Today’s showcase: neither Czechs nor European champions Italy will go to the World Championships

The Czech team lost to the home team 0:1 in overtime in Sweden and will not go to the World Championship in Qatar. The last time the team played in 2006, the gap will be the longest in history, at least twenty years. But European champions Italy will not go to the World Cup either. Danish midfielder Eriksen returned and scored. The woodpecker celebrated 90 years.

The longest gap in history

The Czech team will not play at this year’s World Cup in Qatar, having fallen to Sweden 0:1 in extra time in the barrage. After a brave and, given the many absences of key players, quality performance, but that does not change the sad fact.

The last record (the only one in the Czech Republic’s independent era) from the 2006 World Cup in Germany with Karel Brückner on the bench is already very faded. Before that, the federal national team had fought its way to the world’s biggest football festival in Italy in 1990. So the gap of sixteen years stretches to at least twenty, it will be the longest in history.

Coach Jaroslav Šilhavý has not accomplished the task of leading the team to the World Cup. Just like his predecessors:: Petr Rada and Ivan Hašek (World Cup 2010), Michal Bílek (2014) and Karel Jarolím (2018).

European champions Italy are also not going to the championship

The Italians are experiencing an even stronger sense of disenchantment. The European champions will not be going to the World Cup, having lost to North Macedonia in the barrage at home.

There have only been three times in history that a European champion has not participated in a World Championship: Czechoslovakia at the 1978 World Championship in Argentina, Denmark at the 1994 World Championship in the USA and Greece at the 2006 World Championship in Germany. Now they are joined by the famous squadra azzurra, holder of four world titles.

It’s also a big blow for the Italian economy, as football is the country’s seventh (!) most productive economy, contributing significantly to national income. Last year, Viva Italia! was heard everywhere, this year that cry will not be heard anywhere.

Eriksen came back and scored

Despite Denmark’s 2:4 defeat to the Netherlands in the preliminary match (both teams are already guaranteed to participate in the World Cup in Qatar), there was much to rejoice about in the land of the Vikings: nine months after his cardiac arrest, midfielder Christian Eriksen returned to the national team and scored two minutes after coming on the pitch.

Football can still deliver more than just sporting results.

Ďolíček celebrated his 90th birthday

On the domestic scene, although the league was catching its breath for the final matches during the national break, there was a significant event: the Bohemians Prague’s famous Ďoliček stadium celebrated its ninetieth birthday, and during the opening ceremony on 27 March 1932, it was donated to the club for use by the great patron Zdeněk Danner.

During that time it has been through all kinds of things. Celebrating a single title in the 1982/1983 season, the UEFA Cup semi-final and Champions Cup matches are also linked to this most glittering period.

Towards the end of the war the stadium was destroyed by an aerial bomb, during the frantic period of privatisation the club lost its assets, the case of the three Bohemians was very opaque, when three entities competed for the nice part of the club (nobody wanted the ugly part).

But Ďolíček is here and will be, just like Bohemians Prague.

Source: UEFA, Bohemians Praha 1905