Groundhopping24

One of  Košice's many fountains. In many ways, Czech and Slovak football are incredibly similar, perhaps unsurprisingly given the joint history of both nations. One reason I point this out, however, is that until very recently, neither second city had a club in the top flight, or at least neither city had a stable, prolonged presence in the top flight. Zbrojovka Brno have famously yo-yo'ed between the two, where FC Košice have technically only existed since 2018. From a legal point of view, FC Košice are a new club, though they are the unofficial follow up of VSS Košice, founded in 1903 and dissolved in 2017, at least as far as the fans are concerned. As a result, promotion to the First League in 2023 meant that Košice finally had a team in the top flight for the first time in almost a decade. It goes without saying that the new iteration of Košice don't have a lot of history, but to summarise it briefly, their first season saw them get promoted immediately from...

 Think of Ukrainian football, and it's like your first thought is Dynamo Kyiv or Shakhtar Donetsk and their multitude of Brazilian footballers who sound like middle-aged British blokes (Fred, Kevin et al.). Maybe some of you recall the Europa League final of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Sevilla in 2015, in which the Ukrainian side were edged out 3-2 in Warsaw by their Spanish opponents.  In any case, it's unlikely that Polissya Zhytomyr are your first thought, or perhaps that, like me prior to researching this blog, you even really know who they are beyond the name. And while that is likely to remain the case as long as Shakhtar and Dynamo continue to trade league titles (only the now defunct Tavirya have won a title beyond those two since the formation of the league in 1992), they're a club that should certainly be gaining some attention as they make their way through European qualification for the second season running from almost nowhere. Polissya refers to the region in wh...

Rapid Vienna v Rheindorf Altach in the Austrian Bundesliga  Last season, to my annoyance, I never got around to watching a game in Austria. Despite it being the closest border to Brno, along with Slovakia, for whatever reason it never happened. I'd planned trips to the likes of Rapid Wien, Grazer AK, and Blau-Weiss Linz,  but other plans took precedence, or illness struck at the wrong time.  The focus for this season is still on completing the Czech First League, which I should manage fairly easily, as well as the Slovak First League. If all goes well, I should be able to tick two of the ballachingly eastern stadia off in Tatran Presov and Kosice next week. Zemplin Michalovce, which is the furthest away, will hopefully be the only one I have left before the league splits in March. Going back to Austria though, and it's a place I've barely wathed a match in despite living two hours from Vienna for the last three years. All three matches have of course happened in  Vie...

The teams warm up before the game. Now a few days have passed following a somewhat disappointing result 'away' at Artis Brno, the footballing schedule waits for no man, and we're immediately back on the road again. This time, we're actually leaving Srbska, and even Brno for Havlíčkův Brod, as the MOL Cup enters the first round stage. Technically it's the third round of matches, though the first stage of the competition is the preliminary stage involving two rounds, in which teams as low as the fifth tier have the opportunity to enter the tournament proper. To my knowledge, it's usually teams that end up winning their respective regional fifth tier cup. The second preliminary round sees teams from the third tier enter, and to my knowledge, there haven't been any major upsets here. In fairness, I wouldn't know a major upset given the sheer array of teams in this round, with my knowledge below the second tier only really encompassing Moravia, and Silesia to...

For those that only casually observe Czech football, you may have noticed a new team in the Czech Second Tier (the FNL, not to be confused with the NFL). In fact, you may have noticed four new teams in Hanácká Slavia Kroměříž (who were legitimately promoted from the MSFL), Ústí nad Labem (who were legitimately promoted from the CFL, despite not needing to play their promotion play-off against Domažlice), Příbram (who swooped in to take Vyškov's licence), and Artis Brno (who as you can probably tell from the title, have simply changed their name). Although there is a huge issue with Artis Brno, in that they've actually done more than simply change their name - they've changed their entire identity in more ways than one. Back in May of this year, after months of deliberations following a takeover from Czech billionaire Igor Fait, SK Lišeň were no more. Despite some healthy progress on and off the pitch since their promotion to the FNL in 2018/19, the club became Artis Brno....