Subject: U21 Jamaica - India

Here comes our first match with eguaro as your U21 NT Coach. Of course the expectations for me will be to get the victory and have a well initiation this new season. What I have seen of Jamaica is that their coach uses two main tactics, one of them uses a wide mid and an advance defense, the second tactic is more centered but also uses his defense in high position.

For now, and what I think he is going to use is his last tactic. What are we going to do? well, I´ve been speaking with Thai Coach, who got Jamaica as a rival in his last world Cup qualifiers, and also played a friendly with Jamaica last match. He also told me to be carefull with his right winger and try to get any oportunity of his advanced defense. For me his wide MID is not a winger as we have seen in regular NTs, because that winger also comes to the middle when the ball is in the other side, We should focus on three oportunities: 1) use our fastest striker, Bungo Aurora, to win the back of the advance and use his pace to get alone to the jamaican GK; 2) I dont see a high level of passing withing his mids, so if we use a short team (short distance between def-mids-strikers) we could recover fastest the ball and give it quickly to our strikers; 3) the formation should be 4-4-2, keep the ball, cover the most possible of the camp.

What worries me now is the low form (solid) of our best striker, and also our other striker Kumawagra (21yo) hasnt been updated since 03.03.2022, but he has superdivine form and his average rating is 4.3, I´m still thinking if giving him an oportunity for now, because besides those 2, our other strikers dont have more than a 2 level stamina. What I like is that our DEF and MIDS is that they both have secundary skills that could help us to achieve our victory.

Please let me know if you have any comments or observations, have a great night.

I think you should feel free to use Kumawagra, who will perform well due to his maximum form. He had a game in the U21 vs. O‘zbekiston where he scored 2 goals and I believe his striker skill has improved since we don't know his skills (March 3rd).

I can help with the lack of strikers by training the 18-year-old Shrirang in my team, I also sent you the skill update yesterday (skill jump was stamina and pace). Popped up a level in pace in 2 weeks now. Now he's getting goal scoring training this week, I hope there will be a pop up in that as well.

I'm looking forward to the first match, I'll watch and support you!

You seem to have done alot of analysis. It sounds good to me and I agree with Attila about Kumawagra.

Thanks for your advise that gives me more confidence.

Good to know that, I was some kind of doubtful about letting him play. The good thing here is to count on you, and please give your opinions and what you thing could improve our tactics after every match.

Both you and @Attila seem to be doing a good job.

It seems that we have to wait for the afternoon games, because even the ones scheduled for 14.00 CET have not started yet. I'm really looking forward to the India U21 match, and of course the India NT match as well.

Congratulations on the nice result achieved in your debut match!
Both Arora and Kumawagra made the most of their opportunities. (Just in parentheses: Jamaica has a huge problem with not having a goalkeeper. A few seasons ago I had to arrange for India to avoid this problem and I managed to find a user who trains a goalkeeper for the U21s, this is a very important thing.)

The first match is always very important, it has to be successful and you did a great job today.

It was surprising to me that Shaukat lasted the whole match with his very low fitness, he didn't look tired at the end either.

One more personal pleasure: it was good to see Shrirang on the field, I will do my best to send him to the field in the next matches :)

Who will be the next opponent?

Our next opponent is Cymru. I have almost done completen our schedule this season, o le free one week, will be publishing tomorrow.

My only doubt was the defense who get in for the second half due too his low form, but with some matches in our NT will recover it.

Thanks for your comments, I’ll be answering and sharing my thoughts of the game later. Also will be watching the senior team. Is just that with the delay of matches today I didn’t have the free time I think.