Holeš before Feyenoord: Memories aren’t the best, but there’s a big motivation to fix it

Slavia go into the opening match of the Europa League quarter-finals against Feyenoord as outsiders. The reason is their autumn clash, but also a huge number of absences. What did Tomas Holeš say before the game?

The quarter-finals of any European competition is the Czech maximum. Slavia will now try to conquer it when they play Feyenoord. The opening match is played in the Netherlands and the home team is the favourite.

“We lost here, so the memories are not the best. We played a very bad first half here, when we didn’t handle it at all.

We didn’t expect the opponent to come at us like that. We were a little thrown off by the atmosphere. Thememories are not the best, but again there is a great motivation to fix it,” said Tomas Holeš at the press conference.

Slavia is an underdog also because it will be missing a large number of players. Some are injured, others have a card penalty and many are also not on the roster for the EKL.

The team will be helped by young players, who will be full of the bench. “The squad we have here is filled with young players. For them, this could be the biggest experience of their career. We have to fight it out, there is nothing else we can do,” he added.

If Slavia manages to get a playable result, in the rematch they will fight not only for their first ever qualification to the semi-finals, but also for the 15th place in the national coefficient.

“We don’t think too much about it. We have a quarter-final against Feyenoord, when it will be very difficult to advance. Every player would like to play that final. It’s not every season that you get that opportunity. It’s more of a dream than a goal. Now we have this double match. We don’t think about anything else,” he finished.

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