West Ham midfielder Tomas Soucek has warned his teammates they’ll need to step up their performance levels if they are to overcome Eintracht Frankfurt on Thursday night.
The Hammers suffered a 2-1 semi-final first leg defeat to Frankfurt at the London Stadium last week and head to Deutsche Bank Park needing to put in a special performance if they want to progress to the Europa League final. This situation is not alien to David Moyes ’ side this season though, with both their previous knockout ties in Europe being settled in the second leg.
West Ham lost to Sevilla in their last-16 tie before winning the second leg to advance before, in the quarter-finals, they drew 1-1 a home with Lyon before producing a memorable 3-0 win in France to progress to the last four.
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Now, as they hope to turn their semi-final tie on its head in Germany, midfielder Soucek has said the Hammers should take inspiration from their previous fixtures into Thursday’s massive game.
“This is a good way [to think] as we won both the other games in the second leg,” Soucek told the Evening Standard. “We need to do it again now. It gives us confidence and we know that we can be a better team on Thursday because we already played against them and we are quite confident.
“But we have to do 100 per cent of us, or maybe more, during the game. We have been showing spirit all season, maybe for two years since Covid started. We have developed a great atmosphere and on Thursday we will need it even more because it is so difficult but so close to the final. Our spirit has to be incredible from the first second because we know what happened in the first leg, we conceded in 40 seconds. From the first second, we have to be ready.”
West Ham’s domestic form has taken a turn for the worse of late, with defeats to Brentford, Chelsea and Arsenal, as well as a home draw with Burnley, leaving their chances of qualifying for the Champions League via league position extinguished. That means winning the Europa League is their only chance of reaching Europe’s top club competition, which Soucek said had to be West Ham’s aim.
“It's one thing to get to the final, to be so close to get to the trophy of the Europa League and get a medal," he added. “The second thing is to get into the Champions League. They are two big things that we want, but it is still a really difficult step to go in the second leg."
