Subject: U21 National Team

thanks... It will be on saturday though ;)

good job :P. I told you that if you play with 4 defenders, earning a midfielder, that possession and more opportunities.

Now on to tactics:
1) defenders must move more left - right, to cover the wing (Canada had an wing low, we do not smell the trouble);
2) when playing with four midfielders, you have to choose, depending on the opponent, 2 or 3 mid central-midoff, and 1 or 2 middef. In your tactics, all midfielders, while, climbed on the stage of attack (if you were dispossessed remained in inferiority) and withdrawn on the defensive phase very close to the defenders (when stripped opponent defenders had nowhere to pass, and chose to discharging to attack, and lose so many balls);
3)in some moments it was too much distance between lines, particularly between midfielders and strikers. I should have tried that with an extreme, because next season we will have only a good striker Robinsson.

Now on the match: was a good game, especially the first half, second half was not played too much. Possession was balanced, but we had superiority in the middle, and very good defenders which did not allow too many opportunities to score Canada, (but next season we have not been so defenders), and our opportunities were few, the first goal=a mistake of opposing defenders, and 2 goals Relly's head.
But football is played on goals, so congratulations for victory

I don't want to be known as someone who can't go on with criticism, but I don't really agree with your points. You make choices in a tactic and if you make choices you lose on other things.

1) defenders must move more left - right, to cover the wing (Canada had an wing low, we do not smell the trouble);

I don't see it. The wing of Canada only gave 1 decisive pass from the flank in a whole match - minute 28. The rest of the passes was intercepted. With a 4 mandefense that is a real good result for me. I saw the winger wasn't very decisive in previous matches and I decided to give him a bit of space and play with a 4 man defense. Defense played very solid and did what I want today. You can't cover whole defense line safely with only 4 defenders.

all midfielders, while, climbed on the stage of attack

You have seen that wrong. Number 7, Jamie Bannon was always positioned as DEFMID. This to cover their ATT MID. I almost haven't seen that player in the whole match so, mission accomplished for me. I haven't seen a dangerous situation were midfielders lost the ball. There was always some coverage from other midfielders. Only chances from them came from some long passes through the center and 1 wingball. Bannon and Scully had a defending task in the centre besides their attacking tasks. Our other two mids, Sathiamoorthy and Beaumont didn't have to defend that much.

3)in some moments it was too much distance between lines, particularly between midfielders and strikers. I should have tried that with an extreme, because next season we will have only a good striker Robinsson.

In sokker players are not that good in short passes. There is always something wrong : bad controlls, pass not good enough, ... Even topclass players have difficulties with that. In my opinion on the U21 level you don't have to count on several players to reach the striker. It will always go wrong somewhere in in between. So for me there was no problem in room between the lines.

big win there congrats.
big improvement.
though i think 3 goals from 7 shots is a bit lucky as much as anything :)
will watch it later i hope

i said similar from your tactic, defence looked deep... will watch tmw though

congrats on a nice result :)
Canada did have the same amount of chances, though imo a few less open chances when looking at the game.
in any case the tactic starts to look like it's on the right track.

the strikers and mids did try to work around the defenders from time to time instead of trying to run through one or more defenders all the time.
the mids proved to have enough precision and insight to give splitting assists which is another way to avoid those direct confrontations. the strikers probably had some good form too, they achieved their main goal: goals :p in contrast to the ones from Canada.

i agree with groene smurf that the winger of Canada was of no consequence. at my level if an opponent plays with 2 wingers i might as well play with 3 in line at the back and conquer the midfield instead (i have won matches doing that). those (pure) wingers hardly participate in the gameplay, they need some luck to give the perfect assist and even then the center defenders might still to recover the ball. if a goal comes from that: so be it. your own team might have had a multitude of chances more by not concentrating on that winger. usually it's pretty much the same at an U21 level, unless the opponent really has an exceptional winger and at least one killer striker.

i also think the defence might be a bit too deep. i'm not sure how fast your defenders are but IF they have enough pace it can pay off to put them some more to the front to create some more pressure (though the midfield was already dominated by ireland) and to force strikers further from the goal or risk losing the ball in offside situations. positioning is always a balancing act though.

in the end one can not anticipate all the possibilities but i think groene smurf has shown to be a capable coach in this match, just give him some time to adjust to these particular players and he'll prove himself.
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next season reilly will be a far better striker than Robinson!

thers only very few people who can see what we have in the pipeline ;)
i still hafnt looked at the NT even though im now admin of the database i just realised :P

might pay more attnetion to the NT now i am actually.
i think everyone kinda knows the skills of irish players we have in our teams at this stage, they get posted, transfer advertised and transferred between us a lot like
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updated ntdb with this guy
http://online.sokker.org/player.php?PID=19578367

he prob cud be added to the squad there now.
2 levels of defender next season and he will be awesome
i dont think we have ANYONE doing defenders at the moment though :/
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is a balanced match with Latvia, but i think if we play 4-2-3-1 or 4-1-3-2 with wing, we can win, because i noticed that the right of defense of Latvia is approachable. And entered the center is hard, considering that our strikers are weak. (but beware of Latvia winger)

Good Luck Irish
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Indeed. Match against Latvia tonight. I hope for a victory. I think we are equally strong so I hope for a bit of luck and some strong performances of our lads!

We lost two pints here. I think we deserved the victory and were the better team!

Yes, you lose 2 points higher, sin, but from my point of view lost for you have not changed anything in midfield. When Latvia attacking, midfielders all came down almost square and there was nobody to make the connection between your square and strikers. Most often passes to strikers came from your land, and strikers could not cope alone with opposing defenders. You missed a lot, clear opportunities, but it will happen again, for like all teams that have very good goalkeepers. .

I think we need to play more compact, more offensive. and noticed that your tactic is simple, linear. triangles must be created to recover faster and have better communication between players.

Still good luck

against the winger i thinnk the deeper defence worked better.. or should have. couldnt stop that winger though ;/

bad luck. i'd say ireland controlled the match nearly the whole time and only lacked some more goals.

however it's also apparent that your strikers don't have the quality to be able to really cope with a defense on their own and then there's still a goalkeeper to beat.

i'd also suggest to give the strikers some more offensive support to create more chances. maybe just one offensive midfielder as target man in front of their defense to lure some of those defenders out of line might allready be enough.

still like i said, it was a match which ireland deserved to win, unfortunately it ended in just a draw.

Maybe. but the problem we have now will still be there if there is an extra ATT Mid imo. He will have to pass the ball to the ATT and the ATT wil have to eliminate the DEF. There will be only one pass more imo. Maybe there will be a defender extra out of position from the defense of the other team and that can be an advantage. Something to think about, but I'm not really sure it will change a lot. You have an extra pass to "complete" too. I will try it in one of the next matches.
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well what i notice in your current tactic is that the main danger comes from those long splitting passes but some end up as kick and rush depending on the position from attacker against defender. what i'm hoping for is that this one offensive mid gives some short diagonal passes from time to time to the attackers to achieve the same as those long splitting passes and with some luck a defender might concentrate on this midfielder just before he passes which would give the attacker the room he needs.

it sounds good to me in theory but if it really comes out like that is unsure indeed. in any case one can only try things out and learn from it.