Ahead of the second leg of West Ham United's UEFA Europa Conference League semi-final, Tomáš Souček has The Last Word...
Hello everyone. I hope you are all well.
I feel very good because now it is coming to the end of the season, but we are all ready to play because we are playing for a lot. Me for sure, but I hope the rest as well are ready mentally and physically.
I remember last year that we were very disappointed after the semi-final defeat [by Eintracht Frankfurt in the UEFA Europa League] and even for a few days or a few months after that that we didn’t reach the final and it is even more motivation for all of us that we are one game from the final and we are 100 per cent on it. Especially because we lost last year, we want even more to get there this year.
We are very happy that we have one more goal in our hand. That’s good for us from the home game, but we don’t want to come here and defend our result. We want to play our way and we did a lot of things in the training session on how we want to play.
I didn’t watch the Frankfurt game again because I was so disappointed for many days and maybe even months because I wanted to be in the final.
I remember nearly every set piece or piece we could do better, but we missed at that time, and I even saw we didn’t do well in the first leg, so I was happy we did well in the first leg this time because that’s very important every time. Now we have the second leg and we have to show at least a similar performance as at home.
We have to go from the first minute of the first leg and we did a massive improvement from last year [in that regard]. We are all motivated to get to the final because West Ham didn’t win a trophy for a few years and we want to give our fans a chance to get to a final and that’s our goal for all of us, so we are even more motivated than last year.
It’s true that before, Declan Rice and I were together for quite long and this season Lucas has come and it’s true that the first few games we couldn’t all get in the right direction, but I think sometimes it takes time and now we all know what one another can do on the pitch and how to attack and defend together and all be a good part of the team. I hope we already showed in the last few games that our connection is in the right direction.
We knew from the videos that AZ can play from the goalkeeper in a good style. We also know how they played in the Dutch league and a few games in the Conference League as well from a few clips, and we also learned a lot from the game we played as well. We were very good in the second half so that’s our biggest learning from the game.
Since I knew at the beginning of the season that the final of this competition is in Prague, I told the guys: ‘Come on, we need to go there because it’s my home!’ so it’s a special motivation for me. I know the stadium very well as I went there at the age of ten!
The last two years were perfect in the Premier League. We finished sixth and seventh and got European football for the next season. Obviously this season we are not happy with our position in the Premier League and we want to be higher, but if we win this trophy I think it will be a very successful season because West Ham didn’t have the chance to lift a trophy for quite a few years, so it would be perfect for us. It would also bring European football for another season, so I would say it would an incredible season if this happened.
