Beast King Costa

Chapter 340 Czech Football
In the middle of the week, it's the Europa League game again.

After defeating Ferreira in an away game at the weekend, the Benfica team flew back to Lisbon overnight.

In the second round of the UEFA Europa League, Benfica will sit at the Stadium of Light at home and face Liberec, a giant team from the Czech Football League [-]!

Founded in 1993, the Czech First League is the highest professional league in the country organized by the Football Association of the Czech Republic.

Compared with the professional football leagues of European football powers, which have sprouted since the 30s and [-]s, the Czech Football League is still a newbie in UEFA. The wealthy teams of the Czech Football League are placed in the five major European leagues. They are new people, the kind that are as new as new.

Because there is not enough historical precipitation, the competitiveness of the Czech Football League is only third-rate in Europe. Even the champions of the Czech League need to start from the very peripheral qualifiers to qualify for the Champions League. They often need Only by accepting more than four or more qualifying rounds will they have a chance to reach the final qualifying round.

With the strength of the team in the Czech League, it will be difficult for them to survive until the final round of qualifying.

Even if they make it to the final round of qualifying, the opponents they face will come from the Portuguese Super League, Eredivisie, La Liga, and maybe even the Europa League champions. The role of "send the boy".

Therefore, no Czech Football League team has reached the UEFA Champions League group stage so far.

In later generations, the first Czech club to reach the group stage of the UEFA Champions League was the Pilsen Victory Team, a Czech team that emerged suddenly.

2011年8月25日比尔森胜利在主场2比1击败哥本哈根，以总比分5比2闯入欧冠小组赛，成为捷克足球甲级联赛历史上第一支杀入欧冠小组赛的球队！
Prior to this, the teams in the Czech First Division were more seeking development in the Europa League, but their best record in the Europa League was just the quarterfinals.

After reaching the quarter-finals of the Europa League, the Czech clubs are faced with the encirclement and suppression of La Liga, Premier League, Portuguese Super League, Eredivisie, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue [-]. No matter how lucky the draw is, the opponents drawn will still have a high probability. It is a team from the five major leagues, and it has reached the quarter-final stage, and the domestic league has also reached the sprint stage at the end of the season.

Generally speaking, for next season's domestic sponsorship contracts, broadcast dividends, league bonuses... including next season's European qualifications, football teams from small countries that can have the strength to reach the knockout stage of the UEFA Europa League will all agree Make the choice of "a strong man breaks his wrist"-guarantee league results and give up the Europa League front!
The simplest thing: in the Europa League, we really can’t compete with the teams from the five major leagues!

Even if you can take advantage of the home field advantage and the crazy support of the fans at home, you can hold a draw at home upset, or even steal a 1-0, but if you go to the opponent's home court, you still can't escape being bloodbathed by your opponent Part——The difference in strength is really visible to the naked eye. Even if the teams from the five major leagues come to the Europa League front and have not reached the semi-final stage and start to sprint for the Europa League championship, they will do a relatively large rotation, but the teams from the small national leagues The team still can't beat them!

As of now in the Czech First Division, the team with the best performance in the Europa League is the domestic traditional giant Sparta Prague—Sparta Prague is the most popular club in the Czech Republic and even the most successful club in Central Europe. First, they have dominated the Czech Football League Championship for many times, and they have won the league championship for five consecutive years from 1997 to 2001, which is the most brilliant!
Sparta Prague has produced many stars in history, such as the most popular super goalkeeper Petr Cech in the Premier League, former European Golden Autumn Mr. Nedved, Czech national team midfielder Rosicky... Before they landed in the five major leagues, they were all He was born in the youth training of Sparta Prague and played official games on behalf of the Sparta Prague first team.

These Czech stars who play an important role in European football are veritable Spartan Prague stars!

But they are stronger than Sparta Prague. Even if they firmly occupy the top position in the domestic league, they are more than ten points ahead of the second place behind them. They can safely invest in the Europa League and achieve another success. When they are fighting for the Europa League championship, they can't compete with the five major league teams in rotation!

You know, in order to adapt to the Europa League, Sparta Prague regularly competed with the five major league teams, and also actively changed the team's tactical system into a defensive counterattack tactical system, although this can be more adapted to the cup competition to create a better Good results, but they lost their previous dominance in the Czech First Division.

Afterwards, teams such as Victory Pilsen, Liberec, Slavia Prague, and Ostrava Barnik, who have already accumulated a certain amount of accumulation, after Sparta Prague was distracted from the Europa League front, The sudden emergence of a sneaky force took away the dominance of Sparta Prague.

In the 2005-2006 season, Liberec, a wealthy team that has been ranked among the top four in the Czech First Division all year round, successfully reached the top of the Czech First Division!
However, because Liberec had no experience in qualifying for the UEFA Champions League qualifying round, they lost to Feyenoord in the Eredivisie in the first round of qualifying for the UEFA Champions League and directly entered the Europa League group stage of the new season.

They come, the security.

Since they failed to go through a few rounds of the UEFA Champions League qualifiers, Liberecs didn't think too much, and they chose to prepare for the Europa League with peace of mind.

In order to achieve the best results in history in the UEFA Europa League in the new season, the Liberec club executives also deliberately poached their meritorious coach Vitezslav Lavica from Sparta Prague.

This native Czech is even one year older than Fernando Santos, but because he has never left the Czech Republic in his career, including his coaching career, his name is not well known in European football.

Vijecslav Lavica can be called the godfather of Czech football. He has led many Czech first division giants teams. Sydney FC, one of the Football League's first league member teams.

The coaching ability of Vyetszlav Lavica has also been proven in the southern hemisphere. The coaching ability of the Czech football godfather is indeed quite amazing. During his three years in Australia, except for the first season, because the team The reconstruction of the tactical system and the reorganization of personnel took time to adapt to the lack of results. In the next two seasons, Vijacslav Lavica led Sydney FC to win the playoffs for two consecutive seasons!

Although I had a good time in Australia for three years, the old Vijeslav Lavicas had a strong sense of nostalgia, so he did not renew his contract with Sydney FC. He chose to return to his hometown, the Czech Republic, and continued to become the head coach of the Czech club—— The first stop of Vijacslav Lavica's return to the Czech Republic from Australia is still the first stop of his coaching career. The Czech giant Sparta Prague has begun to decline!

Vitezslav Lavica's tactical system was a hearty offensive tactic at the beginning, but in order to adapt to Sparta Prague in order to have a stronger competitiveness in the Europa League, he began to actively adapt to the defensive counterattack tactic, using the Czechs Strong physical confrontation ability, high-intensity physical pressure from the front, middle and back lines. After taking the ball away from the opponent's feet, he quickly launched a counterattack.

Czech players are tall and strong, and their speed is quite good, but in terms of footwork, most players cannot compare with players in the five major European leagues.

In order to make up for the relatively rough footwork of the local Czech players in the team, the teams in the Czech League are very keen to introduce foreign aid from South America.

Brazil's foreign aid is expensive, and the Czech League has less introductions, but Colombia, Ecuador, and even Chile, Peru, and Venezuela are all countries where Czech League agents like to go to Taobao. It is also quite outstanding, the most important thing is that the price will not be too expensive, and the contract will not be too big.

The Czech League can provide them with a springboard to enter the top five leagues in the future, so players from these South American countries will also like to play in the Czech League.

This season, in order to deal with the Europa League front, Liberec bought international foreign aid Winston Parks from Costa Rica from the Mexican League.

This Costa Rican foreign aid with outstanding footwork and no lack of physical strength has become the core of Liberec's midfielder in the new season.

But it is a pity that Winston Parks suffered from injuries in the Czech First Division at the beginning of the season, and has not played in the Europa League for the time being.

Since the second round of the game is an away game, to challenge one of the strongest teams in the group, the Portuguese Super giants Benfica, Vijacslav Lavica did not take the injured Winston Parks on the expedition, but took With a team of all Czech local players, he went to Lisbon.

In this team of all Czech local players, although the main players are basically in order, there are a few U19 players in the squad.

Apparently, Vetszlav Lavica is not counting on his team to score points in Lisbon either.

What the Czech coach wants more is to bring more young people to Lisbon and come to the famous Stadium of Light to experience the home atmosphere of a Champions League-level team.

Therefore, for the match against Liberec, on Benfica's side, Fernando Santos didn't care at all.

Anyway, I asked the assistant coach to collect some information about the Liberec club, including the coaching resume of Vijecslav Lavica and the technical characteristics of Liberec's main players.

However, due to the lack of information in this era, and the lack of communication between the Portuguese Super League and the Czech First Division, Fernando Santos' coaching team did not collect much useful information - basically all official information from Liberec As for the news released, I don’t even know how old the news is.

The Czech Bundesliga is not like the Eredivisie. It has a long history and is active in the UEFA Europa League. The information about the Eredivisie is much easier to collect than the Czech Bundesliga.

After all, in this era when the Internet is still underdeveloped and information is extremely asymmetric, timely information flow is more precious than money!

"Forget it, it doesn't matter."

Fernando Santos glanced at the news about the Liberec club collected by the assistant coach, and it was useless at all, and he didn't bother to read it.

"Anyway, the news coming back from the front is that coach Vitezslav Lavica will start from Liberec to Lisbon with an all-Czech lineup. This attitude is also very clear, that is, to give up this away game strategically. There is no suspense in this game, let's seriously prepare for the league next weekend."

In fact...

Benfica's upcoming Portuguese Super League schedule is very friendly.

The opponent in the fifth round is Ives, the opponent in the sixth round is Leiria, and the opponent in the seventh round is Amadora.

They are all teams at the bottom of the current standings.

Judging from the state of Benfica in the new season, it is basically a crushing rhythm. In fact, there is nothing to prepare for.

Therefore, the current atmosphere in the Benfica team is very relaxed. The players are full of confidence in the upcoming schedule. For the time being, they have not encountered any strong opponents that require them to be cautious.

The players in the Benfica team don't know much about Czech football.

Everyone knows the names of Cech, Nedved, and Rosicky—of course, Liberec is not the top team in the Czech League One, and their players must not be able to keep up with them. He, Nedved, and Rosicky are compared with top European players.

although……

Liberec's main goalkeeper, also named Cech.

The boys from Benfica originally thought that Cech, the goalkeeper of Liberec, should not be the younger brother or elder brother of Peter Cech, the famous super goalkeeper in Europe, right?

Later, everyone took a gossip mentality to learn about it seriously, only to find that the surname Cech is in the Czech Republic or in Slovakia, just like Santos, Ferreira... such surnames are common in Portugal.

Therefore, Marek Cech, Liberec's main goalkeeper, has nothing to do with Peter Cech. The only relationship is that everyone is Czech.

Later, after looking at the standings of the Czech First Division, everyone was shocked to find that Liberec, the goalkeeper also named Petr Cech, has quite a saving ability!From the start of the new season of the Czech First Division to now, the number of goals conceded by Liberec's team is still zero!
"Tsk tsk tsk..."

Diego couldn't help but marveled and joked: "It seems that anyone named Cech is particularly good at goalkeeping! This guy is so good. He didn't concede more than 10 goals in the Czech First Division last season."

(End of this chapter)