You're listening to the Footglish Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
Why did Czechia lose to Turkey?
What part did the referee play?
Did the Czech players fight hard enough?
And how do we use the third conditional in English?
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Footglish Podcast.
An English learning podcast which can help you develop your English listening skills.
My name is Denik Lukas and welcome.
And unfortunately today we are going to have to talk about the result of the Czech team.
And that's because my team, Czechia and the Czech Republic, have just been beaten by Turkey.
When I say have just been beaten, well it was yesterday, but it feels like it was today because the emotion is really strong.
I have to say I'm really disappointed.
I'm absolutely gutted about the result, about what happened, how it all panned out.
Czechia with one point, last place, fourth place in the group.
Unfortunately nowhere near qualifying.
All we had to do is beat Turkey and well I'm going to tell you about this game a bit.
But you should know that it's quite hard for me to even talk about this.
Because watching this game was like watching a horror film.
Basically the main event of the game, the main sort of talking point will have to be two yellow cards for the player Barak.
Who unfortunately was sent off very early in the game.
In the 20th, it was around the 20th minute.
And the Czech Republic had to play with 10 men for about 80 minutes, 80 remaining minutes of the game.
And that was a real sucker punch.
I think even for the fans in the stands, obviously in Germany you've got a lot of Turkish people.
So you can imagine they were dominant force in the stadium in the stands.
There were more Turkish fans than the Czech fans.
And after this incident, I have to say that basically those two yellow cards are justified.
The referee sent the player off.
I think it was insensitive because it pretty much affected the whole game.
The game was over or the game that could have been was over and it was a completely different sport.
Those of you who have played football then you know that playing with 10 men for so long, it just changes the dynamic of the game.
And basically we were trying to find a way to somehow beat Turkey with one man down.
And that's always hard.
The player who did this Barak, he seemed to be over motivated when he was singing the national anthem.
He seemed to be very vigorous, right?
Full of energy, which I liked.
But then unfortunately he made some really bad decisions in the game.
Got sent off and yeah, we have to say that he is kind of to blame for this loss.
Yeah, there are other reasons, of course, we lost it.
But this was the main one, I have to say.
Now, it's interesting that despite this, we managed to have total 12 attempts, six on goal.
Whereas the Turks had 17 attempts in total and five on goal.
So overall, we battled, we fought hard despite this unfortunate event.
Now we have to mention the referee who was an absolute disgrace.
We have to say he cost us the game.
The decisions he made impacted the game.
I said the first one, the Barak sending off was insensitive, but he can justify it.
I don't think he can justify what happened after that.
The Turkish player was supposed to be sent off as well after a series of fouls on the Czech players.
There was one decision which could have even been a straight red card.
It went to VAR, but this player was let off in the end.
And well, it was a power play for Turkey.
They had one more man and that's what it comes down to.
The referee showed 18 yellow cards and two red cards.
There was one more red card for a Czech player after the game finished.
But 18 yellow cards is a new Euro record.
Basically, it was not a nice display from the referee and he affected the game really badly.
His name is Istvan Kovács.
It sounds like a Hungarian name, that's right.
The referee is Romanian, but he has got a father from Hungary.
And he has got a Hungarian passport apparently.
And I don't know in what universe you would let a referee from Hungary be in charge of a game
where the Hungarians who were in the other group in the third place waiting for the other matches to finish,
when they needed actually the Turkish team to draw or win.
They needed us not to win, the Hungarians, right?
I don't know in what universe you would let a referee who has got an interest in this, right?
Obviously, if you were born in Hungary, you want your team to progress, right?
So I don't understand how they even let him be in charge of this.
This was a conflict of interest.
Unless I'm missing something, I mean you may say that this is a conspiracy theory,
and you might well be right.
I'm not saying I know the answer here.
But to say the least, this is suspicious.
And the way this match was refereed, it's not just the red card,
it's not just the fact that the Turkish didn't get a red card, it's also a penalty.
There should have been a penalty for the Czech team.
But instead, the referee decided to blow the whistle and it was an offensive foul from our player, Kukta.
I don't want this podcast to be about a referee.
I don't want to rant about the referee.
I don't think it's right, because then you will look for excuses, some external factors.
Obviously, Barak made a massive mistake, and it's inexcusable and unacceptable.
But unfortunately, the referee was a big, big player in this game as well.
Because if he had sent off the Turkish player too, if he had given us the penalty,
things might have gone differently.
Also, some people talk about bad luck, because we had bad luck with the referee,
then our goalkeeper got injured, and things like that.
Well, again, we can talk about bad luck.
The things went from bad to worse in this game.
But the problem is, if we look for all these excuses,
then we will basically be distracting ourselves from real issues that there are with the Czech team.
And there are issues.
I actually thought that the nomination was well made.
I liked the way Ivan Hasek, the Czech coach, the main coach, was talking in the media.
I liked the way it was all presented.
There was an improvement from the previous management.
But I think the issues are more general. More general with Czech football.
We don't have enough creative players, I believe.
We don't have Rosickis, Poborskis and Nedvěts. Not anymore.
And that's why our individual technical ability is just so much lower.
And I think it costs us the games.
Because in this game, we played really well, despite this hardship that we had to deal with.
Despite the way the game was going for us, we battled really well.
And I think that is quite praiseworthy. I think we need to commend that.
We need to praise that.
And I was actually proud of the team in the end.
But we only finished with one point. We didn't manage to beat anyone.
We only drew with Georgia, who finished above us because they beat Portugal.
You could say that Portugal had nothing to play for because by the time they played Georgia, they had already won the game.
You could say that. It's probably true.
But then again, we did not deal with Turkey. And Turkey beat Georgia.
So we deserved to go out, unfortunately.
We deserved to go out, no matter how you try to wrap it with bad luck and terrible referee, which is true as well.
We have to look the truth in the eye. And this is what happened, right?
We were hard done by. We were treated unfairly.
And even the international media are on our side and they praise us for fighting hard.
Players like Provod, Soucek, Krejci. They really gave their everything on the pitch.
But unfortunately, it's not enough. So there are positives to take from this.
But I'm afraid the negatives far outweigh the positives.
Soucek played as the true captain. He scored our only goal.
And you could say that this was a heroic performance from him. Same from Provod.
But yeah, it's not enough.
We had the youngest team in the Euro, so that might be a good thing as well, right?
That could be a promise of a bright future.
We had good team spirit, or at least that's the way it looked.
Decent manager, the assistant managers seemed to know what they were doing.
My respect actually goes to Ivan Hasek and the players who stayed on the pitch.
Staniak, excellent performance from the goalkeeper in the tournament as well.
We fought valiantly. We had courage and determination.
We did not give up. We had a chance. The Turks, they were afraid.
They were afraid because for a long time it was a draw.
And all that had to happen was us to score one goal.
And they would have been eliminated from the tournament.
So from that perspective, we did what we could. We did not give up. We kept going.
But in the end, it was meant to be. It happened, right?
We lost the game and it's probably what was supposed to happen.
I think what we should do now is to learn from our mistakes.
We shouldn't cry. We shouldn't blame just the referee for what happened.
And we should not put ourselves in the position of a victim.
Because the more we do this, and we are quite good at this, the Czechs,
because we have an experience with the referee Pierre Luigi Colina,
who basically gave a penalty, I think it was in year 2000.
And we lost the game against the Netherlands back then.
Then he was the enemy of the country.
But I think we can't think in this kind of way. We have to have a different mindset.
You know, you can be stronger after failing, because you learn from your mistakes.
And if you bounce back, it will make you stronger.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
The only question is, can we do that? Can we do that?
Can we stop blaming and just start working harder?
I hope we can. I have to say congratulations to Turkey.
They knocked us out the third time in a row.
And it was always the last game of the group stage.
The Turkish always beat us in the last three games.
We played them. So from that perspective, they are our bogey team.
We don't want to play them, because they are so good.
They just showed more in this group than us.
They beat Georgia at least, and we didn't.
So, yeah, it is what it is. I'm not very happy about this.
And it's harder to record episodes like this.
But it had to be done. It had to be done. I had to give you my opinion.
I can see all the factors, right? The referee, the barak mistake, getting himself sent off.
I can see the bigger picture as well with the Czech players lacking creativity.
Yeah, and this is the result. Unfortunately, we are out of the tournament.
But this is not the end of the Footglitch Podcast.
We will keep going. And as always, let me teach you some stuff in the next segment.
Welcome back in this part of the show.
As always, I'm going to teach you something.
And this time I would like to take a look at the third conditional.
It's a scary, scary structure in English because it has so many parts.
And it's notoriously difficult for English learners to learn and to use correctly.
But maybe it will be easier when I give you an example that I used in this episode.
I said at one point, if he had sent off the Turkish player too,
if he had given us the penalty, the things might have gone differently.
So I was of course talking about the referee, right?
I talked about the referee too much in this episode.
Hopefully in the future episodes I won't have to do that.
And I am kind of talking about an alternative past.
So the way the past happened is that the referee didn't send any Turkish players off
and he didn't give a penalty for the Czech team.
So basically this is the reality. This is what happened. This is the fact.
But now we are thinking, okay, what would have been if things had gone differently?
So this is how this third conditional is used.
Now notice the structure. If he, the referee, had sent off,
so sent is the third form of the verb send, send, sent, sent, right?
So if he had sent off, send off, to send someone off means to give someone a red card.
If he had sent off the Turkish player, yeah?
And then there was one more. If he had given, so you have had plus the third form of the verb,
give, gave, given, right? If he had given us the penalty.
So this is the condition. So a conditional sentence has two parts.
The condition, which is the structure with if or the clause with if,
and then the main clause. And then in the main clause I said the things might have gone differently.
So often we use would there, right? I could have said things would have gone differently.
But instead I went for things might have gone differently.
So look at the structure again here. Might or would, have,
and again the third form of the verb. The things might have gone differently.
Go, went, gone, right? So again, if he had sent off the Turkish player too,
if he had given us the penalty, the things might have gone differently.
This is the third conditional. And it basically talks about the past that did not happen,
like an alternative past, unreal past that you cannot change.
Usually it's used to sort of have regrets or criticize someone, right?
Or just, yeah, it's used in this kind of way. Maybe I could have regrets about recording this episode
because perhaps I wasn't very calm when I was recording it. Perhaps I was ranting too much.
Yeah. So maybe I could now say if I had been calmer, I would have recorded a better episode.
So I'm sort of like regretting the way I recorded this episode.
If the Czech Republic hadn't lost against Turkey, I would have recorded a more fun episode.
Something like that. Okay, listeners, that's it. I'm done with this.
I hope I don't have to talk about the Czech team for a few days now. I need a little break.
I will still keep doing episodes, but we will be focusing on different teams, of course.
So I want to thank you very much for listening to the Footgrish podcast.
And yeah, please subscribe to this podcast if you like it.
And thank you for listening again. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.