Dusan Fitzel, from the Czech Republic, is the new Malta football coach.

He told the Czech press yesterday that he had agreed to accept the Malta challenge, taking the place of former national coach Horst Heese of Germany.

The news was carried on FIFA.com, the official website of the world football body.

Fitzel has also accepted to be the technical director of the Maltese Football Association.

Previously, Fitzel was employed by the Czech Football Federation and was the coach of its Under 19 side. He was also an assistant to the national Under 21 team coach.

As a player, he used to play for FK Jablonek in the Gambrinus Liga, which is the top league in the Czech Republic.

From information The Malta Independent has managed to collect, Fitzel also had quite a long spell as the Czech Republic's national Under 20 coach. He had started on a top note with a match in Pesaro, beating Italy 2-0 on 21 March 2001. A month later, his team lost to Poland away 2-1. The next result was a 0-0 draw at home with Finland. Then came a heavy 1-4 defeat at home to Germany in May 2001. Two weeks later, he led the Czech Under 20 team to their debut in that year's FIFA U-20 World Cup - a 0-0 draw against Angola and then his team beat Australia 3-0 in the second match in Roasrio. That was followed by a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Japan, but in the last 16 round, he led the side to a 2-1 victory over Costa Rica, thus reaching the quarter-finals of the tournament, where the Czech Republic was beaten 0-1 by Paraguay.