You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
How does it feel to be a Sparta Prague fan after reaching the Champions League League stage?
What would be a good result at the Etihad Stadium in the Manchester City Sparta Prague game?
How good is the new Sparta Prague signing Albion Rahmani?
And what does the phrase, if stars align, mean?
Hello everyone, my name is Denik Lukas and you're listening to another episode of the Footglitch Podcast.
I'm an English teacher and your host for today.
If you by any chance are looking for a podcast about football which can help you learn English, well, look no further.
The Footglitch Podcast is your gold mine.
Sometimes I waffle a lot. You've just heard an example of that.
But I do that by myself. Other times there is a guest.
And today is one of those days, one of those days that I'm not alone.
Let me welcome on the podcast Mike. Hi Mike. Welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Denik. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to have you here.
You are Mike, a Sparta Prague fan and a host of a great podcast, which unfortunately is in Czech.
I know I have some listeners who speak this language.
So definitely check it out.
Your podcast is called Vláci Prahy, which how would we translate that into English?
Yeah, you know, we were actually thinking about it the other day.
It should be taught the name Vláci Prahy, which means something like the emperors of Prague or the kings of Prague.
Basically, it's a long standing nickname for Sparta Prague.
And because I'm coming from a film business, a long time ago, I've created a movie called The Kings of Prague about the Sparta hooligans.
It never came to fruition. It never happened. It never got produced.
But we obviously kept the idea of the name.
So when we came up with the idea to go with the podcast, we had two choices.
We had Kings of Prague, Vláci Prahy, or we were thinking Sparta cast, you know, to make it pretty simple.
But we decided it sounds good as well, to be honest.
It's got Sparta in the name. You know, we were thinking Vláci Prahy.
If you don't know Sparta, then obviously it's going to be a little bit more difficult.
But then Petr, the other guy from the podcast, he had this great idea and he said, look, if we call it the Kings of Prague, we'll immediately be the best podcast about Sparta.
It has a positive ring to it. You're right.
But I think Sparta cast also sounds good for some reason. It has a good vibe about it.
It kind of feels normal. You know, like anyone would come up with the name Sparta cast.
That's true. That's true.
So I feel we want it to be original.
It kind of sounds like a footgrish podcast, a little bit, if I'm honest.
Footgrish is great. You would never expect these two words combined.
It's a blend. The word doesn't exist. For some reason, nobody has come up with the idea.
I wonder why.
Yeah, I wonder why.
For better or worse. You never know.
For better or worse. Exactly.
Even some of my guests have struggled to pronounce the word, the name of the podcast.
So that may also tell part of the story.
That's easy. Footgrish.
It's easy for you.
Of course.
All right. Well, so you are a host of this podcast, which in my opinion is now really taking off.
You're skyrocketing to some unknown heights. Honestly, it's doing really well.
But it's a relatively new podcast. As you said, you are a co-host.
And it is about Sparta Prague and it's for Sparta Prague fans primarily.
The Spartans.
The Spartans, yeah.
No, you're right. Absolutely. We started four months ago.
As everybody who started the podcast, the first idea was, look, we'll try.
We'll see if we like it. And there are some people out there who like it.
Then, you know, we'll keep on going.
But four months in, I have to say, I was right about thinking there is a space to be filled.
There's a niche for it.
There is a niche in business. There is a niche.
Because there are, I think, three or even four Sparta-orientated podcasts out there.
But I personally had issues with all of them.
So rather than complaining, I was like, you know what? I might as well start my own.
And four months in, we're very happy to say we have about 140 subscribers on Hero Hero.
Every episode is being listened by around 5,000 people.
So for us, it's a massive takeoff.
Yeah. You know what, Mike? You're making me feel very small right now, yeah?
Because the Footglitch Podcast has a slower buildup.
But mate, if we are a niche audience, then you are like extreme super niche.
It's true. It's true.
Because honestly, you know, you have to find people who want to learn English via football.
That's not all of Spartans.
I'm OK with it, though. I like it. I like it.
I think when you find the people who are into your niche, as you said,
then I think they will stay for a long time. I'm pretty sure they will.
The advantage you will have over me is you will always remember the names of all your listeners.
It doesn't sound like an advantage, to be fair.
I was supposed to be a little confident, but it was a joke.
Anyway, moving on, basically, one of the reasons I reached out to you is that while listening to your podcast,
and I have to admit, I'm one of your, how many thousands it was, I can't remember, listeners,
is that I noticed that both you and your co-host seem to use a lot of English words, Englishisms.
And then once you also mentioned on the podcast that you used to live in England,
and I knew that I had to contact you and invite you to be a guest on the Footwish podcast,
because this is exactly the kind of person I would like to talk to.
And on this podcast, we cover different things.
I talk a lot about the Premier League, but because I'm Czech, like yourself,
I also talk about the Czech League a little bit, Sparta Slavia, the Czech teams in the cup.
I did some stuff about the Czech national team. So let's talk about Sparta today.
Fantastic. If you want, we can always talk about Premier League 2. That's as good as well for me.
You know, if you enjoy this, then another time maybe.
So Czech League for today.
Yeah, well, specifically Sparta. I think the main thing we have to start with is I should congratulate you,
your team, Sparta Prague, on finally getting to the Champions League again after I can't remember how many years.
Has it been 20 years? 19 years.
We keep saying 20 because it sounds cooler in our podcast, but technically it was 19 years.
So I was barely legal. I was 18 the last time Sparta was in the Champions League.
So for us, it's massive. And the most interesting thing to understand is there are a couple of generations of Spartans
who's never experienced it before. So like you have two generations of fans for whom it's the first time.
Yeah. Well, you might like the fact that I actually went to the Arsenal-Sparta game at the Old Highbury.
I was there too, Zdeněk.
Are you kidding me?
I was there too. And I'm pretty sure we were next to each other. No, actually we weren't because I was amongst the English fans.
I was too. I think I was too. I was sitting next to a fan and we were talking about Karol Poborsky because they asked me,
this fan, it was a man. He asked me about Karol Poborsky, like why he's not in the team anymore or something.
And I think at the time there was some kind of issue and he had gone to České Budějovice or something. I can't remember it exactly.
He got sacked by a text message, if you remember. The owner of Sparta Praxe sacked him by a text message, which he was an icon.
He still is an icon. Karol Poborsky, everybody will remember him from the Euros where he lost his Portuguese goalkeeper,
one of the most famous European goals of all time. And he got sacked by a text message. So that was not long after that. You're right.
It was towards the end of his career. He was not the same player as he used to be. He was, by the way, he once played for Manchester United.
Was it Sporting or Benfica? I can't remember.
I think for a moment he was in Benfica, but he was for sure in Lazio.
Lazio, Rome as well.
You know, Sir Alex Ferguson, he once said that Karol Poborsky would have made it massive in Manchester United.
He had only one problem and that was David Beckham. David Beckham, yeah, exactly.
He was starting out the very time Karol went there.
So we just found out that we actually went to the same game. And I'm going to surprise you one more time, Mike.
Okay. It happened twice.
I also went to the Jablonec Sparta game.
The recent one.
Well, you know, Jablonec Sparta, Sparta Arsenal, it's so similar, isn't it?
Yeah. So to be fair, I don't want to reveal everything on this podcast. I will say this.
Some of my students were there. That's why I went there.
Okay. I believe it at that.
And I'm not going to ask any more questions.
Yeah. Well, I can tell you in private, but I don't want to say these things.
Once we're finished, you tell me more because it sounds intriguing now.
Yeah. But anyway, so basically Sparta Prague in the Champions League.
That's massive, right? That's amazing for you guys.
Crazy. Yeah, absolutely crazy.
And to be honest, we planned for this podcast episode, especially because we sort of knew we're going to go over Malmö.
It would have to be a massive disaster for Sparta to lose because we were 2-0 ahead after the away game.
And we went for the rematch in the home game.
And so it was sort of heading there. So even we managed to get a Sparta legend on our podcast.
And we prepared this massive, massive episode about all of that.
So imagine imagine Sparta collapsed.
Yeah, you know, but would have gone nowhere.
You know what you could have done? There is a way to deal with it.
You know, Boris Johnson, what he did before Brexit.
He wrote to he wrote two articles, one like one if Brexit failed and one if it didn't or something.
And then he chose based on what happened.
He chose how he would behave. So he became a Brexiter.
Right. Sounds exactly like Boris.
You know, the less I have in common with him, the better.
No, no, sorry. Sorry. It was before the referendum.
I think referendum before the before.
I can't remember. There was an important moment in British politics.
And he basically there was like he was on a crossroad and he wrote two articles.
Right. And he did it in a way that would suit him the best.
He was like this opportunistic person. You know, it sounds like him.
But you could have done the same.
I've been talking about British politics for a long time because I'm British too.
I have two passports. Oh, yeah.
So you could you could have done the same thing, though.
Right. Because you could have recorded two episodes, two different episodes with your with your with your friend.
And you're forgetting one important thing. Our episodes are usually two hours long.
So imagine two hours. I heard one that was three, three hours long.
Yeah, that was an extreme one. Yeah.
I think you think our record our record is three hours and twenty four minutes or something like we are not planning for that.
It just happens. OK. And every time we do that, I'm like, mate, we really crossed the line here.
We can't be honest anymore. But every time we release an episode like this extremely long episode, usually we get most positive feedback.
It's crazy to be honest, Mike.
I can already feel it's happening here as well, because I only asked you the first question and I didn't even get the answer yet.
We are almost 30 minutes into the episode. I think that's fine.
That's fine. I'll just reduce the number of questions. That's cool.
So Sparta in the Champions League, right. So you had to go over a few opponents in the qualifier rounds, I think three, three beat three opponents.
Right. Great. Great stuff.
Well, to be completely honest, when I realized we will have to go three, three legs of opponents, I was pretty sure that Champions League is not on the cards for us.
I couldn't see us beating three because Sparta is on the rise after a long darkness.
After a long time of darkness for 19 years, we've been a mediocre club.
In the Czech Republic, we are sort of up there, but we were never really competitive.
We got beat by Slavia for a long time. We got beat by Pilsen for a long time.
So for us to go over three legs was very like testy.
So the first round, we got Shamrock Rovers from Ireland.
And OK, I was like, yeah, we're going to make that happen. That's not a problem.
But the second round, we got FC SB, which is the old Czech Republic.
The Romanian team, yeah.
The Romanian champions. And now I could easily say, yeah, I was I was confident, but I wasn't.
I wasn't. I could see a struggle. And we sort of did, you know, we sort of did.
We really had troubles with that team because mentally we we wanted it a lot.
That was quite clear. But mentally, we are not on the level of mentally of the Real Madrid.
You know, I always say if you want to win, go and be the Real Madrid fan because it doesn't matter
if they play well or don't play well, they win because the mentality they have.
Do you mean do you mean the player like a Real Madrid player? You mean?
Yeah, I mean the team. Yeah, I mean the team, the whole team coached by Ancelotti,
especially at the moment, they don't understand the concept of losing.
OK, so even if they if they play shit, if they play really bad, they usually tend to win the games.
Look at them at the Champions League. They won Champions League like five times recently.
Were they the best team in Europe? No, but they were the Real Madrid.
If they can do that in their heads, then we can make things happen.
I think but you used to have that you used to have there were times when Sparta were dominating the Czech League.
But the question, the real question is because my my listeners know that I'm not exactly a Sparta fan.
I'm I'm Czech football fan. Right. I support Czech football, Czech football teams.
I'm not even sure it's the best thing for for for that league if one team is just winning everything left and right, left, right and center.
You know, I I would rather Sparta win it once than Slavia, maybe Pilsen.
But of course, you are in a different position. But no, no, I'm not. I'm not.
You're absolutely right. For the for the best thing that can happen to Czech football is you have we keep saying in our podcast five competitive teams.
The worst that can happen is what you get in Scottish League. All right. You got Celtic or Rangers.
What is that? That league is so boring. OK.
And Celtic and Rangers are nowhere near as good as they could be if they played in premiership.
OK, of course. Same things with Pata here.
Of course, for me, I wouldn't mind Sparta winning every time.
I wouldn't mind it at all. Would it be the best for the football here? No, of course not.
You wouldn't make you better. It wouldn't. No, it's it's like we have a saying in Czech, like when you are your king amongst amongst like people that have only one eye or something like it's like that.
Like you can be the king where you have competition. You are the best, but no one is making you better anymore.
You know what I mean? I think it's called one eyed king in the UK. Right. OK.
Yeah. You're dead right. Yeah. We need we need Slavia to be good. And they are. I think they're not going to be soon.
But at the moment they are. You get Pilsen, which is being brilliantly managed by whoever is in charge.
And then we need teams like Liberace and then we need teams like Olimo or even Hradec Kralove to step up.
OK. And once they reach the levels of, I don't know, Pilsen or Slovácko, then made, you know, like if you're battling for it.
Wow. They will push each other. The teams will push each other basically.
That's how you get the best out of Sparta. Right. And any anyone else, to be honest.
And it check football will benefit from it. And so this is this is great stuff.
So now you are in the Champions League and your last opponent, you mentioned the Stjava Bukurešća FC.
What is it? FCSB? Well, FCSB.
You're speaking Romanian to me now. It's not this is not a Rom-Glish podcast. This is the Rom-Glish. I'll make it happen for you.
OK. Sure. So then your last opponent, Malmé FF, the Swedish champion, they just they had no chance.
It was it was between Malmé or Pauk, which is the Greek champion.
And everyone favoured the Greek champion to go through and play us.
Even I did. So it was a massive surprise when Malmé beat them.
But it's important to to see the context here, because Malmé beat them.
The first game was, I think, 2-2, two each.
And the return game was three each.
And then we went into extra time where Malmé scored for the fourth time and they progressed.
So Malmé scored seven goals against Greek champions in two games.
And they're a highly attacking team. And Sparta is an attacking team.
If anything, what Sparta is lacking at the moment is the defense.
So going against the Swedish champions, I was OK, we can make it happen, but it all depends on the tactics.
And I'll tell you what, mate, I didn't even say this in my podcast.
So here I can afford it. I believe, I believe if Brian Priske, and I'll say it next time because it's actually interesting.
I believe that if Brian Priske, our previous coach, was still in charge, we would struggle with Malmé.
OK, so let's just let's just explain to our listeners.
So Brian Priske, a Danish, a Danish manager.
It was it was a revelation in the Czech League because we didn't have many successful foreign managers.
Was he even the first one, maybe a Slovakian manager or something?
He wasn't the first foreign for sure, but he was for sure the first successful.
One of the first ones. And he did so well. So he helped Sparta.
He basically came, won and left twice.
He came out of nowhere to make Sparta the best team in the Czech Republic within two years.
And then he's left under sort of debute circumstances for Feyenoord, Rotterdam.
Feyenoord. He's struggling now. He's not doing really well.
Well, he struggled with us at the beginning. So give him time. Give him time.
But we were left with this assistant coach. His name is Lars Fries.
At that time, he progressed to our main manager, the first team coach.
And I'm a big fan of Lars. OK, I think Lars is really good.
But it's starting to show that tactically, tactically, I feel he is even better than Brian Priske.
OK, so that's why with the two-legged game with Malmö, we didn't concede.
We won 2-0 each of those games. And to me, this is OK.
Wow. This to me is the biggest achievement.
No, I watched the games and you are absolutely right.
It was about tactics and he just outclassed or outsmarted.
Outsmarted, yeah. He was a chess game and he was better. He was better at everything.
Now I wonder what's going to happen in the group stage.
It's not group stage anymore. It's called the league stage, actually.
So we have a new Champions League format. So you're going to face eight different opponents, each of them only once.
And well, shall I read your opponent?
You know what? Make me cry, of course.
So I will read them in the order you face them. OK.
Salzburg at home, Stuttgart away, Manchester City away.
This is your favourite. Brest at home, Atletico Madrid at home, Feyenoord away.
So you're going to play against your old coach. Our ex-coach, yes.
Yeah, exactly. And then Inter at home, Inter Milan and finally Bayer Leverkusen away.
So, oh my goodness, that doesn't sound like Sparta has any chance whatsoever in that tough.
Look, I don't think we're going to win the Champions League this year.
Are you sure?
I don't think that's going to happen. I'm going to be objective about that.
I think we have a small chance, small chance of progressing if we handle our home games well.
All the away games, especially the one at Etihad at Manchester City, mate, can you imagine our defence against Holland?
Well, I saw what happened when he played against Liverpool. So you conceded five goals each time or something, right?
Home and away. Or was it six?
I think it was five at home and six away or something like that.
So can it get any worse?
But that was under Priske, you see, that was under Brian Priske who thought, who tested whether we can play an open game with Liverpool. So no, we can't.
So are you going to park the bus then? Is that what you're telling me is going to happen?
And Fris is different. I think we're going to play counter-attacking football, which basically means parking the bus, but he's going to go for the goals as well.
All right. So look, against Man City. Are you kidding me? I'm sorry. I have to laugh because it's like no one can play against Man City.
No one's expecting anything. But I'll tell you what, if Sparta can go 3-1 in Manchester, like losing 3-1, then we're going to be the happiest bunch in the world.
You mean losing by a small margin is a tiny victory for Sparta basically?
Small margin and scoring. So 3-1 Manchester, 3-1 City. And I think we're going to go like, look, this team is really making progress.
And stopping Haaland from scoring. How about that?
No, it's going to be Hat-trick Haaland, of course.
Another challenge. You think it's going to be Hat-trick?
He's unstoppable.
Don't you think he's going to be arrested? Don't you think when Pep Guardiola sees Sparta, I'm sorry, I like Sparta, but when he sees this kind of opponent, don't you think he's just going to naturally rotate a lot and not play Haaland?
No, because don't forget that's where the new league system comes in. And we are playing the third game of that league system.
If it was one of the last games, maybe they would be easily settled by then. But it's the third game and for them it's going to be first or second game at home. They need points. They need to make it happen.
So they're going to be playing full squad for sure. And if Haaland is playing, and to me he's my favourite player in the world now after Ronaldo, because the Ronaldo era is over, so for me it's Haaland now.
If he scores three times, I'm not going to be surprised. His strength, his speed, his dominance against the defence we have, and we have a very good defence, but not on that level.
No one does. It's so hard to play against City. We see the games in the Premier League, we watch them, so no one can really play against them.
West Ham was recently playing City, and they've got two Czech players in there. So they were interviewing one of the Czech players and asking them about Sparta chances against Haaland, because he scored three times against West Ham.
And he just smiled and said, they're going to have their hands full.
That was Vladimir Koufal.
Koufal, as they call him in the UK.
Vlad, Vlad they say.
Right, so you think there is a tiny chance, you see the light at the end of the tunnel there.
Of progressing? A tiny chance, yes. Of progressing easily? No, of course not. But that's Champions League for you.
And I keep saying for the Czech system, the best way is exactly what is happening this year. One team in the Champions League, just to test it out and get the money, and the two teams in the Europa League to actually play competitive games.
Because if stars align, Spalavia or Sparta, in a few years' time, they could be looking to go into the last four in the Europa League. If stars align, in a few years' time.
You mean in the semi-final they would be there? We could go as far as that, not in Champions League of course, in the Europa League.
So two teams in there, and one team in the Conference League, I think is the great setup. Four teams like that is the best thing.
I don't want two teams in Champions League, what for?
I was rooting for Slavia, but they played really well against the French team.
So you sound like a reasonable fan, because I know a lot of Sparta fans wouldn't say the things you are saying basically. So you support Czech teams, even if it's Slavia, right?
In Europe. Of course not in the derby.
In Europe, I am all for the Czech teams, and I love watching Slavia play in Europe, because they are really interesting out there. And the great example was their second leg against Lille, where they were 2-0 down after the first leg.
And if they had one good attacker in there, like our attackers, they would beat them bad. They were actually very close to beating them.
I mean they beat them, but it was 2-1, so it was not enough after all. But they played so well, and then I enjoyed it very much. But in the league, I can't stand them.
Every weekend I have two passions. One is will Sparta win? And the second is will Slavia lose points? And it's equally passionate for me.
I understand. I understand. So you have some new signings now as well. Rahmani Albion, his first name is Albion. I quite like that name as an anglophile.
Albion sounds like a cool name. I would love to have that name, to be fair. So he seems like a real deal, doesn't he?
Well, he played all together for 47 minutes. He scored in Champions League, progressing us into the main stage. And he scored in the league.
The goal, I haven't seen anyone score for a long time in the Czech league because it was so messy. It was just like a messy goal. Very precise.
Very slow and precise. Incredible goal. And then he also assisted for one goal. So he started incredibly. It's quite obvious that physically he's not up there yet.
But imagine if physically he's not up there and he already scores goals. So what happens when he's physically up there? It might be unstoppable in the Czech league.
It might be. And for the money we paid for, and he came from Romania again. So the money was in Romania. He's Kosovan. But did he come from Romania? Yes, I think so.
Yeah, from the Romanian league. I don't know exactly which team. But I should know. I should know. I can't remember now. But he was the main striker.
He was the best striker, best player of that league. So there are big expectations. And so far, wow. The funny thing is that he was the top target for Slavia as well during the transfer window.
But then something happened. They got Hori instead and they let him go. And instead, Sparta signed him, which is interesting.
When it was released, and it was actually after the game with Jablonec that you went and I went and the news got released that he's already on his way to Prague.
Honestly, my first emotion was not, yes, we are getting a great striker. My first emotion was, oh, we got one over Slavia now. Like we beat Slavia in the chase for the player.
That's how bad I am when it comes to the competition. But yeah, I mean, I would I prefer him million percent over Hori because I think Hori is a great player.
But I don't understand Slavia thinking that I don't get it. Also, I was thinking about how we actually should pronounce Hori because in English there's no sound.
So you have to say Chori. Well, we can call him ill or sick because that's what it means, right? Which is the translation for those of you who don't speak Czech, which is the translation of his Czech name.
It means ill or sick. He's like one of those tall players with good hold up play and obviously aerial threat.
And we used to have some of those in the Czech national team, Jan Koller, Lokvence, your ex. Well, both of them played for Sparta Prague.
And now there is this Hori who professed his love for Sparta in a video, Instagram video or something.
And then and then it was a he was in trouble when Slavia were signing him because the Slavia fans couldn't still I think a lot of them still can't stand him because he said in a video, I don't know,
10, 20 years ago that he is the team of his heart was always part of. Now he went to Slavia, the biggest rival.
So it's not great, though, when when when this got released, found and released again, because we have a tendency in our podcast to create like a song for the ending of each episode, which kind of talks about the current affair.
So we made a song about him professing his love for Sparta and his unhappy.
It was a ballot and his unhappiness that he has to go to Slavia now.
It got many hits and views and a lot of hate from the Slavia fans.
But you're right. There are a lot of Slavia fans, the hardcore fans who who don't celebrate when he scores even now.
So so obviously you also got this player. Let me let me find his name. Elias Elias, Elias, Cobb.
I think it's Kabu Kabu who also looks.
Does he look a little bit like you? He has a beard, right as well.
Yeah, he looks as threatening as me. But he says he said in his first interview that don't get me wrong on the on the pitch.
I'm a bit of a demon. I'm really interested what that means. But in my private life, I'm absolutely a nice guy.
I'm like every demon says that. It's like you.
You're also a demon on your podcast, I'm sure.
And in real life and when you are a guest on other people's podcast, you are also now a nice guy in my podcast as well.
It's the opposite with me in my professional life. I'm a nice guy. But when it comes to my personal affairs, I'm a demon.
Actually, we have something in common there.
There you go. There you go. I think so. Possibly, possibly, possibly.
The one thing we need to do with you is to tell you in Sparta fan, you can't be a fan of football.
You need to choose, you need to choose. And you are in heart. It's quite clear.
I'm not sure. Well, if if you asked me to which stadium I went more to let now, which is the Sparta Stadium or Eden Eden in my life,
I think I went to the Sparta Stadium more often. There we go.
Maybe like 10 times or something. Eden, like three times. So there you go.
I'm not sure, though. I'm still not convinced. I like the Premier League too much for that.
That's not mutually exclusive. You can like both. I like both. I'm watching both of course.
But Sparta and Slavia are mutually exclusive. You cannot be a Sparta and Slavia fan. It's impossible.
Impossible. Yeah.
OK, then. And then so let me ask you about one more player, which is an interesting story there.
Jan Kuchta, a player that also used to play for Slavia Prague, then he went to Russia or something of all countries.
And then he ended up at all war. I know it was. I know it was. I know it was.
But still. And then he ended up at Sparta and great two years.
He's also known for being a bit of a troublemaker and unfaunter.
How do we say that? Unfaun is like a there's a French word unfaunterable or something.
Unfaunterable, yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. OK. You see, I didn't know that.
I don't have an English passport like you do. Yeah, there you go. I'll help you.
Thanks. Thanks for that. So but I think it was enough for him. He didn't want to for some reason didn't want to play the Champions League.
Now decided to go to Michelin, a Danish team. So what do you think about that?
Look, I think, first of all, from from the opposite end, Michelin was in the Champions League playoffs as well.
OK. And they play against Slovak Bratislava, the Slovak champions.
I think it was for them. It wasn't even a competition.
So when they were thinking about the Ancarta, they were like, OK, we're going to be in Champions League.
So we're going to pay a big money for this striker who's going to have great two, three years with us before he ends his career.
But then they got beat by Slovak Bratislava, which was to me was a shock because don't forget,
Michelin is one of those teams who are high tech. They've got like 17 million coaches for everything in Slovak Bratislava.
They pride themselves on having a guy who is a coach and a guy who cleans their boot.
And that's it. They're like three people in there. OK, so they beat Michelin.
They went to the old school, old school, better rather at the end of the style.
Exactly. And now now Kuchta is in in Denmark and he's going to play in Europa League.
I guess it's OK for him. I don't get it that much.
But I think the biggest problem for Kuchta here is Rahmani.
I don't think it was so much his his wish to go elsewhere, but he realized with signing someone like Rahmani,
there's going to be no space for him in Sparta Prague. That was the only reason.
I don't think I don't think he would have gone if Rahmani didn't arrive.
Yeah, I mean, if he still has the ambition to be in the national team as well,
which he didn't get into the nomination now because he wasn't really playing for Sparta in the recent games.
So I think it was probably the right move from that point of view, because he still is a good player.
There is something about him, right? He has got some qualities.
If you can use him right, he's a massive player.
And look, he's been with us for two years and it's interesting.
Like some people now call him a legend. No, no, no. Let's let's calm down, everybody.
OK, you can't get a legendary status in two years. OK, you can't.
Can you can you also get a legendary status as an ex Slavia player?
You can. You can. That's not the issue.
But you have to you have to sort of be different with the club.
You have to be with for me.
The word legend is reserved for people who are with the club for a long time and they really become the club.
You know, like people like Claudia Creci, who's went to Girona recently.
He came young guy from Brno. He became out of nowhere.
He became a captain, leader, you know, the icon of the team of the change.
So for me, even Brian Priske, who is the coach who turns Pata around, he's not a legend.
He's not a legend. OK, he's a great guy who I always love for what he's done for my team.
But he's not a legend. And Jan Kuchta is not a legend.
He is a guy who's played here for two years and there were months where he was incredible and he really pushed the team.
And then there were months where he was totally useless. Let's not forget that.
OK, but I like guys like Jan Kuchta, these sort of like twisted, you know, bad boy.
He's a bit of a bit of a character, as we say in English.
OK, Mike, I also have to say you've been an excellent guest on this podcast.
I, you know, I kind of expected that. So your English is amazing.
We want exactly that on this podcast. Thank you very much for featuring.
I'm very happy to be back with your Vladsiprahi podcast, the Kings of Prague and all the best.
Hopefully I may have you on again at some point to talk about the Premier League.
Which team do you support? Oh, yeah, I'm not.
I'm not secretive about it. I'm a Chelsea supporter. Oh, my God.
Too many of those. I know too many of those.
It's a tricky one because in my defense, I supported them before they got bought by Abramovich.
When they got bought by Abramovich, I didn't complain, I must say.
Are you like me? Did you start supporting them because of a Czech player, Petr Čech?
Because I started supporting Arsenal because of Rosicki. I'm not going to deny it.
I understand that. No, no, because don't forget Petr Čech when they're already in the Abramovich era.
I like Chelsea from the Gianfranco Zola era. He was the Italian guy who played really well.
That was the first time I sort of... and I liked their underdogs.
Because I was raised in the Czech Republic, so to me, the English league was... I had no connection.
But then Gianfranco Zola, I liked him and I liked the team because they were sort of second best for a long time.
When they got bought by Abramovich, I didn't complain.
But I was undecided when Rosicki arrived to Arsenal.
And I have a great story about Rosicki coming to Arsenal because I met him at the time in the UK on a very strange event.
But I'm planning to tell that in my podcast as a Christmas story. So we need to tune in some other time.
Okay, okay. Well, that's a nice... Me and Tomas Rosicki, we go way back.
That's a nice way to attract listeners to your podcast.
Okay, Mike, thank you very much for being on the podcast and hopefully speak to you soon.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Take care.
I don't think it can be any surprise to anyone that the episode I recorded with Mike from the podcast called Emperors of Prague or Vláci Prahy, if you want, was very long.
It always happens to Mike. And I guess in combination with me, it's, you know, it's bound to happen too.
But we have the language corner and I'll try to keep it short because we don't have so much time.
And I also want to do a song because we had Mike on the podcast.
So I have to have an AI song in this episode as well. Of course I do.
So Mike said, if it stars align, Slavia or Sparta in a few years, they could be looking to go into the last four in the Europa League.
Right. So basically what he was saying is that if things work out well, if things pan out in a favorable way, then it's possible that Sparta and Slavia will be in the Europa League semifinal.
OK, so it was let's say it was some sort of optimistic prediction from Mike.
But what I'm looking at here is the phrase if stars align, which I really like a lot. And first of all, the verb to align.
So it basically means to arrange certain objects in a line. Yeah. In a straight line.
And we often talk about stars and so-called constellations. Right.
We can talk about stars aligning, right, if you are sort of using telescope and you're observing stars, you can see the stars in a straight line.
And then people study it and they give it names and whatnot.
OK, so we also use this phrase in a metaphorical way. If the stars align, right, if the stars are arranged in the right way or in a straight line, then things can happen.
Then things can pan out or play out in a favorable way. Right.
For example, I don't know, you were about to play a football match against a really tough opponent, I don't know, for example, at Santiago Bernabeu.
And you're not exactly a favorite, but you have a plan. You have a strategy. Yeah.
And you could say something like if this if stars align, we could get a draw there.
Right. So it's like if things work out in the way they should. Right.
There's a chance this could happen. OK. So this is the phrase if stars align. Very good one.
I have to praise Mike for excellent English once again, because it was rather impressive.
I listened to the episode again, so I had a chance to notice the sort of vocabulary Mike uses.
And yeah, it is impressive. But anyway, enough of compliments.
Now what I have to do is to basically encourage you, the listeners of the Footgrish podcast, to subscribe.
Where can you do this? Well, you can do it wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the usual places.
It's also on YouTube. But my YouTube channel isn't called the Footgrish podcast.
My YouTube channel is called Teachers Denek, and I have some other stuff there as well.
So don't be surprised. So please subscribe.
And now what remains to do is to play you this AI song, which I have dedicated to Mike and his friend, Petr.
And hopefully it's not the last time we hear of them here on the Footgrish podcast.
Thank you, everyone, for listening. And I'll speak to you soon. Take care. Bye bye.
And good luck to Sparta in the Champions League. Cheers.
We just run Stuttgart. Let's catch a wink.
Rest is not what you think. It's a team from France. I think we stand a chance.
Sparta is back again. Champions League for all our men.
Mike and Peter cheering loud. Glotzi Proffy feeling proud.
Atletico Madrid has got no flaw. Feyenoord Rotterdam want to draw.
Brian Priske knows our name, but we won't play his game.
Leverkusen with Patrick Schick want to draw. It's just sick.
Holland de Bruijn and Rodri. Man City is tough for everybody.
Sparta Proffy is back again. Champions League for all our men.
Mike and Peter cheering loud. Glotzi Proffy feeling proud.
Eight giants in our way. Our best football we must play.
Red Bull Salzburg and Inter Milan. No need for wings, we just run.
Stuttgart. Let's catch a wink. Rest is not what you think.
It's a team from France. I think we stand a chance.
Sparta Proffy is back again. Champions League for all our men.
Mike and Peter cheering loud. Glotzi Proffy feeling proud.
Thanks for watching.