Tomas Soucek has admitted his pride in captaining West Ham with the captaincy role still up for grabs.

West Ham played their 5th and penultimate pre-season match against Rennes, losing 3-1 away from home. A long-range strike from Santamaria opened the scoring, but it was Tomas Soucek’s headed effort that levelled the game. Arnaud Kalimuendo helped regain Rennes’ lead with a touch past Fabianski, and an own-goal from Angelo Ogbonna sealed the win for Rennes.

Soucek admitted that he saw positives from the game despite the loss, stating “You want to play against the best teams and Stade Rennais are one of those – they finished fourth in their league, and they’ve showed us that they are a good side. We are happy we can play a pre-season game against these types of teams.”

However, he also stated that the team are not happy about the result, but getting some minutes was good for the fitness of the team ahead of the first Premier League game.

“We are obviously not happy with the result but we got good minutes in our legs. It’s important for us to get into the right condition for the first game in the Premier League, so I’m happy that many of us played 90 minutes and lots of us played 65-70 minutes. It’s important, but I also think we need to improve.”

Nayef Aguerd took the armband for the game and emerged a potential captain candidate ahead of the new season, but handed the armband over to Tomas Soucek on the hour mark after being substituted for Angelo Ogbonna. Soucek currently captains his national side too – Czech Republic – and has done since for little over two years.

“I’ve captained my former team (Slavia Prague) and I do it for my country as well, so when I’m asked to do it for West Ham then I will always be proud to do so. It’s a big thing – but even if not, I try to do the same things on the pitch for the team. I always want to give my maximum on the potch and I want to talk with the guys and help them out.”

When asked about his goal, Soucek explained that helping the team with goals is “perfect” and would like to help bring the team some points, but was disappointed to concede twice after his goal.

“I am always happy when I can help the team with a goal. I was happy to get into that area and bring the equaliser. I suppose then I was a bit disappointed that we conceded two more in the final part of the game. But I’m happy to get on the score-sheet. I had another chance to score too and, if I can help the team in that way, it will be perfect. I hope that I can do that and bring us some points.”

Written by Joe Murray