According to coach Radoslav Kováč, Pardubice did not play their game. “The weight of the moment, nervousness was reflected in her. The importance of this match was clear,” the coach of East Bohemia looked back at the game, in which his team quickly took the lead after a beautiful strike by Dominik Janošek. “Zlín was ready for him. But he has a quick loop, he can jam the ball, he is terribly unreadable. I’m glad that he scores goals, he has an excellent shot. He has great quality, we see huge potential in him,” Kováč praised the midfielder, who decided the match in Mladá Boleslav a week before.
Against Zlín, Pardubice took the lead in the 7th minute. “Then we fell out of it instead of being more confident. The last twenty minutes of the first half were waiting for death,” assessed the Pardubice strategist. After a storm in the cabin and with changes in the line-up, the home team rallied for the second half. In it, they increased their lead, but suffered in the end. “Crazy, psycho,” Kováč was relieved over the last minutes.
Zlín reduced the setup in the fourth minute and then things continued to boil in front of goalkeeper Florin Nita. Pardubice survived the pressure of the juice. “Don’t even ask me what it was like. Terrible. After the first corner, the referee said it would be over. In the end there were maybe five of them. Really terrible,” Krobot honestly described how the home team was knocking for the win.
But don’t be surprised. “We have an inexperienced team. For the first time in the season, we won twice in a row. We are not mentally strong enough to finish in the opponent’s half,” explained Kováč, who praised the team as a whole. “The boys are young, they managed it fantastically,” he added.
Pardubice grabbed the points, there is no beauty in the rescue melee. The East Bohemians can grow in self-confidence, they have energy, taste, potential and a solid game plan. And especially in the spring, they collect points more diligently than most teams, including Pilsen, they collected seven points in four duels, only Slavia, Sparta and Slovácko scored more after the winter break.
The family from the city of gingerbread shows good form, although they remain last, but they are catching up with their opponents. Zlín has already tied on points, Teplice and Jablonec have three more points, České Budějovice is ahead by one more point. Kováč, however, dampens any thoughts that Pardubice could avoid the tie.
“We don’t think like that at all. We went into the spring thinking that we didn’t want to be the last. We don’t look away, we’re still the last. We are glad that we made it, that we are breathing. But we still go the same way, we don’t fly anywhere. We are three quarters of the way through the last year and we still have a fight ahead of us. I think we will play for everything until the end. We are ready for it. We know that we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” said the forty-three-year-old coach energetically.
“We are still at the beginning of the journey. We have to stay focused and continue like this,” added Krobot similarly cautiously.
