Will Ondřej Čelůstka get the best present? What are the circumstances of the crucial match against Croatia?

Ondřej Čelůstka, a defender of Sparta Prague and the Czech national team, celebrates his 32nd birthday today! The best possible present would of course be a win in the crucial match against Croatia. How are things looking in Glasgow ahead of the second match of the national team?

Journalist Ondřej Zlámal, who is in Glasgow, took to Twitter to share his impressions of the venue for the crucial match. “Looks like all the Scotland fans have left for London. It’s going to be a ghost match here,” he pointed out, pointing out that the number one match in the British Isles today is the England v Scotland duel.

The match will be officiated by a mixed quartet of Spanish referees, two from Spain and two from Italy. The referee operating at both benches will be Switzerland’s Sandro Schärer. The head referee Carlos del Cerro Grande has never officiated a match of our team.

“I expect Croatia to want to win. They will want to play a lot on the ball to tire us out and take away our physical strength. We watched the video and we have a tactical plan, we will see how we can deal with it,” said the national team’s right-back Vladimir Coufal at the pre-match press conference.

Ondrej Čelůstka’s birthday duel

As already mentioned, on this special day, the 32nd birthday of central defender Ondrej Čelůstka is celebrated. In the opening duel with Scotland he was one of the highest rated players of our team, the prestigious WhoScored server gave him a rating of 7.61, which was the fourth best in the match and the third best in our team (only Patrik Schick and Tomas Vaclik were ahead of him).

The Sparta Prague stopper comes from a football family. His father Rudolf played football for Zlín and his younger brother Tomáš plays for Pardubice. All of the Čelůstek family are/were defenders.

Sources: Ondřej Zlámal, UEFA