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.

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2025/26 team preview: FK Teplice

For too long, Teplice fans had been left clinging to false hope of hearing from a new owner. When it finally happened this April, though, it was everything they’d hoped for — and then some. Billionaire Milan Kratina has not only brought smart presence and concrete vision for a refurbished Stínadla or a new training facilities; he’s also kept the previous main sponsor AGC on board, extending the deal for another 9 years with a focus on funding the club’s youth setup above all. If only the squad had matched the ambition off the pitch…

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2025/26 team preview: FK Jablonec

There’s symmetry in how both Northern Bohemian clubs have handled their respective ownership takeovers — they both (more or less) started in 2024 following a period of vanishing success. But there’s a far greater asymmetry to it all. Where Slovan Liberec were getting a clean break from their late 1990s saviour, including full-blown re-brand, FK Jablonec are likely headed for yet another period of remote club control by Miroslav Pelta, who’s had some sort of a say at the club since 1991 — practically uninterrupted.

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2025/26 team preview: FC Slovan Liberec

There’s a fine line to be tread between ambition and arrogance. It becomes an even more delicate balance to strike when you set out to plant ambition in a place where it had long been a foreign concept — and more so still if you do it with a vision to change not only that particular place but, ultimately and by extension, the entire Czech footballing landscape. How clubs outside the current Top 4 now think about the way they operate and deal with issues like financial sustainability has inevitably been shaped by what Ondřej Kania & co. have done in Liberec since early 2024. And whatever your stance on their individual decisions, this broader influence is undeniable — and hugely significant in the long run.

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2025/26 team preview: MFK Karviná

New horizons unlocked. Just like most of us predicted a year ago, MFK Karviná the club has entered a new era with Martin Hyský the manager. Hardly just your regular coach, the former Vlašim gaffer is making sure Karviná doesn’t become a hollow feeder club of Slavia without its own personality and agenda. Through his charisma, tactical acumen, accountability and sheer dedication to make it all work in a region where Karviná have long fed off scraps, Hyský has — in a way — become for Karviná what Janotka has been for Sigma: a quietly transformative figure reshaping not just results, but identity.

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2025/26 team preview: FC Baník Ostrava

The word “vibes” is growing in popularity even among the Czech-speaking younger generation, and FC Baník Ostrava of 2023-25 could easily demonstrate what it means. On the face of it, the club just rattled off two Top 4 finishes, both remarkable in their own right — the first one marked a delayed return to UEFA competitions, breaking the glass ceiling of sorts, while the second one meant a suitable follow-up via a jump by one place and a whole lot of points. But the vibes… boy, the vibes were different. Where 2023/24 was an uneasy step in the right direction, 2024/25 was a confident statement of belonging.

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2025/26 team preview: SK Sigma Olomouc

If you were to now design a dream Sigma Olomouc campaign in a lab, you couldn’t — the baffled lab operator would keep on mumbling “I’ve only just finished the task”. Through all the victories — first trophy since 2012 and return to the continental stage after 7 years, thanks to a beloved club icon drawing decent football from a cast of largely inexperienced homegrown talent — there was just one ever-present regret: if only there were more people in the stands cheering on. Now, with the clean break from the much-maligned ownership structure, there’s hope for a full-blown success story. On and off the pitch.

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