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Champions League competition can be mixed blessing and James Baxter sympathises with a team thrashed by Marseille
When MŠK Žilina’s first ever Champions League group stage campaign finally drew to an end last December, debate in Slovakia as to its merits and otherwise was already long underway. The general consensus was that the failure to pick up points was disappointing and the 7-0 home defeat by Marseille humiliating but also that the team had played good football in spells and learned several lessons.
Bratislavia’s oldest club don’t seem to be missing their brief period of domestic success and European glory. James Baxter explains
Anyone who has registered MSK Žilina‘s progress to the group stages of this season’s Champions League may also recall that the last team from Slovakia to get this far was Artmedia Bratislava, in 2005-06. But, while Žilina fans have been in bitter dispute with their club over ticket prices for home games in the competition, FC Petržalka 1898, as Artmedia are now known, are experiencing life outside Slovakia’s top division and, so far, seem to be enjoying it.
After 17 years of separation, James Baxter assesses future plans for a possible footballing reunification in central Europe
Nostalgia for Czechoslovakia, the federation that broke up in 1993’s “Velvet Divorce”, is fashionable in the modern-day Czech and Slovak Republics. Politically, the divorce, though amicable, is absolute. Sport might be another matter, however. There has been frequent talk over the years about merging the countries’ ice hockey leagues. Now there is a similar idea for football. Representatives of the Czech and Slovak football associations recently met to discuss a possible return to a joint top division.