We were held by Olbia in our first league match, then spent the next week being repeatedly called out in the media by Enrico Ghidini, the manager of Carpenedolo, one of our main promotion rivals and—not coincidentally—the host of our next game. The players were nervous and uncertain before the match, and spent most of the first half getting pushed around, to the point that I had to waste my half-time talk trying to rebuild their self-esteem.
Then, in the 51st minute, Marco Conchione—remember Conchione? The striker whose accuracy I was so worried about in my last update?—drew a foul against Carpenedolo's Riccardo Appoloni and did this with the ensuing free kick:
After that, we started pushing them around. We wound up winning the match 1-0, and, judging from the players' morale on the bus ride back to Vercelli, I think they might have enjoyed it:
It's hard to overstate the importance of an away win like this, especially given what's happened since the last update: we lost both our remaining friendlies (though we briefly took the lead against Portsmouth and, incredibly, held them to two goals), then promptly dropped our first two matches in the Serie C Cup. The players—most of whom are teenagers, remember, and relatively new to the club—were unsure of each other and struggling to internalize my tactics. Even Walter Colombo noticed a "worrying lack of cohesion" in the squad. I don't agree with Arsène Wenger that you can never win with unhappy players, but the team's lack of confidence and dressing-room dissent was turning into a time bomb. Something needed to bring this team together.
Marco Conchione's goal doesn't solve all our problems. But it gives us a vital away win, and more importantly, it gives the players something to feel good about. It should grant a little more time for them to learn my tactical system and get used to playing together. Counting cup matches, we've now won three of our last four and seem to be improving from day to day.
Up next: Into the league season. A mysterious budget shortfall wrecks our transfer window. More on our tactics. Stay tuned.
General comment: what's the 3D engine like?
I'll write about it in more depth at some point, but the short answer is that it's fantastic. It's easy to think of ways it could be improved—various aspects of it don't look realistic, and it stutters occasionally—but it gives the game more life than it ever had under the regime of swarming dots (even though the dots were surprisingly lifelike).
And for reading tactics, there's a top-down view with the pitch oriented vertically (bascially the second view you see in the video above) that makes movement clearer and the game much easier to take in than before. I've only played a few matches, but so far it just makes more sense to me.
I do like how Conchione's morale was only 'Very Good'. Such a perfectionist.
I have to say, the 3D thing looks great, although there is something to be said about giving personality to those little disembodied circles running around, hoofing shot after shot over the bar and getting sent off when you tell your team to man mark with extreme prejudice.
As for Conchione's morale, I will say this: not to be naive as to what an algorithm would pick up, but there is something about performing incredibly well, at a key moment when everything's required of you, and then feeling a sense of loss afterward. It's almost ineffable. I think of Anderton's retirement speech. He sounded like he knew what he did, and yet, and yet. Football is fleeting. Conchione will get sent off on a straight red in a few matches, is my prediction.
Wow I'm into this thing…
This is too much fun
[...] games against our major promotion rivals: the triumph at Carpenedole that Conchione won with his 35-yard free kick and a tough 1-0 home win against Rodengo, the team with the panda on their shield, on which more [...]
[...] so very, very impressive. I don't mean Walter Colombo, obviously, but everyone else, from Marco Conchione, the veteran striker who kept us afloat during that difficult first season, to Jorge Ibáñez, the [...]