Sorry I haven't updated in a while but I've been caught up in the F.C United vs. Man United challenge so I won't be updating as regualrly as I used to. However I do have the update for the year 2013 where England carried on thier good form in qualifying, only losing one game away to Ukraine. The year started off with a 3-2 win over Scotland who have leapt up the rankings in recent years. Surpsingly England only topped the group on goal deifference as England and Ukraine won all but one of their games. Unfortuantely I forgot to take a screenshot of the final table but I know that England topped the group with 27 points and +35 goal difference.
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In between the two parts of qualifying was the small matter of the Confederations Cup to deal with. England topped the group with three wins out of three and again I forgot to take a screenshot of the group
I managed to work out that England came first, Uruguay came second, Mexico came third and New Zealand came bottom. England faced a semi-final against world champions Spain after topping their group with ease. Both teams battled hard for 90 minutes but neither side could find the breakthrough which meant extra time. Again neither side could find that all important goal which meant the dreaded penalty shoot-out
Thankfully Joe Hart was on sparkling form and saved two penalties
The other players held their nerve and England went through to the final winning 4-2 on penalties
This set up a meeting with Uruguay who England beat in the last game of the group stages. Despite going 1-0 down early on, two goals from Gary Cahill of all people ensured that England claimed their 3rd piece of silverware under my regime
(That's if you count the Olympics lol). Top perfromances from Joe Hart and Wayne Rooney earned them the Best Goalkeeper and Best Player respectively.
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Now it's time to focus on the youth aspect
There were two tournaments this year for the U20s which were the French Youth Invitational and the U20s World Cup. We'll start with the French Youth Invitational as that happened first xD England had a strong selection to pick from up front with Dale Jennings who has already been capped and scored for the senior team. The first game was against Panama U21s which England brushed aside with ease winning 7-1 and Dale Jennings scoring 4 first half goals. England then faced Algeria U21s which again England breezed past 3-0. The final group game was with France U20s where the big mistake was resting Dale Jennings as England slumped to a 3-2 defeat. Finishing second in the group set up a semi-final match against Chile U21s where we regained our form to win 2-0. The final saw us face the team that beat us in the group stage, France. I didn't make the mistake that I did last time so I brought back Dale Jennings. The previous defeat seemed to motivate the players and we went on to demolish them 7-1. Our players swept the Best Player category winning first second and third. Sam Johnstone won the Best Goalkeeper award and Dale Jennings took the top goalscorer award and set a new record for the amount of goals scored. Roll on the U20s World Cup it seemed.
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Finally we move onto the U20s World Cup. I was hoping to carry on the momentum from the French Youth Invitational but a surpsing number of players were deemed ineligible even though they were 20 at the time
This meant that I couldn't choose from the pool of players I wanted to which included Dale Jennings
England started off the campaign with a 2-2 draw with Ghana followed by a 4-1 win over Turkey. England seemed to have an easy final game against Algeria who England played in the French Youth Invitational but we slumped to a 5-3 defeat. England placed second in the group which meant a tough draw against Argentina. England battled hard but succumbed to a 3-1 defeat. A disappointing campaign but one plus point was Will Keane who scored 4 goals in the tournament and hopefully another one to look out for.
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A pretty good year all in all but again a disappointing ending with a 2-1 loss to Uruguay and a 0-0 draw with Portugal. One high point for one player in particular was that Wayne Rooney became England's all time topgoal scorer with 50 goals and counting. Althoughg if Danny Welbeck keeps his form up he may be in with a shout of coming close to that as he's scored 9 goals in 12 games since I've taken over. I have also found out the draw for the 2014 World Cup and England are put in a group with Switzerland, Ghana and Australia. England should quailfy from the group but it will be interesting to see how far we go.
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Just a quick note, I won't be updating as regualrly as I used to because like I said I'm caught up in another challenge but I will try to carry on the challenge and update it as often as I can
