LACK OF A SCORER — THE DECLINE OF OUR FOOTBALL I.
— Unknown | 05/09/1924 —

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about whether the performance of our footballers is increasing or decreasing. Supporters of the second direction had and still have a much easier position, because they can point to the results it achieved over the leading teams one or two years ago and compare these achievements with those they achieve nowadays, and the proof is made — our football is on downward path. There is nothing easier, and finally, in sports it is completely natural and justified by long practice, than to make a certain conclusion about the whole according to two or three striking units of it.

The strength of our football was always judged according to the performance of Sparta and Slavia, and perhaps a third club was also taken into account, namely the one that was currently on a good course, whether it was Viktoria, Union, or Vršovice or the Čechie — everything else, the enormous number football associations, was disconsidered and did not weigh at all. This way of viewing is not correct, because it relies only on a tiny part of the whole, which is its flowering, its representative, but never its average!

And it is the average performance that is always the main thing and the most important for assessing strength! Unfortunately, the average performance of our football, represented by an endless number of sports clubs — and they actually make up the entire movement — was and still is unknown to most critics! And therefore, if we want to talk about the decline or rise in the performance of our football, we must also know its average. Anyone who has the opportunity to follow the performance of our average teams more often can never come to the conclusion that the overall level of Czechoslovak football is declining.

If it is possible to talk about the weaker performance of football today, then this applies only to the most advanced teams and only to a certain extent, because as far as the technical side of football is concerned, there would hardly be anyone who would like to claim that our leading footballers do not reach the perfection, like a time not long ago, in which football reached its post-war zenith. I will give an example! In Paris at this year's Olympics, our national team demonstrated a great hyper-combination game in both matches against the Swiss, certainly refined to the finest finesse. The Swiss were no match for our team in terms of the beauty of the football game. Technically and in combination — in my opinion — our team was one of the best - not including the Uruguayans, because I consider them to be in a class of their own. I had the opportunity to see almost all the competing nations at the Olympics and I can't help it, apart from the Uruguayans, only us, the Swedes and the Hungarians, showed first-class, impeccable and combination football.

Now someone will say: And yet we lost! Of course, we and the Hungarians lost it despite our very good game, because we lacked one thing: the art of expressing our highly developed game!

And this single minus actually means the entire decrease in the performance of our football.

LACK OF A SCORER — THE DECLINE OF OUR FOOTBALL II.
— Unknown | 06/09/1924 —

The resounding failure of our football team could not have surprised anyone who was able to realize the situation in which Czechoslovak football found itself at the moment when it could not count on the participation of players of the quality of Janda, Pilát, Vaník, Dvořáček, etc. There was no substitute for these phenomenal forwards-scorers and it won't be long yet, because they were great talents that our football always had. These players made up the main squad of the attacking team of the Sparta, Slavia and, naturally, representative teams in general, they were the ones who always managed to express the superiority of their teams' play. With their departure, the strength of their teams naturally had to decrease as well — but not the average of the entire football sport.

In Paris, therefore, only what we have been witnessing at home lately was repeated all the time — our leading teams, not having above-average scorers, do not show the kind of success with which they triumphed over their better opponents. Those who have occupied the abandoned places are undoubtedly first-class players technically, but they lack the main thing, i.e. shooting certainty, without which decisive successes can never be safely won. The classic proof of the impotence of our forwards was the last international match between Czechoslovakia and Romania, which once again confirmed our opinion that when we talk about the decline of Czechoslovak football, we always only mean the lack of talented above-average shooters.

And now perhaps it would remain to answer the question of how to remedy this lack. Hard advice indeed in this matter! True, honest and systematic training means a lot, because it is always possible to improve an athlete's performance, but it cannot replace the basic condition of above-averageness, i.e. talent, and as long as our representative football lacks born above-average talented shooters, we will talk about the decline of our football.

We want to point out one more thing on this occasion, in accordance with the wishes expressed to us by the popular captain of Slavia, Vaník. He complained about the depressing impression on the forward player of the display of displeasure with which the audience regularly accompanies a player's wrong shot on goal. "Trust me, I'd rather not even shoot because I'm afraid I'll screw something up." These own words of Vaník are typical and there is a lot of truth in them, which every player will probably confirm. The crowd yells at players when they don't shoot and they don't shut up when they shoot and miss. One cannot then be surprised if even otherwise experienced players, out of fear of being ridiculed by the audience, prefer to either try to get rid of the ball by passing it to their teammates, or, being nervous, shoot prematurely from an inappropriate position and usually miss. It wouldn't do any harm if our audience could reserve in this direction as well — for now, perhaps just for a test — to show to what extent one of our leading players is right.