87% pass accuracy, 1 unsuccessful touch: West Ham player a different animal on international duty despite shock 3-0 defeat

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West Ham United have a whopping 11 players away on international duty right now.

David Moyes has built an incredible squad at West Ham, and having 11 players on international duty with their respective countries is evidence of that.

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The Hammers have had the odd international player here and there in the past, but never 11 at one specific time.

Tomas Soucek is one of our internationals. He’s the captain of the the Czech Republic and has 62 international caps for his country to his name.

The 28-year-old has actually been much improved for West Ham this season but even so, he’s still a completely different animal when playing for his country…

West Ham player a different beast on international duty

Soucek played for the Czech Republic last night during their 3-0 defeat to Albania.

Now, Albania are a much improved side, but the Czechs losing so comfortably definitely was not expected.

And Soucek put in an interesting performance. The main criticism of him amongst the West Ham fans is his poor passing ability and weak first touch.

However, he looked like a different man last night. The 28-year-old had 89 touches of the ball and recorded only one unsuccessful first touch. He chalked up an 87% completion rate from 76 attempted passes. Soucek played two accurate long balls as well (Who Scored).

Now, in the Premier League he has averaged just 71.2% pass completion rate from only 20 passes per match, with just 0.5 long balls attempted per game (Who Scored).

The former Slavia Prague midfielder clearly plays a completely different role for his country than he does for his club.

Tomas Soucek is obviously far more of a play-maker for the Czech Republic than he is for the Hammers, and that’s fine by me. We have a role for him that works at the London Stadium. All that I care about is how these players perform for the club.

With so many West Ham players currently away on international duty, I’m just hoping that they all return injury free.

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