Menzel

No disgrace. Just got to work hard this season to make sure we secure the third round knockout next season.

Dons/Sporting vs Lask Linz or Danube Wednesday

How can Aberdeen ever claim to be on par with the huge Edinburgh clubs with a support like that? Expect this thread to be brought up as evidence if Elixir ever crawls back.

Aye, I did Czech studies at uni and now I work for a Czech company over here. my language isn't perfect but fine enough for a lot of the stuff I do, meetings and so on. Brno's a nice place and not so many tourists, so worth a visit if you're ever in the area. Still cheap for a pint and there's good wine about if that's also your thing.

Wasn't a particularly 'brutal' suppression for a few reasons, mainly because the Dubček government was very quick and clear to tell everyone to stay at home and not confront the tanks. The attempted Hungarian Revolution in 1956 was utterly devastating and they tried their best to avoid that, which to be fair they did. By far my favourite act of disobedience was when Czechoslovakia beat the Soviet Union in 1969 at the ice hockey championships, and a bunch of lads went down and panned in the windows of the Aeroflot office. Realise now that this is widely deviating from the fitba chat so might be better to discuss this sort of stuff elsewhere or by PM! I find this stuff very interesting to talk about though.

I wouldn't use these exact words (!), but it's sort of skirting around the point here. It's a lot to do with connotations of the Soviet Union, which Czechoslovakia was never a part of, and the more unstable fallout that happened there after 1992. As there was no such thing as a 'Czech Republic' until the 90s (Lithuania, as the example @DiegoDiego offered, was already its own independent state before the Soviet Union invaded in 1940, so the deeper questions about a national identity have been sidestepped somewhat). Czechs generally disliked being lumped in with the likes of Ukraine, Belarus and so on who they share a very minimal Slavic identify with, and spent a lot of time crafting an identity as a modern, pro-European EU state; and indeed blame the 'Eastern Europeans' for bringing communism to their country anyway. There's a lot of anti-Russian sentiment here, despite Karlový Vary being a playground for rich Russians in the summer. So it's quite a loaded term here, even though the former politics of the country can often be regarded as a direct product of the region. ETA McTominay shouldn't be a CB.

There is an entirely different context in relation to Central Europe/Visegrád states, particularly in the crafting of national identities post-89. Those who argue semantics tend to be Western Europeans who have little issue with lumping all CEE states together for spurious reasons.

FTFY

I don't think anyone would call Austria Eastern Europen despite sitting immediately below the Czech Republic; and Prague and Berlin are separated by about one degree of longitude. Things might be slightly difficult in the political sense but a lot of Czechs get upset at being referred to as East Europeans and will generally correct anyone who says otherwise.

Underpinning this point, everyone over here is gushing at the Czech performance and had written off any chances of a result. It's getting close to the sort of reception that lower league minnows get when they go deep on a cup run and crash out to one of the favourites - "they gave everything" "couldn't fault the boys" yadda yadda. Tonda Růsek, who came on for the last quarter hour, plays for a team that just got promoted the season before, and is the first Zbrojovka player to feature in a national team match since 2008. That's the level being talked about here. They'll remember how bad Scotland were and go over to Hampden with Hložek, Schick and Král and the rest of the first team and just completely rip us apart based on that. They'll win the group quite comfortably.

Pretty much this - outside of Slavia, Sparta and Viktoria Plzeň the Czech top tier is remarkably similar in quality to that of the Scottish Premiership. What we saw tonight, loosely, was a team which has trained together for a decent amount of time and often plays at a higher level; against a team made up of Killie and St Johnstone players with the occasional Aberdeen or Hibs player thrown in. Who have never played alongside each other before.

The Czech Republic isn't in Eastern Europe.

Unreal. That's a team mostly comprising of players from mid-table of the Czech league who have barely played with each other, and completely outclassed Scotland. How we didn't concede in that second half I'll never know. Absolutely cannot rely on getting a penalty in one of your two trips into an opponent's box in 45 minutes, goals are going to be a real worry here. Thought that Czech midfield was excellent tonight, especially when Radim Breite was introduced.