Conflicting emotions around Jaroslav Šilhavy’s coach! Some defend him, others criticize

Coach Jaroslav Šilhavy and his team dreamed of advancing to the 2022 World Championship. Despite all their efforts and absences, the Czechs fought with the Swedes to advance to overtime. In the end, we lost 0:1 and the Swedes were the ones to enjoy the promotion to the final barrage. There are conflicting emotions among the football public about the coaching seat.

The experienced coach has done a tremendous job with the Czech Republic. He has turned a beleaguered team into a team that can beat more or less any opponent, despite the fact that its roster does not include as many players from top teams and top leagues.

Against Sweden, he set up a 3-5-2 formation for his charges, which the undefeated team had very little time to practice. Nevertheless, we were definitely not behind the northerners tactically.

Šilhavý and his implementation team prepared the national team perfectly, unfortunately we were not able to score a regular goal in a very good first half and we did not have adequate substitutes at the end of the second act.

Of the substitutes only Ladislav Krejci Jr. gave a good performance, Milan Havel tried, fought and nobody can say anything to him, Jan Sýkora was similarly bad, weaker performances came from Pekhart and Matějů.

It is debatable whether Ondrej Lingr, who was in form, should have got more minutes, but otherwise the coaching staff did their best from my point of view. Considering the squad we travelled to Sweden with, we were really close to promotion and I wouldn’t see any fault in the coach.

Public reaction

However, not everyone shares the same opinion. A large number of critics of coach Jaroslav Šilhavy, but also his defenders, appeared on the social network Twitter.

“It seems to me that the EURO and today showed that our team has potential. And I can’t get rid of the impression that it’s a bit of a leak.”

“The best coach for the national team at the moment. The generational change that finally happened today should have come a year earlier. But he should definitely stay anyway.”

“And wouldn’t it be better if we finally started playing football instead of this, it hurts your eyes. There’s no action, no passing, it’s a boring game of chance. The first thing the players think about is not making a mistake and playing backwards, sideways. We have to go to win, not lose. Šilhavy is a scaredy-cat.”

Sources: Ondřej Kreml, Petr Nerad, Jan Vacek