Subject: NT matches: Friendlies

because Nippon haven't got so good wingers, only Takahagi but he is weak to for world football :P

thus, moldova's tactic was defensive very weak ;)

But to be honest, I wasn't very impressed with nippon's victory. They were a bit lucky with the amount of goals made (3 of which were started with a crossball from fuji where their def ran forward to interecept so they were too late to catch Hiraoka. More of a glitch or a sign of fatigue than strength). Maybe I'm a bit too harsch on jukash here (I'm sorry;), but I thought that Moldova had more tactical creativity.
I especially liked their idea of attacking on both wings, but it seemed not to work very well for them. That Andronic and Ulinici really have low skills may be the biggest reason. Plus, at least Buburus (their best winger) should have run more on the outside, since Nippon almost always plays with a very wide defence.

Again, my excuses for these harsh words;)

Constructive criticism is always welcomed. However

More of a glitch or a sign of fatigue than strength

Neither of these. It was thanks to the positioning of the defensive midfielder. He stood on the same line as their wingback, but if he would have stood near the central line of the pitch, he could move towards the incoming ball (or even intercept it) so he could prevent their other wingback to run forward and Hiraoka could have much harder time to run away from the defender.

I especially liked their idea of attacking on both wings, but it seemed not to work very well for them. That Andronic and Ulinici really have low skills may be the biggest reason.

Not really. The two strikers had nothing to do with this. The two wingers couldn't get past our wingbacks because they didn't receive quality balls from the midfielders. Usually the strikers or the defenders tried to pass to them, it was like Lowping couldn't decide what to do with the mids. The attacking midfielder was too offensive and often confronted Miyazawa, and the defensive midfielder was just running up and down trying to attack and defend at the same time.
Just compare the offensive and defensive work of the midfielders of Nippon and Moldova. Our mids had a lot more share in the play.

Plus, at least Buburus (their best winger) should have run more on the outside, since Nippon almost always plays with a very wide defence.

Buburuz tried to help out the inner midfielders, that's why he played there. I think Lowping expected a 4-4-2 with winger(s), in this case he would have been much more dangerous.

All in all, I think our victory had two key elements:
- the badly positioned defense
- the lack of teamwork in the midfield

In the next few weeks we'll play some U21 matches (except next week). Our first opponent will be the Brasilian U19 team.

U21 Squad

Keepers
Sahara So
Endo Yoshiharu
Hirakawa Norihiro

Defenders
Kaburaki Hiroyuki
Hirajima Ekiken
Iwamasa Mike
Fukui Tanzan
Aoki Koichi
Komatsu Yoshiya
Minami Toshiaki

Midfielders
Kitano Nobuyoshi
Kudo Shinya
Ujiie Tenshin
Kobara Hisato
Terada Masasi

Strikers
Niwa Norio
Tada Tanzan
Terada Toichi
Miura Haruhiko
Saito Tetsu

Lots of them has no caps, so we'll see quite a few debutant :) I'm planning to give a chance to everyone in the next weeks, although some of them will play only a half or so.

I can keep only 40 players in the squad, so if I released your player from there, don't worry, I didn't forget them :)

I saw that we will probably lose user who train So Sahara ;/ you should write a sk@ to one of admin and ask him about mail to incapato, he train Sahara but log on sokker not many times:( I think if you write a mail to him he will be back and Sell Sahara to better club where he will train:]

I've sent an e-mail to him, hopefully he uses that address.

Tomorrow, we're going to play with Makedonija. I didn't have much time lately, so I just hope we can achieve a good result. Hopefully I can write something into the association when I get up tomorrow.

Don't forget that the World Cup Final also takes place tomorrow. It's Italy vs Spain, and it'll begin at noon (SK-time) - at the same time as our match :)

Sick match, we missed tonnes of one-on-ones although our strikers were in perfect shape. But I beleive in the extra-time justice was served and the result became realistic - fortunately.

Okay, another U21 match in half an our, we're going to play with the full squad of Cameroun, a country with similar user count but younger than Nippon. Hopefully they won't cause too much trouble for our youngsters, let's see the starting eleven:

Sahara - Minami, Iwamasa, Fukui, Kaburaki, Hirajima - Kudo, Kitano, Terada M. (45' Uiije) - Niwa (45' Miura), Terada T.

Ghana accepted another invitation despite our earlier agreement, so we're going to play with Australia again, both teams with U21 players this time.

It will be hard match ;p good luck :)

After some discussion with cometer, it became Australia U21 vs Nippon U23 :)

@all: since I planned three U21 matches originally and there were two already, I hope it won't cause any problems for you.

I'm a bit disappointed, I didn't like the offensive play. I think I know where's the problem, I'll try to fix it for next week. Still, we could win this match, unfortunately our few chances were wasted.

Next week we're going to play with Tunis if everything goes according to the plan. That will be the last U21 match this season.

I'm a bit disappointed, I didn't like the offensive play

I don't think anything can significantly improve unless you play a winger. You rarely get chances now from the games I've watched under the new M.E. Think that's the first game I've been kept shotless throughout my 6-7 season reign and I've had much weaker sides than the one I sent out today.

Anyway credit for keeping us out, although I'm not impressed with the fact defenders seemed to have become gods and it's almost impossible to breach them now ;).

You really only had 1 top chance and that was the 1 on 1 your striker had against our keeper after getting past Whitley. The rest were from tightish angles or strikes out of the box.

In saying that, we didn't really look like getting a chance, thanks to your pressing. Wasn't able to string out the passes I wanted and had planned for because we were all squished and we didn't play expansive passing like I'd hoped.

Second best goal difference ever (the best one also happened against Tunis), I was quite surprised about the efficiency of Tada, whose form is not too high :)
Well, there's not much to learn from this match, the new match engine was missing a couple of features, like the combination play. In the last couple of weeks in this season, I intend to prepare the team for the World Cup qualifications.

:) Last time was 17-0 :p Go Go Nippon :)