Another International Challenge

moved up from 24th to 14th in world rankings with turkey
 
World Cup 2014 - Czech Republic

SO CLOSE!!

Against all the odds we finished 3rd in Brazil, losing out 1-0 to the hosts in the semi-final. A fantastic achievement.

Group games

2-4 v Argentina
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1-0 v Honduras
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2-0 v Greece
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Qualified as runners-up
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Second round drew us against Uruguay. The winner facing either England or Cameroon.

2-0 v Uruguay
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Remarkably England lost to Cameroon so we had a great chance of reaching the semis to face Germany or Brazil.

1-0 v Cameroon
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The hosts await!

0-1 v Brazil
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So close. Brazil dominated in large parts but took till the 81st minute to break us down.

3rd place play-off

2-0 v Portugal
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A fantastic tournament far exceeding expectations!

To my great surprise we rose to 2ND IN THE WORLD! lol

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Our Euro 2016 should be fairly straightforward (i hope!)

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Wow! Impressive W4NKER and Steve as well, I have a long way to go to reach those heights, but wins against Chile and Cyprus in my first two games (I was underdog for both) has given me some hope although I have only risen by two places in the rankings. I was hoping that beating the team ranked 15 in the world would give me some sort of jump into the 90s or something but it's fine. Gylfi Sigurdsson has been my stand out player, not a surprise really, and seeing as I know very little about Icelandic football, apart from the quality players in FM, finding my best starting XI has also taken a lot of thought!
 
You had a similar run to me W4NKER (losing to Argentina in the groups, then with England losing facing an African team, I faced Ivory Coast).

Unfair that you went 2nd!!! :(
Only joking, well done.


Also, W4NKER, would you mind adding in my 2014 end of year update to the OP, it's on page 14 :) cheers.
 
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Russia Euro 2016 Update

Performance-wise it was not a good tournament for Russia but still managed to get to the quarter-finals somehow. Scraped 2 wins against Serbia and Croatia, then losing to Norway, however still qualified top of the group. Drew Switzerland in the 2nd round and unfortunately went to extra-time but won 4-1 with 10 men! This game killed my old squad and were unable to beat Holland in the quarters.

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My lone player who got into team of the tournament was sent off in the 2nd round and was unavailable against Holland which didn't help matters!

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And Belgium won it! Happy that it wasn't one of the big teams and they beat those Italians in the final!

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I fear that this may be the end of the road for the majority of my squad (average age was 30.2yrs!) and I feel a slip down the rankings soon with no competitive fixtures till the World Cup (hosts) and no real talent coming through to replace the generation of players that won the last World Cup and got us to a high of 4th in the rankings. At the moment Russia are 5th, with Argentina top and Belgium climbing 10 places to 7th after their Euros win.

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I only had 2 friendlies and 2 competitive matches in 2014 so I'm playing through the whole of 2015 tonight and should have a Poland update later.

On a side note, there is 2 Brazilian and 1 German youngsters that have Polish nationality, I tried to call them up to cap them and secure them for Poland but they all rejected the call up. I really can't see them getting into their national teams which is why I tried to get them to switch to Poland.

I can interact with them but the only options are to talk about international retirement and recent form and of course those options are both greyed out.

Any tips on how I can persuade them to play for Poland or do you just have to wait until they decide they might never get capped for their country and change their minds to consider Poland?
 
Russia 2016 Yearly Update

My suspicions were correct and my squad is too old now to compete against the big boys (England and Brazil). The youngsters coming through weren't even able to beat Japan and scraped a win against South Korea...

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In 2017 I finally have some competitive fixtures, although it is in the Confederations Cup so it will be interesting to see how I get on! Luckily I've been handed an easy draw and in previous years would have smashed it to go top. As it stands I will take 2nd place behind the Euro 2016 winners! The board expect me to reach the semi's and so should meet those expectations, but doubt I can take it much further with a fixture against Germany or Brazil!!

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Got a load of friendlies to play after that with a mixture of difficulty.

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Hopefully I can rise in the rankings once again because I have dropped this year down to 9th..

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Poland 2014 / 2015

2014 Fixtures:
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A quiet year as I did not qualify for the 2014 World Cup, two Euro 2016 qualifiers scheduled and previously I only had two friendlies but the assistant manager organised a few more.

The year began with a disappointing 3-3 draw with Romania followed by an easy 6-1 win against Malta and then a 2-1 loss to Brazil to which we put up a good fight.

The next two matches were Euro 2016 qualifiers. A simple 3-0 victory over the Faroes and a very good performance against Belgium saw us win 3-1 and start off the campaign with a 100% record.

The year ended with two rubbish performances in friendly matches against Lithuania and Portugal.

Spain won the 2014 World cup against Brazil:
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


2015 Fixtures:

We qualified for Euro 2016! We did well in a group that I thought would have been very challenging but finished second in our group behind Spain to qualify.

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The first competitive match of the year against Bulgaria ended in a 1-1 draw which was not ideal as I knew this was one of the teams I really needed a result against to ensure qualification. However a nice 4-1 victory over Slovakia in a friendly set us up for a good run of form in the remaining qualification matches. Two fantastic performances saw Poland beat Spain 2-1 and thrash the Faroes in a game where we should of scored twice as many.

Below is a screen shot of the Spain match, I knew it would be very tough to beat them so I went all out, setting opposition instructions to closing down, hard tackling to all Spain players and using touchline instructions to hassle opponents and get stuck in. We went down a goal at first but managed to pull one back before Villa was sent off in the second half, we then took the lead late on and Spain went down to 9 men which settled the game and ensured a sweet victory.
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In the remaining qualification matches we suffered a worrying 2-1 loss to Belgium but beat Bulgaria 2-0 at home to qualify with a game in hand which was lucky because our last game was against Spain which we lost 3-1. In friendlies we thrashed Malta and Latvia as we should but the year ended badly with two defeats in friendlies to France and Georgia.

We finished second in the qualifying group with Belgium qualifying through the play-offs:
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World Cup 2018 Qualifying Group Draw:

Due to qualifying for Euro 2016 our world rankings shot up to a high of 26th, making us 2nd seeds for the draw. The draw was good to us as the 1st seed in our group is probably the worst of the high seeded teams; Slovakia, who I had previously beaten 4-1 in a friendly. The other teams in the group are Latvia, Montenegro, Serbia and Luxembourg so results against Slovakia and Serbia are going to be vital:
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Euro 2016 Group Drawn

Poland were seeded 4th in the draw after a slight fall in rankings. In Group E along side us are Norway, Netherlands and Greece. I wasn't disappointed by the draw, its pretty decent, results against Norway and Greece are certainly possible and I'll be thinking back to my wins against Spain and Italy in the past when the time comes to face Netherlands.

Even if we loose all 3 games I'm sure my job is safe as the board seemed delighted to have qualified. Need to keep up the standards in the World Cup qualification though.
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My team is still fairly young, there are plenty regens that look like they should be of at least equal quality to the players I have available to me now but no outstanding prospects yet.

Currently ranked 34th in the world:
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I have to say I'm surprised that this save is turning out as fun as it has. Although Poland can sometimes be frustrating by not holding on to wins or beating a big team then loosing to a bad one they are a fun nation to manage especially with a player like Lewandowski who scores some mental goals sometimes :D
 
Russia Confederations Cup 2017

Again, a poor tournament performance-wise and finding it really hard to score, although somehow finished 3rd! I gave a new formation a try at the start of the pre-tournament friendlies and it wielded 2 draws so thought I'd give it a go for the Confederations. Got smashed in the last group game against Belgium and ended up playing Germany in the semi's. Held on till penalties but lost 4-3 :( Faced Belgium again and got my revenge with a 1-0 win. Felt this was extremely lucky as I was warned a bad result in that game would have seen me sacked! Would you believe it, almost SACKED after winning the WORLD CUP 3 years previously!

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Got a bunch of friendlies organised now for the rest of the year and then hosting the world cup next year! Had a group of senior players retire now including 2 key centre backs as well as Arshavin. Probably get a few more soon too :(

As I came 3rd in this tournament I managed to move up 2 places to 8th...

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Russia 2017 Yearly Summary

So what seemed like close to the end of my reign as Russian coach halfway through 2017 turned into a pretty good year for me. Highlights for me being a 4-0 win against Ivory Coast and the 4-2 win against Denmark (I was winning 4-0 but they scored 2 late goals when I brought on some older guys as replacements).

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I also had another Brazilian who qualified through residency and brought him into the squad...great replacement for Arshavin and had an average rating of 7.5 over 3 starts and 2 appearances off the bench. Zapater (Spanish defensive midfielder) also qualified and he's had 4 starts and 1 bench appearance with an average rating of 7.3. Unfortunately they are getting on with the Brazilian being 29 and Zapater is 32.

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My ranking has stayed at 8th so fairly happy it hasn't dropped as I've had no competitive fixtures since the Confed Cup.

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My World Cup 2018 group is pretty easy and I'm the host so should top it comfortably with only Uruguay posing any challenge to me.

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My Euro 2020 qualification group shouldn't pose any problems either...

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Russia World Cup 2018 Update

Great tournament!!! The change in tactics has completely changed my fortunes after my squad became accustomed to it. Unbeaten in 2018 up to the FINAL! I drew my first game and I thought, great, I'm not getting out of my group but then Welliton had a stormer against Uruguay and got 4 goals!

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After the Slovenia game I broke a Russian AND World Cup record too...

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I then faced Greece and scraped through and then got Italy. Hadn't beaten them before so wasn't being optimistic but they scored an own goal to put me through to, yep you guessed it, GERMANY...AGAIN!! It was a nervy game, went up by 2 goals twice but they were all over me near the end and thought they'd get the equaliser then win in extra-time!

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So I was in the final yet again, this time against Brazil, who had beaten me in 2016 3-0. I wasn't expecting much and things got off to a bad start when they scored after 2mins. Managed to equalise before half-time but they scored twice in the 2nd half to send us out as runners-up.

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Here's the knockout stages for anyone interested -

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Welliton got Golden Boot and was in Team of the Tournament, my left back and Zhirkov were on the bench. Over both World Cups I have 3 Russian players in the TotT too :)

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The board are delighted and I've risen to 3rd in the rankings (my highest yet and equals Russia's record high in 1996) -

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The only regen that has got a cap, hopefully this inspires the rest of the regens to train harder and become good enough for the Russian squad ;)

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Can you give me a team? I'll take 32 and please do give me a team with a league in the game if you can
 
Fantastic updates lads. In hindsight I perhaps should have assigned us all the same team so it would be easier to compare results, regens etc. Perhaps after this one runs its course I'll set that challenge up.

Keep the updates coming

pujka said:
I only had 2 friendlies and 2 competitive matches in 2014 so I'm playing through the whole of 2015 tonight and should have a Poland update later.

On a side note, there is 2 Brazilian and 1 German youngsters that have Polish nationality, I tried to call them up to cap them and secure them for Poland but they all rejected the call up. I really can't see them getting into their national teams which is why I tried to get them to switch to Poland.

I can interact with them but the only options are to talk about international retirement and recent form and of course those options are both greyed out.

Any tips on how I can persuade them to play for Poland or do you just have to wait until they decide they might never get capped for their country and change their minds to consider Poland?
Click to expand...

I've noticed that you can only wait until the player realises he isnt good enough for his home country then he decides to play for you.

Legendismessi said:
Can you give me a team? I'll take 32 and please do give me a team with a league in the game if you can
Click to expand...
Greece and Denmark are only teams available as Boyd pulled out and pompeyforever got sacked
 
Poland - Euro 2016

Good tournament for us I think. We finished top of our group which included Greece, Norway and Holland.

Started off with a 2-2 draw with the Netherlands:
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Followed by another 2-2 draw, this time against Norway:
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...and finished the group games as Lewandowski thrashed Greece 4-0:
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Greece qualified behind us and Norway went through as one of the best 3rd place teams, Holland got an early plane home.

Final group standings:
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By not loosing all 3 games I was already exceeding expectations so anything else was a bonus.

The knock out stages drew us against Croatia who beat us 3-1:
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Spain Eventually won the competition beating Croatia:
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Lewandowski got golden boot and named in the dream team:
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Republic of Ireland

2016 - Report

EURO 2016 - Lucky to qualify from my group as a best runner-up but lost 4-3 in 2nd round to finalists Belgium

WORLD CUP QUALIFIERS - off to a reasonable start with 3 wins and a disappointing 1-1 draw with Slovenia

WORLD RANKINGS - my aging squad has slipped down to 25th as I still have no decent regens.
 
Should hopefully have a 2011 update on today, played the whole year due to the Icelandic league beginning in Dec 2010, may try and get a 2012 one done as well, but that depends on qualification for Euro 2012, which remains a small possibility.
 
So 2011 came to an end for Iceland and it was a bit of a roundabout year, with the World Rankings ending up pretty much exactly where they started, which was very frustrating as I felt that we did well in some games, and there was probably only one game where I felt the result wasn't as good as I had expected, the game at home to Cyprus.

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As a team, we played a 4-2-3-1, although towards the latter end of the year we moved to a 4-1-2-1-2, and this was my team of the year:

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Pretty much as you'd expect, although I didn't manage to get the best out of Kolbeinn Sigborsson, which was frustrating as I've seen how good he can be on other saves.

This was how my group turned out and with me starting the save with the team on 0 points from 3 games, I don't feel we did too badly.

EDIT: If we were, at some stage, to all compete with the same team, then I think South Africa would be a good one to be
 
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