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Leicester plummeted from the Europa League with a groan, falling in a well deserved defeat to the Czech champions. Brendan Rodgers never made it past the first knockout round of this tournament with Liverpool or Celtic and his Leicester side only seemed briefly able to improve on that record before succumbing to excellent second-half goals from Lukas Provod and Abdallah Sima.
“There are no excuses, the best team won,” admitted Rodgers.
The challenge for Leicester now is to ensure that this disappointment, and a troubling list of casualties that was stretched this week by the loss of James Maddison to hip problems, does not lead to a repeat of the season-ending decline they suffered the year. last. . Here, with a place in the Europa League round of 16 at stake, they were flat and erratic.
After the final whistle, the local players endured the indignity of seeing their opponents scream and dance on the King Power field. Slavia had fully earned the right to celebrate his progress and his first victory in England.
Although Rodgers, possibly with his sights set on Sunday’s Premier League clash with Arsenal, decided to start without Harvey Barnes, Timothy Castagne and Ricardo Pereira, Leicester started out as a team determined to defeat Slavia quickly. The visitors didn’t get to touch the ball until their goalkeeper, Ondrej Kolar, cleared a shot from Cengiz Under.
The Turkish winger forced a new save from the goalkeeper with a shot from the edge of the area in the 10th minute but that was when he reached his peak. Neither he nor the rest of his team seemed likely to score after that.
Jamie Vardy had a chance in the 17th minute after Marc Albrighton ambushed Alexander Bah near the half, but the full-back ran back to atone, deflecting Vardy’s shot for a corner. That set piece almost led to a breakthrough, but Kolar avoided an own goal after Peter Olayinka deflected a clearance attempt.
Slavia gradually began to look like the stronger and more accomplished side. The threat of conceding an away goal may have been lurking in Caglar Soyuncu’s mind when he couldn’t adequately deal with a long pass from behind from Nicolae Stanciu. Sima pounced on him and decided to open fire early, his shot rebounding just wide from 20 yards. Soyuncu continued to look sloppy for much of the game.
Slavia, with her confidence on the rise, forged an even better opening eight minutes later with a delightful move down the right, only for Jan Kuchta to miss the target with a free header from 12 yards. Rodgers had a lot to think about at halftime.
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But his team started the second half slowly. Not even a narrow escape from a corner woke them up. They were soon punished. When Stanciu shot over a wonderful cross from the left, Provod came in unmarked to sweep the ball into the net.
Leicester tried to muster an answer, but Slavia was now much more fluid and robust. Rodgers made a triple change with half an hour to go, but the newcomers made no impact. Sima secured the victory for Slavia with 11 minutes remaining, when he had time to punch a low shot into the net from 20 yards.
“I told the players afterwards that we have to learn from that,” Rodgers said. “I am disappointed with the pair of goals that we conceded, especially the second one, in which we needed to defend more urgently. Today we lacked aggressiveness and intensity in our defense. And with the ball we lacked quality when we reached the last third. We have enjoyed the European experience this year and we will try to return to Europe and be better next year ”.
