Welcome everybody to Soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell. Thank you, as always, for joining us.

This week, we're talking Czech football.

A story that starts in the 1800s, or maybe the 1920s, survives Nazi occupation and Soviet tanks, gets its clubs renamed after factories and secret police, somehow still produces Petterchek and Pavel Nedved.

The Czech top flight has always been defined by two Prague clubs, working class Sparta, intellectual Slavia,

occasionally humbled by provincial Victoria Pilsen.

It's a league shaped as much by politics as by football and the national team who punches above their weight regularly. Graham Ruffin, will they do so again this summer? We'll find out. I mean, I'm still an assault from what Patrick Schick did to us from the halfway line at Hampton Park a couple years ago. So, you know, it was five years ago. I'm still not over it. So don't take it personally, check it, but hopefully not. I'm kidding on. I don't have anything against checking. I've got over it. So don't take it personally, Chequette, but hopefully not.

I'm kidding on. I don't have anything here. I've got over it. We've qualified for World Cup now. Everything is water under the bridge before this point. Did you say I'm still in the salt? In the sulk. In the sulk. Okay, that makes more sense. Is that any way of saying salty? I'm in the salt. I think of the word.

I mean it's salt cared about

about Chequia and their football.

That's right.

Yeah. That makes more sense. I was like, is that a new way of saying salty? I'm in the salt. I like that. I'm a salt cared about, about Chequia and their football.

That's right.

Yeah.

Graham, tell me about the Czech League.

Give me the basics. When did it start? How long has it been going? How many name changes? Who sponsors it right now? Get to it. Yeah, so the name of the Czech top division is imaginatively the Czech First League, which is nice and easy. It is also called the Chance Liga, for sponsorship reasons, chance being an online casino in Czechia.

And the Czech League, as we know it today, can be traced back to 1993, which is around the time of

the breakup of the old Czechoslovakia, which then created the independent countries of Cheddar Public, as it was known then, and Slovakia. Before then you had the Czechoslovak First League, which stretched all the way back to the 1920s. So they have been playing football, soccer in this part of the world for a long time, with the region of Bohemia in particular adopting the sport in the late 19th century,

which you're referenced in your intro, Taylor.

Actually, we had a question, was it on the Patreon this week?

It might not even have come out, yeah, about countries that maybe didn't have soccer brought to them by the English.

And Czech, it might be one of them, because from what I could tell it was the Germans

who actually brought the game to the country rather than that usual origin story of English

...