The eccentric president of Slavia Prague hides a danger for Chelsea | Soccer

To Check that Slavia Prague's pulse only keeps track of the club president's Twitter feed. Jaroslav Tvrdik's flow of consciousness is rarely blocked, but on March 15, he kept things simple. "When guys live their dreams," he posted next to a self-presumed moviejerky players celebrating wildly as they were led to face Chelsea in the quarterfinals of the Europa League. It was the link they wanted and now, Slavia, a club with a famous story, brings its modern, dynamic and undeniably conflictual form to its larger audience to this day.

It appeared to be a moment of arrival when, in the 119th minute of the Czech League's 16-match lead against Sevilla, Ibrahim Traoré scored the decisive goal and completed a remarkable overtime recovery. They had to score twice after Franco Vázquez gave the advantage 5-4 to Sevilla on aggregate. Few people would support an outsider in this situation, but Slavia has never been so close to losing that label.

"I would say it's the strongest Czech club-side team I've seen for a long time," said Martin Vait, reporter for iSport.cz.

The Slavia are a part that keeps coming to you; One of them is full of team spirit and camaraderie for which the most successful clubs in the country are both celebrated and packed with quality. Jindrich Trpisovsky, their charismatic manager at the top of baseball, uses Jürgen Klopp as a model. As a result, the Slavia play a supple and energetic football at a much higher tempo than most teams in the former Eastern Bloc countries tend to handle. that makes them a danger to Chelsea and it 's the incarnation on the ground of a property saga that brought them back from the edge of the chasm.

The club's rise is inextricably linked to that of Tvrdik, a 50-year-old former Czech defense minister, who at one point had a reputation for unhappy failure. For years, he was nicknamed "Luftjarda" after a failure within Czech Airlines. However, Tvrdik has been falsely adept at running a football club while playing the role of a demagogue limit that – through Twitter and other means – makes the club's supporters eat hard. Among his contributions, he tweeted a photo of three slavia players naked in the team's swim, as well as a photo showing a list of Trpisovsky's transfer targets, but the reality is harder.

"I did not think he would be able to," Vait said. "I thought it would be about this wild and eccentric ex-politician who was trying to make his way through football, but he has become really clever in what he does."

Tvrdik plays a leading role in the Czech-Chinese Joint Cooperation Chamber. It is through the relations between these countries that his role at Slavia crystallized; He is a long-time advisor to Czech President Milos Zeman, whose efforts to attract Chinese investment in the country have borne fruit when the energy conglomerate, CEFC, took over Slavia three years ago and half.

He has extended China's interests to the soft power of European football, but it seems that it collapsed last year when the CEFC dried up, its debts of 13.3 billion pounds having apparently run out his patience in Beijing. Tvrdik appeared to have his fingerprints on another bad job, but Slavia was bailed out in November when Chinese group Sinobo, a real estate development company, became the majority shareholder.

They have not looked back although, for supporters of a club traditionally considered a haven for intellectuals, liberals and dissidents, not everything goes smoothly. The connection with Zeman, once considered a progressive social democrat but now a shameless populist, gives them the opportunity to be seen where Sparta, their historically more prosperous neighbors, used to be.

On the other hand, there is a tendency to enjoy the good times as much as they can. "Slavia has always felt that the problem was imminent," says Vait, of a club that flirted with relegation and the financial crisis early in the decade. If the Sinobo property seems to offer few long-term guarantees, it may be time for Slavia to be able to live this moment.

Chelsea will certainly face a battle at Eden Arena on Thursday night and will see how Miroslav Stoch, the Slovakian winger who has made five appearances during a four-year stint at Stamford Bridge has developed. . "He was considered a kind of rebel player when he came in, possibly reputed to have caused problems, but he proved that people were completely wrong," said Vait.

Stoch, who perhaps plays in the middle, is 29 years old and comes in the form of his life. Trpisovsky's penchant for rotation means that few players are needed and only the player who matches that range, midfielder Tomas Soucek, is suspended. A glance at his team-mate Alex Kral could in any case distract Chelsea enough; Kral looks strangely like David Luiz and works with a similar intensity.

Maybe Slavia and their riches will fade again; perhaps they will flourish in the kind of long-term sustainable European energy that would serve their region well. In any case, Tvrdik will probably document the ups and downs. On Wednesday, he shared pictures of new guest seats inside the Eden Arena the Chelsea delegation will be placed; They looked sumptuous but Slavia hopes to organize an uncomfortable evening in the Europa League.