West Ham United duo Vladimir Coufal and Tomáš Souček have been slammed in their native Czech Republic after the disappointing 0-0 draw with Moldova.
Idnes cover the reaction of the fans after the game today, explaining that ‘such a difference’ was not expected after the country had shown ‘their best performance in recent times’ with a 3-1 win over Poland four days ago.
That result had created some raised expectations, which were then naturally brought crashing down by the disappointing result against Moldova.
As usual, Idnes have their readers and fans grade the players following a game and in the course of that, several players ‘fell far below average’.
According to them ‘the worst’ were Souček and Coufal, with both of them receiving a four alongside Antonín Barák (the lower the rating, the better).
That figure is an indication of West Ham pair putting in ‘the weakest performance’ of the group.
Not that anyone else scored particularly strongly, with only goalkeeper Jiří Pavlenka receiving an ‘above average’ mark of 2.07.
Souček was more than aware of the issues, with the West Ham midfielder commenting after the game and trying to alleviate the disappointment.
“There was excitement after the match against Poland,” he said.
“We scored three goals, gave a great performance, now we wanted to confirm it. Which failed. We played on a difficult field, to the full, we need to be a big team and handle such matches.
“There will be more. Maybe next time away against the Faroe Islands. Before the clash, four points would not be bad, now we are obviously disappointed.
“But we are still first in the group. We want to advance to the Euros, that’s our goal. There are lessons to be learned from this match. We have to play against the Faroe Islands as we did last year in a friendly in Olomouc, where we beat them 5-0.”
