Czeching in on a heated rivalry

The inter­na­tional break has been an absolute god­send for me. It’s allowed me some time to catch up with what’s hap­pened in foot­ball from late Sep­tem­ber until now. As I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, I had to step away from the blog for a cou­ple of weeks for my wed­ding and hon­ey­moon. Just as I was get­ting back from my hon­ey­moon, the 263rd Pražský S (Prague S) derby was being con­tested. I’m of Czech her­itage so I do tend to keep an eye on the league tables.

Sparta has been down on their luck this year and do not look likely to be among the top spots of the table for a Euro­pean cup berth. They’ve also been knocked out of both the Cham­pi­ons League (in the third round of qual­i­fy­ing) and the UEFA Cup (first round). On the other hand, Slavia, tra­di­tion­ally the smaller of the two clubs, is sit­ting at the top of the table. They are also in the group stage of the Cham­pi­ons League and are tied with Sevilla for sec­ond in their group. There is a third club in Prague, Bohemi­ans 1905 (founded as the suc­ces­sor to the insol­vent FC Bohemi­ans Prague in 2005), but they are not as strong as the other two clubs and are cur­rently near the bot­tom of the table.

As for the derby, Slavia were handed a dream start when after just four min­utes of play. Fol­low­ing a Slavia cor­ner, the ball bounced off on-loan Liberec mid­fielder Daniel Pudil’s knee and beyond Sparta goalie Tomas Pos­tulka. The game remained close but Sparta’s chances took a major blow when mid­fielder Pavel Hor­vath was sent off. In the 43rd minute, Hor­vath was brought down by the goalscorer Pudil. Hor­vath lashed out at the player with both feet, earn­ing a straight red. It would take until the 85th minute for Slavia to ice the game when sub­sti­tute Zden?k Šenke?ík headed home a cross and gave Slavia a win over their rivals.

Hor­vath has been banned for three games while his club fined him 300,000 koruna (10,900 euros) and has replaced him as cap­tain. Hor­vath is no stranger to trou­ble as he was fined 200,000 koruna by the dis­ci­pli­nary com­mis­sion in Sep­tem­ber for mak­ing a fascist-style salute to fans, although he says his hand sig­nal was meant to calm the fans.

Unfor­tu­nately, the derby was not only marred by Horvath’s vio­lent con­duct but by a racist inci­dent. A sec­tion of Sparta fans unfurled a ban­ner con­tain­ing the word “Jude” — Ger­man for Jew — while also chant­ing the same word, a long­stand­ing taunt used against Slavia. Czech pub­lic tele­vi­sion chan­nel Ceska Tele­vize (CT) has threat­ened Sparta with a broad­cast ban unless they put a stop to anti-semitic slo­gans being bran­dished by a group of their fans.

Match High­lights:

The derby from a fan’s perspective:

Below are the cur­rent league stand­ings for the Czech Gam­bri­nus Liga. Gam­bri­nus liga is the offi­cial name of the Czech foot­ball pre­mier league. “Gam­bri­nus” is the name of the best sell­ing beer in the Czech Repub­lic pro­duced by the main spon­sor – Plze?ský Prazdroj

   Standings         P  W  D  L  F  A Pts1  Slavia Prague    10  8  1  1 21  6 252  Teplice           9  6  2  1 13  6 203  Banik Ostrava     9  5  3  1 16  6 184  Sparta Prague     9  5  1  3 11  7 165  Mlada Boleslav    9  4  3  2 12  7 156  Sigma Olomouc     9  3  4  2  6  6 137  Tescoma Zlin      9  3  4  2  8 12 138  Brno              9  3  3  3 11 13 129  Viktoria Plzen   10  3  3  4  8 11 1210 Ceske Budejovice  9  3  2  4 10 12 1111 Kladno            9  2  3  4 14 15  912 Most              9  1  4  4 14 19  713 Bohemians Praha   9  1  4  4  4 10  714 Jablonec          9  1  3  5  5 10  614 Slovan Liberec    9  1  3  5  5 10  616 Viktoria Zizkov   9  1  3  5 12 20  6