Meet Václav Kotal
The new first team head coach Václav Kotal has been closely linked with Sparta for many years. He had played in the club for 9 years as a player, was first team assistant and repeatedly successfully led the Sparta reserves. He is now coming from reserves to the Sparta first team.
In 1973–1982, Václav Kotal played 168 league matches in Sparta and with scored 31 goals. He won the Czechoslovak Cup twice. “I got to Sparta because I had been in the nomination of Czech universities for some championship. I didn't go to there finally, because I went to Sparta. I like to remember playing in Sparta,” said Václav Kotal in a recent interview for Sparta match magazine.
He also worked as a coach in Sparta several times. “As a reserves coach, first team assistant, reserves coach again. I liked it too. We managed to get to the second league with the reserves. Then I went to Russia with Jaroslav Hřebík (to FC Dynamo Moscow in 2003). We came back after a year and I was back in Sparta half a year later,” he looked back.
As a head coach, he managed to get to the highest competition with Hradec Králové after seven years in the season 2009/10. In the following season, he took eighth place with a newcomer. Then he trained Jablonec or Zbrojovka Brno. In 2015/16, he was on the sixth place with the team from the second largest Czech city.
A native of Náchod also trained the Czech national team under 17. He got to the EURO U17 with the team around captain Adam Hložek advanced to last year. Subsequently, he became the coach of the renewed Sparta reserves.
In the current season, Vaclav Kotal won 13 out of 15 matches with the young team in the Czech third division. The reserves is on the second place after half of the competition with only a two-point loss to the first position.