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Europa League 1st Qualifying Round

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The first leg in Azerbaijan was glorious, big fat 4-0 win, 3 goals from 3 new signings making their debuts, and the 4th goal is from our 17yo Bulgarian youth product. Great!

The second leg was going just as sailing as I decided to fiddle with a possession version of our tactic based on another tactic I've seen around in the forum, but our **** players not being good on the ball plus complacency led us to conceding 3 goals - not much of an issue when we had scored 4 before.

 

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Osijek should be a much tougher test, they are a side of a similar level to us, maybe a bit bigger than us.

 

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Pre-season 2019/2020


 

Transfers

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A somewhat understated pre-season in terms of sheer numbers with just 3 new first team players, but those 3 seriously reinforce the attack. I'm not gonna bother screenshotting Suto and Horvath, they're just plain **** picked up by the DOF, I've stopped confirming his transfers without double-checking his signings now.


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Poacher-esque pacey striker who's a serious upgrade at ST but I would've liked higher jumping.
 

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I absolutely broke the bank for him with crazy wages above the entire squad (even Adam Vass) but he's worth it IMO, excellent inside forward upgrade for the left, is not crazy good at particular skills but he's a super complete player, is "consistent", and the basic skills (crossing, dribbling, pace, finishing) are about as good as all my other options anyway. He became 22 just days after signing for the club, I remember I'm only signing Under-21 Eastern Europeans.
 

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Almost the other way around, he's a little better than Senic on the key skills however a passing of 3 scares me, I'm also not sure about him being left-footed, as my balance up until now of a right-footed on the left (as a traditional IF on support) and a right-footed on the right (as a IF/A that doubles up as a sort of winger as he reaches for his preferred foot on the right wing) has been working well. But he's most definitely worth a punt, who knows if he might offer a little variance for us as well.
 

 

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Starting well, let's see what we do against Osijek now.
 

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Europa League 2nd qualifying round

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Wow, what a tie with quite the twist. In Croatia we were running comfortable 2-0 winners until we surprisingly completely fell apart and let them turn the match around already very late. With 2 away goals we could still do a lot at home, but in this 2nd leg Osijek frustrated us successfully for 90 minutes in which we attacked the most but failed to create absolutely anything, and were even pretty lucky not to concede from a penalty. Until in injury time Ákos Baki scored in a corner kick and off we go to the next round!

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This is getting tougher, PAOK next are rightfully clear favourites. I fancy our chances to surprise, though.

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Europa League 3rd qualifying round

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Gaahhhhh. We were so close here to something pretty cool but eventually PAOK prevailed. We went ahead twice in Greece and still came home with a 2-2 draw that looked really good for qualification. But back in Budapest the game just didn't go well for us. PAOK scored from very much the first kick of the game, and even after we got back into it and made it a very even match, they got a penalty out of the blue midway through the 2nd half, scored from it, and then we struggled to impact the game in the final 30 minutes in which PAOK just about controlled things okay. It all feels like we were a little unlucky here and more than competitive enough to have progressed with just a slightly more favourable roll of the dice.

Overall I think I'm happy with this European performance for now, I mean as it stands we should lose to PAOK, we're not of the same class. 

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29 minutes ago, wynter said:

Very close vs PAOK, upgrades to the team should be great though. Hopefully they help out in the immediate future. 

After checking out in the editor yesterday the youth numbers for Hungary I'm not super optimistic we're ever gonna produce great youth. :( Maybe if we get more Bulgarians like George Krastev YP18A.

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Mid-season update 2019/2020


 

Transfers

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One late signing and he's fire.


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Only temporarily on loan from Guimarães, but what a player. 12 goals on 14(1) appearances as it stands, he's just an excellent forward. I want to hire him permanently, Guimarães always say yes, the player says no.

 

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There's not much to say here, I'm only a little surprised that we're at this stage already, because we're absolutely cleaning out the league. Currently undefeated with just 2 draws, and counting from last season already, we're on a 26 unbeaten matches run. As it stands it's a 16 point lead and we're looking real good for our first title in 11 years. It all very much looks like the challenge of the Hungarian league is already over!

No problems on the cup neither, I hope and expect this is the year we beat the quarter-finals hurdle...

 

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End of season update 2019/2020


 

Transfers

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No transfers in.


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Not much of a story this 2nd half of the season as we were always well on course to become champions. Annoyingly Paks ruined our chance of an undefeated season, and Ujpest would beat us too, near the end. But right before that match we clinched the title, 5 matches early, with a 4-1 over 2nd placed Vasas. We would end up champions with an enormous 25 points gap at the top.

The cup was much tougher. Debrecen shocked us in the quarter-finals with a 4-1 win in the 1st leg as our LB Luka Marin saw an early red card, and that tie looked over... only for us to win 3-0 and scrap through in away goals in the 2nd leg. And we would again need away goals to overcome Videoton in the semi-finals, after a 0-0 and a 2-2. The final was simpler, Biró and Senic getting a goal each in a 2-0 win - they would end up tied as our top scorers both on 17, which Senic won't be pleased about as he later missed a penalty kick! Either way, it was my first Hungarian cup, the club's first since 2000, and the first double since 1997.


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Squad review 2019/2020


Best 11

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GK - Zsolt Gyarmati
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Coming good, with an improvement over last season in all measures, from goals conceded to clean sheets to ratings, and he's kept on improving his attributes even if he's not thought to have huge potential. The young keeper's likely to have competition for the position now though, as I've got a new keeper lined up.


DR - Antal Sáfár
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Developing into a crazy good fullback! He's now rated the best player in the squad on par with Krastev, and on the pitch had a crazy good season as well with the highest ratings of everyone (7.46) and a bonkers 10 assists from the right-back position!


DL - Luka Marin
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Good but not great again, this is a position where I still don't feel 100% happy with, and could be open to an upgrade.


DC - Máté Komáromi
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Coming good, his lazy-ish personality doesn't help him reach his great potential but slowly he's getting there. Picked up his first 3 caps for Hungary at the age of 19.


DC - Ákos Baki
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Also picked up his first cap for Hungary, but Komarómi's more experienced CB partner is now starting to look like the weakest link in our starting 11.


DM - Ádám Vass
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Now aged 31, he's starting to look like a problem in the making for the next few seasons, as I am unlikely to find a player this good at the defensive part of the game to replace him. My staff now give him only 3 stars of CA, but I think he's still head and shoulders above any other options we have for DM.


MC - Veljko Nikolic
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Wow, nothing like last year, which had been a pretty disappointing first season for the Serbian midfielder at the club. This year he just absolutely bossed the midfield, looking really comfortable as BBM - 7 goals, 12 assists (!!) and 7.43 ratings. Seems to have already hit his potential at the age of 20, though.


MC - Georgi Krastev YP18A
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Holy crap, our Bulgarian youth intake kid has developed into an absolute monster! The performances on the pitch actually weren't that amazing this season compared to the exciting form he was at the end of last year, but attributes-wise he has just absolutely exploded and is now rated the best player on the squad on par with right-back Sáfár. I've been able to slowly increase his release clause, now to 750K, after a few contract negotiations, but I think it won't be long until the big teams in Europe spot him and I lose him.


AMR - Vladislav Mukhamedov
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The Belarusian's first season at the club was marked by a superb goalscoring run at the beginning of the season, but then his goals dried up and I started rotating him a lot with Ivan Tejic. At the end still a decent output of 14 goals and 13 assists - that's most assists in the whole squad, just one more than Tejic and Nikolic though.


AML - Milan Senic
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Also new here and I'm also slightly unconvinced by his first season which was also marked by inconsistent good/bad periods of form. But at the end... he still finished as joint top scorer on 17 goals. 9 assists, too.


ST - Bence Biró 
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The loanee on what was probably his only season for the club, did fine - joint top scorer with a winger (Senic) might look a bit damning for a forward, but he did play less, due to arriving late in pre-season, and a bit of rotating and injuries here and there. It's proving hard to sign him permanently, but I'm thinking I might just pass up and let him go, since Gábor Kitl is also emerging as a great forward in the making.



Rest of the squad and hottest prospects

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AMR - Ivan Tejic
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The promising Serbian winger again just misses out on a mention on the strongest 11, but to be fair he was pretty much our 12th player as I kept on rotating him with Mukhamedov on the right and sometimes even Senic on the left. He ended up with a 7.40 ratings that was higher than both of them, but that is flattered by cup appearances. 9 goals, 12 assists.


ST - Gábor Kitl
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A new signing that was supposed to be first choice for striker until I managed to loan Bence Biró. So he became very much 2nd option this year BUT by the end of the season I'm starting to think he's probably the best option now. He's a more one-dimensional player than Biró but is developing incredibly quickly and has loads of pace plus great finishing. 14 goals, 8 assists.


ST - Róbert Fedor YP20A
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When he popped out of the youth intake as the leader of a "golden generation" and very promising attributes, I was dead sure he'd become a future great for us. When he scored twice on his debut (to be fair, a **** easy cup match) I was even more convinced. Then he broke his leg... still rated with great potential, but I'm now seriously worried he might miss out on the player he could've become.



Career progress table

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Champions League 1st Qualifying Phase

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Wow! What about this! Celtic's narrow Brazilian 4-2-2-2 played wildly into our hands in the first leg, but I would've never expected this - a 6-0 smashing! Gábor Kitl on crazy form with 4 goals! In Scotland a lot happened, from us taking the lead, to Celtic turning it around, to a red card for a Celtic player, to us missing a lot of chances and Celtic still holding on to the 2-1 win. But what matters is that they were never turning around our 6 goal lead from the 1st leg.

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For the next round I'll risk saying we are favourites, HJK are surely weaker than Celtic and probably weaker than us.

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18 hours ago, oriole01 said:

What a result :eek:. Could not have predicted that in any circumstance.

I definitely didn't predict it neither. :D Just one of those days where everything goes to plan I guess.

I love that FM blames it on Celtic missing Brendan Rodgers, too. :lol: (I checked and from memory he moved to Southampton I think)

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Pre-season 2020/2021


 

Transfers

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The signing of the 2 pretty awesome non-EU (Serbian) players meant I ran way out of non-EU slots as we can only play 5 of them at once yet I now had 7. Hence I decided to do pretty radical move of selling a very good player to another Hungarian team - that is DM Balsa Banovic. I'm not that bothered: he wasn't a starter, and I don't mind strenghtening other teams in the league, we were so dominant last season that I'm cocky enough to think we won't be challenged and I need the national opponents to help with the league UEFA rankings. ;) And I'm still going to sign a EU national replacement for Banovic anyway... and I'm gambling on the Serbians becoming EU nationals whenever Serbia joins the EU which usually happens in long-term saves. ;)


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A very exciting young keeper! Total class at the age of 18, loads of potential and "driven" personality!


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Not as much potential, but this also 18 year old Serbian is a very nice upgrade for the LB position which has been one of our biggest problems so far this career.


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With the European fixtures starting this early and the league's about to start already too anyway, there's not much space for much of a pre-season...

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On 09/07/2018 at 15:31, Timetxu said:

Gábor Kitl getting a 9,9 from that match is like your teacher refusing to give you a 10 because you misspelled one word in a maths test.

He was rubbish. Absolute rubbish. Definitely not good enough.

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Well I wasn't expecting to sign up the Banovic replacement still before the first league match so let's pretend this is part of the update above.

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He's not bad, hey? Probably not a starter as that should still be Nikolic-Krastev YP18A, but a very nice first backup option for the midfield! I paid 230K€ for him.

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Champions League 2nd Qualifying Phase

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The first leg was pretty disastrous. The team was nervous and HJK capitalised on every counter or set piece - we found ourselves losing 3-1 at home and really struggling. We still managed to tie it, but HJK got their winner and even missed a late penalty - a bad 3-4 home defeat, that barely resembled at all the big win over Celtic in the previous round. But in Finland... we were class! Tejic was was hugely inspired with 2 goals and 1 assist and booked our place in the next round as we came back to Hungary with an emphatic 3-0 win.

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The level of difficulty is rising now... but we did beat Celtic which are pretty much the same level as Sparta if not slightly bigger, so who knows if we can repeat it.

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Champions League 3rd Qualifying Phase

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It's another great European night in Budapest as we return to the spirit of the 6-0 win over Celtic, and smash Sparta 4-0! Nikolic was particularly inspired scoring a lovely freekick from way far, plus 2 assists.

We went to the Czech Rep feeling pretty comfortable, but as Sparta dominated the first half hour and we were lucky not to concede, I switched to a cautious countering tactic. It worked and although we were rather fortunate with this scoreline, we were the winners again, now by 2-0.

 

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Only a plastic-fizzy-drinks-club stands in our way from the CL groups now. Feels crazy that we need to get past 4 rounds (!) to get into the groups, though.

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47 minutes ago, noikeee said:

I'm getting tired just from looking at that GIF.

So fraudulent for a circle of fitness enthusiasts...

Nicely done against Sparta!  Salzburg isn't all that bad a draw...  Good luck!

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Champions League Playoff

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The first leg of this Austrian-Hungarian derby of sorts, in Budapest, was tense, tight and nervy. There was the odd rare chance either way but it ended 0-0.

In Austria though, RB Salzburg's narrow 4-2-3-1 played perfectly into our hands as it allowed us to exploit the flanks and be super dangerous on the counter. Tejic took the lead for us to give us a very valuable away goal, RBS still equalized within the first half, but Tóth (replacing as ST a regretfully injured Gábor Kitl, out for 3 months) put us ahead again shortly after the break, and we'd never lose our advantage again, even missed plenty of chances. We're off to the Champions League proper! The group stage!

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Unsurprisingly, we had the lowest coefficient of all 32 teams in the draw here and were way down on pot 4 (although we had the company of AC Milan in the same pot!!). Given the circumstances, I am delighted with the draw. There were so many harder groups, somehow we managed to avoid clubs from any of the big leagues at all. I don't expect us to do much but I'd like at least a point. Anderlecht look the team we can possibly trouble the most.

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46 minutes ago, kidthekid said:

Impressive result against the truly honorable Leipzig. How did you approach the match home and away, normal tactics or you played with caution?

We didn't play Leipzig, we played the original highly-marketed-cans-of-caffeinated-p*ss club.

Normal tactics which is the one in the last season update. However for the away leg I ticked "exploit the flanks" as they lined up on a narrow 4-2-3-1 instead of a wide version of that tactic. It worked!

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27 minutes ago, noikeee said:

We didn't play Leipzig, we played the original highly-marketed-cans-of-caffeinated-p*ss club.

Normal tactics which is the one in the last season update. However for the away leg I ticked "exploit the flanks" as they lined up on a narrow 4-2-3-1 instead of a wide version of that tactic. It worked!

Ah my mistake. So you played the honorable football club in Salzburg

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Nice. :cool: He picked up the record of youngest ever scorer in the Hungarian league, too.

Meanwhile,

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I asked for a new stadium and this is what we got. 8300 capacity is far too little. Granted, our tiny stadium at the moment has only capacity for 5000 but we're playing our European matches on a nearby stadium with capacity for 12000 - and packing it. 8300 is a blinkered short number. I should've ticked "buy stadium" instead of "build new stadium" and hoped for the board to get us the 12000 capacity one, but how would I know...

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Champions League Group Stage - 1st half

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The first match was our best chance for a point, and we did it! It took a late goal from our 16 year old youth academy striker, but we got the draw against a surprisingly defensive Anderlecht side, playing a very deep 3-4-2-1 formation with 2 DMs and 2 MCs.

In Lisbon and Moscow we could not repeat this, but I don't think we were embarrassed at all, which is good enough for me. Particularly in Moscow I think we were highly unlucky to lose by 2, had pretty much as many chances as Spartak.

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There's a chance we could grab 3rd from Anderlecht and still go to the Europa League, but quite frankly at the level we're at, anything we can get from here would already be a surprise.

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Budapest, 15th of November 2020

Surprise!

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This was an ambition of me from the very beginning of the career, as the whole idea is to re-energize Hungarian football. This job comes a bit early as I've barely had any time at all to produce and develop young Hungarian players through my youth setup etc, but I had to take it as it opened up, who knows when it will open up next.

I barely have time to breathe as we have a match against Kosovo tomorrow! Here's the players I'll have with me, who were called up by the previous manager:

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Lots of familiar MTK faces...

 

It should be no surprise they sacked their manager when you look at Hungary's results:

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Truly awful! :lol: We're relegated to the Nations League Divisions D, so I guess next time this competition comes up we'll face the likes of San Marino, Andorra...

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Once this sorry competition is over, the World Cup qualifiers begin and this is our group....

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.... which I don't fancy at all. This is trouble. I don't expect to make the World Cup. Thankfully, neither does the FA. :lol: 

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UEFA Nations League

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I'm disappointed to concede those late 2 goals that make this result closer, when it was so comfortable at a point. But overall pretty decent I think for a match with zero preparation for, even if against an easy opponent.

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At least we don't finish with ****ing zero points on this. :lol: 

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Champions League Group Stage - matches 4 and 5

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The match against Spartak wasn't going well at all - Spartak were dominating us even after we were forced to revert to a cagier setup. Then I decided "**** it", and went even cagier to DEFENSIVE mentality, in a twist to my setup that was largely inspired by @herne79's take on strikerless that I was reading a couple of days ago, although mine here wasn't strikerless (essentially a more traditional 4-1-4-1 with a CF/S upfront but on defensive mentality yet rather aggressive roles from the midfield line of 4, these roles I already have in my regular wide 4-3-3 which I adapted for this twist here). It worked! We minimized all that Spartak danger, started having the odd chance on a counter, and on the 94th we suddenly had a penalty kick and scored! The scenes!

In Brussels, I lined up like this again, right from the start, and it worked even better. We were fortunate not to concede from a penalty kick they had midway through the first half, but would run away with a famous 3-1 victory.

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3rd place and continuation in Europe is already guaranteed, an achievement I'm rather proud of. We can even continue here to the Champions League knockouts, as we're level on points with Spartak and "just" need to better their result, but it'll be tricky as we have to play Benfica. 

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And this is the defensive tactic, just in case anyone's curious. Still have the occasional PIs here and there which remain from the main tactic, such as BBM/S told to get further forward too, lots of "shoot less" for lots of players, etc, and my usual set pieces.

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