Asunto: National Team

So.... What are you using to make the animated gifs?

This little beauty :)

This is the competition for the 4 3rd place teams to qualify into the next stage of the world cup.
At present we sit in 2nd due to points, but based on GD we are equal 5th, so lets hope the points keep us in the lead

Österreich 12 Pnts +21
Australia 11 Pnts +17
Peru 10 Pnts +30
Canada 9 Pnts +30
------------------------------
Norge 9 Pnts +28
Portugal 9 Pnts +17
Belarus 9 Pnts +12
Colombia 9 Pnts +10
Bulgaria 9 Pnts +7
Venezuela 9 Pnts +2
Ireland 9 Pnts +0
Sverige 9 Pnts -2
Cymru 9 Pnts -6
Bosnia 8 Pnts +3

only 2 points more...won't be easy. Let's hope for another good draw...

Photoshop, I'd imagine.

Well with Portugal defeating NZ that shifts us back to 3rd in the top 3rd placed qualifiers. We really need to get a result against either Brazil or Croatia now to be safe to qualify. I'm hoping it comes tonight, although I'm a little edgy about this game tonight. I have a feeling it could end up on a similar scale as last week, a lot depends on what they decide to do. I've got a tactic set up currently, making modifications every so often to try and improve different positions. Could be quite an interesting game.

Still around 4 hours to the game, so plenty of options for me to switch a few things, although it will be largely tweaks. The trick is once again to cut out Brazil's midfield, but hopefully this time I've managed to eliminate the shaky situations that we had last time around.

Still fiddling around with throw ins and minor things, just to try to reduce the time they get on the ball.

Won't be easy, though Andy is well prepared with his unearthly form.

Funny thing that both in sokker and buzzerbeater I have best Aussie player and I'm not even from Australia :P

Our group is far more interesting then others....

It will be hard game yours with Brazil....but no matter what, until last 2 games everything will be open....

yeah it will be just as tough as before. Can't believe Poland lost to Ukraine though, even if you did go in with a very reduced side ;).

It was u18 :)

And Australia is used to play in tough groups ;)

Yeah, although it would be nice to get an easy group, at the same time by having the harder groups the campaign doesn't get as boring and also tests whether we can compete against the stronger sides and I think we've shown it recently.

Yup, with those results we'd have a chance to get out of group at WC. Just need to get some luck if we qualify..

Why on earth were the defenders that far upfield :@. They were never meant to be that far upfield :@. That's just asking for Brasil to tear em apart which they did. They should have been back at least half a square more. Also at least 3 of the 7 goals came from defenders fumbling, which is an absurd amount. I'm also come to the conclusion that after a pass defenders don't react at all. Half the time they were meant to close the gap they didn't even though I had them closing the gap from about the 2nd top square since that was a problem last time :@.

Not happy, expecting a fair chunk of criticism but there's a lot left for me to find out explanations to.

I think you are being hard on yourself. I thought the tactic was pretty much spot on. Especially offensively - the winger and striker positioning was excellent.

Brazil did a fantastic job of finding the seams in the Australia defense. The seams weren't that big - they threaded the needle time after time.

The real problem was Ando. Neither keeper was good, but I've never seen Ando play so poorly. Think it was the 70th minute before he actually made a stop. :/

Can't complain. We've gone with very aggressive tactics against quality sides. The odds of doing that and never paying for it were always low.

Obviously we gave up a lot of through-balls from deep in their own-half which we normally don't do.

All that said, I thought their tactic was very well thought out. Their mid-3 did well against our mids and they had Willis covered well. We didn't get enough time in the midfield to really make them pay for essentially having 2 at the back.

I still think putting three goals past Brazil is a good achievement.

not to mention the INSANE amount of dodgy offsides, don't think i have seen so many in a single match...

and i thought they nerfed 1-on-1s...