There will be a moment before kick-off at the Fortuna Arena when Santi Denia stands in front of the Czech bench, probably looking considerably calmer than most of the people behind him.
Then somebody will blow a whistle and the experiment begins.
Czechia against Croatia on Saturday night is technically the opening match of UEFA Nations League Group A3. In reality, it feels more like the first public demonstration of a machine hurriedly assembled over the summer, now having to be switched on in front of 20,000 people.
Patrik Schick has retired from international football. Tomáš Souček is injured. Several other familiar figures from the previous generation have gone too. Czechia have just returned from a miserable World Cup, collecting one point, scoring twice, and finishing bottom of a group containing Mexico, South Korea and South Africa.
Naturally, the reward is a Nations League group containing Croatia, England and world champions Spain.
Football has a sense of humour.
Santi Denia Has Not Come to Prague to Preserve Things
The Czech FA appointed Denia on 31 July, giving the 52-year-old Spaniard a two-year contract with an option to extend it. More significantly, he became the first foreign head coach in Czech national team history.
That alone tells you something about what Pavel Nedvěd and the Czech FA think needs to happen next.
This wasn’t presented as a repair job.
Nedvěd spoke about Denia helping to build a new face for the national team. Denia described League A as possibly the most difficult group Czechia could have received, then asked: why shouldn’t they succeed anyway?
Which is the sort of thing a new manager is supposed to say. “Frankly, lads, Spain look terrifying and we’ll see how we get on” tends not to survive the communications department.
But Denia does arrive with genuine pedigree.
He spent years inside Spain’s international development system, working from the younger age groups upwards. He won the European Under-17 Championship in 2017, the Under-19 version in 2019, reached the Under-21 European Championship final in 2023 and then led Spain to Olympic gold in Paris in 2024.
He knows tournament football.
He knows young players.
More importantly for Czechia, he knows how to build a recognisable way of playing.
That may be the most useful thing he can offer.
So What Will Santi Denia’s Czechia Actually Look Like?
There is always something slightly dangerous about announcing a manager’s “philosophy” before he has managed his first competitive match.
Football has spent the last decade turning coaches into lifestyle brands. Everyone has principles. Everyone wants intensity. Everyone believes in brave football. Nobody has ever arrived at a press conference promising frightened sideways passing and a massive centre-forward being used as emergency scaffolding.
Denia does at least have a substantial body of work from Spain’s youth teams to examine.
His preferred shape has frequently been a 4-2-3-1, using two deeper midfielders rather than the single pivot traditionally associated with Spanish 4-3-3 systems. His 2023 and 2025 Spain Under-21 sides used variations of it, as did his Olympic team.
That matters for Czechia.
The double pivot offers protection while also giving Denia two players through whom possession can be recycled. Ahead of them sits a number ten, with width supplied by attacking players and advancing full-backs.
But don’t mistake Spanish for slow.
Denia’s teams have wanted the ball, certainly. He spoke during the 2023 Under-21 Euros about remaining faithful to Spain’s model even after falling behind. Yet his sides have also pressed aggressively and looked to win the ball back high up the pitch. UEFA’s technical analysis of the 2023 final against England specifically highlighted Spain’s high press and the number of players committed to preventing England building from deep.
The interesting question is how much of that survives transplantation.
Denia previously had Spanish midfielders raised within one of the world’s most developed possession cultures.
He now has about two months, a Czech squad and Luka Modrić coming to Prague.
Slightly different assignment.
This Isn’t Quite the Revolution It Looks Like
Denia’s first squad provides another clue.
Lukáš Ambros, Roman Macek and Matěj Radosta have all received their first senior call-ups. Alex Král and Michal Sáček have returned, with Sáček back in the national setup after a lengthy absence.
But this isn’t 26 strangers wearing name badges at a corporate away day.
Fifteen members of the World Cup squad remain involved.
That feels important.
International football doesn’t really allow revolutions anyway. Club managers can spend July making players repeat the same passing sequence until everyone starts seeing cones in their sleep. National coaches get a handful of training sessions before everyone disappears back to Wolverhampton, Lyon, Prague or wherever else pays their wages.
Denia therefore has to change Czechia without changing everything at once.
One obvious alteration could be the defensive structure. Czech reporting ahead of his debut has suggested the era of routinely using three centre-backs and wing-backs is likely to end, with Denia expected to restore a conventional back four.
And that brings us neatly to Ladislav Krejčí.
Is Ladislav Krejčí Actually Good?
Yes, although “good” is one of those wonderfully useless football words that can mean anything from “competent professional” to “I watched a compilation and have become emotionally invested”.
There is considerably more evidence for Krejčí than that.
The 27-year-old is a 6ft 3in left-footed defender who can also operate in midfield. He came through Zbrojovka Brno, became captain of Sparta Prague and helped them win their first Czech championship in nine years. During his time at Sparta, he was named the league’s Player of the Season and developed a peculiar knack for scoring goals, even though much of his job involves stopping them.
He then moved to Girona, played in La Liga and made seven Champions League appearances before Wolves brought him to England. He’s been relatively vocal about helping the club get back to the Premier League, which has brought him a lot of credit.
There are imperfections. Krejčí isn’t an explosive recovery defender and can look uncomfortable if asked to defend enormous spaces behind him. But that is precisely why Denia’s structure matters.
Give him protection and his strengths become much more useful.
He’s physically imposing, excellent in the air, comfortable stepping into midfield and, crucially for a coach who wants his defenders participating in possession, very comfortable on his left foot.
For anyone specifically wondering whether Krejčí is left-footed: yes. Wolves officially list his preferred foot as left.
They even mention the spectacular left-footed volley he scored for Girona against Villarreal.
Centre-backs are not traditionally supposed to produce those.
Nobody told him.
Croatia Are Not Particularly Considerate First Opponents
Then there is the small issue of who Czechia actually have to play.
Croatia.
The Czechs are searching for their first victory in this fixture and recent history has not exactly been therapeutic.
There is also something almost rude about starting a rebuild against Luka Modrić.
He is 41 now, an age when most footballers have become assistant coaches, television pundits or suspiciously enthusiastic padel players. Modrić is still playing international football because apparently ordinary biological processes are optional.
Alongside Mateo Kovačić, Croatia can still field a midfield capable of turning possession into mild psychological warfare.
That presents Denia with his first fascinating choice.
Does he ask Czechia to impose his ideas immediately?
Or does pragmatism win?
His history suggests those concepts aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Denia wants possession, but he has also shown a willingness to alter pressing structures and defensive organisation according to opponents. His Spain teams could dominate the ball but were also comfortable being direct when spaces appeared.
Against Croatia, the double pivot could be crucial.
Král, Sadílek and Červ provide different combinations of physicality, defensive discipline and progression. Whoever starts will be asked to prevent Modrić and Kovačić turning the centre of the pitch into their private sitting room.
Then Czechia need to move forward quickly when possession changes hands.
That sounds simple.
Most football tactics do until somebody starts running at you.
And Who Scores the Goals Now?
This is the other uncomfortable question.
For years, Czech attacking discussions could eventually arrive at the same conclusion.
Patrik Schick.
Now they can’t.
Adam Hložek therefore enters this cycle with a chance to become something more substantial at the international level, while Pavel Šulc offers another established attacking threat.
There will be temptation to describe somebody as “the new Schick”.
There always is.
Football dislikes vacancies and immediately tries to shove somebody into them.
But Denia would probably be better served by avoiding a direct replacement. Schick’s retirement can instead force Czechia towards a broader attacking structure, where goals are distributed between Hložek, Šulc, Karabec and runners arriving from midfield.
Perhaps that is the point of this whole exercise.
The old Czechia has gone.
Trying to reconstruct it with slightly different people would be an unusually elaborate way of achieving nothing.
What Should Czech Supporters Expect Against Croatia?
Not perfection.
That seems worth establishing.
Denia has inherited a national team recovering from a dreadful World Cup, missing its captain and its leading striker, introducing several new players and attempting to alter a tactical identity that has leaned heavily upon back-three systems in recent years.
His first competitive assignment is Croatia.
Three days later Czechia play England.
Welcome to the job, Santi.
The most interesting thing on Saturday may therefore be less about the result than whether the outline of something new is visible.
Look for the back four.
Look for Krejčí being encouraged to pass forward rather than simply clear danger.
Look for two midfielders sitting beneath the attacking line.
Look for Czechia trying to press Croatia’s build-up rather than permanently retreating.
And look at what happens immediately after Czechia lose possession.
There will inevitably be mistakes because there are always mistakes when a team learns something new. The challenge is distinguishing productive mistakes from the ordinary variety.
Nobody should expect Czechia to suddenly start playing like Spain because they hired a Spaniard.
Football doesn’t work like changing the language settings on your television.
But Denia’s appointment offers the possibility of something Czechia badly needs after the World Cup: direction.
Not a miracle.
Not a “new era” because somebody printed those words on a social media graphic.
Just evidence that there is an idea here.
Saturday night is the first opportunity to see it.
