The squad of our team also changed in the winter. Jan Knapík, Tomáš Koubek, Lukáš Masopust, Dominik Mašek, Lukáš Mašek, Vojtěch Stránský and Šimon Gabriel joined the team, while Adam Ševínský, Lukáš Hasalík, Denis Halinský and Olaf Kok left for another club.
Meet the new players
Centre-back Jan Knapík moved to Slovan from FK Teplice. After breaking his ankle, he made his first appearance of the season on 23rd November and crowned his comeback with a goal. In the last two games before the winter break against our team and Slavia Prague, Knapík also captained Teplice.
Tomáš Koubek should be familiar to everyone from Liberec. The now 32-year-old was already in goal for FC Slovan in the 2015/16 season before playing for Sparta Prague, Stade Rennes and FC Augsburg. In his first Bundesliga season, Koubek was Augsburg´s regular goalkeeper before becoming second choice. He cancelled his contract last summer and is now back in the Liberec box.
Lukáš Masopust has already celebrated three championships and three cup wins in his career. After a long injury break and little playing time in the first half of the season, the 31-year-old midfielder wants to really get going again in the spring and get close to the 300 league games mark.
Dominik Mašek, a talented defender from Dynamo Busweis who played his first games in the Chance Liga in the first half of the season, has been signed. The 22-year-old used the winter training camp to get his first minutes with Slovan and is hoping for many more appearances in the league.
Namesake Lukáš Mašek is 20 years old and has mostly played in attack or as an attacking midfielder at FK Mladá Boleslav this season. He scored three goals in the Chance Liga and one goal in the Conference League qualifiers.
Vojtěch Stránský also comes from the city of Škoda and plays in the centre of midfield. Towards the end of the first half of the season, he increasingly featured in the starting line-up and also scored a goal against Slovácko. Like Mašek, Stránský has already gained experience in various national youth teams.
A few days before the start of the second half of the season, Šimon Gabriel also signed a contract with our team. The 23-year-old defender arrives from MFK Ružomberok in Slovakia, although the Czech youth international played his first professional minutes for Mladá Boleslav in 2020 already.
Four games, two wins
FC Slovan Liberec played four friendly matches in preparation for the second half of the season. After a clear 5:1 victory against Žižkov, the team travelled to the training camp in Marbella, Spain. There, Slovan Liberec lost 1:0 against Malmö and then 3:2 against Wolfsberg. In the final preperation match against Raków Częstochowa, however, we managed a final 1:0 victory, which gives us optimism for the first competitive match against Baník Ostrava.
The highlights of the preparation matches:
