Author Archives → CzechFooty

2025/26 winter stocktake: FK Teplice

It started off much like last year. Six losses out of the first 7, three of them very unlucky. Stuck on only one win until Round 11. In 2024, it was seven losses out of the first 8, five of them undeserved, but at least by Round 11, Teplice were already on three victories. It’s therefore a little wonder FKT ended up improving their forecast, following up on Pardubice suitably with their own three-win conclusion of 2025 which completely changed the season’s complexion for them, giving the team a bit of breathing space.

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2025/26 winter stocktake: FK Pardubice

It’s hard to think of a club in recent memory that would sit 7 points off the direct relegation spot, like Pardubice do now, yet still head into the spring in such high spirits as the Eastern Bohemian organization — armed with a new sporting director transitioning from the same role at a freaking Slavia (much recommend Jiří Bílek’s refreshing interview for Liga Naruby, btw), who’s in sync with the new-ish head coach Jan Trousil, his former teammate from lower tiers, and supported by a rich owner. For now, I’ll stop short of calling FK Pardubice an emerging mid-table staple, but they could very well be on the way.

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2025/26 winter stocktake: FC Baník Ostrava

On 19 July, just a few days before their continental showdown with Legia, Baník lined up for the league opener flush with all the trump cards — Ewerton, Šín, Prekop, Rigo, Kohút. Everyone was there for the unlucky 0:1 loss. Fast forward 6 months, the first four names are gone, as is the head coach biding the curse of the successful men before him, and the fifth star only just returned from a long injury lay-off. A side the model had all but locked into the Top 4 now finds itself joint bottom, with 9 fewer projected wins than at the outset.

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2025/26 winter stocktake: FK Mladá Boleslav

Nobody expected this transition to be painless. Yet, nobody expected it to be quite this painful either. For the first 8 rounds, everybody was like “woo-hoo”, in for the ride that saw Mladá Boleslav pacing for over 55 regular-season goals scored, over 80 goals conceded, and a lousy but somewhat tolerable 30 points. Throughout the next six rounds (of two points), the reality set in and it all came crashing down, with coach Aleš Majer seemingly needing to receive some sort of a vote of confidence every two weeks. Now, with Majer more or less assured, team more or less set in their ways, it’s time to make progress.

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2025/26 winter stocktake: 1. FC Slovácko

On a fourth permanent coach since the iconic Martin Svědík left the club a mere year and a half ago, Slovácko are officially at a critical crossroads and part of the relegation-threatened inner circle. Last season, there was the Dynamo-shaped get-out-of-jail card; now there’s no cushion, with Slovácko sharing the 14-point basement with two other clubs. Will the (thus far) modest winter reinforcements prove to be enough for the fight?

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2025/26 winter stocktake: FK Dukla Praha

Amidst a complete top-down overhaul from the owner, sporting director and head coach all the way down to much of the dressing room, Dukla welcomed the year 2026 by losing one more longtime voice on the board (CEO Tomáš Mejzr), having that same new head coach called out publicly by the very same new sporting director (who’d wasted no time in signing a couple more random foreigners) for not introducing any tangible identity, all the while sharing the league’s basement and coming out as the favourite to wrap up the regular season dead last in our winter simulations. Yeah, safe to say, it’s not gone great…

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Czech Footy’s 2025/26 Winter Roadmap

It’s that time of the year again: one of the two months in a year I mostly stop spouting nonsense on X and focus on producing some actual content on a website. The fact I am no longer publishing at Medium also means there are some extra belated Christmas gifts for you aside from the usual — the mid-season review series, now re-branded as winter stocktake. If you’re into reminiscing (and laughing out loud at me), you can enjoy my full personal history of Bold Predictions at one place, as well as a slightly more depressing recollection of all New Kids on the Block. And if you’re into paying a few bucks for some fancy-schmancy tables, full of data you just won’t find anywhere else on the internet, then you can enjoy twin dashboards on 25/26 xP Performance and a complete Forecast Log.

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2025/26 team preview: FK Mladá Boleslav

Last summer, we noted the weirdly lowkey, unenthusiastic club takeover by David Trunda, wondering if he wasn’t there just to “score populist points ahead of the Czech FA chairman election”. Turns out he absolutely was — and now Mladá Boleslav are stuck in an owner-less void, almost entirely at the mercy of Slavia, the very club that helped Trunda become Czech football’s boss. The good news? It can hardly get worse than the spring. And FKMB are now armed with a head coach who’s got serious potential to let the fans forget about what’s going on upstairs by implementing a ‘heavy-metal’ brand of football downstairs.

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2025/26 team preview: 1. FC Slovácko

There’s hardly been a worse follow-up to a club managerial legend’s departure — the second biggest Czech city might offer up the only real contender. Josef Masopust, not often thought of that way, is actually Zbrojovka Brno’s most celebrated coach; the man who brought the only title to town in 1978 and signed off with two more Top 3 finishes. Once he left, Zbrojovka promptly collapsed from 2nd to 12th and, within three years, dropped out of the top flight altogether for six mournful seasons. Are Slovácko on a similar trajectory after making such an unsure first step into the post-Martin Svědík darkness?

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2025/26 team preview: FC Hradec Králové

‘Votroci’ are officially gunning for Europe. After coming within an inch in 2024 — to the shock of many — they now want to make it the norm. New ownership should be in place by the end of September, and they look set to doggedly hold onto all of their key players until then; furiously adding high-end, foreign battle-tested quality in Vladimír Darida, Mick van Buren or earlier Tomáš Petrášek to the misfit core built around Adam Zadražil, Daniel Horák and Filip Čihák. The city is celebrating 800 years since its first recorded mention; the club is turning 120 with a fancy new stadium still gleaming, fresh money coming their way, and the potential fifth UEFA spot very much up for grabs. If not now, then when?

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