Shadaza

Portugal next. A real fun team to play with some great creative and hard working players and again excellent wing backs. Unlike Spain though, the Centre backs are all terrible, I was playing a back 5 to cover the weakness here and it lead to a fairly decent if exploitable defence. Lopes played every game including the September internationals, such a great keeper probably deserved to go to the tournament for real. Florentino Luis, at 22, was easily the best midfield player, the other highly rated highly caped players such as Sanches and Moutinho just did not work for me. Diogo Jota injured for the real tournament was a blessing to have, top scorer and hard working player that contributed at every stage of play. Pedro Goncalves too was also excellent and will be a player I keep an eye out for in future games. Also note, the Vintinha in the squad is not the same one as at the real Qatar WC, this is a Portuguese league striker instead. As for the tournament itself: First game was South Korea, a cagey 2:1 win. Second game was Ghana and we shockingly lost 1-0. The Uruguay game though was a convincing 3-0 victory and got us through the group stage to play a very strong Brazil. The Brazil game we lead 2-0 after 20 minutes but couldn't keep them out the game and eventually had to go to penalties with an exhausted squad and several injuires. The team was thus spent before we could even play Spain. We kept it 0-0 for 60 minutes but then Spain broke the dam.

I love international management, I'm going to try a few teams. First up, Spain. A promising start ended in heartbreak, won all 3 group games, the only team to do so. However lost 3-1 to Canada. We had xG of 2.5 vs Canada's xg of 0.8. But it do be like that sometimes. Played a 4-3-3 to make use of pacey wingbacks and great creative midfielders. Ramos made an incredible captain whilst Aspas was great upfront. Paco Alacer broke his back as soon as the WC started. My best surprising player was Dani Parejo of Villareal who quickly earned a starting spot on the team. https://gyazo.com/0de8c56be3549d8366be1072c5aa778e