The Reality Draft: Round 1 - harms vs Joga Bonito

Who will win with players at their respective peaks?


  • Total voters
    27
  • Poll closed .
Good job Joga as well, you had a very good team and against a more narrow formation you'd have been perfect to counter them. Good luck Harms.
 
Wow, can't believe he saved all 5 penos..
I can swear that every time I vote for a team and it gets to penalties it loses. Every draft every match.
 
The problem wasn't that you used him the wrong way or anything like that. He's absolutely fantastic in the role you played him. It all started to be a bit ridiculous, when he all of a sudden tracked Cafu and became a hardworking left winger, instead of the brilliant inside left who is your biggest goalthreat. I'd personally would have used him to put pressure on Koeman, that would have been an absolutely perfect role for him and hurt Joga's team a lot more than keeping Cafu from receiving the ball in his own half or whatever Annah described above.

That's what I assumed throughout and the reason why I emphasised how the playmaking was squarely on Koeman's lap. I could see Blokhin being a problem for him, but since harms wouldn't mention it I left them to it. In practice though, I would have expected Blokhin to do that whatever his instructions, most of these players know their football better than we do :smirk:
 
What are the odds Koeman and Mani would miss in the same shootout? Negligible really.

Good win harms, hard luck joga.

MotM: Zubizarreta, so comfortable saving penos he even saved one for joga out of pity.
 
What are the odds Koeman and Mani would miss in the same shootout? Negligible really.

Good win harms, hard luck joga.

MotM: Zubizarreta, so comfortable saving penos he even saved one for joga out of pity.

And he volunteered to be the last penalty-taker also - though, he made sure that it won't be needed.

I'm interested now, did he beat Zenga? @Annahnomoss
 
You can now take 2 players from me right? Who are you considering @harms

EDIT: NVM
 
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No! There will be a snake draft on all players who gets kicked out I am fairly sure.
 
No! There will be a snake draft on all players who gets kicked out I am fairly sure.

Yup just read that on the main thread's OP. A newbie to drafts so my bad.... Was always under the impression that the winner gets to choose 2 players he wants from the loser team from the previous drafts.
 
Yup just read that on the main thread's OP. A newbie to drafts so my bad.... Was always under the impression that the winner gets to choose 2 players he wants from the loser team from the previous drafts.

Was the rule before but it has been changed for quite a while. Always was extremely imbalanced
 
Was the rule before but it has been changed for quite a while. Always was extremely imbalanced

It wasn't really. It actually favoured sides which drafted well to begin with and didn't have any weak links. If you had weak links, yups, you were left hoping you came acrosss an upgrade.

Take any of the older drafts and most sides have a strong link to the original one, in this new age ones with pools and stufff teams suffer constant wholesale changes.

There's pros and cons, but it wasn't a terrible concept by any means.
 
It wasn't really. It actually favoured sides which drafted well to begin with and didn't have any weak links. If you had weak links, yups, you were left hoping you came acrosss an upgrade.

Don't really get you here. One of the main purpose of reinforcements is to upgrade, surely?

If you and opponent are playing toally different strategies, then the reinforcement round will not help you, but will give another player a big advantage because his opponent is playing similar style. There should be equal opportunity for everyone in these rounds.
 
Don't really get you here. One of the main purpose of reinforcements is to upgrade, surely?

If you and opponent are playing toally different strategies, then the reinforcement round will not help you, but will give another player a big advantage because his opponent is playing similar style. There should be equal opportunity for everyone in these rounds.

1) It's not equal from the moment it follows a sequence.

2) You are absolutely right, sometimes it's a very specific kind of player you are after and need to get lucky. But it's more nuanced than how you are presenting it. It was common for the key players in the other side to be no use for you, but then they offered you the chance to allow for other tactics. When the other side played the same tactics it wasn't uncommon not to have any use for his key players because you already had that sorted: e.g. having Maradona and playing against Platini.

It really was completely random though and ultimately it really boiled down to: have you drafted leaving enough flexibility/versatility and room for upgrading? If you didn't, you wouldn't win, simple. Yes, those drafting well would then be exposed to luck, but everyone had the same probabilities with the only certainty that drafting badly to begin with was too high a mountain to climb. In the format that has been adopted you could draft badly but with some luck in the fixtures you get the chance to get awesome players, across any position, from the pool. That tips the balance against those drafting well to begin with, doesn't it? It depends on what you consider the "skill" part of this.

Take the all-time draft, many say I won that because I was lucky to come across Pelé and Maradona (I would have preferred other combos personally, but that was bloody good, of course). The reason I won that can be tracked back all the way to the initial draft. I gambled on not getting any fancy Argies and Brazilians so I could accommodate Pelé/Ronaldo/Romario/Maradona/Messi if available (e.g. I kept telling Aldo to stop banging on about Redondo as getting him would mean two changes to accommodate a Maradona)... I built a strong side based on unfashionable countries or taking someone exactly in the position I would want for that country in the final (e.g. took Facchetti as my Italian, Rijkaard as the Dutch guy, Effenberg as my German holding that spot for Beckenbauer...).

It took a long time to establish what position to nail down for each nationality and then drafted accordingly, got a lucky break in going through and from then on everything I came across I could seamlessly add to the side. At the other end you had Cutch, who had a great side, had won the lottery starting early and managed to pick George Best at a cost of... Northern Ireland, best player in the draft by a mile. I think he also had Cristiano fromt the start :eek: He slacked with his RB though, he kept saying fullbacks weren't important/didn't weigh much... then never managed to find any good ones and it most likely was what cost him the final. One of the things that stopped him getting a good RB was not being able to pick Germans because he had two keepers, both German. Unbelievably bad planning. :p @Cutch
 
@antohan
Wrong on Cristiano. He was my very last move before the final. Upgraded Figo for him. Hoped that CR7, Best (4th in the first round pick) and Edwards would have been enough to swing it for me. Di Stefano then behind Van Basten. Amazing team.

Obviously the right back was the weakest link by a mile but there was little said about him all the way through so was hoping i'd get away with it. Besides who would be fit to dig up random videos of some Chilean bloke defending poorly in the 1960s....oh wait :(
 
@antohan
Wrong on Cristiano. He was my very last move before the final. Upgraded Figo for him. Hoped that CR7, Best (4th in the first round pick) and Edwards would have been enough to swing it for me. Di Stefano then behind Van Basten. Amazing team.

Ah, yes, you had Figo. I knew you had your wings sorted from the start though. It was a brilliant team indeed. IIRC my favourite to win from the very start.

Obviously the right back was the weakest link by a mile but there was little said about him all the way through so was hoping i'd get away with it. Besides who would be fit to dig up random videos of some Chilean bloke defending poorly in the 1960s....oh wait :(

I spent ages watching Chile games in '62, trying to make a video with his bad defending, but it was really dull and no one was going to watch it. A FIFA All-Star game at Wembley to mark the centennary, with all the very best players from those days? Awesome! How could you not watch it? And the poor bloke somehow managed to be at fault every single time they scored. Brutal :lol:

Still, the root of it all wasn't Eyzaguirre but that Maier-Kahn double pick. I remember thinking at the time "two German keepers? = no outfield Germans?". Hilarious brainfart, you could have had Brehme otherwise IIRC :lol:

And that's the point, the reason you couldn't upgrade was making a poor drafting decision which hamstrung you, that was part of the fun, now with these pools there will always be someone you can pick which puts less emphasis on nailing it in the initial stage. We rarely had superteams winning drafts back then, it was more about carefully balancing and keeping options open.
 
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He slacked with his RB though, he kept saying fullbacks weren't important/didn't weigh much... then never managed to find any good ones and it most likely was what cost him the final. One of the things that stopped him getting a good RB was not being able to pick Germans because he had two keepers, both German. Unbelievably bad planning.

There's a history of teams with crap RBs going far in drafts, I'm sure you remember your old mate Gary Kelly :p
 
Obviously the right back was the weakest link by a mile but there was little said about him all the way through so was hoping i'd get away with it. Besides who would be fit to dig up random videos of some Chilean bloke defending poorly in the 1960s....oh wait :(

:lol: