Asunto: National Team

Yeah. Who needs someone who puts his shot on target almost 70% of the time

If you want to talk about the team start up a private forum. Get the 6 guys involved with the hockey NT over there as well. It could be useful even if it's just NT managers posting.

Or just post everything here. Who cares if they steal your strategy. That just opens them up for when you finally lie about what you're really going to do

Time for a pre-game post. Chinese Taipei is up today. I think this is a good matchup for us, and I'm really hoping we can finally drop one in the win column. We'll have a few players making their competitive NT debuts today (and yes, tujague, you'll be happy about one of them--this is an especially good matchup for him).

Valadez is suspended today, and we'll be sitting a couple other guys where we have significant depth.

Well that hurts...

Wow. That was rough. We dominated ball control and even shifted to a 3-4-3 in the second half to try to generate some offense. 7 shots on goal and no goals for us, and they score on their first shot on target in the 89th minute.

I'm not sure what else to say here. We seemed to exploit the really good matchup on the right side (Max Mark vs. Liao Xiaojian) and their weaker center mid core to create the offensive chances I was hoping to get. The ball was in their end twice as much as it was in ours, and we had a clear advantage in time of possession in the middle of the field as well.

I'm never sure what stock to put in the replays, but for what it's worth, it's not as if we were taking all of our shots from way out, either. We had shots on target from 6m (Brennan), 12m (C. Mark), 2m (McFarland), 9m (Brennan)...we were clearly able to penetrate their defense with our scoring chances.

I'll be thinking this week of ways we can improve the scoring; we've got a good crop of forwards and we should be scoring more than 2 goals in 3 games.

What % of chemistry is there that can be problem sometimes.
Im new here but i used to play other managers games online maybe i can help

I also noticed that some player don't play their position
if he prefers Left side don't put him as CF player gets confused that's why he misses chances from 7m.
I would try next game 4-3-3
-LF--CF--RF-
-LM--CM--RM-
-LD-CD-CD-RD-
-----GK-----
Attack from the wings Left and Right, very high importance, normal Aggressiveness, hurry up, offside traps sometimes and Clearing the ball out of danger, play possession football
Make sure that LD LM LF player are that prefer left side CD CM CF universal and RD RM RF players that prefer right side
This is mine opinion it might work.

FYI Brennan & Rudd are in camp this weeked.

Well that makes sense. More goals in one game against a strong opponent than in 4 games against weaker opponents. But I'll take it! That's a good start for the tournament. Hopefully tomorrow we can exact some revenge on Peru.

FYI to the managers who have players on the team, those guys who were called up today will stay called up for this entire tournament (per tournament rules). Not sure if that will have any bearing on your training camp plans.

Good win today!! Now we just need to comtinue that shut out tomorrow and get another 3 goals.

BTW- I am stepping down from Asst manager so that someone else can experience the online view for the NATIONAL TEAM.

Great Job so far Willmot- Next year the world Cup!

I was going to ask you about that. Thanks...it's been good working with you.

Who else is interested in working on this? Outsider, I remember you had expressed some interest before, but I know now you're the assistant for the hockey U18 team. Do you still want to help out here, or would you rather just focus on that? I'm anticipating that early next season will involve a fair bit of scouting and perhaps scouring other leagues.

To tell you the truth there is not a lot to do in hockey, being the assistant.

If Runny wants to take a vacation, i will take his spot.

Seeing no other volunteers, I'll make the switch to Outsider following this tournament. Outsider, I'll be in touch with you early next week about what I'd like to do at the beginning of the season.

Two games, two wins, and we've already clinched moving on to the elimination round regardless of what happens today. We have the benefit of seeing early results from today, too. If we beat or tie Poland, we play Germany tomorrow, and if we lose to Poland we play Russia. Honestly, there's not a huge difference between those two teams, skill-wise. Obviously it would be nice to win the group, but I'd like to save some energy in this one too, since whatever the outcome, tomorrow's game is the one that counts.

Well that sucked. Russia's got some good players, but I really thought we had a shot at this one.

Back to the drawing board for next season. These were obviously not really the results I was hoping for this season; I've got some ideas for modifications to the plan for next season that I think will get us back into the qualification zone for the Intercontinental Cup.

There won't be a lot of moves this season, but I may make a couple changes to the roster, and I'll post here when I do. Feel free to keep your players (and any other US players you've scouted) up-to-date on:

nt-soccer.czechppm.cz/usa...

I decided not to change much about the team for this season. I picked them last season for a reason, and for the most part I'm going to stick with them. The one change I did make was to release Willie Novak . He's one of the few (non-developmental) players who didn't see any playing time last season. No jab, Runnyonion--this was a tough call and he's a great player, but he's stuck behind a very strong group of CD's (3 of our top 4 players, OR-wise, are CD's). I'm not going to replace him on the roster immediately; I'd like to have the flexibility of those open spots headed into the season.

Otherwise, onward into the season. I'll be building chemistry with our top guys in the first few friendlies, as we really need to try to win all four qualification round games here.

I was surprised he stayed in last season. His cl should drop next season.