Overloading Soucek or your own choice? The national team coach explained why he didn’t substitute

Tomáš Souček is like a football robot. His workload is unbelievable, he plays all the minutes both at West Ham and in the national team. That’s why no one really understood why he wasn’t spared in the meaningless friendly against Kuwait. That’s what assistant coach Jiri Chytrý explains.

Since the start of the season Soucek has already played 18 competitive games for West Ham, adding 6 games for the Czech national team. 24 games someone doesn’t play in a whole season, Soucek has already got it in his legs in mid-November.

That’s why no one understood his deployment for the friendly against Kuwait, which was more like a fairground match. Sure, he is the captain of the national team and the coaches wanted to try certain tactical things, but in the 60th minute the score was 5:0 and the match was just being played out, but the midfielder was not affected by the subsequent substitutions.

But as assistant coach Jiří Chytrý, who represented head coach Jaroslav Šilhavy, explained, it was the player’s wish.

“We considered Tomáš’s substitution, it was one of the options. We consulted him at half-time and during the second half. But the nature of the match showed us that we can leave him in. We solved it with him, but he wanted to finish it himself, so we allowed him to do it,” Chytrý said in the post-match interview.

Soucek will play another game on Tuesday, against Estonia he will almost certainly play the full 90 minutes again. After returning from the national break, he has a weekend game against Wolverhampton, followed by a Europa League match against Rapid Vienna and a sharp clash at Manchester City.

Let’s hope that Soucek’s body can withstand this onslaught and he won’t have to take a forced break. But so far in his career, the Slavia alumnus is showing that he is truly unique.

Source:: Fotbal.cz, Livesport