You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
Who are, by far, the two most popular teams in the Czech League?
Why could be the Czech League fun to watch this year?
How can you join the Fantasy Czech League?
And how can we use the present simple tense in English to talk about the future?
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Footglitch Podcast.
This is actually the first episode of season 2 of the Footglitch Podcast, or if you want, season 2024-2025.
This time I would like to talk about the Czech League, which is the first time ever on this podcast.
I hope you don't mind. The reason, of course, is because I'm Czech. I'm from the Czech Republic.
I know the Czech League is not one of the most famous leagues in the world.
Actually, in terms of its significance, it's one of the, let's say, mid-table leagues, you know, like average leagues in Europe.
Not one of the best leagues, not one of the worst leagues, I would say, but it is a league of the country that I come from.
So that is why I would like to talk about it.
And we will have 16 teams, as usual, in Fortuna Liga, and one team got promoted from the second division.
One team got relegated last season.
And at this point, I just want to say that if you don't want me to talk about the Czech League, well, you don't have to listen, of course,
but don't worry, the Premier League will always have a priority on this podcast
because it's fun to watch, more fun than the Czech League, and because I have experience talking about the Premier League,
and I think I know more teams and more players there than I know the Czech League.
I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to the Czech League.
At this point, I would like to remind you that I'm an English teacher, a football fan, who is a professional English teacher.
So I'm not a journalist. My knowledge about football is actually not as vast as a knowledge of a journalist would be.
But I'm an English teacher. That's what I'm doing here.
I just talk about football in English, and then I explain and teach some stuff.
Now, the Czech League actually, believe it or not, starts tomorrow.
I am in fact recording one day before the start of the Czech League.
Why does it start so early? Actually, just a few days after the end of Euro 2024.
Well, the main reason is that there are a lot of Czech teams in European competitions, and it's quite important that we do well.
From next season, we will have one team in Champions League, directly in the Champions League, without having to play qualifications.
But this time, we still have to play qualifications. There are two teams that will play it, Sparta and Slavia.
As far as I know, Sparta are in the second round of the Champions League qualification.
Slavia are in the third round. So Slavia needs to beat two opponents to get to the Champions League, which, as we know, will have a new format this year.
And Sparta, they need to beat three opponents. So it's going to be quite tough.
Honestly, if just one team gets to the Champions League, I would be really happy and proud.
But as we know, even if you fail in these rounds, there is still a possibility that you qualify for Europa League or Conference League, which, you know, this is the worst that could happen here.
Yeah. So as I mentioned, Sparta and Slavia are, in fact, the biggest Czech teams. You probably heard about Sparta Prague and Slavia Prague before.
They are the teams from the Czech capital Prague, and they are historically the most successful teams, the biggest rivals in the Czech Republic as well.
Usually, if you ask someone, they either support Sparta or Slavia in the Czech Republic. If you ask a Czech person, not everyone, of course, but.
Fortunately, in the last few years, there have been great development in how the Czech League and these big teams have been sort of presenting themselves.
I think there's a lot of there has been a lot of progress in terms of marketing, in terms of finances.
And, you know, it's it goes hand in hand with the success that the Czech teams have had in the recent years, because, for example, last year, it was like historically the best year of Czech teams ever.
Sparta was in the round of 16 of the Europa League and they lost to Liverpool. So they got knocked out.
Then there were two teams in Conference League. I hope I'm saying it right. It's possible that Slavia was in in the Europa League as well.
Let me let me check that Slavia lost to Milan AC Milan and it was also Europa League.
I'm sorry. So both Sparta and Slavia got to the round of 16 of Europa League, which is good achievement, I would say.
And Victoria Polzen, the third Czech team, they managed to get to the quarterfinal, actually, of the Conference League and where they got knocked out by Fiorentina.
So, as you can see, big teams, Czech teams had to face huge teams and they lost in the end. But it's really it really looks like we are in for some really good years, you know, some nice times ahead, bright future ahead.
It looks like it. A lot of money is invested in the teams. We have some interesting signings.
The big clubs are signing now players from even La Liga and from the Balkans, from the Nordic countries, like Scandinavian countries.
It looks really, really interesting this time, I have to say. And that's why it will be fun to watch.
Sparta Prague, their best player arguably is a Serbian player called Vilko Birmancevic, who was the best player of the Czech League last season. He is a striker and he also featured in the Serbian squad in Euro 2024.
They sold their best player, not the best player, but their captain and the biggest sort of leader Ladislav Krejci, the defender, to Girona. So he signed for Girona, the Spanish team, the Spanish second team.
Girona finished right behind Real Madrid in La Liga. So obviously they needed to fill in that gap. I think they got some interesting signings.
As for Slavia, they bought Chory, who was one of the best players at Victoria Palzenje. They bought him, but also he's a bit controversial because he's one of those bad boys. He can cause sometimes havoc on the pitch, provokes players and is capable of headbutting opponents and things like that.
So that was an interesting signing from Slavia. They also look great. Actually Slavia had 10 players at the Euros, most of them of course in the Czech team, but also there was one player from the Slovakian team, Ivan Šránc.
It's that Ivan Šránc that became one of the top six goal scorers of Euro 2024. So Slavia are full of excellent players as well. Actually Slavia hasn't won the league for three years though.
Last two years it was Sparta Prague and the year before that it was Victoria Palzenje. So there is a trophy drought for Slavia Prague. So they have some stuff to do this season. They're very motivated.
For Sparta Prague they could get a little bit complacent because they won the title twice in a row and it's always hard to complete a hat-trick like that of course because maybe the motivation is not so high.
They had an amazing coach from Denmark, Brian Priske, who however went to Feyenoord Rotterdam to the Dutch league now. He replaced Arne Slot who became the coach of Liverpool FC.
As you all know, Jürgen Klopp resigned. So that's the chess that has been played now in the international football. Interestingly enough, Sparta Prague actually didn't get a new coach, but instead they promoted the assistant coach from the Brian Priske's team.
His name is Lars Fries, he's also Danish. So it will be interesting to watch. Actually this Brian Priske was the best foreign coach. He did an amazing job for Sparta Prague and fans loved him.
But he wanted something more of course. So if Feyenoord, when they call, most of us would probably go there as well.
So the question is, who do I support? Who do I actually support? Well, I have to say that one of my clients is someone from Jabloneet. So I will support this team.
It's a team, a traditional Czech team from the north of Bohemia. And well, their ambitions are like mid-table finish, I would say. But I will support them.
Also, quite close to me would be Mladá Boleslav. That's a place famous for Škoda Auto. And also not far from where I live is Hradec Králové.
And next to it is another city, Poděbrady. All these cities have a team in the first Czech league.
And did I say Poděbrady? No, sorry, I meant Pardubice. Poděbrady is where I live. But Pardubice is a city where I went to university, where I studied English teaching.
So possibly I will also watch these teams a little bit. But of course, I was also born in Prague. So I'm going to follow Sparta and Slavia.
I'm actually most likely to watch games of Sparta and Slavia. These are the most interesting teams to watch because we have the most emotions there.
The fans are going crazy. The stadiums are full. You can watch best football because these two teams are just much richer than any other teams.
Except maybe Pilsen, who have been doing really well. And like I said, last year they got to the quarter-final of Europa League, a conference league, which was an amazing result.
And they also have great players and an excellent coach. So that will be interesting to watch. And I look forward to watching the Czech league.
I might not be able to watch all the matches. In fact, I might just check the highlights each week. But I will definitely be keeping myself up to date.
And also I've decided to start playing the Czech fantasy league. Yes, I think there are two versions of this league. And this one is eSport fantasy league.
That's the one I will be playing. And well, I have a lot of experience playing the FPL, the fantasy Premier League.
And that one I will definitely talk about in the future. And that one will be more important for the Footgris podcast.
But if any of you are interested in Czech football, if any of you speak Czech, because this Czech league is in Czech, you need to speak the Czech language if you want to play it.
If any of you want to try, then feel free to join my mini league. I will leave the code for the league in the description of this episode. But it's N-P-L-E-G-A-U, all capital letters.
That's the code to join the Footgris League. And you can make your team at fantasyleague.cz. Basically, that's where you find this. Yeah.
Fantasyleague.cz. I think you need to speak really Czech in order to create your own team. But why not? Why not? Yeah.
Hopefully, we will have like one or two people in the mini league that I have already created there. But don't worry if you don't want to play the Czech league and you don't care about it at all.
Don't worry at all, because I understand that the vast majority of listeners are probably non-Czech people. So definitely on this podcast, we will talk about the fantasy Premier League.
And I will actually dedicate one episode to explaining what it is, how you can play it, and so on. Yeah.
But this episode of the Footgris podcast was about the Czech league. And now, as always, let me do the language corner.
Welcome back. This is the language corner. This is where I do my job as an English teacher.
And this time, I would like to take a look at the present tense, the present simple tense, which can be used to talk about the future. That's surprising, isn't it?
A present tense? Present simple? To talk about the future? Well, it's possible that some of you already use it and don't even think about it.
Basically, I said the following sentence. The Czech league starts tomorrow. A very simple sentence, right? The Czech league starts tomorrow.
Well, there's the word tomorrow, which obviously suggests that I'm talking about the future, right?
Because I am recording this on Thursday and the Czech league starts on Friday.
So it's possible that by the time you listen to this, it's already the present or the past. But don't worry about that.
The point is that in English, you can use the present tense to talk about the future. Not always, though.
You have to be careful because we also use to be going to, to talk about plans. We also use present continuous to talk about fixed plans.
For example, I'm visiting my friends next Sunday. It's a fixed plan. We also use will for the future.
For example, for predictions, we use will for offers, for promises, also decisions at the time of speaking.
So the future in English is really confusing. And to add a bit of more confusion, we can use the present tense.
The present simple tense to talk about the future. How? Well, when we talk about some timetables, when it's some kind of scheduled event,
for instance, the most classic example is the train leaves at five. When we talk about the train or plane or bus timetables,
we often use present simple tense to refer to the future times of these vehicles or what are they? Means of transport, I should say.
OK, and we can also talk about the Czech League, right? Because it's a scheduled competition, right?
The league starts tomorrow. It was scheduled like that. It's not my plan. It's not any prediction. It's just something that was scheduled.
Right. So we can say this game, the first game is Sparta versus Pardubice, I believe. I think so.
So the game starts at eight p.m., I think. I'm not sure 100 percent. But the point is we can also say the film starts at eight o'clock.
Right. You go to the cinema and you have the timetable of all the films there and it tells you which cinema theater you go to and the start of each film.
Right. So that's how you can use present simple to talk about the future. I hope this is clear. I hope you understand it.
Let me know if you do. You can send me an email at teachersdenek at Gmail dot com. You can communicate with me.
I have to say I only have about 20 to 30 subscribers for now. So it is a small podcast. I hope we will grow.
That's why I keep asking you to help me promote the podcast. Tell your friends about it.
Tell people who are learning English that there is a podcast which was made for exactly those kind of people, people who are learning English and love football.
Perhaps it would be difficult for these people to listen to podcasts made by native speakers because they speak much faster and they have different accents.
I know for a fact that my accent is understandable for English learners around the world because I have lived in different countries and they all say that I sound very clear.
I think maybe my speech is a little bit slower. Also, I have some excellent guests on this podcast whose first language is not always English as well.
So I think this is a fantastic podcast for a certain type of people, a certain type of English learners. Anyway, I hope so. I hope so.
Okay, guys, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much for listening. And don't forget if you speak Czech, don't forget to join the Czech League and please do it by 5 p.m. Central European Time tomorrow.
Because if you don't, you will miss the first round of the fantasy league, which would be a shame. Anyway, thank you very much for listening and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers. Bye bye.