Czech Republic’s Tomáš Souček has expressed his unhappiness after his West Ham United teammate Vladimír Coufal, Aris’ Jakub Brabec and Sparta Prague’s Jan Kuchta were asked to leave the national team camp immediately for violating internal rules.
Speaking to the media on Sunday, relayed by České Noviny, the 28-year-old admitted he was not aware of the incident involving the trio.
On Saturday, the West Ham fullback, along with Brabec and Kuchta, visited a nightclub in Olomouc, and photos and videos of the trio inside the nightclub started circulating online.
The Czech Republic football association dismissed the trio for breaching the rules, ahead of today’s European qualifiers against Moldova. The West Ham midfielder has insisted he wants to focus on the upcoming fixture and on the three players.
“We want to fully concentrate on the game after this unfortunate incident. We don’t want to go back to it and the whole team wants to fully concentrate. We have a lot of great players here who want to concentrate only on the game,” he said.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t know about the action. I didn’t know it was going anywhere. I learned this in the morning when we all had to go into the room and deal with internal things. Then I learned it from the guys, who said they made a mistake and that they regretted it.”
Souček is the national team captain and this has made him even more disappointed in the 31-year-old right-back, Brabec and Kuchta.
“We all regret it, me as the captain a lot, because I stand by the principles. In the end, the biggest punishment is for them, they wanted to be here with us and achieve a common goal. It’s an unfortunate thing,” Souček explained.
“Even I, as the captain, had something to do with it, we all said it, with the players and with the implementation team. I would leave the answer between us.”
The West Ham star scored in the Czech Republic’s 1-1 draw against Poland. He would be in contention for today’s clash against Moldova, after receiving a boot to his face in the last tie.
