Sunday, October 5, 2014

United Nations League - Season 22/23

This season was another great success. We've managed to once again take the UNL title. This is the third year in a row, and despite our great point count, we still had to wait for the very last game to be able to claim the title. In the last day of the season Heidelberg was only a single point ahead of Minato and we needed to at least do as well as them in order to lift the trophy. Well we did it after beating the Russian side, Kremlin by 1x0. The game wasn't necessarily a close one, but still very exciting. Check out the goal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx8XaCLhLvQ

 We also managed to win the UN Cup as well which was a great achievement for us, to win both of these on the same season. (check the final @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDMCKqCPeQ&feature=youtu.be ). It would have been even greater if we had won the Champions League, however, that wasn't in the card. We made it all the way to the semi-final, only to lose by 5x0 on aggregated to Machester City. We did qualify past the group stage despite having Real Madrid, Spartak Moscow and Sparta Prague in our group. We then beat Olympique Lyonnais (3x2), Inter (3x1). Even though our Heidelberg squad is strong enough to do well internationally, we still don't have a team quite at the caliber of some of the richest clubs of the world.

In terms of players, my top picks are our steady captain Antonio Jose. This 23 year old Brazillian centre back played 54 games this season, which is insane and managed an average of 7.60... He's certainly part of the reason we did so well. While Gustavo Orsi had a terrible last few months, he still managed to score 19 goals in 38 games and had an average of 7.44. Tihomir Maric, our vice-captain also did very well, scoring 21 goals in 39 games and had an average of 7.35 overall. A few other favorites of mine were the right winger Kitazawa, who had a wonderful early season which was halted by an injury in which he never really recovered completely. He still had 9 goals and 7.27 average after 30 games. The DM Robson Geraldo was another great player this season, this 20 year old Brazillian had an average of 7.27. Robertinho, our AML also had a great early season but an injury later on did slow him down unfortunately.

Below are some more stats for this season.