Asunto: National Team U21

Great game from our boys, taking on a country with over 11x the number of users we have (more like 20x as most of our "users" don't even play) and giving up a 10 rating point difference.

2:2 draw against the 2nd ranked U21 side currently (we are 39th at present, which is probably too high for our players skills), certainly one of our greatest achievements.

This draw seals our path to the U21 World Cup Finals next season, where we will be taking on a bunch of other top teams, despite the fact we only just scraped in to the 3rd basket. The good thing is, based on rankings, most teams we will be taking on will be "weaker" than the Espana side.

Great work to everyone who has been training for the U21 side. This campaign would not have even been considered a possibility 11 seasons ago when I took over the team
(editado)

Yeah a great result although fortunate to get it (and unfortunate not to have stolen it when we hit the lead late on). Greenwood whenever he got the ball in behind or side on to the defense caused all sorts of pain. Just didn’t get the ball in those positions often enough.

Jobs not done yet though. We’ve qualified yes but we’re still within striking distance of Spain if they drop points next round. That would give us a top 2 pot for the main draw.

In any case, we need to win against Honduras to try and see if we can secure a 3rd pot for the main draw which would give us a chance of drawing a decent group.

Who knows, without Burkes injury last night in my friendly match, it may have been just enough to clinch it. There's quite a difference in skills between him and his replacements on the field.

Greenwood caused mayhem when he got the ball. Great player and talent for the future along with Parkinson. And Boyd may be even better, just need his updated skills.

Whilst there were some silly decisions when we had open players up front that would have led to more shots and possibly more goals, overall they performed as well as can be expected given the rating difference.

I actually already knew the final score prior to it occurring so when it got to 80th minute and I knew there were two goals still to be scored, it was interesting to see how they would occur.

So, obviously I'll be running for U21s again after being the first coach to take us to the World Cup finals in 13 qualification cycles (26 seasons).

Big shoutout to the first Australian U21 team to Qualify for the World Cup group stage in 13 cycles (26 seasons or approximately 7-8 real life years)

Squad

GK - Travis Choony (21)
GK - Scott Hart (20)

DEF - Perry Houston (21)
DEF - Morgan Santalab (21)
DEF - Oscar Sekulovski (21)
DEF - Ron Piper (20)
DEF - Loyd Turner (20)
DEF - Todd Burns (20

MID - Tristin Rayner (21)
MID - Andrew Wilson (21)
MID - Josip Burke (21)
MID - Karl Sevin (20)

ATT - Terje Parkinson (21)
ATT - Anton Boyd (21)
ATT - Callum Greenwood (21)

Honourable mention to a few players who filled in on short notice

Jay Panopoulos, Blair Yang, Saxon Mundine, Christian Renaud, Joshua Moss, William Aloisi, Husein Skaife, Steven Brain

And thank you to all the managers who played a part on training these players, the players that lead the way to the high pot ranking, and the future players who will do their best moving forward

Fabulous to see that this team is no longer being filled with players from just a couple of teams. Great work by the active managers and well dome achmid for driving this forward season after season.

Australia is growing stronger and stronger season by season under you command, general Achmid :P
Great job so far, mate. Hope you can keep it up. Putting all hands on deck to achieve the goal!

A few more graphs to help see our progress. This is the data I have been doing with numbers in lines, but after 11 seasons, it's getting long and hard to follow.

On the x-axis is season number when I took over.

Tonight we took on Israel in our first World Cup match in 26 seasons, and boy did we dominate the match.

Going in to half time we really should have been at least 2:0 up, and by the end of the match, at least double that, but alas, we walk away with a 2:0 win (13 shots to 0 shots)

Not too long in to the 2nd half, Israel were shown a red card, and surprisingly, we actually dominated less after this than before it.

We had many, many crosses from the win to the striker, all follow the same path....straight to the goalies about 2-3 steps in front of our striker.

It was certainly an interesting match, and a win we had to get to have any chance in this group, however the more deserved for and against would have been nice going in to Round 2 against the #1 team in the group.

Solid result. Sometimes a red to a defender can mean you get caught offside more often as its one less in the line. However, yeah we didn't really take full advantage despite Myers having clear space.

At this stage I think you'll need to snag one more win or 2 draws to progress but stranger things have happened before.

u r amazing!!

Congratz, u r strong tactically.

I think u could get some points in the next matches. Usually Brazil is not tactically strong but they have so many stars :P. Dont know the style of the new coach.

Why did u change the GK? I think was very risky

Thanks mate.

Changing keepers is definitely risky but unfortunately he needs to be changed due to how he has been changed.

Unfortunately the other two teams in the group drew, which was the one result we didn't want from them, making it harder to progress to the next round (as we really will need a win against one of them rather than a draw), but we will keep fighting and see where this campaign can take us

But the second gk is not as good. And now he is sold. The discipline will fall

I think the draw of the 2 strong is good for u.
I understand you prefer ypur opponent to be 0 rather than 1 point. But in wc anyone can go to next round, so right now there is not a clear strong team

Best of luck for the next game.

Actually our second GK has better discipline than our #1.
Can't give too much away in a public forum, but he definitely requires subbing when we have the chance to do so

Good effort. Coughed up a goal right at the death but we almost booked our spot in the last 16. Surprised you only used 1 sub but maybe you had some other orders for when they came on. Feel like our defs definitely struggled that last 20 and was waiting for us to concede earlier given they made subs to both their strikers. Still a draw keeps us in it, though not as sweet as it was looking towards the end there.