Sparta coach slams his team’s play after the loss in Liberec

The coach of hockey club Sparta did not hold back after the loss in Liberec in round 13 of the Extraliga: he called it unacceptable that the team only woke up at 0:2 and promised to shake up its game before Saturday’s match.

Disappointment over the start

“I’m disappointed with how we entered the game. The opponent started superbly, and we weren’t ready,” the coach said. According to him, it was only thanks to goalkeeper Josef Kořenář that it was 0:0 after the first period. Sparta then got several power plays, but, as the coach put it, they backfired: the team conceded a goal and then gifted the opponent another with a mistake. He stressed, however, that this takes nothing away from Liberec’s performance.

Sparta came alive only in the third period. “We can’t go on like this — entering a game thinking we’ll always concede,” the coach noted. In his assessment, the game was lost on the power play: the team had not had that many chances in previous matches.

What will change on Saturday

The coach admitted that it makes him angry: from the players of at least the first two lines he expects that they will find the solution themselves. “They’re not robots, we won’t draw everything for them with a ruler,” he said. The team works on the power play every day, but the same thing keeps repeating. That is why the coach intends to “blow up” the routines and combinations and shuffle the lineup to shake the team up — he promised to do it by tomorrow.

He also noted that the team was “cold” for most of the game: when the opponent pushes, Sparta retreats, and some players start to shake. “We play sport, we’re not operating on a brain, and nobody is going to lose their life. When we shake, the joy of the game disappears.” In his words, the team has to find courage in itself and show it not only when it is losing: “This is a sport for real men, you have to play every shift from start to finish.”

Asked whether the team lacks more players of Filip Chlapík’s calibre, the coach said that with six power plays it should be the top players who decide them, and in the Extraliga Sparta has them. He called the many pointless wrist shots and blocked shots “glaring.” Ahead is a tough opponent who will give nothing away for free.

The game in Liberec was special for him only to a degree: he coached there for five years, and assistant Ladislav Šmíd once played for the club. “I left five years of my life here, but the game wasn’t truly special,” the coach said.

Around Prague, based on reporting by sport.cz