The basic part goes to the finish line. Sigma will challenge champion Sparta on Sunday

The marathon of thirty matches on behalf of the regular part of the FORTUNA:LIGA is coming to an end this coming weekend. In the 30th round, the Olomouc football players will face the leading team of the competition and the defending champions of the league – Sparta Prague. The game will be played at the sold-out Andro stadium from 3 p.m.

“We are very much looking forward to the match, because a stadium sold out to the last seat is a unique situation for us. These are the moments we do football for, it’s the reward. And I believe that we will be a good opponent for the favourites,” says coach Jiří Saňák before the match.

Sigma will go into the match from the eighth place, which it secured in the last two matches, in which it was undefeated. A fortnight ago, coach Jiří Saňák’s wards first took over when they defeated Jablonec 1:0 in a weakened state with a goal by Juraj Chvátal. Last weekend they robbed against Slavia. In Eden, after the change of sides, with goals from Pokorný and Zifčák, they already took a two-goal lead, but the home team still managed to equalize at the final 2:2. After almost nine years, Sigma scored at Slavia.

With a draw in Eden, the Hanáci shuffled their cards in the fight for the championship title. Sparta defeated Ostrava 4:3, and in combination with Slavia’s point loss, their lead at the top of the league increased to four points. Even before the match in Olomouc, the team of the Danish coach Brian Priske is sure that they will dominate the regular part.

Sparta has the best attack in the competition, which has scored 65 goals against opponents in the past 29 matches. The best scorer of the team is Veljko Birmančević, who scored 13 goals. He is followed by Lukáš Haraslín (11 goals) and Jan Kuchta (10). Together, this trio scored more than half of the Leten team’s goals. The number one among the three poles is the Norwegian goalkeeper Peter Vindahl, who kept ten clean sheets in the season, the second highest number in the competition. Sparta has the second best offense after Slavia.

“It will be about humility again. We are aware of the quality of the opponent, which is unequivocal. Sparta is a slightly different opponent than Slavia in terms of typology and style of play. We will need similar attributes to last week to succeed again this time. Again, it’s about believing in your own strength, but also about sacrificing yourself for the team,” judges Saňák.

During the season, Sparta found only two defeaters in the league. First, in autumn, they lost 1:3 in Mladá Boleslav, then in March they lost 0:4 in Pilsen. Otherwise, they regularly score points from the opponent’s pitches and are in first place in the table of away matches.

Sparta’s successful season is underlined by their participation in the final of the MOL Cup, to which they advanced at the beginning of April after a victory over Opava. In it, they will compete with Pilsen for the trophy. In the fall, they made their way from a difficult group, when they left behind the Spanish Betis Sevilla, to the spring battles, in which they first eliminated the Turkish Galatasaray Istanbul, but in the round of 16 they were eliminated by the English Liverpool.

“Sparta has been playing 3-4-3 for a long time and is bringing players into that system. The structure, way of playing and overall philosophy is different from Slavia. But I certainly wouldn’t dare to say what is better and worse. Both teams are excellent. The beauty of football is that there are different paths to success, and Slavia and Sparta in particular show that,” concluded Saňák.

The last time Sparta played in Olomouc was last year in the 1st round of the extension section, when they won 1:0. Last year in January, the two rivals parted amicably 1:1. Sigma’s last victory over Sparta at the Androv Sadion dates back to April 20, 2022, when the Hanáci beat their opponent 2:0. The overall balance of the matches is on the side of Sparta, which won 33 of the 58 matches that the two teams played against each other in a separate Czech league. Sigma beat Letenské 11 times with 14 matches ending in a draw.

The match between Sigma and Sparta will be managed by Ondřej Pechanec, whose assistants will be Petr Caletka and Jiří Kříž. The fourth judge will be Vít Zaoral. Jan Všetečka will sit down with assistant Jakub Hrabovský for the video.