All about the next opponent: Interview with Sparta Praha-Fan Jan

Spar­ta Pra­ha will be Stuttgart’s first oppo­nent in a Cham­pi­ons League home game after four­teen years. Jan of the Der­by Pod­cast tells us all about the Czech dou­ble win­ners.

With the Red Stri­pe: Hel­lo Jan and thank you for taking your time to ans­wer our ques­ti­ons. Could you plea­se intro­du­ce yours­elf and your pod­cast to our rea­ders?

Jan: Hel­lo, my name is Jan Pav­li­ca and I am 37 years old. I was born as a Spar­tan and I will die as a Spar­tan. In Pra­gue we have 2 teams Spar­ta and Sla­via, the rival­ry is huge and this Sun­day we are wai­ting for a “der­by” game, Sla­via at home vs Spar­ta away. It is a social posi­ti­on if you sup­port Spar­ta or Sla­via in Pra­gue, the­re are poli­ti­cal, eco­no­mic and his­to­ri­cal reasons behind it.

I am an acti­ve ath­le­te, but my big­gest hob­by is foot­ball and Spar­ta in par­ti­cu­lar. Other­wi­se, I have 2 child­ren, for­t­u­na­te­ly, they also cho­se Spar­ta, alt­hough I admit that it was not very demo­cra­tic in our house, you can­not untie the children’s hands too much in cer­tain mat­ters (laughs).

I am an entre­pre­neur, I run a busi­ness in the tou­rism indus­try, with solar panels as well, and every Mon­day we record an incre­asing­ly popu­lar pod­cast on You­Tube — DERBY PODCAST, when we talk with my “fri­end”, a Sla­via fan, about the cur­rent round play­ed by Sla­via and Spar­ta, we do a pre­view of the matches which both teams await in Euro­pe and in the dome­stic league.

On Fri­day, Spar­ta lost a com­pe­ti­ti­ve match for the first time this sea­son against Sig­ma Olo­mouc. What was the reason for that?

Spar­ta ente­red the match with the stron­gest lin­e­up, in past matches Spar­ta was cri­ti­ci­zed for focu­sing too much on Euro­pean matches and the home matches were not con­vin­cing.  Spar­ta won home matches with a small goal mar­gin, con­ce­ding a lot of goals, so the new coach Fri­is deci­ded not to unde­re­sti­ma­te any­thing for this match and deploy the stron­gest Spar­ta had. This line-up will pro­ba­b­ly run out in Tuesday’s match in Stutt­gart as well.

Spar­ta quick­ly took the lead after a kick from goal­kee­per Vin­dahl, the attack las­ted eight seconds, Ola­tun­ji scored a beau­tiful goal and ever­y­thing loo­ked very simp­le.
Unfort­u­na­te­ly, Spar­ta stop­ped play­ing and con­cen­tra­ted on the match. Two big mista­kes were made by stop­per Mar­tin Vitik (21 years old), the most valuable play­er of cur­rent Spar­ta (15m EUR), Sig­ma scored two goals from the­se mista­kes and led 2:1, ano­ther huge fata­li­ty in defen­se was made by the natio­nal team play­er Jaros­lav Zel­ený and befo­re the end Spar­ta was losing 1:3.

It was­n’t enough to get the result and 1 goal scored at the end meant Spar­ta lost at home in the league after more than 1.5 years. Ever­yo­ne was like a scald, a big slap, and a wake-up call for the next matches. Spar­ta nee­ded this slap becau­se she loo­ked too con­fi­dent.

Last sea­son, Spar­ta won the dou­ble for the first time in ten years and the second league cham­pi­on­ship in a row. Is Spar­ta on the rise again after a deca­de of Pil­sen and Sla­via sha­ring the league titles bet­ween them?

The­re is a lot of talk now that the Czech league has made a big move, the coef­fi­ci­ent of Czech foot­ball is real­ly high and from this sea­son the 1st team auto­ma­ti­cal­ly qua­li­fies for the Cham­pi­ons League, which also means a big finan­cial injec­tion for the clubs. In the Czech League, the­re are 3 domi­nant teams: Spar­ta Pra­gue, Sla­via Pra­gue, and Vik­to­ria Pil­sen. Vik­to­ria Pil­sen is like a joker or the wild card of the tour­na­ment, ever­yo­ne knows that Spar­ta and Sla­via always give away, but when two fight, the third laughs, if you know what I mean.
It is important to know that the owner of Spar­ta is Dani­el Kre­tin­sky — the richest per­son in the coun­try and a very ele­gant young busi­ness­man who has com­pa­nies in Eng­land, France, and other Wes­tern Euro­pean count­ries. He is not an Eas­tern-style olig­arch, but a very edu­ca­ted and cha­ris­ma­tic man.  He has owned Spar­ta for over 14 years, but ever­y­thing chan­ged 5 years ago when Tomáš Rosický beca­me sports direc­tor.

Three years ago he brought coach Bri­an Pris­ke (form­er­ly Midt­jyl­land or Ant­werp) to Spar­ta, and they chan­ged the who­le Spar­ta tog­e­ther, bet on for­eign play­ers, and set a win­ning men­ta­li­ty. At the end of last sea­son, after the dou­ble, Feye­noord rea­ched out to him to replace Arne Slot, and Pris­ke was repla­ced by the very ambi­tious A team assistant Lars Fri­is. And it was Lars Fri­is who led Spar­ta Pra­gue to the Cham­pi­ons League after 19 long years. We beat Sham­rock, FCSB, and Mal­mo, domi­na­ted all the matches, and con­firm­ed it in the first leg of the Cham­pi­ons League against Red Bull Salz­burg 3–0.

What is your expec­ta­ti­on for the cur­rent sea­son?

Spar­ta always sta­tes at the pre-sea­son press con­fe­rence that the only goal is to win the league and qua­li­fy for Euro­pean cups.  The­se are the main goals of the club.
This sea­son will be dif­fi­cult again with Sla­via, Sla­via needs to win the title after a long time. It will be real­ly exci­ting and the Der­by will tell a lot on Sun­day.
Spar­ta wants to be com­pe­ti­ti­ve in the Cham­pi­ons League and will have a lot to test its sys­tem in Stutt­gart:  Fast play on the wings, solid defen­se with goal­kee­per Vin­dahl, who plays simi­lar to Manu­el Neu­er with his feet and he is a third-stop­per.  Up front we have dan­ge­rous stri­ker Vic­tor Ola­tun­ji and the head of the enti­re sys­tem in the midd­le of the mid­field is Kaan Kai­ri­nen.

Let’s look at the sys­tem, which one are you play­ing? What are curr­ent­ly Sparta’s strengths and weak­ne­s­ses and which of your play­ers should we look out for espe­ci­al­ly?

Spar­ta plays in a 3–4‑3 style with wing­backs. Spar­ta has a very quick tran­si­ti­on to the attack, whe­re the­re are two very good play­ers on the wings, Haras­lín and Bir­manče­vič, both of whom have many assists and can score a goal them­sel­ves, your defen­se has to watch out for them. Up front we play one power for­ward from Nige­ria, Vic­tor Ola­tun­ji, strong in tack­les, quick, shoo­ter. I alre­a­dy men­tio­ned the goal­kee­per, the very focu­sed and calm Peter Vin­dahl (Den­mark). The defen­se is set: Vitik-Soren­sen-Panak

My favo­ri­te play­er is Kaan Kai­ri­nen ( Fin­land ) a crea­ti­ve cen­tral mid­fiel­der, he con­trols the who­le game and the tem­po of Spar­ta. He is not very fast, so he needs a run­ning team­ma­te (Laci or Sadi­lek) next to him

The strength of Spar­ta Pra­gue is that it eva­lua­tes the opponent’s strengths well and tri­es to eli­mi­na­te them. The lin­e­up is very strong, unfort­u­na­te­ly the bench is wea­k­er in some places. A weak­ne­ss is if the oppo­si­te team plays an acti­ve press sink against Spar­ta, at this moment Spar­ta makes mista­kes. A gre­at expe­ri­ence was the match against Liver­pool, we ope­ned the game and Liver­pool scored a lot of goals, that’s why Spar­ta is now more com­pact from this match and does not open the game.

Ano­ther weak­ne­ss are the  wing backs Wies­ner and Pre­cia­do. Wies­ner is small in sta­tu­re, holds the ball a lot, and is weak at the back. Pre­cia­do is skillful on the ball, but has a lot of feet and tricks and is wea­k­er at the back.

Stutt­gart and Spar­ta have never play­ed each other com­pe­ti­tively, the only play­er I found to have play­ed for both clubs was Jan Simak. What were your reac­tions to the draw against VfB, what is your per­cep­ti­on of the club?

The Cham­pi­ons League draw was very dif­fi­cult for Spar­ta, it was eva­lua­ted as the second har­dest pos­si­ble. (RB Salz­burg, VFB, MAN City, Brest, Atle­ti­co Madrid, Feye­noord, Inter, Lever­ku­sen) Spar­ta is strong at home, the atmo­sphe­re is ama­zing and that helps the team to beat big teams (Betis Sevil­la, Gala­ta­sa­ray).
Away, Spar­ta is wea­k­er and VfB cer­tain­ly gets a lot of respect due to the fact that you play at home.

The Ger­man league has a very good name here, the big­gest stars of the Czech league go the­re: Kol­ler, Rosi­cky, Schick, Hlo­zek, Kader­a­bek or Hra­nac. VfB has not been at the top of the Ger­man league for a long time, so it is unknown what awaits Spar­ta in Stutt­gart. Cer­tain­ly, the match against Real Madrid, in which you lost 1:3, but you play­ed very good foot­ball, caught the atten­ti­on of many Czech fans. The only Czech play­er who play­ed for you was the wild child of Czech foot­ball, Jan Simak. Many sto­ries not only about foot­ball from his life attrac­ted the atten­ti­on of the bou­le­vard media.

Do you know how many Spar­ta fans will make the trip to Stutt­gart?

Spar­ta has a very strong fan base. Accor­ding to the fans, it is the big­gest team in the Czech Repu­blic. 3300 seats were released in Stutt­gart, but the­se seats dis­ap­peared within 1 minu­te, I was lucky and I am going to Stutt­gart with a group of fri­ends of about ten peo­p­le. For this away match against VfB, we have spe­cial edi­ti­on t‑shirts, we will all be wea­ring black.  Spar­tan fans are very hot-bloo­ded, and devo­ted, we use cho­reo in the sta­di­um, and pyro­tech­nics. It will sure­ly be a gre­at spec­ta­cle for you.

We never stop chee­ring and I belie­ve we will match the volu­me of your fans. All over Euro­pe, we are high­ly prai­sed for the atmo­sphe­re we crea­te.

What is your guess for the start­ing ele­ven and the result?

Spar­ta Pra­ha is going unde­fea­ted, I per­so­nal­ly think the­re is a chan­ce to draw, but it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict if we have a quick goal.  I esti­ma­te that we will score a goal and it will depend on your fans how they dri­ve your team to win. A 2:0 or 3:0 defeat would be a big dis­ap­point­ment for Spar­ta Pra­gue today, losing by one goal would pro­ba­b­ly make the team stand out in the media.

My tip for the result is 1:1

Thank you and have a good game.

Pic­tu­re: © Ian Walton/Getty Images