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I give everyone a day off in preparation for our match at Stuttgart. Porto are still in the Champions Cup. They won their first game away against Juventus and in two games they will host and try to win again and advance to the next round. Braga didn’t make it out of the Euro Group Stage. Benfica are still in the Champions too, they are against Schalke right now. They lost away 2-3, but that gives them a shot of winning today, March 11. Unfortunately they lost 2-3 again and are out of the Champions league.
And if Porto surprisingly loses against Juventus (not a big surprise, obviously) then we’ll be the last Portuguese team standing in European play.
Alright, time to see if we have any chance of progressing past Stuttgart. I pulled Tosun for Adriano in my starting squad. My team is superb morale, and playing well. We’ve won against a lot of good teams in the European Competition;. We will begin with a defensive strategy. If we can be as lethal in set pieces today as we were in the last game, we could have something. Their weakness was defending them, so I worked on attacking set pieces. They are cutting our longer passes too easily – our passing and speed aren’t good enough so I tell my folks to do shorter passing. Despite closing down an attack well, one guy shoots from range and makes it in in the 27th minute. Perhaps hassling them and tighter marking will help? Half time. Unlucky so far! Rondon had a great break away opportunity but just couldn’t find the net. They score again off a nice offensive movement in the 53rd. Daniel C had a good opportunity in the 75th and missed. We’ve found our groove it seems. An Adriano goal is called offside. If we can score here late, and get a nice away goal, it’ll help us massively at home – I order my folks to a very high tempo in the last 12 minutes of play. Then something happens. They made all of their subs, and in the 80th minute, we injiure one of their people, and they are down a person. I move to control, push the ball wide, and then it happens. A beautiful goal kick by Perrata finds Rondon, who feeds Candeais 1:1 With their GK. He drops it into the top right corner, and its 2-1 them. Nice. Now, if we can keep them from scoring (or score ourselves) that would be great. We have a couple of shots off a corner kick but can’t get the ball to sink. I pull back to defensive. But then they score deep in extra time to make it 3-1, and all of that energy is gone. They scored because someone (Aurlio) did not follow direction with a short pass or to keep possession risked a long pass from the back corner, which was obviously intercepted. ).
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