Asunto: [U21]LaBamba

Paraguay U21 election page:
Votes: 21 / 70
Election Turnout: 30,00% (!!!)

That's pretty impressive..

Considering the fact that our U21 team is based on YPs of 3-4 people it's amazing you remained competitive on this level..
(editado)

Although the team lost, I have to say well done. By half-time I was already thinking that the result wouldn't matter because our boys were more than matching Paraguay.

Perhaps the striker substitution should have happened maybe 15 minutes earlier (Lekgwathi struggled in the second half). Also Manyathi's clearances were probably because of the keeper-wing issue. Methula stood well upfield for goal kicks and keepers like to try to kick the ball to the wing, even if they can't possibly reach him.

Anyway, it was a good effort. We're looking forward to many wins this season. ;)

Thanx Marc.
Yeah it was the wing issue, although I've played like this many times and this never happened. He was passing it to no mans land couple times. I have to check it again what was wrong..
I should may be have been a little more gutsy and played more offensivelly, if only our strikers wouldn't suck so bad.. I would have switched one def MID for striker. Paraguay was nothing special offensivelly and we could have handled them with 4 DEFs and 1 def MID adequately.
Our MIDs and DEFs are really good for such tiny nation..

Yes more wins are coming, 1st one definitely already in the next match :-)

I've just watched it again, there was nothing wrong with the player's spacing. Manyathi clearly had 2 better choices. He decided to pass it to empty field or directly to opponents wing where there was nobody even close from our players. 5 times in a row.. Was he trying to kick over the whole field? :-) Too much confidence is counterproductive :-)
Considering his form and passing skill this is pretty confusing to me..is the scouting report on his passing correct?

I believe it is correct.

Got Sekano, though I paid a bit more than I would have liked.

That's still nothing compared to what I just experienced. Probably the biggest upset in my sokker life, I sold my striker for third of the price he was woth, I'm in shock..shit
I bet somebody will outbid me tomorrow for Valentine cause I wouldnt have the money and than i will have to overpay for him twice his price to buy him back..

Very close game. Better luck next time!

Little preview against O‘zbekiston :-)

So expected victory, 5:0 exactly as was my pregame tip, but it wasn't without trouble.

Positives: I was able to guess the stance of Rufr's defenders so our strikers nicely mirrored their movement and this way didn't get into many offsides, didn't need to dribble through the defenders from the front and were able to receive some nice through passes between the defenders (e.g. our 2nd goal)
More importantly the quality of our team was just simply too overwhelming for the opponent (for a change)

Negatives: Our performance was not very convincing, our MIDs played much worse than against Paraguay and just couldn't get the final pass the whole game. There were a looot of "stupid" mistakes. Another dissapointing match for Mathula, except 1 or 2 drives and passes, he was useless, may be I'll try to find him different spot on the field.
It seems like Rufr changed the position of his defenders (despite playing tactic with the same name) on the throw ins around penalty area (his wing defender suppose to be in the corner of the penalty area) and our wing suppose to be wide open there, unfortunately he put defender right at that same spot and this way we got lot of turnovers and lost a lot of easy throw ins and subsequent passes. But I'm just nitpicking here :-)
Huge upset is obviously the injury of Felix for 18 days, sorry Marc.(this injury also disallowed substitution of Niang, his fresh legs could potentially bring some more goals).
Felix would be very missed against next tough match vs India. Btw this is how U21 GK should look like :-) I think our strikers are already scared of him :-)
(editado)

So I overpaid like crazy for Valentine Methula and also bought Benson McClure :-)
Hopefully Vale will pop quickly and show me his talent and we'll get some strenght in our ATT, cause this was not very economical decision for my club :-)

congrats, nice result...mate ;-)

congratz, mate :)

Well done, good result.

On the positive side, Matsau played some great through balls in the first half when he was quite deep.
If we had better strikers... :)

With Methula, I agree that he wasn't effective but in the match he didn't get much opportunity.
The mids usually chose to pass the ball forward to the two strikers instead of going wide, even when he was open.
If you use Methula as a wing, it might help to have a mid positioned somewhere behind him to play quick balls straighter up the line.

Regardless, maybe his combination of pace/tech/pass/play just isn't right for a wing position and finding a different spot for him is a good idea.

Yes, pity about Felix. He'll miss two weeks of training. At least for the India game, our strikers are going to be too nervous to score anyway so we won't miss him too much. ;)

I tried to position our strikers in direct line with Matsau just for this purpose, to receive some nice through passes.
Mathula is not natural winger and he was miscast a bit and he had hard time because he played against 5 defenders twice in a row, but with the "quality" of our strikers I thought this could give us one of the only chances how to be dengerous and score goals. They won't outrun and "slalom through" a lot of defenders so wing header action could be our only hope..
It's not just his positioning but the fact hiss passes were completely off most of the time, which is weird considering his PM/pass/form. India is playing 4 defenders usually, so we will see next match..

btw. Bonang Ludick will be for sale in 1-2 weeks, do you still have spots for pace? If not I'll may be buy another NT striker:-)

Currently sitting at 13 players aged 21 or less, plus 4 older players that I'm giving some training.
I can take on a few more and will keep filling gaps with players from my youth school.