Post Category → Season Previews

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.

Continue reading →

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?

Continue reading →

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?

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: FK Dukla Praha

In a way, FK Dukla Praha find themselves in much the same boat MFK Karviná were in last summer. They, too, are waving goodbye to coaching from a bygone era — only here it’s condensed into one name rather than spread out like with the Silesians. In its place comes a young coaching staff pledging a possession-heavy brand of football, hoping to facilitate the club’s entire transformation in the process. That would be, crucially, done with the backing of new majority owner Matěj Turek, a 40-something involved in a number of start-ups or fixer-uppers, taking over from soon-to-be 70-year-old Petr Paukner. Fittingly, it was Karviná who issued a timely reminder to Dukla on Day 1: “This won’t be easy.”

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: FC Zlín

A cynic would say FC Zlín are returning in the same shape they were relegated in. The cynic would, in fact, often hail from Zlín’s own fandom. The same stadium in acute need of fixing up, the same owner of 25 years, the same vice-president who is now a Czech FA vice-chairman on top of it, and the same pragmatic, defence-first coach betting on the same types of players including a throwback striker up top. One major change, and possibly even a source of hope, is personified by sporting manager Pavel Hoftych whose involvement is showing on an unusually active transfer window for a promoted club.

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: Bohemians Praha 1905

Last summer, all the talk centred around Ďolíček and how the Jakubowicz family plans to take things in their own hands; two years on from what proved to be a frustratingly empty promise by Prague’s town hall, the owner of the iconic stadium. In winter, all that anyone was interested about was Ďolíček again, with a new 60-year-old lease announced in November. An hour-long press conference then laid down the concrete vision for a new arena in December, followed by some enticing visuals revealed in May. It’s all moving forth at a neck-breaking pace; in sharp contract to progress, or lack thereof, on the pitch.

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: FC Viktoria Plzeň

Whenever Viktoria Plzeň have climbed the table in recent past, it meant one thing and one thing only: a title. In 2011, they went from 5th straight to 1st — just like three years ago. In between, they had turned three more podium finishes (2012–13, 2014–15, 2017–18) into the ultimate glory. Now, for a change, we are talking incremental progress — from 3rd to 2nd, from 70 points to 74, from a UEFA Conference League quarter-final to a UEFA Europa League Round of 16 — but meaningful progress nonetheless, not least because of Koubek’s Sophomore Year Curse ©. And if Plzeň navigate three tricky UCL play-off rounds (a tall task), or manage to hold off Priske’s Sparta and close the gap on Slavia at least a little bit (potentially an even taller one), the oldest coach in the league will have done it again.

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: FK Pardubice

When FK Pardubice announced their RESTART last summer, this is most certainly not what they had in mind. Gone is the main sponsor after which the arena was named, head coach, sporting director, technical director/director of recruitment and chairman from that time; though in the case of the latter, Vít Zavřel — promoted in his place — insists Vladimír Pitter still “works the same way he used to”, whatever the hell that means. Granted, the initiative rather targeted a shift in visual identity or fan engagement, but even on that front, “maybe the font has changed” was one of my consultant’s sarcastic response. Most notably on the fan engagement side, the club has succeeded in uniting all the fans against itself.

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: AC Sparta Praha

You’re not supposed to step into the same river twice — but Brian Priske isn’t much for proverbs, as evidenced by his less-than-blessed attempt to prove that the grass is greener in Rotterdam. Just a year after guiding Sparta to a long-awaited double, he’s back at Letná, undeterred by a short-lived and rather damp detour at Feyenoord. It wasn’t exactly a triumphant leap to a bigger pond, but Sparta fans won’t mind. To them, he’s still the man who had turned water into wine — and they’ll happily take a second vintage.

Continue reading →

2025/26 team preview: SK Slavia Praha

This, really, is how you respond to a three-year title drought — by completing what now stands as the most dominant season of the analytics era, narrowly eclipsing your own covid-affected 2020/21 campaign. It marked the first time a Czech club has ever cleared the 90-point mark. And while Sparta’s 2013/14 side steadfastly remains the best team in history (at least by points per game), Slavia show no signs of slowing down and could end up lapping Lavička’s iconic team, too. Their summer was somehow even more ambitious — from a larger-than-ever kit project to a flurry of new partners, including OMV and Coca-Cola — all in preparation for a full-throttle return to the Champions League.

Continue reading →