Pavel Nedved (26 Viewers)

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The Jackal
#2,481
Jan 14, 2005
22,871
#2,481
Čech is best Czech player for autumn


Prague, Dec 19 (CTK) - Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech who plays with Premier League's Chelsea has won the Golden Ball poll for the best Czech soccer player in the autumn season, followed by midfielder Tomas Rosicky (Arsenal) and Marek Jankulovski (AC Milan), the Czech Sport Journalists' Club announced Wednesday.

Cech has won the Golden Ball in the three previous seasons.

The Sport Journalists' Club that organises the poll will announce the total winner of this season's Golden Ball in the summer.

The Top Eleven includes only players of the Czech national team, except for Pavel Nedved (Juventus Turin) who stopped playing for the team after the World Cup last year. Among the Top Eleven are three players from the Czech soccer league - Zdenek Pospech (Sparta Praha), Marek Matejovsky (Mlada Boleslav) and Stanislav Vlcek (Slavia Praha).

12th Golden Ball best Czech soccer player poll's results for autumn season:

1. Petr Cech (FC Chelsea) 1106 points, 2. Tomas Rosicky (FC Arsenal) 900, 3. Marek Jankulovski (AC Milan) 592, 4. David Rozehnal (Newcastle United) 395, 5. Jaroslav Plasil (Osasuna Pamplona) 317, 6. Pavel Nedved (Juventus Turin) 306, 7. Jan Koller (AS Monako) 290, 8. Zdenek Pospech (Sparta Praha) 285, 9. Marek Matejovsky (Mlada Boleslav) 247, 10. David Jarolim (Hamburger SV) 229, 11. Stanislav Vlcek (Slavia Praha) 199.

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ReBeL

The Jackal
#2,484
Jan 14, 2005
22,871
#2,484
Keeping them guessing

The soccer community has fallen into a guessing game this month that will most likely last until the summer. The game’s hero? Star midfielder Pavel Nedvěd. Its subject? Whether Nedvěd will once again return to the national team.

The 35-year-old midfielder, who over the past decade was an icon of the national team and named Europe’s best player in 2003, retired from the team in August 2006, shortly after its dismal performance in the World Cup. “It’s time to go,” he said then.

However, a year and a half after his retirement, rumors have surfaced about Nedvěd’s possible comeback for the Euro 2008 finals in Austria and Switzerland next summer. Italian defender Nicola Legrottaglie, who plays with Nedvěd on Juventus in the Italian Serie A league, kicked off the rumors after telling the soccer Web site Goal.com that Nedvěd was likely to make an appearance at Euro 2008. “You will see — Nedvěd, like me, will return to his national team and play in the European Championship next June,” Legrottaglie said.

Nedvěd’s lawyer, Bronislav Šerák, rejected Legrottaglie’s assertion. “I spoke with Pavel and he told me that the national team was a closed chapter for him,” Šerák said. Nedvěd does not communicate with media based in the Czech Republic. However, the national team’s spokesman, Lukáš Tuček, said Nedvěd repeated to him that he was not considering a comeback.“Nedvěd said that his teammate made the statement without consulting him,” Tuček said.

Should a player other than Nedvěd become a subject of such speculation, talks about his return to the national team would look pointless. Nedvěd is different, however, as he has already retired and returned to the national team — a comeback that was also first anticipated by his Juventus teammates.

Soon after guiding the national team to bronze medals at Euro 2004 in Portugal, Nedvěd withdrew from the team. The midfielder had seriously injured his knee in the semifinals against eventual champion Greece, and he did not fully recover for the start of the Serie A season. The frustrated Nedvěd soon stated that he did not feel healthy enough to carry on playing for the Czech Republic.

Losing the team’s playmaker was hard to accept for head coach Karel Brückner. Fearing sanctions from the European soccer governing body UEFA for refusing to play on the team without any justification, Nedvěd called an official end to his career on the national team.

However, when the Czech Republic advanced to the World Cup qualification playoffs and stood on the verge of advancing to their first World Cup in 16 years, rumors about Nedvěd’s return intensified.

Nedvěd’s then-teammate at Juventus, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, said in mid-2005 that Nedvěd would, in the end, appear on the national team in the World Cup. And, that autumn, Nedvěd indeed changed his mind. “If I’m nominated to the games, I’ll be glad to help my country in the [World Cup] playoffs,” he said. Despite the team’s mediocre performance in Germany, Nedvěd was one of its leading players. But then he quit the national team once again after a minor friendly game against Serbia in August 2006.

When he called an end to his national team career, Nedvěd was getting ready to fight with Juventus for promotion to the Serie A, which the club had been demoted from by court decision following a corruption case. Nedvěd said that demotion to the second Italian league had influenced his decision not to play on the national team. “I wouldn’t be able to get ready for tough international soccer in the second league,” Nedvěd said.

Juventus advanced back to the Serie A this season and Nedvěd, after a slow start, has rounded into form in recent weeks, showing he is still competitive in top-level soccer games.

Although Nedvěd has rejected a comeback, his teammates on Juventus and former teammates on the national team have not ruled out his return for Euro 2008. National team defender Zdeněk Grygera, who plays with Nedvěd on Juventus, revealed in November that Nedvěd was still interested in the country’s Euro 2008 qualification. “On the day after the national team secured advancement to next summer’s tournament, we talked about it with Pavel during a Juventus training session,” Grygera said. He joked with Nedvěd about whether he wanted to join the last qualifier, but Nedvěd reportedly did not respond.

Despite his adamant refusals, Nedvěd’s controversial past and anticipated return have made him the subject of betting in the Czech Republic. At a Fortuna shop in mid-December, the odds that Nedvěd would in the end return to the national team stood at 2.9:1.

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