What did Plzeň expect to happen with Adrián Guľa?
On Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after the conclusion of the 3:3 draw with Příbram, FC Viktoria Plzeň finally pulled the plug on the Guľa regime. Somehow, the board decided this was the proverbial last straw; a game where the team — supported by its manager’s in-game adjustments — rallied from 0:2 down to a 3:2 lead, despite losing their key striker and veteran left back to injuries in the process. A lead which they still held 5 minutes into the added time and surrendered it only due to a lack of concentration on the part of their 2nd-choice goalkeeper that was called into action due to another badly timed injury of a star player.
Plzeň were my latest hope that a top club could do things differently and change the Czech footballing landscape only a little bit by not reacting to results and trusting the process, which Guľa instilled — make no mistake — in a record span of time and with tangible results both early and late in his regime.
That hope ceased to exist today. Rather maddeningly so.
What I took for signs of long-term planning (them not firing Guľa in winter, giving him a platform to start building in youngsters like Šulc and Matějka) was instead a sign of Guľa being handed a borrowed time. He was living off it for the entire spring, it seems, with the board waiting for the first suitable opportunity to give the coach a sack that was likely getting cheaper with every month (which, also quite likely, played some role in the decision-making).
Guľa did borrow some more time through a recent 10-game unbeaten streak, but it’s now painfully obvious he was always fighting a losing game on the back of one unsuccessful autumn. His first autumn in charge, mind. His first 4 months following a (shortened) summer break that saw Viktoria act as buyers instead of sellers for the first time in his tenure (Krmenčík leaving was the only major move of the winter transfer window). I’m not sure if everyone fully realizes this, but Guľa has been fired without completing one full season. In this current season he came reasonably close to completing, meanwhile, his team got shut down for a whole month due to Covid-19. He finished his assignment while getting to coach just four games in a non-pandemic world.
The irony is, Guľa’s own start did him disservice. His team wasn’t beaten until it met Slavia for the second time in 2019/20 (in their 12th stand overall). Their 12–2–1 record in the spring was better than that of Slavia (9–4–2), which clearly made the Viktoria board think this is the standard to meet…
It decidedly wasn’t the new standard, it isn’t one, and it never really was.
Not because of whatever Guľa has done or not done in charge of Plzeň, but for the phenomenal way Slavia have separated themselves from the rest of the pack.
Plzeň played some mesmerizing football early under Guľa (akin to the six dominant results Viktoria notched this season, as well, lest we forget), but pretty much all of it came against the clearly lesser teams. Jablonec, Sparta, Slavia and Ostrava all outshot Plzeň (and outworked them on the xG clock, too) in four spring 2019/20 games they took a combined two points from.
What happened to Plzeň this year was a basic regression to the mean. They matched up about as well (or bad) against Liberec, Jablonec or Slavia and took one point from those games as opposed to nearly all of them last year.
Look at it this way: when Guľa took over, Plzeň were 16 points behind Slavia after 20 rounds. Now they are 26 points behind them after 30 rounds, so the gulf in quality and ability to pick up points has more or less remained the same only that Limberský et co. are a year older now. Obviously, Guľa wasn’t hired to stay the course but rather to turn the ship around, but a ship doesn’t turn in a split second. That’s as much true in reality as it is in this methaphor.
Sometimes, if not most of the times, you simply need to take a step backwards to make strides forward. Guľa and his former employers know it all too well.
His first season at Trenčín saw the 2nd-tier club earn 1,85 points per game instead of the 2 points per game that had them finish just a point away from promotion in the previous season. In his second year, Trenčín won the 2nd division title by 18 points (!), with Guľa — an up-and-coming visionary — then laying a strong foundation for the mini-dynasty that followed in 2013–16. There were many Trenčín fans who believed Ševela simply just fed off Guľa.
At Žilina, even more patience was needed. In summer 2013, he took over a cup finalist who finished 7th, dropped to the 9th place in year-1 while even briefly flirting with relegation, only to sit atop the table as soon as at Christmas 2014. In year-4, Guľa celebrated his first top flight title — while relying heavily on eight U-23 players including Iván Díaz, Michal Škvarka, Nikolas Špalěk, Martin Králik, Denis Vavro and Miroslav Káčer.
This was basically the trajectory Plzeň were supposed to follow after some squad trimming and refreshing. Their immediate contending window had closed, Slavia stepped up to the plate big time, clearly leading the way, and so without explicitly admitting it (because of confusing results), Viktoria have found themselves amidst a “retool”, as they’d call it in the NHL. Yet today, its presumed architect was fired without any real change of personnel (or “tools”, to keep the lingo) occurring. How the hell do you even reconcile that?
To be fair to the Viktoria board, they had no idea about Covid-19 when they were making this strategic hire in December 2019. Hindsight is 20/20, and it applies here as well. The pandemic has changed everything about our everyday lives and it’s caused a seismic shift in the financial landscape of Czech football, too. As a result, getting into Europa League became an even greater necessity, and perhaps the board felt like it was now in acute danger. If Plzeň didn’t beat Slavia in the cup final, they’d have to jump all the way to the 3rd spot in the league, and that spot could be 10 points away as of later today.
Based on the current form, there was no reason to think Plzeň were bound to do either of that, the board would surely argue, and Conference League was never enough of a compensation. However longterm they were thinking 18 months ago, the board would perhaps argue, their sudden impatience has basically been thrust upon them by the Covid-19 circumstances. It’s an open secret Viktoria‘s financial strength of early-to-mid 2010s is gone, especially after the recent change of ownership, and so finances are the motivation now.
That’s all understandable, but it still begs the question why would the board keep Guľa while doing nothing to patch the ageing, underperforming and vastly understaffed defence (remember Plzeň let go of Pernica, their 3rd-choice centre back, over the winter without replacing him)? They could’ve brought in a pragmatic, a Bílek — someone I’m sure will improve the defensive record and earn a couple of hard-fought 1:0 victories in an instant, because that’s literally his only calling card — earlier, if the results were such a pain.
But they didn’t, and now they are caught inbetween two differing stances, while the end result may very well not satisfy them regardless of this late action.
Further to the point of the Viktoria board having its hand forced, I think it was becoming increasingly clear Guľa wasn’t getting the buy-in from his veteran players that his elaborate tactics require to work.
I remember Brabec saying he hopes Guľa’s “infectious energy lasts” following his first few weeks in charge; now it appears as though the same Brabec simply gave up on the coach. His “zero shits given” defending, coupled with Limberský having a much larger influence and role than would be healthy for the team at this stage, is what much of recent Plzeň failures boils down to. He wears the captain’s armband after all; and his approach to games has been anything but captain-y lately.
Guľa would never throw his players under the bus; he’s way too big a perfectionist to allow that mindset to creep in. It was indeed refreshing to see him take the blame for a draw (essentially a loss) he clearly wasn’t at fault for.
That’s where the board needs to step in and support the coach. That’s where hefty fines should come in for the whole team to wake up, even if some players who are amidst their career years (like Beauguel and Ba Loua) don’t need the wake-up call. Instead, the club has issued a clear message that players > coach in a situation where it should never be the case.
You hire a demanding visionary to mostly keep the band intact and choose to abandon the vision sooner than you abandon the apparent deadwood? You have no business in running a professional club then, that’s my takeaway.
More on Plzeň underachieving (?) in this week’s Newsletter. Subscribe here.
