Subject: [NT] World Cup Qualifying

I had watched the NZ - Wales match this morning. The matches did have a very similar feel. Both teams had some bad luck in that one - Wales with the early red card, NZ with some very poor finishing.

TBH, I think the Albanian defense over-achieved to a certain degree today. They were nearly flawless with their tackling. I wouldn't expect them to maintain that level of play, especially against the strikers NZ can throw at them.

actually, you listed him after my term, and shared no player data with me, sorry, just the facts and one of the reasons I flew off the handle that season, pretty frustrating after years of forking over so much info to my main rival :)

The post just sounded like you were going to play Biron as a lone striker, it just seemed odd, I wasn't advocating Boiss, I just thought that it might have been a good match to get some time for other strikers who's managers don't get to see them at the NT level very often, didn't know about the injury to Leopold

I updated all of my players in the NTDB at the start of the season, unless it didn't go through for some reason, did you get the password when you took over, cause it's a really handy tool!

I think you misunderstood. I said there was a transfer ad with his current skills posted in Transfers Canada throughout your term. This is correct. Your term was from 1-24-09 ==> 4-25-09. The transfer ad was posted 1-07-09. It not only showed his skills but described his current training regime. And you sent 1 msg asking for skill updates - I hope you can understand that it's easy to forget to respond to a SK-mail msg when you have 9-10 in your mailbox when you log in. If it was crucial, then you should have made a second request.

It's nice to give players a run that don't get many caps, but the place for this is friendlies. The group we are in is very tough, and could easily come down to +-.

We are set for Paraguay. And tho it kind of runs counter to what I said in the post above, there are a few new faces in this week. :) That's due to the New Zealand match next week. I'm reticent to use players with 2 yellow cards and risk a ban to a potentially useful piece. I'm optimistic there won't be a noticable dip in performance given the skill of this week's opponent.

Striker continues to be an issue, as Broussard and W Lav are both nursing knocks. Leopold is healthy again, and will start. I'm optimisitic Bruce and W Lav will both be in game shape for next week's big game.

All good points Seca....good luck tonight! Who will Leopold be paired up with in attack? Perhaps give Amado his farewell game?? :))

Amado should have been dropped from the roster ages ago. :) And I do plan to do so - after giving him a chance to reach the 100 goal mark (stuck on 98). I recognize that has no practical value and is purely sentimental. I'm not about to deny my sentimental attachment to this player. :)

But it won't be today. Q-matches are too important. Despite the injuries up front, there are other options that are clearly better.

Tho it would have been nice to hang double digits against Paraguay, my expectations were lower. I was hoping for ~+6, so despite another rather flat performance, the result IMO is acceptable.

Offence struggled again for a number of reasons. First and foremost, my striker positioning was less then ideal. Paraguay made some nice adjustments from last week, and my own tweaking of midfield and striker positioning was counter-productive. Additionally, Leopold's finishing was rather poor. And tho Bellevance filled in admirably for Sebrango and played well defensively, he lacks the finesse of Sebrango, and didn't bring quite the same offensive pressure.

The injury to Sebrango is rather unfortunate. He's our best all-round defender (and in great form). He'll be missed against New Zealand next week.

Good luck for the game - I hope to see an exciting one.

Btw why didn`t you log in for a week?

Was a pretty busy week. My apologies. I was on yesterday preparing for the match, and did some refinements this morning.

Strength of New Zealand is as it always has been - up front. They have some wonderful depth and skill at the striker position, and from Canada's perspective the match will be won or lost with the tackling of the back line.

New Zealand also has an fantastic goalkeeper - world class. He, however, is injured which is a great benefit to Canada, as NZ's second string is a significant step down.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, Canada has an advantage in midfield - particularly defensive midfield, which has always been a problem for New Zealand. NZ is missing a nice offensive mid in Sansom, but they do have a bit of depth at that position.

Canada gets W Lav back from injury, tho he's shed some form. Sebrango is still injured and won't play.

Both coaches are seasoned NT managers. It's possible there will be a few tactical errors in the match, but I think it's more likely that match comes down to player execution.

I was very surprised to see the shot total after the match. I really thought we had carried the play, and it didn't seem to me that New Zealand had that many chances. I will have to rewatch.

I was happy with our tactic. Created a number of excellent scoring chances, and could well have been more had Caron played better and generated something from the left wing.

I'm dissappointed not to get something from the match, but the writing was on the wall early on. Canada had 3-4 quality scoring chances early, and couldn't beat Baldaro. When you carry early play and can't score, you lose more then you win.

As mentioned Caron's play was poor. The coverage on him was fairly tight, but there were a number of times he had position on Kilkenny and gave up the ball far too easily.

Canada's cement-shoed keepers usually bite us somewhere along the way - and today was the day.

Anyway, congrats Vilpu. Your boys played well. I'm guessing it was a tactical NZ win in your eyes. :)

Anyway, congrats Vilpu. Your boys played well. I'm guessing it was a tactical NZ win in your eyes. :)

Well, that´s obvious...wasn`t it?:)

For me it´s difficult to evaluate who was better overall. We need someone impartial to decide that. The obvious thing is you deserved a goal in the first half. We were lucky and I was laughing, when I saw your strikers failing again. But we had our moments in the first half too - Few chances definitely, there were 2 one on ones etc...But you dominated. Second half was bit different, not surprised to see you scoring.

Our second goal was pure tactical win for us - nice pass from Root to Morocombe:)

Can´t wait our next game in 2 weeks.

I was very surprised to see the shot total after the match

Actually so was I. I guess many of them came in the 2nd half. We started to bomb right till the end.
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Hmmm, hard luck on this one.
Canada has many quality chances with B. running alone to the goal 4 times but miss all.
At least L. made one out of his two chances.
You have a great tactic have 6 one on ones but miss them all.
That's how sokker is tho, great sokker chances are crosses from the wing, but Caron played only one that Broussard knocked on wood.
I had expected that Broussard and Lavrynenko would play on switched positions.
It might have made a difference today.

To this untrained eye, the biggest difference in the match was the keepers. Is that really NZ's second-best keeper? If Canada had a Baldaro, this match would have been one point for Canada if not three. Baldaro would easily have stopped the second goal and had a better-than-even chance at the first.
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Baldaro is our 3-4 choice, depends on forms.

1. Kaz injured
2. Alves low form
3. Oorschot injured/Baldaro

edit: our biggest star Rob Morocombe got injured for a long time. Good for you:)
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Good luck for tomorrow. I won´t be sad if you win tomorrow:)
Difficult to beat someone who knows everything about NZ players. Very hard to surprise you.

No matter how it goes - the most important is that we have (probably you, I doubt I can do that once again) to win Suomi one more time.

Gonna be a crazy game between us.

Congrats, great game. Especially the last 10 minutes.

:)