Asunto: National Team U21

it was as if paul scholes, steven gerrard, and frank lampard combined their right legs and pulled the trigger on the perfect volley =/

or just essien decided to have a long range crack ;)

I wish Drum had pulled the trigger a couple of times. :P

What's even more annoying, is that strike was going wide of the goals anyway before Copping went to save it :(. The keeper was completely outside the goal line when he deflected it back in.

I think you may be right... I found this in Copping's locker.

Hey now, Kris is a fine young lad... or at least he was before he left these shores anyway ;P


I don't know if we've got any high tech midfielders but something I'd think would work well at U21 level would be to have a fairly deep set mid played with the ATT order. Especially when we are committing so many people to defense, what we really want is a mid/wing that takes the defense on and just gallops up the side of the park rather than passing to an overwhelmed striker too early. As long as you set the instructions right (ie he doesn't get anywhere near the goals) he should hardly ever shoot the ball and we'd get into more dangerous situations more often. Again, this is all moot if we don't have the right player. Even some high tech DM's would work better if they dribbled the ball up through the center more often.

Willis would have done better! Next week I'll start training him in passing to make you pick him!!

He came very close to selection today. Passing will certainly help his chances, but Copping will pull away from him in keeper. It's a shame about Copping's form, but he still pulled off some good saves tonight.

Especially when we are committing so many people to defense, what we really want is a mid/wing that takes the defense on and just gallops up the side of the park rather than passing to an overwhelmed striker too early.

Yeah, I think Erdogans our highest tech midfielder at U21 level from what I remember but doesn't have enough pace/passing to damage teams often enough. I suppose he did get 1 assist tonight though :).

His passes hit the target more than Fihaki's... go figure. :P

It would've been magic is Fihaki had landed that last one on Drum's head.

Would have been a great result to grab a draw but it wasn't to be :(. Probably 7/10 times that last ball would have found the head.

or foot, given the quality of fihaki's passes...

Brilliantly done :). That's the best way to get revenge for them beating us twice in the qualifying campaign, beating them when it counts most :D.

Now if it's ok I'll go and get my heart checked out ;). I got more nervous as the game went on when it was clear our pressing had tired out our back row and our midfield hadn't come back enough to prevent through balls. Then when they got that free kick in the 89th I thought, that would be right, drawing for the jaws of victory.

Fortunately they stuffed that up and we're still alive to progress :). Depending on what happens, we could even qualify with a loss next week so long as it's close.
(editado)

Booya, wooo!!!

That was so even. Their near-misses, then us up the other end.
We took a few chances with the tactic and had some luck. HUGE result!

More shots, 2 goals from 9 attempts. Not a bad return.

Willis out unfortunately but Copping did a great job in his place. Solid performances across the park in ambitious positions.

Wow!

Thanks to cometer for the great scouting. He was responsible for that formation, targeting their weakest points. I reckon we have the best brains-trust of any NT.

Thanks, although I'd say whilst I threw up an idea for the formation we ended up using, the execution (players used, positioning, shifting, movement) was all yours and that assisted the win.

So I feel in the end you were the one responsible for the win, as you had the final say into what ended up happening and were the one responsible for getting it to execute :).

As always though, it's a team effort and without it, we simply wouldn't be performing as we have been.

Suomi will be an interesting week. What I can say though is it's good we've (Australia) broken that duck of world cup performances. Though it isn't quite the same thing as the senior world cup, we've at least scored goals and have secured the first win at the highest possible level (for U21 NT's).

Think we've already exceeded expectation, I guess it's just a case of how far can we raise the bar :).