Asunto: National Team

Great news today as all 3 USA NTs won their games and are on the path to qualify for the ICC (Senior) and world cup (U20 & U17)!

Regarding specifically the Senior NT, today we beat Saudi Arabia in a hard-fought match where the single goal of the game came from a free-kick taken by the one and only Raymond McCready.
But unluckily the referees in ppm are just as terrible as they are in real life and sent off Matt Barnard for a second yellow for a supposed "dive" after a foul by one of the Saudi players

Goal and unlucky expulsion: img824.imageshack.us/img8...

Full Match Report: soccer.powerplaymanager.c...

Our next game is Peru who are in-form after beating Colombia and Morocco, but we are confident we can beat them

Standings currently gave the win to the Saudis.... Weird.

Maybe this was a mistake that has been fixed since you checked, but I just checked the rankings and Saudi Arabia dropped 2 spots while we got 1349 points and moved up 3 spots (btw this was a lot more than I expected, and it's probably due to the win being for a qualifier... We might be able to reach the top 10 sooner than I expected, as long as we win the rest of our qualifies)

Lol... No I didn't realize that some teams played already? Weird

We should have won by more then 1 against a weak team. However they played heavy D and we went down the middle.

GG Manum

The issue I think it was that they played on Aggressive but didn't get any red cards that they definitely should have and we got that BS card called for "diving" when we were the ones that got fouled! As I said... The refs in this game are as terrible as they are in real life!

Also, when we'd attack they'd foul us and we'd end up making crosses from the FKs... And this is why almost all of our shots were taken by defenders! (our goal, in fact, came from a direct free kick!)

But we really should have won by more than one goal

FYI I am relinquishing my NT post as promised. Manum will make an excellent candidate for next season. He has done most of the planning and scouting week in and week out.

I also think that tmac364 should be NT-17U manager due to his awesome profile pic.

Hey guys... um, don't be too hard on the fact that "we should have won by more"...

It's been stated that Peru played a very defensive game. They played a really good game, in fact. I look at it as 3pts won - the quality in the team shone through. And we played away - it's especially hard when the home team packs the stands. The only thing that might be concerning is that we wasted a lot of chances (3 ST, 8 SW, 6 CK).

Good win for the USA, and we should be encouraged that we've got the talent to win no matter what.

Our USA teams are infamous for winning by one goal... I just wish we cloud have a 3 goal game every once in awhile

A Dubs a DUB

I agree. We do need to stop wasting our goal-scoring chances, but we also need to take into account that scoring on a shot has a huge "luck" factor that we often can't control. Plus, GKs on the international stage are usually very good. However, what we can control is creating the chances in the first place. I'd rather create 20 chances, get only 5 shots on goal, and score 1, than create 2 and score 2. Obviously this is a bit extreme and it's almost imposible that you only score 1 of 20 shota, but in my experience (both in ppm and playing and watching soccer in real life), it's easier to keep up the form that lead you to create a lot of scoring opportunities in the first place, and then improve your efficiency (scoring on these chances) than improving your game-play and creating more chances. As we stand, I think we are on a great path and in-form and scoring more goals than we already are is just a matter of time.

Also, after climbing 8 spots since the begining of the season, we are now in the 11th spot in the international rankings! And between our current form and easy fixtures with Colombia and Morocco, I think we could pass Romania and Latvia, and maybe even Brazil (neither of them are in a very good form)

soccer.powerplaymanager.c...

Very exited for our midfield next year! Henne and Ashcraft!!

Thanks for the support, you've done a great job too and I hope we can keep up this great form!

It's official! We have seriously got to start scoring on our attacks! Today we won with a very lucky 89th minute goal from Aldridge against a far weaker Colombian side.

We had a total of 21 shots, 14 on target and 5 wide, a 59% ball possession, 13 corners, and 9 free-kicks.

They did play a 5-4-1, but their goalkeeper is only rated 19 and we should have won by a lot more.

Here's the full match report: soccer.powerplaymanager.c...

I think we'll break the Top 10 when the rankings update!

Pft, I think *they* got lucky. 14 shots on target, and they only let in one. Certainly, this "win by one" mentality isn't very efficient, so it does merit some consideration. Perhaps when teams pack the center, we work the wides instead?

We tried that in some of the friendlies and wasn't as effective, but it is worth another shot