The 47-year-old coach explains his desire to continue working for the team. “We have identified with the club, we are at home here. We want to develop it further, the work fulfills me. Someone recently asked me what will happen after Slavia. I answer that nothing. Free time. I don’t have it in my head. But it’s football, anything can happen. The owner can change here, someone won’t want us, whatever. But if contact with a club takes place now, I’m not thinking about leaving,” explains the chief strategist of the Red and Whites.
Three championship titles, four triumphs in the domestic cup, participation in the basic group of the Champions League, three quarter-finals in the European and Conference League. What next meta? “My goal is to once again get Slavia to the Champions League and try to win a game in it. I enjoy developing young players,” he mentions in the Slavist Total podcast.
He is not currently attracted to foreign countries. “We talked about it with the guys who are there. They told us to go abroad and try it. But that player has it easy, he goes to play football, he plays for himself, it’s a completely different job than that of a manager or coach. As a coach, you need cooperation with the management, sports director, owner, have a philosophy, We have a specific playing style and applying it to another team would take a while like in Slavia, it wasn’t right away either,” points out Trpišovský.
For many people, he would be a suitable coach of the national team in the future. “I don’t know. I think we have a great coach (Jaroslav Šilhavý). And I have nothing else in my head but Slavia, certainly not this one. I don’t like to think about things that aren’t real or out of reach because that’s a waste of time. For me now the only topic is Slavia, it’s pointless to think about it,” responds the Slavia coach.
He is currently coaching the team at a training camp in Austria. He is happy with how the squad looks. “He’s wide, he’s replaceable,” perceives Trpišovský, who indicated what the players must go through under him. At the first week-long camp in Austria, everyone ran between seventy and eighty kilometers. “It’s the sum of running and game training. The differences are, for example, wing players have it differently than stoppers, then we have group exercises, someone is injured, but everyone moved within this range,” explains Trpišovský.
They have to prepare for the possibility that the desired left back David Jurásek may leave. Interesting clubs from across Europe are gathering around him, including Benfica Lisbon, Leipzig, Nice and teams from the Premier League. “We are working with the option that David Jurásek has a great chance of leaving. We don’t have a classic left-back, so we are also working with a variant of a different formation. We are deciding who could replace him in the lineup,” he describes what he has to deal with.
Photo: Vlastimil Vacek, Law
David Jurásek and coach of Slavia Prague Jindřich Trpišovský during the match with Mlada Boleslaví.
“Even with Ondra Lingra, it is not certain whether he will leave or stay. He is a typical under-the-radar player. They can both leave with David, one of them, or none of them. God forbid someone might get injured, we have to be ready,” Trpišovský points to other possible variables.
He admits that there is also interest in stopper or defensive midfielder Maksym Talovjerov, who visited Linz in the spring and reached the semi-finals of the U21 European Championship with Ukraine. “Linec is interested in buying him, negotiations are underway between the sports departments. Plus is playing well at the EURO, so we are monitoring the interest of other clubs from abroad. It will be about the offer that comes to him,” explains the coach with a typical cap on his head.
Slavia has been without a title for two years. Discussion in the program PřímákVideo: Sport.cz
The start of the season will again affect its success in cup preliminary rounds. The Czech vice-champion will start in the third preliminary round of the Europa League, where he will face either the Greek Panathinaikos or the Ukrainian Dnipro. “It’s hard to choose,” smiles the coach of Slavia.
“We got to know Panathinaikos last year, they have a great team, coach and players. Since then they have brought in six more players and they are hard to play. The environment in Athens is stormy and hellish, in addition, there are demanding climatic conditions,” Trpišovský calculates the pitfalls associated with the Greek opponent, whom the seamers eliminated in the Conference League qualifiers a year ago.
“We don’t know much about Dnipro now, but we know the players from the national teams, and recently Ukrainian football has gone up like Israeli football. He is an unpleasant opponent, he left Dynamo Kyiv behind and pursued Shakhtar Donetsk. We have the first news from Taras (Kačaraba), we have already seen some matches,” he says about the second potential juice.
“We have the gates to Europe again through difficult opponents, but I think that our team is also further than last summer. And if we want to get there, we have to eliminate the opponent that the lot puts in our way. If I could choose, I wouldn’t want to go to Panathinaikos. Also because we knocked them out once and it would be waiting for us a second time. Better for Dnipro,” explains Trpišovský.