International friendly.
The Czech Under-21 team’s preparations for June’s European championship finals continued with a 1-0 away win over the Netherlands in Waalwijk — but were overshadowed somewhat by a bizarre scandal involving Sparta Praha players.
Having withdrawn Tomas Pekhart, Vaclav Kadlec and Croatian defender Manuel Pamic from international duty for fitness reasons, Sparta seemingly fielded all three players in a friendly against Zenit St. Petersburg in Spain yesterday (Wednesday).
In an apparent attempt to disguise the players’ identities, their names didn’t appear on the Sparta team sheet and the three wore jerseys with teammates’ names on them — Pamic playing as Jakub Podany, Kadlec as Pavel Kaderabek and, oddest of all, Pekhart as black Cameroonian midfielder Martin Abena.
Sparta’s plan seems to have gone wrong when a Czech journalist recognized the players in photos posted on the Zenit St. Petersburg website.
Czech national team general manager Vladimir Smicer was unhappy with the deception, describing it as a “scam” and telling iDnes.cz that Kadlec and Pekhart definitely shouldn’t have taken part in the Sparta-Zenit game.
A Croatian football association spokesman was more relaxed about Pamic’s involvement in the match, telling the website that it wasn’t a problem and offering the player congratulations on his speedy recovery.
wrote:Did you not get the joke or are you being a retard?
