Life with the U20s - Week 2

Join OrangeStar for a look behind the scenes at the U20 Oceania Managerial position. Find out about what it takes to be a National Team manager, about the ups and downs, highs and lows, and get engaged and involved with the conversations about the future of our great nations. This is a weekly series about the challenges, thoughts and feelings that come with being the manager.

#fearthebear
#allin

Well. That was a lot of HT-Mails. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining! I knew it would be busy, but I didn't quite expect 2-3 HT-Mails every day. It really is great to see how trainers are interested in the prospects of their players, and also how willing people all across the globe are to communicate (in English) for a common goal. This week has been another week of organisation and preparation for the upcoming World Cup Qualification campaign.

The main focus for this week has been getting in touch with managers of the players that I was thinking about selecting for the WCQ squad and encouraging them to look after the form and stamina of their players. The other thing I did was encourage all managers to make sure their player data was being sent to Hattrick Portal (http://hattrickportal.pro/Tracker), where thankfully I've discovered a few new players popping up in the last week or so!

The biggest problem I've seen with the squad so far is their lack of stamina. Overall, this is a huge problem because of the way that it costs us ratings late in games, and it makes me very reluctant to select players. Stamina is sometimes a challenging thing to change, especially as bumping up the stamina share in training can cost a player their form (something that is also really important at not just U20, but any level of HT). This is not something that is anyone's fault, but it is a reason that we need more people to be involved with the National Team setup. Stanski did a fantastic job but can only focus on so much at once. If you want to get your players in the U20 team, please make sure you are training their stamina from approximately halfway through the season before they are likely to be selected. This will allow their form and stamina to balance out (especially if you have a form coach) around solid/excellent.

Why is form important, you ask? Well imagine that a player in excellent form is playing at the top of his game (100% efficiency). A player in passable form, just two levels below, only plays at 89.7% efficiency. So a player with a titanic main skill is playing like he is only world class. A player in weak form plays with just 73.2% efficiency, meaning they are playing like they have brilliant main skill. At a representative level, we can't afford sending ourselves out onto the field with those kind of handicaps.

Overnight, we played our final friendly before the qualification period kicks off (620348799). Against Angola, we were not trying to be competitive, or even score any goals. The primary goal for that match was improving formation experience, and getting an opportunity for some players that will feature in our upcoming campaigns to get some last minute experience in (and hopefully an experience pop) without giving too much of a guide to the way we are going to play. The final thing I didn't want were injuries. Thankfully, we succeeded in almost all of those things. We didn't score any goals, there were no injuries, and players all got experience. Unfortunately, we didn't get quite the formation experience boosts that I was hoping for, but something is still better than nothing!

Looking across the other friendly matches in our group, only Foroyar (620349095) and Al Maghrib (620349003) won their matches, and Uganda was the only other team in our group that scored (620348872). Benin (620348783) and Malaysia (620348969) lost in relatively close matches, while Israel (620348925) and Brunei (620348774) both lost 5-0. Of course, like our own friendly match, the results of these matches are meaningless too, as Team Spirit and Team Confidence will be back to neutral levels in time for the first match next Saturday morning. Most of the squads in our group have been completely emptied now in preparation for the start of the qualifiers, with the 'fog of war' setting in at 10 pm AEDST Friday night.

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Pos.	Team	P	W	D	L	GD	PTS
Oceania
Israel
Foroyar
Uganda
Al Maghrib
Brunei
Benin
Malaysia

Our first match of the campaign is at home against Uganda (620249232). Ideally we will be able to make the most of our home advantage and get some points on the board early in the campaign. Uganda finished sixth in their qualification group last campaign, missing out on Round II by just four points. Other matches in our group for opening day see Brunei hosting Israel (620249233), Foroyar hosting Benin (620249234) and Malaysia hosting Al Maghrib (620249235).

It's going to be another busy week, but I am excited for the first round of official matches to kick off. The campaign starts now!

#allin
#fearthebear

Link directly to this article (HT-ML, for the forum): [ArticleID=20448]