5 min readJun 17, 2026 05:56 PM IST
First published on: Jun 17, 2026 at 05:56 PM IST
The bus got stuck at their training ground in Zapopan last week. The driver took a wrong turn somewhere in the Guadalajara suburbs, then another, and eventually the players grabbed their bags and walked to where they needed to be. A World Cup squad, hiking. This is Czechia.
On the morning of March 24, 2026, two days before Czechia played the Republic of Ireland in a World Cup playoff in Prague, police arrived at the headquarters of the Czech Football Association at six in the morning. Investigators from the National Centre Against Organised Crime, backed by regional units, supported by Europol and Interpol and UEFA’s own anti-match-fixing division.
The operation ran from the first division down to the fourth, into youth competitions, to a town mayor, to Martin Latka, co-owner of MFK Karvina and a former Birmingham City defender, to men who travelled to Vienna to collect cash from Asian betting accounts. Forty-seven disciplinary proceedings were initiated that day. The federation president called it probably the largest operation in Czech football history.
Three weeks later, Czechia beat Denmark on penalties in Prague to reach the World Cup for the first time in twenty years.
Czech football has spent a long time being run by men who were not what they appeared to be. Roman Berbr served as a secret police agent for the StB, which surveilled dissidents, handled interrogations, and maintained the communist party’s grip on Czechoslovakia until the state collapsed in 1989. After the collapse, Berbr became a football official. He accumulated leverage through information, through favours, through patience. Referees who cooperated received international appointments. Clubs that resisted received consequences. In 2013, four clubs voted against his preferred candidate in a federation election. The following week, those four clubs were shown ten red cards across four matches.
The rap song
In 2018, FK Teplice midfielder Tomáš Kučera released a rap song whose lyrics referenced Berbr. Five days later, Teplice played their next match. Song released November 18, 2018; next match November 23, 2018. The ethics committee fined Kučera 60,000 Czech crowns for the song. Berbr was never fined.
Berbr’s boss at the federation, Miroslav Pelta, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for manipulating sports subsidies. “I needed his votes to be elected. But his power on referees is dangerous,” Pelta later told Czech media. Two men ran Czech football consecutively. Both ended up convicted in court.
Czech fans learned, across those years, a particular response. They drank beers and shrugged. Nothing will change. While the federation ran itself like a protection racket, the golden generation came and went.
At Villa Park in 1996, Karel Poborský received the ball on the right side of the penalty area, looked up, and chipped the Portuguese goalkeeper from an angle that should have been a decision not to shoot. Manchester United signed him within the week. Pavel Nedvěd won the Ballon d’Or. Koller scored fifty-five international goals. They qualified for one World Cup, Germany 2006, and Koller pulled up with a thigh injury in the opening half against the United States and was carried off. Rosický scored twice. They won 3-0. Then Ghana. Then Italy. Then gone for twenty years.
The Faroe Islands beat them 2-1 in qualifying. Ivan Hašek was sacked. Miroslav Koubek, 74 years old, beginning the forty-third year of a coaching career he started in 1983, was appointed in December to take them to the playoffs. “We just have to live with it,” he said in Guadalajara last week, “because that is what others planned for us.” His first competitive international fixture was the Ireland game. Czechia were 2-0 down in twenty-three minutes. Schick pulled one back from the spot. Krejčí equalised in the eighty-sixth.
They won on penalties. Then Denmark: 2-2 after extra time, 3-1 in the shootout. The players tossed Koubek in the air. He faced the cameras with tear-stained eyes and later told AFP he had stayed up until morning. “I’m no drinker,” he said, “but I like two or three beers when there’s an opportunity.”
Souček wins headers and covers ground. Schick, when fit, puts the ball in the net. Krejčí reads the game carefully and gives nothing away. Against South Korea on June 12, he headed home a Vladimír Coufal throw-in in the fifty-ninth minute. South Korea came back to win 2-1.
On Thursday in Atlanta, they play South Africa. They have never advanced past the group stage.
Krejčí spread his arms wide in the exact manner of Tomáš Rosický, the last Czech to score at a World Cup, in Germany in 2006. Nobody told him to. Nobody had to.
Czechia's Ladislav Krejci, centre, celebrates with teammates after scoring his team's first goal during the World Cup Group A soccer match between South Korea and Czechia in Zapopan, near Guadalajara, Mexico, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix) 
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