UNL 22/23: player profiles

After posting only the major results I figured it would be good to showcase some of my main players on the blog. Maybe post some of their numbers and write a bit about some of my most important players this season. After spending so many seasons putting a solid squad together, I'm now finding we've been shuffling the team around a lot less often. Here are some of my players:

Tihomir Maric (11)

Maric is our vice captain and he's been with Heidelberg for 6 yeas and he joined us quite young at the age of 20. He was originally more of a winger for the team as he can play the left wing fairly well but once we started using our newer and more fluid tactic I found he was very effective as an advanced forward. He has scored 11 goals in 10 games this season and he's slowly taken Orsi's place at the front. Orsi has been one of our best scorers historically, but this season he's been a bit disappointing for some reason. Fortunately Maric has picked up the slack and has been scoring a lot of goals with Robertinho to feed him the ball.

Robertinho (8)

Robertinho is also 26 and he signed up with Heidelberg back in 2019 as a free agent from Santos. I'm not sure how this happened at this point since he's an amazing winger and getting him for free is bordering criminal. Robertinho has been a great power in the left wing. He is fast, he is agile, he is an amazing crosser and is also great at set pieces. He can basically do everything a manager would want from a winger. He has been probably the best overall player for the past year, not only contributing to Heidelberg but also for the Brazillian national team (which I also manage now).

Antonio Jose (2)

Antonio Jose is Heidelberg's captain and has been for a few years despite his early age. He's been a stable force at the back alongside Kelisson Roberto, his Brazilian partner at the back. AJ is a strong CB with great aerial capabilities as well as a strong leader within the squad. He joined the team back in 2017 for 1 Million from Fluminense. Beyond that, he is a consistent player and is part of the reason we have had such a great season so far. 

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.