On Friday evening, the England national team, playing in the European Championship qualifying match, experienced an unexpected defeat against the Czechs.
In case of victory, the direct ticket to next year's European Championship could have been won by the English, but they suffered a 1:2 defeat on away ground. This was the first failure of the English football players in this qualifying cycle.
As it turned out after the match, defeat in the qualifiers is generally unusual for the English - until yesterday's match, they had not lost in the qualifiers since 2009.
The last time, counting both World and European Championship qualifiers, the England national team suffered a defeat was in October 2009, when the Ukrainians were recognized as having a minimal advantage.
Since then, the English have won 34 matches in the qualifiers and played nine draws. It was precisely in the match against the Czechs that a series of 43 unbeaten matches was ended.
After the match, national team coach Gareth Southgate admitted that the team had a very poor performance.
"We must be proud of what we have achieved in the last two years, but today we did not put in enough work to win," the strategist claimed.
"The performance we put in was simply not enough to achieve victory. Perhaps we did not deserve to lose, but the second goal into our net came after a typical situation.
As a team, we have to accept the fact that we played poorly today," G. Southgate added.
