UNL: end of season 20/21

This was officially our best season yet. We managed to win every competition we were involved in which includes the UN League, the UN Cup and the Champions League. It was just an outstanding year for Heidelberg. A very consistent year as you can see from our fixtures, we pretty much dominated most games and with the help of some of our long term players we've achiever much more than was expected. We finished in first with 76 points, followed by Minato with 69 pts and third place went to La Pichard with 65. I feel that I can comfortably say that at this point these 3 teams are the cream of the crop in the United Nations League. While this is our first trophy, Minato has won it 4 times now (2014, 2015, 2019, 2020). They have been an impressive side over the history of the UNL.

La Pichard has had an impressive run as well, even though they only have 1 title (2017) they have placed 2nd twice and 3rd once. Beyond that, the UN Cup runner ups, Kalevipoeg, have also won once in 2018, and the other 2 german clubs have won it once each as well (FC Berliner in 2016, 84 Munchen in 2013)

In terms of notable players during this season, the player of the year award went to Espen Moe (Minato, Norway), with Piotr Pontus (Accra, Poland) in second and Rob Tol (Accra, Holland) in third. All players under 22 years of age. The top goalscorer this season was Will Baxter, the Englishman from Kalevipoeg with 27 goals and an average rating of 7.50. Todd Thomas (AC Lombardia, Australia) was tied with Aurel Lengyel (La Pichard, Romania) for second with 21 goals each and an average rating of 7.43 and 7.34 respectively. Lastly, the top goalie of the season was Philip Hulme from Heidelberg with an avg rating of 7.05, quite a feat for our 20 year old American goalie. 2nd place went to Osigwe, which is our old goalie, quite exciting to see 2 Heidelberg players get those awards.

UNL: 20/21 season update

2020 has been a great year so far for our Heidelberg side. The long term investments into young players with great potential are starting to bear fruits. We are currently in 1st place in the UNL and I have a strong feeling that this will be the year we win the League. We've had just a flawless campaign so far with hardly any losses. Perhaps the biggest challenge this season has been the departure of Zhao, our trusty target man for so many seasons. Just as he became a mature player we were forced to sell him to Manchester United. Perhaps I could have kept him for longer, but it would have been difficult to keep Zhao pleased in the club while so many of the best teams in the world were offering outrageous amounts of money for him. We ended up letting him go for a record 21M dollar deal. With this in mind I knew we would have to find some other player to replace him, which is why we brought in the Argentinian target man, Orsi, for 7M. Orsi is another great young player that I am sure will be a major threat to the opposition once he fully develops his game. This 21 year old striker may not be quite at the same level as Zhao, but he has certainly been an effective player at the front against some of the other teams in the league.

Beyond Orsi, a few players of not this season have been our defenders Antonio Jose and Kelisson Roberto. Both have had an incredible season so far and it is hard to believe these two are only starting their football careers. It's difficult to imagine they could get even better than they are already.

Another player that has been a pleasant surprise so far is the Japanese winger Kitazawa. He's always been a bit of a rotation player. I tend to only bring him in to rest some of our other players, however this season he's been playing superbly well. To the point that now I'm having trouble getting everyone enough pitch time since I have almost too many options at the front. I may actually have to sell one of our strikers/wingers at the end of this season, especially if I'm not going to be able to give all my players enough of a chance to develop. My main candidate to be sold is our Ukrainian striker/winger Ruslan Voytsekhivskyi. While he has been a strong reinforcement over his stay with the team, I believe our formation and tactics don't really offer him a place to really shine. He's really great as a lone striker, but so are our other 3 lone strikers. I use to play him in the wing a lot but now that's becoming difficult too with so many options on those positions too.

I've also purchased a few other players for this season, keeping up with my tradition to bring in young talented players. I purchased the Brazillian Rafael Fernando for $1.5M from Kobenhavn. Rafael is 23 and plays right full back. He has very high tackling, bravery and first touch. I was looking to get a full back with more offensive capabilities, but I have had a really hard time finding one, so I settled for this guy since he looks very promising as a defensive full back.

Lamine Diallo is one of my other purchases ($300K). This defensive midfielder from the Ivory Coast already has some impressive stats considering he is only 18 years of age. I plan to send him away on loan but probably get him some first team action next season already. My last purchase was the Brazilian left midfielder Dimas (bought for $650K). This kid is only 16 but has a great set of stats, incredible for his age. He has 14 crossing, 15 dribbling, 14 passing, 14 technique, he's really almost ripe already. If he can develop more over the next couple of years he has the potential to be a real threat for the opposition.

Lastly, I'm considering posting a few team profiles on the blog, just to give my readers a chance to get familiar with some of the other exciting side in the UNL. If anyone has any requests, just leave a comment. I'm probably going to do some profiles for teams that were suggested by fellow Redditors.