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Looking good, indeed.

The good work of the last seasons gives our national team some 'X-factor- glamour' at last.

Come on Belgium, come on Joe !

And we can add the fact that we have played 4 times against a crunch (Cyprus, Albania, Danmark and now England), so finally the schedule wasn't very favorable for us...

... and in spite of this... we're still ranked that high!!!
you're really doing a great job Joe!

Joe,

i am not so sure that Danmark will Destroy England completely.

anyhow, we got to give it to Cyprus. they surprized everyone, and if Danmark England and we would have had different outcomes, then Cyprus would have made it to the second position in our league... you got to give them credit for that ( how much i hate to give them credit after they killed us of)

and comming to think of it, i think the difference between Danmark and us, is the game vs Cyprus... we lost by 30, and they won by something close to 20...

that's almost a 50 point difference between us ( not to mention the fact that Danmark gets a game ahead of us). so if we were to end 3rd, then i think it is safe to say that the game vs Cyprus, was the deciding game. and the others tried to CT us, because Cyprus managed to pull out a win... that is the main reason for it this.

anyhow, unless the Germans realy hate us, they won't CT us. they are sure to be qualified, cause even if they lose now, they'll still be in first position. also, Danmark is 2 games behind them, England is 3 games behind, and cyprus is 2 games behind. and we haven't got the goal average to threaten their first position ( and if we look at the players salary, it would be insane hoping to get a win against Germany).

so i am not sure if we should try and get a win their, i think that it would be better to get the best possible defence up, and try to prevent a big defeat. if we can stay within 5 of Germany ( what would be a great preformance!) then i think we might have a chance.

England needs a result against Danmark. they really need the result, or they slide on the Nt rankings, and theirby have a much harder poule to qualify next season...

so i wouldn't give up england just yet.

Rev

ps: you have pulled of stunts against Danmark and England, so nobody would blame you if we end up 3rd. if we end up 3rd, then it is clear that Cyprus screwed us up. they had expected Danmark, England and Belgium would each win and lsoe one game agaisnt eachother, and that way, they hoped ( cause the chance it would work was really slim) they could manage to get hold of the second spot thanks to point difference. but they missed out on the fact that the smaller teams would fight with eachother for the remaining ordre, and that they would have a hard time their. nevertheless from their prespective, they did a good job. it's only sad to see that GM-LoD was right about the fact that it has ruined our own campaign...

Last edited by AthrunZala at 2/2/2010 6:51:23 AM

aaslong as we are not eliminated, let's not think about it. let's try to minimalize our loss and hope for a Miracle in the england Danish game.

Rev

anyhow, we got to give it to Cyprus. they surprized everyone, and if Danmark England and we would have had different outcomes, then Cyprus would have made it to the second position in our league... you got to give them credit for that

oh please...

let me rephrase that again: if Danmark England and we would have had different outcomes

Now, IF 3 other games would have diffrent outcomes we would be in first place.

Cyprus has doomed their chances starting in game 1. It was obvious then. Only a miracle would make it otherwise.

If Cyprus had played normal, they might have still won, and then they probably ended in second place, or at least had much better chances.

I can not but call it a mistake. I did it then, I'm doing it again. The fact you are now naming 3 things that shuld have been diffrent for Cyprus to succeed...

An other fact is that it indeed is very hard to get more then e few crunches againt your team. Unless a team is clearly much stronger, no team can withstand and survive if everyone decides to crunch on them.
It work's 2 ways: first they take a victory from you, but second they also mostly hand out a win to a concurrent. If that happens 4 times, the result is quickly predicted.


I stress again that I don't hold anything against crunch, or I also don't mind loosing. I'd only wish the winning, and crunching team would indeed gain somethnig out of it. Making 1 team loose and an other win, only to come out in the position you would likely end up in if you didn't twist and altered the other team's standings isn't what the tactics where invented for.

I also know the Cyprus NT thought that this was his only shot (so he explained) so I'm not mad at him. He will probaly have learned from this which is good for his future decisions.
But giving him credit for his crunch against us (and believe me that I would say the same if it was against any other country) is asked a little to much.

All in all we must face the truth. You can try your best, if others decide it's not your season, there's nothing you can do about it.
Good job Joe!!

the fact that he though of this plan (very daring plan, and the chances for him to pull it off where slim) and executed his part of it, i find that worth giving him credit for it.

and their is also something else. Germany was the strongest from the beginning, that is something everyone will agree on. if you looked at the second spot, their were 3 teams ( 4 if we take Cyprus into account) that could have won that spot. for Cyprus, they needed everything to go right ( and in BB it hardly ever goes right, still it's worth a try). they needed to win their games, and hope for us to lose to eachother.

the misstep was that he didn't count on having a fight with the remaining teams...

that said, i find he deserves the credit for trying to pull it off. he'll atleast have won 1 spot on the rankings, and if he's lucky, he might end up 3rd in our division.

what Joe has learn this season, is what it means to be seen as the team to beat for the second position. Geramny was first, and if you look at the rankings, Belgium should be just behind Germany in terms of strengh in the team. yet we weren't. and the others saw that aswell.

it unlikely that we'll be the highest ranked NT team in a round robin pool, but we might be ranked second again, and be seen again as the team to beat. i hope that Joe ( or whoever succeeds him if he were to stop with the NT) will remember this lesson. what it means to be seen as the team to beat. i am not sure if the results of some games would have been different, but out of each game (and each season), you got to remember the good points and the bad points. and take them on with you to the next game ( and next season). you got to work on them.

ofcourse, i would have prefered to see Belgium without a loss at this point. cause then we would be qualified at this stage, and the remaining game, we could have used as a game to try out something new...

but as i said, things rarely go as you would like them to go, or as you had planned them. that is what makes this game so much fun, cause it's unpredictable. no matter what the odds are, you can win a game. i recall BoD getting beaten in the cup by a 4th division team(!) a few seasons ago. i've seen BoD make an incredible comeback in B3 this season, to win the game.

and if LoD can do it, why wouldn't our NT be able to beat Germany? if we lose, so be it. our NT won the games against Danmark and England, with GS of players, that were far from ideal. Joe has done whatever he could under the circumstances, and he's done a great job untill now.

even if Joe loses the game against Germany, and we end up being 3rd (or 4th), even then, i wouldn't have wanted anyone else as NT coach. Joe has shown us that he dares to make decisions everyone else wouldn't have made. and to be honest, i still believe in Joe. he has nothing to prove anymore. he's a great coach, and his proven that to everyone already.

if you compare the salary of the NT teams we played against, then you'll see that the Belgian NT team is one of the few that doesn't have one or plural 100k+ centres. yet he's given us ( however small it may be) a chance to qualify. that second place is still ours and it will remain ours until next week monday. what happenes monday, we don't know that yet, but let's have faith in Joe. he has given us a shot to qualify, so let's see if that one shot will be enough.

cause unlike Danmark, we don't have to take their game into account. if we can keep the goal difference in the game against Germany really close, then Danmark will need to trash England to win. and what if we were to win? then the game of Danmark doesn't even matter anymore.

our game, will be decisif for who gets that second spot. not the game between England and Danmark...

so everyone here should tune in monday, and come and see the game against Germany. come and have a look at our NT team, and be proud of what Joe has accomplished.

Rev

i hope that Joe ( or whoever succeeds him if he were to stop with the NT) will remember this lesson.

heh, the problem is there is no lesson to be learned. Wheter you know this or not doesn't make a diffrence as the other teams have your fate in their hands.
The NT coach can only try his best, and hope he doesn't get screwed by the rest.

If you still feel Cyprus did not make a mistake crunching, and believe he had more chances of getting in second place by crunching then when playing normal, I think there are some things about enthousiasm that you still need to learn.
We all agree on 1 thing though. He needed everything to go right to be able to end second. And that meant he had to try to beat us with normal, hoping we would TIE, and then try to win the next games as well. If he'd played Germany next, I might be okay with the crunch as he could regain his enthousiasm in a game he wouldn't try to win anyway, but that wasn't the case. He gambled on to many things that had to go right, where he could have had enough with fewer luck-factors. But okay, that's everone's own vision I guess.

About salary. Times have long passed that salaries indicate the quality of players.
I can pick a team for you containing all players with wages over 50k each, and easely beat it with my team, if I can find 5 Rio Garcia's with a wage of half that amount.
the best example is the most expensive player I owned for a short while. Siontis had a wage close to 70k, yet he came no-where close to the quality on the floor that Rio Garcia has. He actually was the least player in my team as a matter of fact... So don't go blind on wages. If the player is nicely trained it will indicate the quality, but mostly, the higher the wage, the more twisted and unbalanced the players get...

salary ain't everything that is true.

but Joe has faced of against the SG of Georgia. and that 153k SG didn't only have firepower, we was quite well on the defending end of the court too.

so i'll admit that salary ain't everything, it's more like a burden on your team come to think of it, but in the NT you sometimes want these super (unbalanced) players, cause they need an equally unbalanced player to be defended...

the time of taditional players is comming to an end now.

am maybe this comparison is not the good one to make, but with 5 Rio Garcia's on the floor, could you win the B3 championship? you think it is possible with 5 rio Garcia's?

when i think of my team in the futur, i not only think about defence. i think about how can my player be the player that i want him to be, without giving him a killing salary but with the skills to cause an upset when needed. they must have that one special thing that i can use... that one thing that can give me an edge on anyone. that's what i am looking for... and most likely, the trick will be to find the players that give the edge, but don't have the killing salary. (maybe Garcia falls in this catergory, if so, then congrats on having one of those players already)

Rev