The worst team you’ve never heard of: meet the club without a single win this season
Across the last few weeks, most of the top European leagues have concluded, where teams around the continent have had time to reflect upon their season. For some, it has been a memorable season that ended in glory – where that be a famous cup run, a league title or staying up against the odds. For others, it ended in misery, but the reflection is equally as important in which teams can rebuild for next seasons promotion fight.
However, for some teams the season has been so historically disastrous they may feel like there’s no direction (looking at you Man United). But, in comparison to SK Dynamo Ceske Budejovice (known more commonly as ask Dynamo), the team from Manchester may seem as well run as Brentford, and their season as good as Liverpool’s. You see, SK Dynamo didn’t just get relegated and didn’t even just end their season of the Czech first division in last place: no that would be manageable. I mean at the end of the day, someone must finish last every year, and at least there is extra motivation to write your wrongs next year. But Dynamo, from the south of Czechia, ended their season on just 5 points. Yes, you read that correctly. 14 losses, 5 draws and 0 wins with a goal difference of -64. In comparison, FK Pardubice, wo finished 2nd bottom had a goal difference of over half of that. It truly is ‘rock bottom’ in the truest sense. But if that was bad, it’s not even the full story.
You see, in many leagues across the Europe they enter a championship and relegation group where 6 teams enter each division in order to decide the winners and losers of each season. But for Dynamo, this just meant 5 more games of prolonging their suffering as their fate was sealed long before this. They closed the season with 4 more losses and one draw – which was a 0-0. When I first saw Dynamo’s poor form I actually just chalked it up to the team folding in which they would be handed 0-3 losses every week and that would ironically have been a better reality. In fact, when you go through the season it is quite hilarious really. For one, their only win this season was a cup victory, in which they needed penalties to beat an amateur side from the 3rd division, before being knocked out in the next round to a side from the 2nd tier.
Perhaps my favourite fact though, is that of their 6 draws this season, 5 of them were 0-0s, meaning the team scored just 1 goal that effected their points tally at the end of the season. In fact, Dynamo only scored 16 goals all season and conceded a whopping 86, meaning they were conceding an average of 2.4 goals a game. For reference, Derby County in 2007/08 who are widely regarded as one of the worst teams of all time, conceded 2.3 goals per game. So, in this context we are potentially talking about an historically bad team across the whole of Europe, and the evidence proves this. Dynamo are currently on the longest winless run across the top 20 leagues across Europe. So, then the question is: what the fuck has happened this season? Well, it’s firstly important to note that Dynamo were promoted last season through the playoffs, so it wasn’t extremely hard to imagine relegation being a real possibility.
But the real blame can be put upon the new owners of the club, who failed to handle the growing financial problems of the club. The owners threw out the handbook of how to get fans on your side, by sacking the coaching duo of 2 former club legends that had brought them to the first division in the first place. This was not only problematic in the stands, but in the players too because it was the 2 coaches that had overseen the club’s signings that summer. And instead of actually investing in the club, the owners decided to sell all their players of any value to direct rivals. Obviously the most logical solution of how to run a football club.
However, as they say the darkest point of the night is before dawn and often there is a sliver lining to it all. According the Transfermarkt, as fan anger throughout the season turned to sadness and acceptance, there seemed to be a change of attitude. Supporters handed out ‘death certificates’ and held a funeral march in the city, of which I must admit is reasonably funny. Although the sense of unity among the fans is both courageous and uplifting, it could not prevent their fate aa the worst team in the whole of Europe, in a season worth forgetting.
Let’s just hope for their sake that they don’t get promoted next season.
