From Italy forum (translated):
With much more effort than I would have expected, we take home the debut match of this world championship. In fact, the Canadian coach managed to find the right combination to put us in trouble, putting the double pdp on one of our perhaps "phoned" LI. Fortunately, after a game of extreme suffering, we managed to bring home a game that at a certain point I was convinced I was going to lose.
The preparation of the match was in some ways difficult since the Canadians until yesterday morning had only called up 3 elements and had not allowed me to study their roster fully. In addition to this, the absence of NTSO which has lasted for a month, which is a sort of database of BB players, complicates everything. Unfortunately, unless some pious soul wants to save him, judging from what is written on the home page (http://odp.alwaysdata.net/ODPConsult/web/NTSO/index) it seems that NTSO is destined to to disappear.
In any case, the advantage between the longs seemed to me such that I could play it safe with a Look Inside without having to worry too much about how they could play them. Also because I honestly didn't think that for the Canadian coach it would have been a smart choice to use enthusiasm to try to win against us instead of keeping it aside for the teams with which the next round will be played (China and Hong Kong). Instead, as is now the tradition of our world championships (do you remember the Chinese mots at the first match of the last world championship?) This time too we got more enthusiasm, fortunately this time a normal. In attack, the Canadians used a very effective slow down which actually created us more than a few defensive problems.
The game was not for the faint of heart. After a sprint start we gradually turned off until we even hit -10 2 minutes from the end of Q3. At that point I really thought we were going to lose it, but luckily a high-level 4Q gave us the victory with a decent +8 goal difference. MVP of the match that undoubtedly goes to our totem Lange who asserts his excessive power compared to the Canadian longs, closing with 18 + 9 and +9 of plus / minus.
A defeat would have been really heavy and would have complicated our path a lot. But luckily we came out of it and now we can look forward to the rest of the world championship. From the other fields of our group, Spain wins quite easily with the same commitment with China. Morocco, on the other hand, accomplishes the day's feat by firing a murderous mots on Hong Kong with a double pto taken. This result puts Hong Kong in an uncomfortable situation and makes next day's match against Canada already decisive for them.
In the other group, the USA win the big match with France by putting together absolutely respectable values. Respected the predictions of the other two games with the Philippines and Germany winning with South Africa and Romania.
Thoughts:
1. Too bad all it turns out to be was a scare.
2. I did indeed guess they would safely pick LI to start the tournament with the huge big man advantage they had.
3. Now you see the strategy of not showing the roster before game 1 until it is necessary to input the game's tactics.
4. We are favored to lose against all or all but one game in our group. I thought going for this one minus a crunch was warranted.
5. To be up 10 with 14 minutes to go and lose by 8 is tough to take.
6. If Shara didn't foul out we really had a shot.