Sparta Prague – the story of the club in the 21st century

AC Sparta Prague is historically one of the most successful Czech clubs, both on the domestic and European scene. Let’s take a look at the first twenty years of the 21st century and the development of the club, which is considered a league favourite every season.

A great first five years

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by solid results from the point of view of Sparta’s fans and management. AC Sparta Prague won a total of three titles in the 2000/2001, 2002/2003 and 2004/2005 seasons.

In addition, it was also successful on the European stage, first under Jaroslav Hřebík (2001) and then under Jiří Kotrba (2003/2004), it managed to advance in the Champions League from the group stage.

Hřebík managed the Champions League without any big names, Kotrba brought in the experienced Poborský, Sionk and Zelenka, who fell short to AC Milan in the eighth round.

Two titles and a qualitative breakthrough

In the following years, Sparta began to lose ground, especially on the European stage. In domestic competition, the retreat from the top ranks was gradual. Spartans managed to win two titles in the 2006/2007 and 2009/2010 seasons.

However, the dominance was there. In Europe, it was even worse, as constant player changes meant that Sparta were unable to peek into the Champions League’s group stage, but at the same time they ceased to be competitive in the UEFA Cup, which was very alarming.

This is also why Sparta manager and coach Jozef Chovanec has come to Sparta to build a new squad. The names of foreign reinforcements like Bony Wilfried or Léo Kweuke along with Juraj Kucka and Miroslav Slepicka are known to everyone.

The biggest success of this Spartan team was qualification to the Europa League group stage in 2010/2011. Unfortunately, the stability of the team’s performance could not be confirmed in the next season, and therefore Jozef Chovanec had to pack his bags and leave Sparta.

Fluctuations in the last ten years of the 21st century

After the departure of Jozef Chovanec, a difficult period began for Sparta fans. From 2010 to the present, i.e. the 2020/2021 season, Spartan players have won only one title in the domestic competition (2013/2014 season).

The second place was a symbol of the retreat from glory that has become a hard reality in the last five years. After all, that period has yielded only three third places and a scary fifth place. Perhaps a glimmer of better times came in the last season (2020/2021) when Sparta finished second behind a strong Slavia side.

In Europe, it wasn’t much better

Sparta’s successes could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Under coach Lavicka, the team from Letná fought their way into the Europa League’s group stage. Thanks to the experience of Marek Matějovský or Jiří Jarošík, the team managed to advance to the knockout stage, where the Prague team eventually lost to English club Chelsea.

Probably the biggest success of these years on the European scene was the promotion of the team coached by Zdeněk Ščasný in the 2015/2016 season. Sparta advanced from the group to the spring knockout stage of the Europa League.

Sparta knocked out Lazio Rome of Italy in the eighth round and were only eliminated in the quarter-finals by Villarreal of Spain. The team’s progression to this stage of the competition was one of the biggest successes of Czech clubs in European cup competitions.

However, as we mentioned in the introduction, it was the last major success from Letná’s team not only in Europe but also in domestic competition. The reason for this was, among other things, a big change of coaches, with Holoubek, Svoboda and Rada coming in after Zdeněk Ščasný left.

The unsuccessful Italian and the period of consolidation

The rotation of Czech coaches led club owner Daniel Křetinský to one of the biggest coaching experiments at Sparta. He put Italian coach Andrea Stramaccioni on the bench.

He brought in reinforcements for a whopping more than 250 million crowns. Unfortunately, most of them from abroad. However, the team didn’t work, on the contrary, there was a huge decline, which the Italian didn’t stop and was dismissed in March 2018.

Since that moment, Sparta has been working to consolidate the team, which has involved, among others, club icon Tomas Rosicky and, in the last season, one of the better Czech coaches Pavel Vrba. So let’s see if they can return Sparta to the top and the limelight.

Source: AC Sparta Prague, Wikipedia