2024/25 mid-season review: FC Viktoria Plzeň
Miroslav Koubek simply refuses to go. Last spring, there was nothing to play for in the league, so the focus was on reaching the first European quarter-final in the club’s history. Which they did. Then this past autumn, the veteran coach didn’t want a repeat, aiming to stay in the hunt domestically while doing their thing up one UEFA competition level. Which they also did — keeping at least a 2% chance of becoming champions despite an historic fall from Slavia (no small feat!) and remaining the very last Czech participant standing internationally. Miroslav Koubek simply refuses to go, by which I mean… he rules.
The outlook
Honestly, I was going to say “weirder things have happened than Plzeň outsprinting Slavia the rest of the way”, but… I don’t think they have. Had the Prague side not bombed in UEL, I could’ve at least imagined it. Now it seems close to impossible. Yes, Slavia do still need to pay both Plzeň and Sparta their visit, but did you see the rest of their schedule? All of Ostrava, Boleslav, Hradec and Jablonec coming to Eden, not the other way round. Make no mistake, the red-and-white throwing this lead away would be the worst bottling job ever witnessed in the Czech top flight — and that’s with another great candidate potentially cropping up at the bottom of the table.
This, by extension, puts Plzeň in a very unique situation as well. They are currently pacing for 68 points after the regular season. The model clearly doesn’t trust the pace, but even in its eyes, there’s a non-zero chance of clearing the 70-point bar (7%). Slavia had the runner-up campaign for the ages last year, and they finished with 72 points — not all too far out. Put it another way: two winters ago, Plzeň led the pack earning 2.43 points per game after 16 rounds and a 52% championship projection. Three rounds later, at the mirroring stage, Viktoria were at 2.36 points per game. That is already pretty darn comparable to their current pace of 2.26 points, yet I can’t imagine they’d dropped anywhere close to “forget it” title odds then.
Anyway, that’s the reality Plzeň are currently stuck in. They can focus on Europe and continued retool on the fly which has been a decisive, but not overwhelming success, while guarding their 78% chance of entering the post season ahead of Sparta/Baník, thus facing them both at Doosan Arena. That, by itself, might be enough to preserve the UCL-bound second spot.
The big question
Can healthy Durosinmi and Souaré push Plzeň up to the next level?
Despite all of the above, Plzeň should not — and likely will not — give up without a fight. A wild card of the whole fight being the (hopefully) pending impact of Cheikh Souaré and Rafiu Durosinmi. The former had already returned towards the end of the fall (for a total of 328 mins), but he would probably be the first one to admit it wasn’t his best version in the slightest; plus he’s coming out of the break “lightly” injured, skipping one game after another, bringing an awful déjà vu to ever Viktoria fan. Durosinmi, meanwhile, hasn’t played a meaningful game since 21 October 2023, but he at least travelled with the rest of the team to Bilbao as opposed to Souaré, so he might actually be closer to some more competitive action.
Whatever versions of themselves we get to see most in the spring, it’s good to remind ourselves of the players they’d been just before they went down with their respective issues — because those were the best versions of them.
Durosinmi managed 774 minutes, spanning just eleven 2023/24 games, yet he racked up 671.5 MVP points that would walk him into seven individual team’s Top 5 at the season’s conclusion. Such was his brief influence he remained the third most profilic scorer on the 3rd-place Plzeň’s roster until the very end, rivalling Cadu with a total of 11 points and 15 goal contributions. Two of his six goals? Coming following a corner kick. The whole Viktoria team has managed just one of those the entire 2024 autumn. A third goal added from a throw-in, while one of his own long bullet throws led to a converted penalty. Wanna guess how many goal-creating throw-ins Plzeň fans witnessed over the course of the entire year of 2024? They wouldn’t have to stretch their memories that much — zero is the answer. Durosinmi got fouled for a penalty, pressed for a goal off of a counter, produced clever lay-offs as part of the build. He did it all in those 774 mins.
Souaré, for his part, didn’t accumulate many more minutes himself (1060), but it proved enough for him to climb all the way up to third place on the team’s leaderboard in terms of deep completed crosses in/to the box (26) — despite not getting to share the pitch with Durosinmi, a noted beast, for even a second. On the whole, Plzeň were crushing it down Souaré’s channel, generating an average of 0.41 xGF per game the left wingback played at least a majority of (11 such appearances in total). That would comfortably lead the league, but what makes it even sweeter is the fact the Souaré-powered channel controlled a whopping 75.4% of its entire xG flow. In games that mostly saw his colleague patrolling it, the channel was just 67.6% Plzeň’s. That’s not nearly bad, as it corresponds to Slavia’s full-season share down the left; it merely underscores how phenomenal Souaré was.
Would Durosinmi and Souaré have been able to sustain this form for an entire campaign? Their mythical cases are, to a great extent, products of small samples, for sure. But you can’t possibly rule it out either, can you?
The wild card
The bloody set pieces
I’ve already alluded to them as part of the Teplice preview, claiming that while Viktoria fans actually had a big reason to complain, their Teplice counterparts would be best advised to just stick it out because brighter days are most likely coming given what we’ve seen to date. Let me elaborate. Partly because that statement should never be interpreted as “Plzeň didn’t deserve better than 2 set piece goals to go with 36 wasted chances”.
Not quite.
First of all, Lukáš Kalvach leads the league with 19 consequential set piece deliveries, only one of them resulting in a goal scored. He too led the league in 23/24 with 41, seeing 9 of them in/directly set up a goal. A minor detail. Year before, the goal share was even greater, as the midfield maestro picked up 5 assists on set pieces, facilitating 3 more goals through his deliveries, and creating 27 wasted chances that way (2nd behind Havlík). Kalvach may have declined to the point Plzeň could survive without him beyond this season — likely his last — but he decidedly hasn’t declined to the point he’s a useless set piece taker. We are just being fooled by #numberz.
Second of all, you simply don’t put up 0.41 xGF a game from corner/free kicks to rank dead last in goals following set pieces. That’s just ridiculous. Granted, in most seasons, this rate wouldn’t land second in the league like it does now (it would’ve been good for 5th last term), but Mladá Boleslav of 23/24 produced a dozen of goals from the exact same 0.41 xGF per game, while Bohemians of 22/23 harnessed 14 from as much threat generated.
Finally, and more to the second point: we normally talk about shooting underperformance in relation to strikers, which makes a whole lot of sense, but what about Robin Hranáč, Svetozar Marković and Václav Jemelka producing a predictable 0 goals from a collective 0.65 xG? All of them mustering a combined seven shot attempts is hardly on Kalvach alone. Plzeň rank 3rd in head shots (51), but simply have too little to show for it.
MVP race
Pole position: Pavel Šulc — 1084,8 pts — ranked 2nd league-wide
Prominent chaser: Lukáš Kalvach — 964,7 pts — ranked 6th
Damn… how’s this for a follow-up act, am I right? Many observers fully appreciated the 2023/24 breakout while respectfully doubting Pavel Šulc had what it takes to repeat the feat, yet five months later, his stocks keep rising amidst what’s arguably been an even better season than his previous (24-point) one. While a lot of Šulc’s 23/24 scoring was empty-calorie in essence (only six of his 18 goals were either equalizers or go-ahead goals), the guy has been nothing but clutch this season, with half of his 12 points vital. Most notably, Šulc assisted on the lone Sparta goal and spearheaded turnarounds against both Karviná and Jablonec, growing into a leader without the captain’s armband. On top of that, he remains a premier chance creator — all of his 30 chance-creating actions coming from open play, no less! — who’s shown great potential even in a more withdrawn role, shouldering much more defensive responsibility than he arguably should.
Remarkably, with all this being said, Šulc isn’t quite a shoo-in for MVP.
While his case is propped up by the aforementioned set piece acumen (and opportunity), Kalvach is also the league’s foremost turnover machine, forcing 6 ball losses in the final third leading to tangible danger. Sampson Dweh has acted as the exception to the rule on attacking set pieces, putting together a solid resume of 3 goals, 8 clean sheets and 7 TotW nominations. And then there’s Matěj Vydra: the great redemption story of a withdrawn striker recently bashed for a lack of goals, all of a sudden putting up 9 points in 10 competitive games. As this frequently banged up, diligent worker who all the same boasts an incredibly soft, clever touch to allow for smooth link-up play, Vydra is the stuff of dreams for this Viktoria side.
Bold prediction temperature check
Prediction: Lukáš Červ will be sent off in a game against his cousin
Status: Impossible to call
All we can say now is that Červ didn’t flip out in the first Slavia stanza. Even as Plzeň were getting bashed on the way to the eventual 0:3 loss, David Douděra’s cousin didn’t commit a single foul in 73 minutes of action. Will it be any different at home? Perhaps not, but his foul rate has bounced back following a “down” year (0.72 per game) and he finally picked up his second top flight red card earlier against Mladá Boleslav. Maybe he liked it…
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