sport today

Maltese scare for Czechs

MILAN BAROS spared the Czech Republic’s blushes as they edged past Malta by the narrowest of margins, triumphing 3-2 in Telice on Wednesday evening.

The strike midway through the second half of this World Cup qualifier condemned unlucky Malta to a highly-commendable 3-2 defeat.

The Liverpool-bound saviour pounced just 12 minutes after coming on as a substitute for Pavel Kuka but up until then the Czechs appeared to be in grave danger of dropping two more points in their bid to make it to Korea and Japan.

On the back of Saturday’s 3-1 defeat in Iceland, they were far from convincing in Teolice on Wednesday night against a Malta team ranked 133rd in the world and with just one point to its name in Group Three qualifying.

Malta had won this point against the Czech Republic at Ta’Qali and it looks like that the Maltese always give the Czechs a hard time, even though in football terms they are miles apart.

In the end they were saved by the fact they were up against a Malta side clearly not used to playing two matches in four days, although on plenty of occasions the Maltese proved they are technically a very good team who followed up Saturday’s brave 2-0 defeat at home to Bulgaria with another great performance by their own standards.

The Republic’s victory, unconvincing as it was, keeps alive their hopes of qualifying for the 2002 World Cup finals, although it is the Maltese who will take immense credit from their heroic performance.

New coach Sigi Held, in charge for his first competitive away match, was quite satisfied with the effort despite being slightly disappointed with the manner in which his defence was caught napping, allowing an unmarked Baros to turn home a cross from the right-hand side.

Maltese man-of-the-match, goalkeeper Mario Muscat, denied Baros a second goal by diving at his feet in the 80th minute but a fourth goal would have been an injustice to Malta.

Sensing that nothing but a good performance and the three points could restore their supporters’ faith in them, the Czech players were quick to throw themselves into attack in this game but they were repeatedly held back by a Malta rearguard well-marshalled by Spiteri and Debono.

However, after 20 minutes the Czechs forged ahead through Marek Yankulovski, who placed the ball cheekily over Muscat from Vratislav Lovcenk’s pass, and while at the time this was expected to open the floodgates, Novotny’s trip on Antoine Zahra two minutes later allowed captain David Carabott, making his 104th appearance for Malta, to convert from the spot.

The visitors’ joy was somewhat short-lived as the Czechs restored their lead a quarter of an hour later through Lovcenk.

In the second half the Maltese performed even better and even though they rarely score two goals away from home they did precisely that after 55 minutes when Gilbert Agius latched on to a perfect pass from Zahra and beat Pavel Srnicek at the near post.

With the wind in their sails the Maltese once again pushed forward and three minutes later Michael Mifsud beat Srnicek for a third time only for the effort to be correctly disallowed for offside.

Heeding the warning Jozef Chovanec introduced Baros and his speed soon began to play havoc with the Maltese defence, culminating in his winner in the 68th minute.

From then on the hosts took over and the Malta defence was stretched to the limit but to his credit Muscat stood his ground to keep the score at 3-2.