Kazakh, not Czech, national anthem accidentally played at Czech-Sweden hockey match in Moscow

Moscow, Dec 16 (CTK) – The Czech national anthem was not played before the match of the Czech ice hockey team with Sweden within the Channel One Cup tournament in Moscow on Saturday.

While the Swedish national anthem was played without any problems in the CSKA Moscow arena, Czech players were waiting for their anthem in vain.

Instead, Czech fans sang it.

The organisers started playing the national anthem of Kazakhstan, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes today.

“This is a failure that cannot be fully ruled out. This can happen. Luckily, Czech fans excellently performed in reaction to the technical problems,” Czech team’s spokesman Zdenek Zikmund said.

As soon as the fans finished their singing, they were greatly applauded by the Czech team’s assistants as well as players.

“All of us were somewhat shocked, but the [different] anthem was soon stopped. Well done! This must be said about the fans who reacted in this way,” Czech team’s captain Jakub Jerabek said.

“What a shame,” Czech coach Milos Riha said.

“When the Russians went to play the last match to Saint Petersburg, the tournament seemed to have been over. This is not a good performance of the organisers. But it was wonderful from our fans. Thanks to them we could at least hear the anthem, when it was not played,” Riha said.

The Russian Ice Hockey Federation apologised for the incident, LN writes.

“For technical reasons, the Kazakh instead of Czech anthem was played. We sincerely apologise to the Czech national team and its fans,” it said on its webpage during the match already.