It was an incredible atmosphere in the Ondrej Nepela Aréna in Bratislava on Thursday night. From the first to the last minute, hundreds of Czech fans created a home match atmosphere for their team in the neighbouring country.
Every goal, every save by goalkeeper Tomas Mrkva was cheered for and the fans stood as one behind their team – and with the support from the stands, coach Rastislav Trtik’s team almost managed to cause a major surprise in their opener against defending champions Spain (26:28).
Even the day after, Trtik was impressed.
“It doesn’t happen very often after a defeat that the fans are applauding when you go to the dressing room. We got an enormous help from the stands,” he says.
On Sunday (18:00 CET, live on EHFTV), his side will face Bosnia and Herzegovina. For both teams it is the last chance to keep their main round hopes alive, as the Bosnians lost 18:30 to Sweden.
“We have to fight. We know we made some major mistakes in the last game. We know we did not have a lot of time for the preparation, but we will try to eliminate our biggest mistakes. It was hard to realize the defeat, as everything went down, right when we had the chance to get ahead of Spain,” says Trtik.
But Sunday is a different situation and the Czechs are marginal favourites.
“We will try our best to win. I can promise that to our fans. I believe we can win the next game together with them,” Trtik adds.
The loser of this match is likely to be out of the race for the main round.
“I hope our good performance against Spain will give us the mental strength we need. It is important,” says Trtik. He knows some of the Bosnian players well from his time coaching German and Polish clubs – but he does not want to talk about his match plan.
Despite the clear Bosnian defeat against Sweden, Czech right wing Miroslav Jurka predicts “a tough opponent. Their team has quality. It will not be an easy job. Sweden scored a lot of counter-attack goals against them, we need to get these easy goals too.”
In 2018, the Czechs were the surprise package of the EHF EURO, when they made it to the placement match 5/6 and left back Ondrej Zdrahala was top scorer of the tournament. Two years ago, they reached the main round, but lost all four matches. Now the team and the fans hope that their time in Bratislava will not be over on Monday night after the last preliminary round match against Sweden.
But to extend the series of home matches away from home, the Czechs must achieve two wins in the remaining matches.
“First we have to find the weak spots of the Bosnians. They are a little bit of an underdog in comparison to our last opponents, but it doesn't mean that we're going to be the favourites,” says centre back Vojtech Patzel.
