Subject: [U21] Attila

This will be our Team against Hellas. We have only a little chance but we never give up we will fight as we can. Hellas is one of the best U21 team (8th ranking) with very strong players. But I believe in wonder :)

Squad
1 Harvinder Lavanya GK
2 Arijith Biswas DEF
3 Senthil Munusamy DEF
4 Arun Chiba DEF
5 Lanel Zev DEF
6 Murli Rochan MID
7 Nikhil Nikhil MID
8 Satish Gambhir MID
9 Hardip Anees MID
10 Tejas Satwant MID
11 Dominic Sundaramoorthy ATT

12 Kashi Chohan GK
13 Naushad Murugappa DEF
14 Vijay Mehul DEF
15 Sarabjith Suksma MID
16 Tomba Shilpa ATT
Set pieces
Free kick: not specified
Penalty kick: Dominic Sundaramoorthy
Conditional orders
Min. Condition / Action
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 2
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 3
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 4
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 5
60' always
Sarabjith Suksma on position 10
70' always
Naushad Murugappa on position 2
75' always
Vijay Mehul on position 4

Some interesting changes. No Suksma/Shilpa starting but that's fine because we are going with just 1 striker. Chiba will start the game for the 1st time and Mehul will make his debut. Nice.

An expected result. I'm just glad they didn't score more.
They drew their previous 2 matches so they really needed the win today.

Indeed, this was the expected result. Unfortunately, Hellas is one of the strongest teams currently out of all teams and not just in this group.
They dominated the game very firmly, already in midfield they took the ball from our players a lot of times. We only had 1 chance to score, but unfortunately Satwant got into a position against the goalkeeper and due to the MID setting, the match engine decided to pass backwards instead of shooting at the goal in excellent position. This is a feature of the game and the match engine. I could have set Satwant to ATT mode, of course, but all the times he had the ball he would always have tried to move towards the goal and hold the ball instead of a pass, and so would have been mounted many (even more) times by the opponent's player (already in midfield).
Unfortunately, that’s all there is to our little team right now. We have a significant disadvantage against Hellas and similarly strong teams. Goalkeeper, wing-defender, midfielder, striker - so in almost every post. My club team has an Uruguay U21 striker with 12 pace, 11 tech, 12 striker skills - at the age of 21 a striker is similar strong in a higher ranked U21. With us in India U21, Sundaramoorthy is the best striker, but he probably has lower skills (although I don’t know exactly about it because his owner doesn’t respond).
There are still many things to improve. I think we are on the right track, in recent weeks there have been several 18-19 year olds who will be forming a stronger team in the next WCQ matches (after 2 seasons).

The result was expected but it was really hard to track without seeing the player names so was very difficult to judge the player performances. I hope the Devs sort out that issue soon because it's now getting frustrating, that should be the main thing that they should look into.
Anyway, with regards to the game, we were basically no match for them and although we went with the same tactic that we deployed against Belgium, the result was vastly different. On the other side, Belgium beat Republica Dominicana by 2 goals to none and if we compare our result, it means we played better than the Republica just in getting that extra goal. We next play against Norway who drew against both Republica and Greece but then smashed Algeria in the recent game.
We also retain our 65th rank with Slovenia close on our heels although even they were drubbed by Italy.

There are still many things to improve. I think we are on the right track, in recent weeks there have been several 18-19 year olds who will be forming a stronger team in the next WCQ matches (after 2 seasons).

Yeah, three 19 year olds played in yesterday's game.

With us in India U21, Sundaramoorthy is the best striker, but he probably has lower skills (although I don’t know exactly about it because his owner doesn’t respond).

Another thing the Devs should change is that they should allow coaches to see skill of all NT players, that's just a no-brainer.
(edited)

India - Norge WCQ

Squad
1 Harvinder Lavanya GK
2 Arijith Biswas DEF
3 Senthil Munusamy DEF
4 Arun Chiba DEF
5 Lanel Zev DEF
6 Murli Rochan MID
7 Hardip Anees MID
8 Tejas Satwant MID
9 Nikhil Nikhil MID
10 Sarabjith Suksma ATT
11 Dominic Sundaramoorthy ATT

12 Kashi Chohan GK
13 Ajayan Makarand DEF
14 Vijay Mehul DEF
15 Satish Gambhir MID
16 Tomba Shilpa ATT
Set pieces
Free kick: not specified
Penalty kick: Dominic Sundaramoorthy
Conditional orders
Min. Condition / Action
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 2
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 3
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 4
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 5
60' always
Ajayan Makarand on position 2
70' always
Satish Gambhir on position 8
70' always
Tomba Shilpa on position 10

This time, some players will be playing in a new position in midfield.

It’s very interesting that Suksma would be the 2nd best as a defender, but he has to play as a striker because we don’t have a 2nd striker like him. I thought Suksma would be a defender in this match, but in the end I decided that maybe in a striker position he could take advantage of the high defense skill. I hope he will have a chance to take the ball away from his opponent and thus get into a scoring chance.

The odds are clearly Norway, but I am confident that our team will repeat the performance we have seen against Belgium.

In the U21 matches there is a higher chance of forwards using their defence skill to tackle defenders because the defenders will probably have low playmaking and technique skills.

I think we had badluck again... :(

What was a joy in today's match is the game shown. The team played just as well as against Belgium. We made it to the scoring odds after several good passes, but the strikers, especially Sunda, were unfortunately not strong enough today to defeat the Norwegian goalkeeper (who is a divine keeper anyway).

I think we deserved a point, based on the image of the game, Norway (although a stronger team) did not deserve a win. The goal scored, as Norway scored ... the match engine produces very strange things.

This is the case unfortunately, we were defeated again today, but I am proud of the team. I see progress in our game. Thanks to everyone who trains players for India U21.
(edited)

Yeah, I think we played a lot better against Norway and our game was very similar to the one against Belgium. And we definitely deserved a point if not for very poor goalkeeping from Lavanya which cost us that goal. Sundaramoorthy was unfortunate but his sprints were really good, it was just the angle that he was approaching that went against him. Shilpa too came close in the dying moments but couldn't score. In fact, we easily created more chances than them. Overall, everyone did a fabulous job except for Lavanya of course.

Thanks to everyone who trains players for India U21.

You too are doing an awesome job on the training front.
(edited)

Have asked the mods to put this guy on TL as he's from a bot club.

In the U18 category, he's the 2nd highest valued player after Tarif Subbarayan. He also has more value than Desmond Saji and Sylvester Ragunathan who are 3rd and 4th respectively.

Jaswinder Neel
(edited)

I think he is in a Test team. I’ve seen several "new teams" in India lately that have just been registered but aren’t actually playing. The name of the owner of this club is also telling: aktester

Another team like that: Tester [139959]
(edited)

Reference to my post on 6th Jan.

Players to look out for by week (n=14):
Stanley Manohari 20 incredible outfield 2 Pune FC
Sylvester Ragunathan 18 excellent outfield 4 Lagends FC
Tarif Urjavaha 18 formidable outfield 5 Lagends FC
Biju Saini 17 solid outfield 6 Pune FC
Manjit Pavan 18 very good outfield 7 Pune FC
Pratik Yashodhan 17 formidable outfield 7 Lagends FC
Savio Sreekanthan 19 formidable outfield 10 Lagends FC
Amandeep Pavan 16 adequate outfield 10 Pune FC
Abhijit Pawan 17 solid outfield 11 Pune FC
Ratan Ajatashatru 17 good outfield 11 Lagends FC
Ramesh Ujesh 17 excellent outfield 12 Pune FC
Sarabjith Meyappan 19 outstanding GK 12 Pune FC
Mahesh Pavi 17 solid outfield 13 Pune FC
Vikrant Sawant 17 solid outfield 15 Pune FC

So of the juniors we were looking out for this season:
Stanley Manohari: Striker
Sylvester Ragunathan: Striker
Tarif Urjavaha: Should have had a better skill distribution with his skill level. Currently looks like a mid/striker.
Biju Saini: Mid

Overall, 3/4 juniors have had decent skills and definitely are crucial for NT. Again, 3 juniors will be out next week, 1 from my club and 2 from Lagends FC. Will be interesting to see how Yashodhan comes.

Today I want to get minimum 1 point. If we have a little luck, we may have a chance to win as well.

Squad
1 Harvinder Lavanya GK
2 Arijith Biswas DEF
3 Senthil Munusamy DEF
4 Arun Chiba DEF
5 Lanel Zev DEF
6 Murli Rochan MID
7 Hardip Anees MID
8 Tejas Satwant MID
9 Nikhil Nikhil MID
10 Sarabjith Suksma ATT
11 Dominic Sundaramoorthy ATT

12 Kashi Chohan GK
13 Ajayan Makarand DEF
14 Vijay Mehul DEF
15 Satish Gambhir MID
16 Tomba Shilpa ATT
Set pieces
Free kick: not specified
Penalty kick: Dominic Sundaramoorthy
Conditional orders
Min. Condition / Action
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 2
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 3
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 4
1' red card or no player
Murli Rochan on position 5
60' always
Ajayan Makarand on position 2
70' always
Satish Gambhir on position 8
70' always
Tomba Shilpa on position 10

Republica Dominicana were thrashed 6-0 by Greece in their previous encounter. Their avg mark is high but we can definitely draw the game considering our spirited past performance against Belgium and Norway.

That was a surprising result but who's complaining? Our best match this season, we literally outsmarted them on the tactical front. Even the stats show that we have 12 shots to our name as opposed to 3 of their and that too against a team which is ranked 55th and had an average mark of 52. Really happy with the result and we deserve this after our previous close encounters with other teams. It could have even been 4-0, if Sundaramoorthy would have converted the ball that came off the post from the shot of Shilpa and then later another shot hit the bar which was really close to a goal. Their defenders were too far back I think which gave Sunda and Suksma all the time in the world to unleash their shots from close range and give is us that 2 goals. No wonder, they played even worse than us against Greece, they conceded 6 goals in that game which is too much for a team of their calibre. At the half way stage now, we are 4th with 2 wins and 3 losses . Of those 3 losses, 2 could have been a draw so our performance has been really good in the 1st half. We just now have to replicate a similar performance in the 2nd half of the season, even a 4th place finish at the end of the season will be like an achievement for us. We also now go to 63rd as we jump over Panama and Wales who faced defeats against significantly weaker teams in their own games.

First of all, I am very pleased with the result, especially that our opponent did not score a goal. Looking at the group stats, we can see that Republica Dominika is a very high squad average value and India is 6th on this list.

We managed to score 2 goals and really - as KautukP wrote - we had a lot more shots on goal, more chances to score even more goals. But even with these, I am very satisfied. It helped us a bit that a player got a red card from opponent. But it didn’t depend on that, I think we would have won against 11 players as well.

Yes, as you write, we are in 4th place halfway through the series. It’s a good performance, maybe that’s the maximum that’s available in the end as well. It would have been a draw against Belgium and Norway to exceed the maximum :)

We got 50 points in the world rankings with this win. I want to advance the Team to 60th place next season, but it will be very difficult, currently 200 points behind Honduras.

The previous sentence said that I would like to continue to lead India U21 next season :)
(edited)