The thing with the nations League is the way to go and I would say it’s helped a number of those middle teams such as North Macedonia, Scotland and others improve.
Everyone should have a shot at qualifying so there has to be a playoff system in place but the nations league makes for more competitive matches in my view, it almost makes it watchable.
Was that game televised, I’d like to have a peek. 
I’ve been there as well - not in football.
Was playing cricket for school in Yr 8 - so was 12 or 13 at the time, when we got dismissed for 9. The highest scorer was one of their bowlers bowling 4 wides. We are still the only team in the comp to score a single figure total after 20 odd years
I’ve only ever played cricket once and I got 15… then again I do have history of playing Baseball and Softball so it was hit and hope.
Think this is one of the rare times a manager in the middle of a season spoke about his team and a game not long ago.
I bet her brothers would be fucking proud of that hip & shoulder 
Tell me she’s got a brother called Wayne…
That is her step brother whose family name is King 
yep. played in a cup match against a masters team called Eastern Bloc that had some older ex-pro’s in their roster. what a beating that was. nothing humane about that shitkicking.
Ha, don’t remember the score, but there is a big tournament here at Disney every summer and we got embarassed badly there one year. Teams come from literally all over the world to play and so some of the teams are quite tasty. We had a side that was normally good, lots of ex low level pros and players who fell out of the system late in the process. One year we got drawn against a bunch of old fat Moroccans called Casablanca FC and we assumed it was going to be an embarrassment. It didn’t take long to figure it out it was going to be, but the other way around. It was small pitches and 7 a side, so a bit different style of game, but after the first 30 seconds we barely touched the ball again. I was chatting with a couple of them afterwards and it turns out they are the reunion of the Moroccan world cup side from 1986 that topped the group containing England, Poland and Portugal.
Old cheating bastards.
That’s fucking brilliant
A story typical of the rather deprived area I grew up in. Our group of kids basically grew up together left much to own devices from as early as 6 years old. Nobody moved away so we had this same group of kids till late teens/early 20’s. We played everything but football and cricket were the chief investments of our time and we all grew up relatively strong, agile and hard bastards. I was the cricket guy but was a pretty good winger as well, rapidly quick and others were as good if not better but this one guy. Wow, I mean, just… wow. He did things with a ball on a pitch and in a game that was just unbelievable and mesmeric. The township kids and as we grew up, the teens and adults, hated him but loved him too if you know what I mean, because he embodied everything they loved about the game; bold, flamboyant and stylish. We used to go into the township or at the ground where the action was for the weekend, enter our team and walk away with the cheese at the end of the day (most times).
Anyway, we had absolutely zip in terms of coaching or kit. Some guys played barefoot, others in takkies, mismatched shirts etc (shirts on or shirts off was the kit, lol) but one enterprising week we decided to enter this tournament in Pietermaritzburg that was being hosted by a Premier League Club (Kaizer Chiefs, I think it was) for any youth teams that wanted to enter with. Competing as well were the u-18’s of various top flight clubs in the country, so we entered for a laugh and the local supermarket guy thought it would be good exposure for his supermarkets and sponsored us a kit (sans boots).
We hammered the local PMB teams that were in our group, thrashed some team from Durban in the first knockout and then got drawn against the youth team from Amazulu (a top flight club from Durban at the time) and wow, this guy… I can remember that day as vividly as I can remember having breakfast just now. He absolutely tore them to shreds going forward. Unfortunately we never could defend for toffee being the you score 4 and we’ll try and score 5 type and we lost 6-4 but I have to say it’s one of my proudest moments on any sports pitch.
These guys were so impressed they offered him a trial. Mad bastard travelled to Durban and went on a bender instead!
When I was very small, like U10’s or something, we often got beat by 7, 8, 10 or more…
Whoever our best player was, he used to play at CB/libero in a back 3/5, just to help us, take goal kicks, etc.
Made no sense whatsoever to play on a full pitch with those goals, the extra irony was that our shortest player was our goalie.
Not football related but I’ve got a similar story with Rugby. For those who didn’t play in school, most schools first XV team will be made up players from all of the last 3 years (fifth form through upper 6th in old money, or year 10-12 in new money). We played every year in the world’s largest 7s tournament in Roslyn Park, but the year I made our first team as a fifth former (15 years old) our entire 6th form was unavailable because of A level field trips that clashed with the date. Rather than pull out (we’d lose our place the next year if we ever didn’t attend and the waiting list was over a decade at the time) we sent an entire side of kids from my year, none of the rest of whom were good enough to play first XV rugby.
In our first game we drew an exclusive private school called Ampleforth that offers scholarships for Rugby. That year, 5 of their starting 7 were in the England U19 side. We kicked off and without us being able to make even a single tackle they ran the ball back and scored. We kicked off again…rinse and repeat. To start the second half we hoped we’d at least touch the ball from their kick off, but nope…they recovered their own kick off. We didnt have a second player touch the ball until we changed players who took the kick off.
We learned recently that 30 years later it’s supposedly still a tournament record loss.
I have ZERO sympathy for anti Vaxxers or those who refuse the vaccine if they get Covid. Zéro