WROCLAW, POLAND—Two Czech midfielders know what it means to strike at the right time.
After a demoralizing start to the European Championship, the two rising stars of Czech football — Petr Jiracek and Vaclav Pilar — became saviours for their team and not for the first time.
They struck early in a 2-1 victory over Greece in Group A to keep the team in contention for the quarter-finals after a 4-1 loss to Russia.
RELATED ON THE WEB
Euro 2012 fan photos
KELLY: Poland’s redemption lies on pitch
POLAND 1 RUSSIA 1
Jiracek collected a superb through pass from Tomas Hubschman three minutes into the match at Wroclaw’s Municipal Stadium before adding a clinical finish for his second international goal.
“I just needed to control the ball after a wonderful pass from Tomas and had just the goalkeeper (Costas Chalkias) to beat,” Jiracek said. “I needed such a goal and I’m happy it came and helped the team succeed.”
Pilar, known as the Czech Messi, added the second just three minutes later from close range despite having two markers on him for his second goal of the tournament. Pilar beat both Greek defenders to a ball sent across the goal by defender Theodor Gebre Selassie.
“I went in very hard in to meet the cross and got to the ball with my knee,” Pilar said. “I tried hard and it paid off. This was a big goal for me.”
In fact, the two midfielders had already made an impact before the tournament.
The Czechs were struggling in qualifying when the 26-year-old Jiracek and the 23-year-old Pilar came in to rejuvenate a team weakened by the absence of retired stars such as Pavel Nedved, Karel Poborsky and Vladimir Smicer.
Their creativity helped increase the Czech attacking force in the crucial 4-1 victory at Lithuania, a result that secured a playoff spot for the team.
In the first leg of the playoffs against Montenegro last November, Pilar found the net from 20 metres, setting his side on its way to a 2-0 win.
Jiracek scored the only goal of the second leg after bursting past two Montenegrin defenders and scoring with a low shot to maintain a record of reaching every Euro since Czechoslovakia split in 1993.
Last year, the two midfielders were club teammates in Czech champion Viktoria Plzen’s first Champions League campaign. The team finished third behind European powerhouses Barcelona and AC Milan in the group stage and earned a spot in the Europa League. Their performances didn’t go unnoticed.
Besides earning regular spots in the national team, Bundesliga club Wolfsburg signed Jiracek in December to a contract until 2016 and Pilar is expected to follow him after this tournament.
When the two play with captain Tomas Rosicky, the Czech midfield are once again a force to be reckoned with.
The Czechs face Poland on Saturday in their final match in Group A.
“I’m happy to score two goals,” Pilar said. “Now we have a chance to advance.”
Top Stories on the Internet:
Euro 2012: Rioting with Russian, Polish supporters could have been worse, Kelly says
Euro 2012: Russia fined 120,000 euros for fans’ violent attack on stadium stewards
Live at 12:30 p.m.: Toronto Blue Jays vs. Washington Nationals game blog
Canada’s Alexandre Despatie hurts head in diving mishap; Olympics status unclear
Griffin: Nats’ Stephen Strasburg leads emerging crop of elite young starters
Russia's Sergei Ignashevich, left, challenges Poland's Robert Lewandowski for the ball during Tuesday's Euro 2012 match in Warsaw.
A few dozen participants, divided between the sides and heavily influenced by a day of drinking, decided to go at it for a few minutes.
From the Polish perspective, the march by Russian fans to the stadium — aborted when police intervened midway — was a disaster on two fronts. First, their vacillating allowed it to happen in the first place. Second, dozens of cameras were on hand when it devolved into violence, as it was always going to.
The lesson here is this — if you think you’re going to have a riot, don’t allow the media to get hold of its parade route.
Polish hooligans started it off. The sides began lobbing rocks and bottles at each other over a phalanx of riot police. Eventually, they got at each other and took a few swings before security forces could break it up.
It resulted in a few injuries and a few arrests — all of it filmed.
In all, perhaps a couple of hundred over-refreshed nitwits wrapped up in their respective flags were responsible for a variety of incidents across the city during the afternoon and early evening. This from amongst 20,000 visiting Russians and 1.7 million locals.
Most fans co-existed . . . “peacefully” isn’t the word for it. “Warily” might be better. There was no hugging, mutual toasting or jersey exchange, as will be the case in just about every other game here.
But Russians and Poles were able to sit on the same patios in the afternoon and resist the urge to shank each other with the silverware.
From the Polish perspective, the opportunity to stick it to their former oppressors was just too good to pass on. They chanted rude chants. They pointed and laughed. A small, specific example: At passport control inside the Warsaw’s Frederic Chopin Airport earlier in the afternoon, most arrivals were being waved through after only a cursory glance at their documents.
Russians were forced to stew for long minutes while blasé-looking young guards silently flipped through their papers beginning to end, and then started again from the beginning.
Given that, given the history, given the numbers, given the needless provocation of the march, what happened fell on the pleasanter side of what was possible.
But it didn’t look like that on TV.
Through that simplifying lens, it looked like a war.
Whatever hopes the Poles had about showcasing their country to the world through this tournament are finished now. When memories of the games have faded, people will remember bigotry in Krakow and images of a few skinheads kicking each other in the head on the Poniatowski Bridge.
Russia doesn’t look any better this morning. They’ll care far less. Their needling of the Poles was carried right into the stadium, where they unfurled an enormous banner reading “This is Russia.” That can be read a couple of ways. The Poles read it the worst one.
The macro-tournament — the long game about tourism and international esteem that host countries at any big ’stravaganza convince themselves to believe when they’re bleeding themselves faint — that’s over. What Poland still has now is the tournament itself. That’s where they might best concentrate their energies.
Their hopes were saved Tuesday by their captain, Jakub Blaszczykowski. He scored a long-range, in-swinging screamer — probably the tournament’s best goal yet — that rescued the 1-1 draw.
Striker Robert Lewandowski is better known, but Blaszczykowski comes with the better backstory. His grandmother raised him, after his father was jailed for stabbing his mother to death.
Thanks to him, Poland now faces a simple job — beat the Czechs on Saturday and they’re into the quarter-finals. That win will wash away many sins, inside Poland if not everywhere else.
The Poles are discovering a painful truth that UEFA or FIFA or the IOC don’t like to advertise to prospective hosts — in the end, all you have is the sport.
The money will never be made back. If you want to be remembered, you have to do something on the field.
Now, only this team can partially redeem the great expense and frustrated effort their countrymen have put forth in order to present themselves to the world.
Euro 2012 photo gallery
Euro 2012 fan photos
No comments:
Post a Comment