Asunto: National Team U21

Haha, leading it without even playing a game 2 weeks in

Table after week 2 results

Initially I thought we’d avoided group of death, then noticed you only play those from the other group!! :D
Should have enough in the tank to get to final barring upsets.

Hard fought win against NZ with equal shots and our sniper Hickmann scoring two goals from 1 shot.

Don't know what makes him so good, but he just loves scoring, so he will keep getting selected.

Chapman got moved from Striker to DM for the past two matches and has performed well, although I fully expect him to be back in the striker position next season (or this season if his form picks up again).

Our number 1 striker at present, O'Sullivan, still hasn't actually played a game for the U21 team due to low form, but I hold out hopes his form will go up in time for the finals
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Given the lead India and Australia have taken in to the final week of the group stage, it is likely we will play India in the semi finals for a chance to play Kazahstan or (likely) Indonesia in the final.

For a little insight in to the seeds of these teams. World Rank is based on the start of the tournament

Australia (1) - 34
India (3) - 59
Kazakhstan (6) - 86
Indonesia (2) - 54

Hickmann continues hit charge in scoring goals for Australia, whilst I gave Elias O'Sullivan a well deserved cap (as form has plagued him all season).

Our pretty consistent back 4 once again held another clean sheet along with Munn, and Chapman continues to slot in wherever he is needed.

The midfield has been unchanged as a 3 all season, with Scuderi and Schofield sharing the number 9 position.

Next up will be one of our toughest matches of the cup against India in the semi finals. This is a matchup we have had in a number of Asian cup finals series in the past

Below is the post from the Asian Cup Forum

And that is the final round of the group phase of the Asian Cup.



It ended up being a very tight table at the top.
New Zealand will be ruing their forfeit with it being the difference between a semi finals birth and now playing for the cup title, however Kazakhstan will be looking to make the most of this opportunity against Indonesia.

In group B, just 1 point separated India from Daehan Minguk, with the undefeated Daehan Minguk just missing out.

So next weeks draw is as follows. Please make all matches CUP matches.
For Sunday and Monday, only the HOME team to invite the away team. The home team is the first one listed.
If by Tuesday you are an away team and have not received an invite, please paste here and invite the home team with CUP rules.

Finals Week 1

CUP SEMI FINALS

Indonesia vs Kazakhstan
Australia vs India

PLATE FINALS - ie best of the rest
New Zealand vs Hong Kong
Daehan Minguk vs Ozbekistan


And the showdown to avoid last place
Singapore vs Iran

2nd last game for the current crop of U21s for anyone looking to watch their players one last time. For some of these players, it may be the second last or last NT game they play.

Hope everyone has been enjoying either watching the games or knowing their player has been a part of the U21 team (I know I'm guilty of not watching a lot of my senior guys play for the NT but still get a lot of enjoyment knowing they are).

Taking on India, it should be well worth the watch.

Well unfortunately I subbed the wrong defender off (subbed our number 1 defender off) accidentally (as I was setting up a tactic whilst trying to pay toll charges I did not occur) and it cost us in the end, our weak stamina defender crawling himself along the pitch for the last 80minutes of the game. He will be a beast of a defender in the future, but at present can't play 40 minutes let alone 120min

So we went down 3:2 in a penalty shootout.

Congrats India on winning and good luck for the final.

We will play off for 3rd place next week
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It happens. Annoying as im sure it for you I think you’ve still managed to outperform with the side we have and have done so for a number of seasons now.

Yup gotta take the wins with the losses, and given we won the past 2 Asian Cups, it was due for another winner to take the mantle

Fair to say the semi-final as good as the final…expect India to win it.

So a bit of an update.

Indonesia went on to beat India 4-1 in the final.

We took Bronze with an emphatic 14-0 win over Kazakhastan, a result that took us back in to the top 34 u21 nations, which I believe the World Cup Group stage is drawn from the current U21 ranks as of this week (not those rankings after the upcoming match, as I got caught out by this last time).

This should mean that we have a 2nd seed spot, making out life have a higher chance of having a slightly easier draw to go through.
Unless of course now we finally got here, we get drawn in to one of the 4 5 team groups, which makes it extremely difficult to get through to the world cup group phase

Always a risk to be drawn in a 5 team group but I think half of the 5 team groups get the 2nd team through so as long as we do better than 2 of the other groups runner up we’d qualify. Let’s not get a 5 team group though just to be safe.

And so comes the end of another successful U21 season

We didn't quite come home with the Asian cup this time, but we did manage to move ourselves up in to the 2nd pot for World Cup Qualifications for the first time, coming in at Rank 34.

We have managed to get drawn in a 6 team group which is great, but we have also managed to draw quite a hard 3rd pot team (more to come).

Once again I thank everyone for your hard work with training and hope you are all enjoying seeing the U21 side succeed.

We are going to lose some absolute champions this season, but also lose a group of hard working strikers who whilst being far from the quality we have had in past seasons, all stood up to make up for it, sharing around the NT honours. One in particular was Matthew Hickmann who was regularly not in the top 3 or 4 skills wise, but somehow always had the best conversion rate by quite some distance.

We will be losing the following regular NT players

ATT
Heath Chapman - 17 matches, 7 goals, 4 assists - the allrounder who played ATT/MID/DEF filling in wherever he was required. Hard to tell whether he will play for seniors, and if he does, would he be better trained as a striker or def - agbell
Matthew Hickmann - 12 matches, 22 goals, 2 assists - with a goal rate of almost 2 goals per match, he is the kind of player that makes you think there may be something more to goal scoring than what we see
Ante Goulding - 15 matches, 15 goals, 3 assists - an absolute work horse who would often come on for half a match and dominate the tired defenders - gulzzy
Elias O'Sullivan - 1 match - the highest skilled but just couldn't pick up his form - oscar
Mick Richards - 8 matches, 9 goals, 1 assist - missed a lot of the early rounds but came back stronger than even - philly
Terje Stanton - 2 matches, 2 goals, 3 assists - limited opportunities but stood up when required - philly


MID
Marshall Schofield - 17 matches, 1 goal, 3 assists - this guy will be big moving forward. One of the best MIDs that have come through the U21 system - achmid
Ace Scuderi - 19 matches, 10 assists - right on schfields tail, I expect these two to dominate for the senior team in the future - cometer
Barney Dawson - 4 matches - the few chances he got were at DM and performed adequately - philly
Jay Viduka - 14 matches, 4 assists - the 3rd of the unbreakable trio. Noone else really got a chance outside of being the odd sub or playing as DM with mid orders
Honourable mention - Stuart Theoklitos - 0 matches - on the bench all season, deserved a cap but it never eventuated

DEF
John Brown - 24 matches - playing his debut at 19. This guy will be big, may even be a 100 match superstar in the future - achmid
Dylan Thomson - 20 matches - another great player as can be seen by the number of matches he has played, will represent in the future too - panxxxo
Talon Casserly - 12 matches - a regular fixture in the back line all season - oscar
Paolo Villafane - 2 matches - subbed in when he got the chance, but form hit
Scott Gillard - 1 match - good for the depth but didn't get a shot during the season with such a star studded back line - cometer

GK
Honourable mention - Ian Burton - 0 matches - has played second fiddle in reserve for many seasons, initially held out by last seasons keeper, and then with Munn training hard, stuck behind Munn too. Unfortunately at his skill level, his representative days are over

*Green means they are either currently being trained by Aussie users or were very recently sold from an Australian user*
As we can see, we are still the primary trainers of the top U21s.
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Time for a new round of season stats to start the season. Once again allowing us to see how we have progressed over the past 12 or so seasons since I started collecting stats when I took over the team (for objective stats rather than subjective ones often used by other managers).




To take a look back at the previous season start of season stats, one thing that was very interested was we went in to the season with one of the worst average values we have had in a long long time, yet somehow, we managed to have both the highest season rating and highest start of season rating we have ever hard. Something that shocked me given we don't have a beast goalie and our strikers were above average at best.

Looking forward to this season, we have actually bounced back a little with average squad value, which getting an even younger average age. We have stayed stable at rank 34 (although the two previous rank 34's were the week or two after the world cup qualifications were drawn), and our ranking points have continued to go up.

The max rating in the first 4 weeks for this season (67) are artifically low given we have only had one match, but even after just one match, we can see the strength of the team is in the top half of those I have coached, and pretty in line with what I have had to work with since season 58.

I noticed last season I mentioned the goal of hanging on to 2nd pot and we managed to do this

Below is the current U21 and U19 squads. This is just for a bit of fun, a lot of players only just missed out and I expect many players not in these lists to play for the Australian sides so don't take this as gospel.

If you have a player you would like to discuss their chances of playing, please contact me.

Now for a bit of fun, here are the teams