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.

 

UNL: Conclusion of the 21/22 season

After such a successful campaign on out 9th season, season 10 was not quite as impressive. However, we did still get the Uniter Nations League trophy. It is our second title in a row, and this season Minato really came close to taking it towards the end. They were a mere 2 points behind with 2 games left in the season and we were to face each other. A tie would have been enough to lift the trophy, but we managed a 1x0 win at home in front of a full Midazolam Stadium with a goal by Chan Jook-Ki in the 82nd minute after he replaced Orsi. I think this game exemplifies exactly how the team was this season. We had a really strong starting 11 for the most part, but whenever we were missing a player someone from the bench would come in and make the difference.

Beyond the UNL, we also managed to win the Club World Championship, which is the cup where winners from the Champion's League face off with winners from the Copa Libertadores. As a South American I've always enjoyed this tournament but I know this sentiment is not shared everywhere in the world. Anyway, we beat the Brazillian side from Rio, Flamengo. On December 19th (2021), we won 3x1 at BMO Field in Toronto. Flamengo scored an own goal at 10 minutes and after that we exploited their vulnerabilities for the rest of the match. Ortega and Luppi were our other goal scorers, and we even missed a penalty (Al-Mazam) towards the end of the match. Flamengo managed a goal by their 24 year old striker Cesar.

In the Champion's League we did not do as well this time around, and we actually only finished in 4th place in group B (1. Bayern Munich [11pts], 2. Fenerbahce [9pts], 3. Jablonec [7pts], 4. Heidelberg [7pts]). The Champion's League final ended up being between Barcelona and Manchester City. City took the cup with a goal by Jovetic.

We also won the WU Badge against Minato after a 1x1 draw in a penalty shoot out. Exciting game. We did however do very poorly in the UN Cup this year. We won in the first round against R&R by 4x1, only to lose in the second round to the Irish team Celtic Tigers in a penalty shootout after a 1x1 tie. The cup final involved Minato (won vs Celtic Tigers in semi by 2x1 on extra time) and Inter Zagreb (won vs Amsterdam by 1x0 on extra time). The final finished with a victory by Minato by 2x0 with goals by the popular Justin Gant and the 21 year old Norwegian midfielder Jens Johan Hovde.

Some potentially sad news is that both Xavier Arellano and Javi Garcia have announced that they will be retiring. The American full back Arellan played 7 seasons with us and went on a loan last season to FC Berliner. He was still a great backup player for us but with the addition of Blanco to our team we should be in good shape for next season. The Spanish DM (35yo) Javi Garcia will probably be a more problematic loss. He came to Heidelberg in 2017 from Man City and has been a consistent starter this season despite his age. He's a solid defensive player and has been averaging above 7.1 every season since he joined us. He played 31 games in 21/22 and will certainly need to be replaced by a competent player.

In terms of player stats and awards in the UNL, our #9 Gustavo Orsi placed 4th in goals scored with 21, after Zhao Wendong (24 goals, CHN, Accra), Emil Lyng (24 goals, DEN, FC Berliner) and Justin Gant (23 goals, CAN, Minato). In terms of average rating, Antonio Jose was 4th with 7.65 and Orsi was 7th with 7.6. Great performance by our team really.

The player of the year award went to the Canadian Justin Gant from Minato, followed by our own Kitazawa and 3rd place went to Gustavo Orsi. It is quite an achievement to get 2 players in this, it is too bad we didn't get the #1 spot though. Once again Philip Hulme took the goalie of the Season award with a 7.07 performance this year. He had 15 clean sheets in 34 games. He was followed by the popular Argentinian goalie Ayala and the Hungarian Gyula Nagy, both with 16 clean sheets. In the defense, Antonio Jose took the #1 spot followed by the English player from Kalevipoeg Ricky Amass and the veteran from Minato Timm Klose who had a 7.94 average rating this season after 36 games. Not sure why he didn't get #1. Perhaps it's because he has won this award 3 times (2017, 2019, 2021) already in the past, which makes sense since he seems to win every other year. In the midfield Lars Jensen took #1 for Accra, followed by Iain Gibbs from British Columbia and Nwosu from KVC Antwerpen. Up front the young German Hendrik Nattermann took #1 with 21 goals in 33 matches, followed by Zhao Wendong from Accra and Tapoko from Praha.

UNL: 21/22 - Search for players

Heidelberg has been doing quite well recently. We find ourselves in 1st place in the UN League after 20 games. We currently lead with 44pts, followed by Minato (40), KVC Antwerpen (35), Kalevipoeg (34) and FC Berliner (33). Despite a strong season we have already been knocked out of the European Super Cup, and UN Cup. We were also eliminated from the Champion's League at 4th place in our group. Quite a disappointment after winning it last year.

While our team is strong, I have been wanting to purchase a good full back for my right wing. Here were some of the players I was considering.

 Juan Blanco - This Spaniard is unsettled at Barcelona and is a good fit for our right DL need. He's very pacy with decent crossing and ball skills. $7.25M for this 24 year old.

Sergio - This 23 year old Brazillian is also very fast and has even better dribbling abilities. He also has the added bonus of being a good set piece taker. He would cost $5.7M.

 Alex Grimaldo - This LB from Spain costs $4.5M and is 26 years old. He is a very strong crosser with good tackling and seems to be fairly mature.
 

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.

UNL: Conclusion of the 19/20 season

Another superb season for Heidelberg, we've managed to finish at the best position so far in the UNL and on top of that we made it to the semi final of the Champion's League and were the runners up for the UN Cup. I don't think there is a doubt that this was our best year yet.

We had a very strong season, which mainly featured a good start, where we essentially dominated in the first half of the season during 2019. I feel that Heidelberg began to struggle towards the end mainly due to the number of games we had to play and I believe the team take over that happened around April had a negative impact on the team. It was unfortunate since we may have been able to pull 1st place if it wasn't for that. Instead Minato once again grabbed the 1st prize with 81 points, quite a strong performance. Although this is not the best in UNL's history, in the 14/15 season Minato finished with 87 points and during the 17/18 season Kalavipoeg from Estonia finished first with 81 points. We were in second place with only 66 points, closely followed by Londinium FCwith 65 points. Much like Heidelberg, Londiunium have been improving over the years moving from bottom of the table during

the first 4 seasons to 11th place in 17/18, 6th in 18/19 and now in 3rd place after the 19/20 season. This is definitely a team we will need to keep an eye on for upcoming seasons.

In terms of individual players, one of our highlights is our young striker Zhao who finished the UNL seaosn with 24 goals, 2nd best after the Egyptian Islam Farouk from Londinium FC. Fabian Eiling from Norway (Bygdoy) snatched 3rd place. Zhao was also 2nd in Player of the Year following Farouk and ahead of the Brazillian winger from Londinium, Fernando Cesar. All 3 players are between 21 and 22 years of age, so we can expect that the UNL is only about to get more competitive and full of talent.

March 2020 - Team profile

It is almost the end of the 19/20 season and I figured this would be a good time to profile some of the players that have made it possible to be in 2nd place in the UNL, the final of the UN Cup and Heidelberg even made it past the group stage of the Champions League, which is completely novel to our squad.

To start, let's look at my two goalies. Both of them were chosen because of their age and potential. The 19 year old American Philip Hulme is our starting goalie, he's been absolutely great for our team despite his young age. He is also supposed to have a great amount of potential according to our scouts. Our second goalie is another young German player, Manfred KneiBl. He's slightly smaller than Philip but still has a lot of the great qualities of a player that may develop into a world class player for us. As I've mentioned before, we're really trying to build up a team with young players. UNL is still developping into a really competitive competition, so we can still afford to use some less inexperienced players to get the job done, which gives them so much experience. This is certainly part of the reason they have been developping so fast.



In the back we currently employ Kelisson Roberto and Antonio Jose. Both are our Brazillian defensive prodigies. Both are great players in the air, Kelisson being a more defensive minded player while the capitain Antonio Jose does have a bit more speed available allowing him to play a cover DC role with some offensive capabilities.

Beyond these two fenomenal Brazillians, we also have our two veterans, the 34 year old Jose Goncalves, who much like Kelisson takes more of the stopper role, while the 29 year old Zelimir Busic is our other ait threat. This Croatian DC has been with us for quite a few seasons now, and still starts games for us on occasion.


As full backs, our left side has the talent of the Dutch John Berghuis as well as the Italian defender, Rossano Luppi. Bot these players are actually quite similar in style and both could potentially be long time players for Heidelberg if I can keep them in the club. Unfortunately, on this side of our defense our players are defense minded, which at this point does limit our attacking potential from these roles


In terms of right full-backs, our veteran Xavier Arellano still plays for our team. He is perhaps slightly faster than our other DR, Kevin Bigler from Switzerland. Bigler is a very technical and creative full back. Our right side however is weaker in talent when compared to our left side.

Our current tactics involves a 4-1-2-2-1 formation using a lone defensive midfielder, often in an anchorman role or sometimes a defensive DM role. For this position we have the Mexican Erick Cardenas, Cesar Guerreno, Javi Garcia and Freddy Mveng. Garcia is our veteran with a strong air presence and quite a bit of physicallity to supplement that. Mveng is perhaps our best DM in my opinion so far. This 27 year old Cameroonian is shorter but much faster than Garcia.

Both the Mexican Cardenas and the Paraguayan Guerreno are 19 years of age and still have a lot of developping to do. Cardenas is tall and more defensive minded while Guerreno can play a bit more of a playmaker role since he is much more technical.

Guerreno is also one of our options when it comes to the mid field, however the Spanish Efijota certainly has more creativity and attacking potential, so he often is made the started with a DLP supportive role.

Beyond the mid fiel we have left and right attacking midfielders, often with an attacking winger role or even an inside forward role. On the left side we have another pair of Brazillians. The 22 year old Nilson Chule and the 22 year old Marcos Roberto. Both of these players are actually fairly similar, very fast and technical. Both have been a great part of our success this season so far.

On the right side we have the Ukranian Ruslan Voytsekhivskyi, who we just recently aquired. Despite his usual role as a striker, we have mostly used him in the AMR position so far, which is alright considering his speed and attacking skills.

Beyond that, Yoshinari Kitazawa is our Japanese forward that we tend to use as backup to a lot of different roles up front.

Chang Joon-Ki, is our 18 year old Korean that has also been doing a great job showing his talent.

Our two biggest stars perhaps are the two forwards, Tihomir Maric and our Chinese star, Zhao. Zhao tends to play either as a complete forward or simply a target man. Maric is a bit smaller and tends to be used in speedier roles.