Part I: Welcome to Bulgaria
Part I of our challenge brings us to Bulgaria, a country on the lower east part of Europe, bordered by Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, and Turkey. The official language is Bulgarian and the population is just under 7 million. The capital city is Sofia, which is also the largest city with a population of just under 1,250,000 people.
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(Forgot to mention that my name, Mitch Collins, will be the manager name used in this game. I will also create myself as the nationality of the team I am managing.)
Now let's take look a quick look at the squad. The Board expects us to be competitive in our only competition at the moment, the UEFA World Cup Qualifiers. We sit in fifth in Group 2 through six matches.
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The rest of the schedule is not too difficult, we get Italy, Malta and Armenia at home and travel to Denmark. We should be able to beat Malta and Armenia and could give Denmark and maybe even Italy a fight. We will tune up once more before the competition with a friendly match against world power Argentina at home.
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Velizar Dimitrov, while old, is our best player at the central attacking midfielder role. He fits best as a
trequartista.
Georgi Milanov is a young, talented attacking midfielder. He will play left attacking midfielder and play as an
advanced playmaker.
Todor Nedelev is our starting right attacking midfielder. He can also play central attacking mid and is young. He fits best as an
inside forward.
Ivelin Popov is yet another talented attacking midfielder. Since there is no room for him to start, he will be a rotation option. He is a great
shadow striker.
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Ventsislav Hristov is our best striker. At 24 he has room to grow, and backup
Ilian Micanski can help him out. Micanski is another good option.
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Simeon Slavchev is the brightest young talent on our team. At 19, he is already set to start at central mid or defensive mid, and clubs such as Atletico, AC Milan, Dortmund, PSG, and SLB are interested in him.
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Svetoslav Dyakov is our best defensive midfielder, but he is currently injured for at least two to three months, meaning he will miss the Argentina friendly, Italy game and potentially the Denmark game.
Vladimir Gadzhev is another option at DM.
Stanislav Manolev,
Ivan Ivanov,
Valentin Iliev, and
Petar Zanev make up our back four. There is a lot of depth here so we can go a few different ways.
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Nikolay Mihaylov is our starting keeper, he's a solid keeper who does his job.
Vladislav Stoyanov​ will back him up, another solid option.
The tactics we will be running:
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Our main tactic is a
4-5-1 Defensive. Why defensive, you ask, when the mentality is counter? Well, defensive because we push our two midfielders back to DM and the tactic is meant to help control the ball in our own third and get it in to the midfield, which is why the mentality is counter. The attacking full backs and wingers help expose space on the sides to get the ball through from the final third.
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Our secondary tactic is a
4-5-1 Attack. This tactic will be used in must-win games and other games where we have a clear advantage talent wise. The idea of this tactic is that it is similar to the defensive just with the DMs moved up to central midfielders to add more attacking power. With a higher tempo, it allows the attackers to get moving and create more chances near the goal.
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Our final tactic is a bit of an unorthodox one, a
4-1-2-2-1 Control. In this tactic, the idea is to control the game while still attacking. The full backs will join the attack with the strikers and midfielders. The only potential downside to this tactic is that there are no wingers - that is why we need to control the midfield and the middle of the pitch.