Asunto: [U21]LaBamba

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 :-)

Well, of course beating Czech republic will be hard.. :p

And true story about those youth pulls.. We need them very badly ;-)

Any pulls would be good.
It's pretty tough building squads from 4 youth schools.

Arthur Letsholonyane is mine! Next week Matsau :-)

Mxaka was bought by defense trainer, Walker by Czech GK trainer that I know.

Sales seem to be working out fine.

Got a good price for Felix. :)

I made a nice bid war for Mxaka, too bad that the price went too high, and at half mln euro I have decided to stop biding.

perhaps next time

I'm about to close a deal for Nagoli ;)

Wow he looks nice now:-) What does he want, 4 M EUR? What will you train him?

Well, he's about to agree for 3 million euro actually.. but it isn't closed yet, so we'll see. And I'll train him pm/passing/tech.

Really for 3? That might be a nice bargain for you. But his NT flag will push the price I think..
He will be great NT defender for a long time, this defense generation with Cole, Theunissen and Olivier was really strong..

Those 4 guys will be the upcoming def line for a while indeed. Our defense needs some replacements soon since they're all quite old.

But his NT flag will push the price I think..

I can always perform the magic trick 'release player'.

;-)

Poor owner, doing business with NT coach :-)

With that training, Nagoli's going to be a super NT player for us.

Review against Pilipinas

It's so nice to have competent strikers:-) Even though the rest of the team is so much weaker than in previous 2 seasons, our strikers really make the difference and for the first time in 2 seasons we can see them outrunning or even beating the defenders from the front:-) Again we scored some nice goals, perfect cooperation between Serola and Ledwaba led to 2nd goal and beautifull through pass from Lingard led to the 3rd one..

Compared to the match against Marocco our defense wasn't that high, which on 1 hand resulted in less territory dominance and shots, but on the other hand our defenders didn't have that much work. Being positioned lower and moving towards the Pilipinas' strikers worked quite well, especially because they were so deep in the midfield. Except 1 break away chance we didn't face any trouble and we held them to 0 shot attempts.

Next stop is Marocco again, first of the African teams we are facing in this season..

Also our problem in today's match was the low PM of our MIDs..I can live with the bad defenders but our MIDs really struggled and lost a lot of balls beause they couldn't make a decision due to lack of PM.
Kalaka played very well, but you can see PM is his biggest problem. Lingard made some nice passes, but with his combination of PM and technique I might have to give more opportunities to Burton Felix. What do you think?

edit - I've checked and all the MIDs are trained in PM and pass this season so it should be better soon..
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