Updates: 12/27/2021 2:10 PM
Released: 27.12.2021, 14:10

Prague – Forward Patrik Schick has set out for his first victory in the Golden Ball for the best Czech footballer of the season. The 25-year-old gunner of Leverkusen and the national team mastered the autumn part of the 26th edition of the Club of Sports Journalists with a score of 826 points. West Soum from West Ham, ahead of the second defender of the championship, has a significant difference of 207 points. The third place is held by Verona midfielder Antonín Barák. The overall winner of the Golden Ball will be known after counting the votes for autumn and spring.

Schick was the top scorer of the European Championship together with the Portuguese Cristian Ronald with five goals in the summer and helped the Czech team to unexpectedly advance to the quarterfinals. He kept the formula in the fall. Although he was eliminated for a month due to an injury, he scored in the Bundesliga and has already scored 16 goals in second place in the gunners’ table, losing three goals to Robert Lewandowski of Bayern Munich.

The former player of the Prague clubs Sparta and Bohemians 1905, Sampdorie Genoa, AS Roma and Leipzig, broke Leverkusen’s record in the first half of the league season after only 16 laps. At the same time, even before the end of the autumn, he matched the Czech player’s best shooting performance in the five most prestigious top competitions in one year. Schick scored one goal in the autumn for the national team.

So far, Schick finished best in the Golden Ball in the Golden Ball, which he took last year and in the previous year 2016/17. Then he won the spring part. None of the 57 voting journalists missed him this autumn. As many as 50 journalists ranked him in first place and placed worst in fourth place. The national team gunner recorded the best autumn result in the poll since the 2014/15 season, when former Sparta forward David Lafata scored 833 points in the first half of the year.

The winner of the last two years of the Golden Ball, midfielder Souček, did not have such an extraordinary autumn this year and is losing over 200 points to Schick. The 26-year-old national team captain was ranked first by only four journalists, while he was ranked second on 31 ballots.

Another 171 points back is midfielder Barák, who has so far finished second in the poll for 2017/18. Verona midfielder has a difference of 12 points on the fourth goalkeeper of Olympiakos Piraeus Tomáš Vaclík, the winner of the Golden Ball from the 2018/19 season. The order between the third and fifth place is very balanced, another West Ham player defender Vladimír Coufal loses 13 points to Vaclík. The Spartan offensive midfielder Jakub Pešek, who is the highest-ranking representative of the Czech league, is in sixth position with an already significant deficit.

Five players took first place in at least one of the ballots in the autumn. In addition to Schick and Souček, Barák and Vaclík once appeared in the highest position, as did Spartan defender Ondřej Čelůstka, who overall holds up to 17th position. At least one vote was won by 43 players, the same as last year. With a tie, he decided on a higher number of better places.

Compared to last year, there were five changes in the elite eleven in the autumn. This time, goalkeeper Ondřej Kolář, midfielders Vladimír Darida and Alex Král and forward Lukáš Juliš and Tomáš Pekhart were not among the best. They are replaced in the top eleven by the winged Pešek, forward Jan Kuchta and midfielders Barák, Michal Sadílek and Tomáš Holeš, who are the ninth highest ranked player in the Czech league leader and Slavia defender.

The Golden Ball votes in two rounds. The overall winner will be announced after the votes, when the votes for the spring part will be added to the results from the autumn. The record holder of the survey is goalkeeper Petr Čech with 12 firsts.

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