Community » Hattrick Press

NT World Cup recap

Written by HPE-regia5

This article will detail what happened during last Qatar NT World Cup Qualification campaign, and the work done trying to achieve a good campaign, highlighted with an away win against Føroyar and an away draw against the mighty England.

Being elected as NT coach during the season, as it happened to me, you have more troubles: you didn't select the team, and you can find a difficult situation. In Qatar, it was even worse.

These were the result of the first 4 matches (not played by me):
Nederland - Dawlat Qatar 4 - 1
Dawlat Qatar - Suriyah 1 - 3
Dawlat Qatar - England 0 - 3
Slovenija - Dawlat Qatar 7 - 0
0 points, a terrible goal difference (-15, an average of almost -4 for each match), and also the lowest TS & confidence in the group.

Unlucky the_bodyguard (previous NT coach) had some real life issue and wasn't anymore able to fulfill his duties, and it was pretty obvious that the team after 4 matches was out of the qualification picture.
World Cup dream was out of question: we had to focus on the basis, to start to rebuild our confidence and TS, and to give credits to the best owners of Qatari players, even if it would have given us some weaker performance.

My first match, at home against Føroyar (496511319) (16651421.99) was played trying to keep a clean sheet as first target: the result, a 0-0 draw, was something I was happy about. One match, one point. Quite good, considering the situation.

The second match, was a difficult one, away against Prathet Thai (496511323) (16651421.106). They were fighting for qualification, and they needed to win. I was in Greece for a short holiday, but I arranged my time so that I would have been able to do anything needed for the match. I expected them to not concentrate on possession, so we went on field with a lineup that would have been able to take some possession, focusing on defenses. The gameplan was excellent, and it worked well: we came back home with another precious point, drawing 1-1, and restoring our pride.

Third match was a challenging one. Away against Lietuva (496511325) (16651421.110), a team that anyone was expecting to see fighting at the top of the table, but who didn't get the result they wanted. But they had to be careful: our TS and confidence were back to decent level, and we could have tried to go for possession. I feared their attacks, with a 2-5-3 we would have been exposed, but they played with a 3-5-2 lineup that left a smile on my face.
Our defenses had to work hard to keep the draw, but at 79th minute they scored the goal that gave them the win. We lost, but looking back at the situation, we knew we were playing well: in 3 matches our opponents scored just twice. We still lacked some edge in front of the goal, but we had difficult games: it was something we still could have changed soon.

And it changed for the fourth match, against Nederland (496511328) (16651421.113). We played 3-5-2 in an open match: they had a 100% record so far, having won 7 matches out of 7, and they were between the favourites to win the World Cup. Was it expected that little Qatar would have played in this way? Probably no, but it gave them some nightmare. We were able to pull back twice, and we were drawing 2-2 until they scored a quick+pass SE. We tried to recover, but it was too late. They won the match, but we walked out the park with high head. It was an enjoyable night.

Fifth match: the match we strongly wanted to win, the match we were waiting for. (496511332) (16651421.116). Suriyah away. A potential dream who became a nightmare. The first problem, was Suriyah attitude: they played MOTS, wasting their TS and ruining their chances for the following matches, just trying to beat us. Our lineup was anyway effective, and we had more chances to win than them. But it was one of these nights, when match engine does anything against you. We had even more possession, but we lost 5-0. Crazy. Terrible. Shocking. We had to restart and rebuild our confidence as soon as possible.

And it happened with my sixth match, in England (496511336) (16651421.119). What a fascinating match: I think that each child who loves football, sooner or later will dream to play at Wembley against England. And we had to do it, against an England team who was fighting for qualification, and who just wanted to get rid of us scoring plenty of goals. I knew it would have been a potential nightmare, but we acted as if we would have liked to go there to play an open game, trying to snatch a win. False. We went there building on our defenses, and pressing. We parked the bus. And they were exposed, because they didn't expect it, and they weren't able to cope with it. The final result was 0-0, and our players exploded showing their joy for one of the most prestigious result ever gained by this team. It was the best night of the campaign, really.

Seventh match: Slovenija, at home (496511346) (16651421.122). I managed Slovenija U20 few time ago, and it was probably my worst term ever, for various reasons. It was quite nice to play against them, because of the mixed emotions. They feared me, and on the other side I wanted to show them I was able to build on our momentum, and I wanted to win the match. They needed to win too, so I supposed they would have played an open match, but they didn't. Our efforts unlucky didn't give us a goal, so we had to be relatively happy with a 0-0. Another clean sheet, another good result, even if we were still missing a win.

But our wait didn't last too much. In my eight match, away against Føroyar (496511347) (16651421.124), we chose to play MOTS. We wanted to grab that win. We huffed and puffed and we did it! It was a balanced match, but we escaped with a 2-1 win, that made us very very happy: to end our campaign without a win would have been disappointed, and something we didn't want to accept.

Ninth match: at home against Pratet Thai (496511350) (16651421.128). Having MOTSed previous match, our TS was obviously weaker, but Thailand did the same so we were not in a bad position to pick up something from this game. More than that, they had to win, so they had to take risks. We were the favourites, looking at ratings, but this time we gained just pain and no satisfactions: we lost the match 1-0, with a result that will be later decisive for Thailand qualification (at the expenses of England, with a major surprise).

Tenth and last match: at home against Lietuva (496511354) (16651421.131). Once again, we tried to win the match. We had the edge, but we were not able to do it. We were even losing it, but we scored a goal with 3 minutes to go that was a nice way to end our campaign. Another draw, and again we showed that we can pick up points against anyone.

It's also important to notice that we never played at full strenght: we often fielded young players who needed experience, keeping out better players at the end of their careers.
We have to build on our future. And our future are the new guys, players still young and relatively unexperienced, but who'll give a big contribution in future (being very well trained).

Forum thread for the new campaign: (16786177.1). Feel free to join us, and click on 'Like' if you liked this article!