Asunto: [U21]LaBamba

Congrats MarcL! Also congrats to LaBamba on yet another great season as under 21 coach~

Thanks. :)

Easy enough to get 7 in the squad when you're training 22.
Glad to see that most of the ones that I've sold on specifically for training have gone to good clubs and tend to make the squad too.

It's going to get interesting now when i sell off a bunch of 18 year olds. Hopefully they will also progress from here.

Thanks Schalla. And since the election time is here again, I would like to continue that for yet another season, so please cast your votes for me :-)

Won't have big speach this time, I think you know at this point what you can expect from me and I want to go on as your U21 coach with the same enthusiasm as of now.

Next season our team is going to be much weaker in defense and midfield than in previous 2 seaons, but finally we should have some strenght in the attack, so it will be interesting change. There are no WCQ so I'm gonna try to book only weaker teams for friendlies to try to keep improving our rankings, so we can be drawn into more favourable WCQ group in the future..

maybe in the future when my vacation ends, if i will have time, and i will not recive the 100th forum ban, i will train again strikers, too bad that Ledwaba isn't getting the best training routine at his new team, i trained him from 16 yo and this situation make me wanna buy him back, but i can't, now when i changed my training on Def's.
(editado)

Review against Marocco (Al Maghrib)

One man show for the ages aka Ledwaba's 6 goals on 6 shots destruction of Marocco:-) MarcL could remember this, but I'm just guessing is that an all time individual record for South Africa?
Anyway it is coold to have competent strikers after 2 seasons, but it is not so cool to have lame defenders :-) They won't be able to defend ANYBODY this season.
Marocco is the type of team we would outplay in previous seasons, but we would struggle to score..not this time. Not to mention we could have scored more than 7 goals, there was the unnecessary cross bar, plus another 4-5 wasted break away chances.
I think we should be outscoring weaker teams this season easilly, but against better teams we could be in big trouble, much more than in previous seasons, because of the subpar defense and midfield..luckily it's the friendlies season and I'm able to schedule weaker teams:-)
(editado)

It's not a record by Ledwba. I looked back through the top scoring matches and found these.

Lechesa scored 9 goals against Vietnam on 22/1/2010 (won 9-0)
Nkosi scored 7 against Kazakhstan on 13/8/2010 (won 9-0)

Lechesa scored 6 against Macedonia on 25/12/2009 (won 6-3)
Roskruge scored 6 against Algeria? on 20/11/2009 (won 7-0)

A couple of players scored 5 goals in a single match.
Das Neves (twice), Cameron and Lechesa

Wow 9 goals.. Ok it's only record with me as a coach :-)

Next season I'm trying to schedule all African teams for friendlies (except Ghana, whos coach ignored our deal last season) to confirm that we have the best team in Africa. We are easilly the highest rank team and we are attacking TOP60 in th World.

Those are our friendlies so far. Question marks are not confirmed yet. I wanted to schedule all African teams, other than Cameroun who is participating in African Cup (I wanted to be part of that also, but it seems the organizer Dimijuni has booked only 1 African team - themselves :-), Tunis (whos manager is not replying to mails) and Ghana (waiting for election results - don't want to play with the current manager as he ignored our last friendly agreement).

As I said I'm trying to select weaker teams (except derby vs Czech. rep.) to get better rankings for next WCQ and also those that we've never faced before.

I'm leaving 1 spot for Ghana and 1 for Australia (where my friend maťka is running for elections), so that means 1 spot is remaining, is there any special team you guys want to play against?

edit - so there won't be any African Cup after all..

Week 01 - 28/09/2012: Al Maghrib OK
Week 02 - 05/10/2012: al-Jaza’ir OK
Week 03 - 12/10/2012: Ghana OK
Week 04 - 19/10/2012: Kenya OK
Week 05 - 26/10/2012: Misr OK
Week 06 - 02/11/2012: Cameroun OK
Week 07 - 09/11/2012: Singapore U20 OK
Week 08 - 16/11/2012: Sénégal OK
Week 09 - 23/11/2012: Īrān OK
Week 10 - 30/11/2012: Nigeria ?
Week 11 - 07/12/2012: Sakartvelo OK
Week 12 - 14/12/2012: Guatemala U20 OK
Week 13 - 21/12/2012: El Salvador U20 OK
Week 14 - 28/12/2012: Česká republika OK
Week 15 - 04/01/2013: Costa Rica OK
Week 00 - 11/01/2013: Australia OK
(editado)

Belgium U21 would be nice of course, but they're a bit too strong I guess ;-)

If you can convince their manager to play U19 or something, then no problem :-)

And what week? ;-)

Well they are playing WC so either week 00 or 11, because Lëtzebuerg's coach thinks we are too strong for him (but he is not decided yet :-)

But I'm not playing Belgium's U21, even the U20 is too much :-)
(editado)

And he won't play U19 I guess, so case closed :p

I'm waiting for some confirmations so there might be some changes, but most of the friendly schedule is basically done, how do you like it?

Well balanced and not that hard. With a bit of luck and few injuries you should be capable of winning them all. ;-) Good luck!

lol even against Czech republic? Australia and New Zealand are better, but all the other teams are beatable. I really don't know what to expect from this season, our attack is finally pretty good, but our defense is horrible and midfield not that much better. Our next generation for WCQ should be much better, even though except the strikers we will still be pretty average in midfield and defense, there are really no special players and they're certainly much much weaker than in previous 2 seasons..

Looking at the U19 team, it is pretty balanced without weakness but there are no exceptional players as well, the same goes for U18 and U17, we could be looking for seasons of mediocrity (for our standards)..really since Serola we didn't have any superstar youth pull and that is already 2 seasons ago:-(

I don't see Methula, Felix, Matsau, Nagoli, Cole, Kalaka, Serola or Ledwaba anytime soon..

Guys, we need some great youth pulls :-)