Onderwerp: [NT] mario.t

Hey guys!It was a pretty interesting season, it had it's ups and downs.Overall I think it was successful as we managed to qualify although we were definitely outsiders facing France and England.Still we had 2 pretty solid games against England, although we lost one quite undeservedly.

Still we recorded 9 wins, 0 draws and 3 losses in the WC qualifiers and 2 wins, 0 draws and 0 loses in the friendly games (where we faced Greece who threw Belgium out of the tournament).That helped us make quite a significant move up in the ranking as we're now sitting at 30-th place in front of countries like England, Portugal, Bosnia, Ireland and etc.... oh, and most importantly - Canada!

Also, thanks to my friend sviktorov the database is up and running and now has more than 250 players in it.That is a significant bonus as now the NT manager has a wider choice of players (I can bet we would have won the first match against England if we had such a DB).

Now on the WC I don't think we stand a chance with our average rating of 71-72 as most countries there have marks over 76-77 and are quite good tactically.So guys, if you decide to choose me have in mind that I can't promise you that we'll even take any points.

My main purpose for next season will be to choose opponents which will allow us to stay in top 32 although that will be quite hard because the teams behind us won't participate in the WC so won't record losses there.

Still I believe that I'll manage to keep the team in top 32.I hope that will assure we get a reasonable draw and then qualify.Then we will have some quite strong players that are currently 26-28yo.Actually this week I'll play U27 in order to see the strength of this generation.I like the players a lot except for the keeper and defense (we have way too few good players there at age 27 or less).But the good thing is that we have a bunch of good 28yo defenders which will help out in the next qualifications.

P.S. Oh, and there was a magnitude 6 earthquake tonight so if I wrote something strange - that's the reason! :)
(gewijzigd)

God, isn't that ironic?We're in the same group with Bulgaria :)) Here's our group:

1. România
2. Bulgaria
3. USA
4. Österreich

I think the group is pretty tough and we definitely have nothing to glad of.

1) Romania - they are the current WC champions so there's nothing to discuss about them
2) Bulgaria - a pretty tough team with quite better players, hopefully with some luck we may snatch a draw but I wouldn't count on that
3) Austria - their team is pretty similar to the Bulgarian one; in the last few weeks they managed to beat Germany and Turkey so we'll have a pretty tough job getting something from them

To sum up, I can't promise you guys that we'll even get a point from these opponents.They are all better than our team so we'll have to depend on luck to get something from those matches.

My main task for this season remains getting us in the top 32 so we'll have a better chance of qualifying for the next WC where we'll have a better team than now.

Its a "normal" group... Not the group of death for sure though... We have a chance of advancing. All you need is a bit of luck and we're through ;) I've noticed you don't promise anything even though you have a chance. :p

I prefer to say directly what I think will happen than to make some promises which I can't fulfill.You guys have always been supportive so I just don't have the right to do that.And when having in mind that Bulgaria and Austria have an average mark that is ~5% higher than ours I just can't promise anything.

We'll need quite some luck to qualify but in the end that's my job - to do my best and try to qualify the team.

Thanks to all of you guys who supported me.I'll do my best to achieve what I promised in my campaign and who knows, maybe a little more than that.

Good luck mate. I know you'll do your best but I won't be disappointed if you can't make it out.

Just better not see you throwing those bulgarian games ;)

Haha, believe me, Decho will turn the world around but he'll do everything possible to help me win against Bulgaria :))

Guys, I managed to complete our schedule today.I wanted to do that as quickly as possible in order to find the right opponents.I chose a mix of equally strong and a bit weaker opponents so we can try and get into the top 32 which will be a hard task.Here's the complete list:

Week 02: Russia
Week 03: Moldova
Week 04: WC
Week 05: WC
Week 06: WC
Week 07: Misr
Week 08: Pilipinas
Week 09: Denmark
Week 10: Scotland
Week 11: Cymru
Week 12: Perú
Week 13: El Salvador
Week 14: Zhōngguó
Week 15: Cuba
Week 00: Malaysia
Week 01: Al Maghrib