Did the Czechs play badly, or is that just a naive point of view distorted by the result?

The result is unambiguous.The Czechs fell to the best team in the world 3: 0. Critical society loves this, unsatisfactory results awaken distorted views in the omniscient public and encourage them to find even the smallest mistakes. Did we really play that badly?

Despite the disappointing result, I dare say that the Czech football team is slowly getting back to where it used to belong. Am I crazy? I’ll try to give you at least a little outline of why I think that.

Belgium is the best team in the world, according to FIFA, and we came in with a more or less broken squad. We didn’t play the experienced Jan Bořil, one of the three stoppers (Ondřej Čelůstka, Ondřej Kúdela, David Zima) and above all we were missing Patrik Schick at the top of the attack.

Despite these absences, we managed to create a slight advantage in certain passages and get into some chances. Belgium’s quick lead played into the hands of their formation and their principles of play, which they have mastered perfectly and are able to transition incredibly quickly into attack.

How did the match develop statistically? In total, it offered a beautiful 28 shots (16 Belgium, 12 Czech Republic). This alone proves that we didn’t play against the ultra-offensive Belgium, for which we should be praised! Not to criticize.

According to the xG indicator (number of expected goals) the game should have ended 2.1 – 1.17 (2-1) for Belgium. Which is a great result with our badly broken line-up! Statistically we can see that the key man of the Czech team was the captain Tomáš Souček.

It is also interesting to note that the young Adam Hložek only made one less dribble (2) than the star Eden Hazard (3), who was selected as Man of the Match by WhoScored.

And watch out, the future of Czech football can be much better if we can adapt young players well to adult football! Our U19 category drew with a strong Belgium 3:3.

Sources:: 11tegen11_plots, David Holoubek