Subject: [NT] Macedonia

Tomorrow we are facing Macedonia... It is one of the last matches as your NT coach (at least if we talk about senior NT) and I hope it will be a successful one!

Although Macedonia is playing U24 squad, they will be still much better than our team.

If you want to know more details about the upcoming match, look in the association - I will post some information over there :)

I know that not everybody is following our association forum so I will post here our discussion over there, react on some posts and write my opinion on the match...

Of course, I will be glad of any of your comments! :)

panahand: OK fair enough. It is closely the tactic you were using so far. Especially with Malta I want you to admit my friend that this was a disaster.

I would have gone with a much offensive tactic and use both Ceylanli and Kotsonis in the middle of attacking, something like 4-4-2 with 2 defensive midfielders one slightly in front so that he can also give straight vertical passes (I dont know the skills of the players to tell you which I would use) and of course with two wingers and 4 defenders keeping their line and pushed up to the middle when the team is attacking.

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orestios: I just watched the game. I think offensively you did the best you could trying to exploit their weaknesses on an offensive tactic of their part ,given the fact that we had to play 5 defenders.

On the defensive part I liked the way our full backs were played. I think the two points we did not do good enough were that the defense was set to much up field(trying for technical offside maybe) and our central defenders had a big gap between them and in certain positions we missed their attackers who had tooo much space to act as they were faster and badly guarded in some situations - (same line as our defenders and they were inside the big gap, this is pretty much why we conceded the 2 goals.

First of all, I will made my comment on the match (and also reply on orestios's post):

I don't understand why Rafa_Benitez has used a lot of old players when we have agreed on U24 match... Most of their line-up were over 24 years, and some of the players were even much, much older... Despite this fact, this match has quite fulfilled my expectations. It was far from being a one-sided match, we have quite a lot of chances and we could have even win (it's shame that Kotsonis has thrown away his great chances in the end of the match)... Though it will be a little bit lucky win, I think that nobody could have said a word against it.

As orestios said, our defense was sometimes clumsy. I tried to make their strikers to be in offside and not to give much space to opponents midfielders (I think this task was accomplished quite well) though sometimes it exposed us in rather dangerous situation. Our central defenders were sometimes really not well positioned. It was partly caused by Unal Basel, who was just sold, so that he has really low tactical discipline and he hasn't fulfilled the tactics well. Despite his mistakes in positioning, I was really satisfied with his performance :)

@panahand: I checked the match with Malta once again and it doesn't seem that bad to me. That doesn't mean that I am fully satisfied with it but I wouldn't call it a disaster. I see the greatest problem not in the amount of strikers but in the positioning of him... Maybe if you consider just the match stats you may call it a disaster but in fact, Malta played with good team and has taken it really well (to be honest I expected completely different tactics from fsoler).
Sorry I can't admit that it was a disaster but I can admit that I could have played it way better ;)
Anyway I don't know why you haven't written such words earlier on?? I agree that that tactics is close to the tactics I use quite often but why restrain from a tactics that was successful quite often? I could name for example matches against Albania, Wales or Venezuela. And if you follow NT properly you should know that it's not the tactics I use that often as you said ;)

I would be glad if you comment on this match and point out what was that bad on the tactic I was using so far...