the classic (Sparta) to the unique (Liberec, Olomouc)... and then there are the rotting characterless husks that make up about half of all stadiums in the top 2 levels. Many clubs have had stadium plans die to funding issues even for fairly minor upgrades. Infrastructure also includes training facilities which in some cases are even worse, most noticeably a team like Viktoria Zizkov which has some history were reduced to practicing in public parks.

I thought about including youth scouting at top clubs, especially the question of how to people like Barak and Matousek wind up developing in Pribram instead of the bigger clubs, but I think that is a tough issue to detail.

 

Stanciu to Slavia is now official. Massive signing if he can fit Trpisovsky's system they're Champions League prospects look improved (and if he decides to stay more than 6 months).

Slavia spent 4 Million Euros to settle with the Saudi Club, far less than the 10 million he left for in winter.

 

Sparta have signed two players from the Scandinavian leagues since winter, and are moving in on a 3rd with Danish youth international Oliver Abildgaard negotiations ongoing after a 1 Million Euro bid was rejected.

I don't know about this player, but Karlsson was a part of Sparta's spring turnaround so surely their scouts see some value buys in the Nordic leagues.

 

Not sure how seriously anyone takes the Czech-Slovak super cup, but Slavia beat Trnava 3-0 in Slovakia in what is officially the first competitive match by a Czech team of the 19/20 season.

 

There will actually be a "Brno derby" next year for the first time I can remember. SK Lisen won the MSFL and were officially granted a license to move up to FNL (2. Liga).

 

It looks like Simon Deli is about to leave Slavia for Club Brugge, reportedly wants to live closer to French language schools etc. in Belgium for his family. Was not Slavia's best player even at that position, but certainly their most popular.

Finding a quality replacement at center back will almost certainly mean looking internationally as we don't seem to produce those domestically.

 

Ngadeu-Ngadui has a much higher release clause (5 Million) than Deli (not sure what Slavia was thinking with just a 2.5 Million clause on a key player), and at his age it would probably only be teams in England or Spain that would pay it. Fulham actually offered it last winter but failed to finalize paperwork, and they are less appealing after relegation.

In other news, Dockal underwent another operation for his Achilles and is likely out for at least the remainder of 2019. To be honest, Sparta sort of turned their season around without him last spring and considering what he costs many people named him the worst transfer of the season during postseason voting on twitter. I believe this is his 3rd injury in about 2 years so hopefully this doesn't become an endless injury cycle.

I think its a bigger blow to our national team than Sparta since he has the best final ball of anyone in our selection. Sparta meanwhile still have a talent advantage against everyone but Slavia & Plzen, and they also signed Travnik who is younger and has more upside potential.

 

Not really, its too early and the off-season too short to know what teams will look like when the window closes.

I suspect right now the order would be Slavia, Sparta, Plzen for the top 3. Mlada Boleslav, Jablonec, Liberec and Ostrava competing for the 3-6 spots. My guess for relegation is Pribram.