How did the Czech players do against a strong England?

In the last match of the group we lost to England 0:1. The second half, however, made history as the spectators waited until the 83rd minute for a shot, the longest of any European Championship since 1980.

England dominated possession, but only by a ratio of 56% to 44%. Visually, England’s dominance on the ball looked more pronounced. It has to be said that we played the ball quite a lot in the second act, but we couldn’t create any scoring opportunities.

According to the prestigious WhoScored server, the average rating of the Czech players was 6.22. The English were exactly half a point better at 6.72.

Before the match, the supercomputer logically favored England. The probability of their victory was 61.1%, of a draw 23.3% and of our team winning 15.6%. Unfortunately, the prediction was correct and England became the first team in the history of European championships to win the group with only two goals scored.

Czech player ratings

WhoScored rated the top 3 Czech players as: Coufal, Holeš, Vaclík. On the other hand, the match was not good for our left side, which was visible visually. The worst rating of the Czech team was given to left back Jan Bořil (5,96), Jakub Jankto was not much better (6,13) – he was substituted at half time.

On the other hand, the duo of Walker and Saka, who are world-class players and are truly world-class at their positions, took care of the defensive phase.

Now let’s look at the more positive news and these are our top rated players. Tomas Vaclik got a 6.42 rating, he made a bravura save against Kane in the first half and kept us in the game.

Tomas Holeš was basically the only one who dusted Pickford’s goalkeeping gloves properly. His shot from about 24 metres really threatened the English goalkeeper, but it didn’t end up in the net.

The central midfielder, who took Alex King out of the starting line-up, was rated 6.74 by WhoScored. He had 49 touches of the ball, 29 crosses – 75.9% of which were accurate. Holeš was also very valid defensively, winning the ball 4 times in personal duels.

The highest rated player of the Czech team was right back Vladimir Coufal. WhoScored gave him a rating of 6.82. During the game he had 76 touches with the ball, which was the most of our team, only Harry Maguire (81) had more touches.

He had a pass success rate of 86%. He sent two centres into the penalty area and had one successful dribble. Defensively, he won two header duels and also won two personal duels that led to ball gains.

Sources