Well, the next opponents are known. this will be the planning of the few next weeks:
29/11/2011 1:30:00 Belgium - Jamaica @ Jamaica
5/12/2011 19:35:00 Prathet Thai - Belgium @ Belgium
13/12/2011 2:00:00 Belgium - Costa Rica @ Costa Rica
19/12/2011 19:35:00 Hayastan - Belgium @ Belgium
26/12/2011 19:00:00 Belgium - Deutschland @ Deutschland
2/01/2012 19:35:00 Magyarország - Belgium @ Belgium
when we look at this draw, it's not to bad. knowing that a 6-2 record means that you are sure to be in the knock out stages ( even a 5-3 gives you acces to the KO stages, tho you'll end up being eliminated in the first round for sure in that scenario) we should be able to make it into the KO stages.
However, the trick is to make it to the KO stages while having HCA for a few games... GS must be taken care off and will be an important thing, if we want to secure a spot in the KO 32 stages before playing Germany!
the 3rd game is an away game against Jamaica. Considering they play England and then Tounes after us, i don't think they'll go CT. However, the Netherlands ( who are more or less our equals in terms of strength in NT games) only managed to win by 30 points on Jamaica's turf. We better take care of the GS to avoid any unpleasant surprizes. With a good GS, we should be able to win the game with a nice margin to add to our point total.
The 4th game is home against Prathet Thai. They don't have a very strong NT, so that should be a game where we'll try to maximize our point difference, so that we get an as good spot as possible at the end of the 8 preliminary games. Russia was able to win with 20 points in the away game, so it shouldn't be a big concern to us ( unless our Gs would prove to be horrible...)
The 5th game will be an important away game. Costa Rica will be playing columbia and argentina before us, and face turkey away after their game against us, so they might feel the need to CT us, hoping to end with 3 wins ( while winning against Danmark and Romania in the end of their campaign) they most certainly have got a pretty rough draw, with Danmark being the weakest team and Belgium and Romania being their 2nd respectively 3rd easiest opponent... Either we'll want to go for the win here, or we'll want to save up enthousiasme. Gameshape will most likely decide what action we take here, tho if we manage to win here, it would make things alot easier, because with the win, we should be able to claim our spot in the top 32 regardless of the result of our last 3 games... Never the less, we shouldn't waste enthousiasme if a win seems unlikely. Costa Rica doesn't have a very strong team, but with HCA on their side, things could get a bitt trickier than they'd normally be.
Our 6th opponent is a home game against Hayastan. They don't have a very strong team, so if our GS is good, we should be able to increase our point diference even more and thus securing our spot in the top 32 if we hadn't already done so with a win over Costa Rica.
The 2 last games our the ones i would have prefered We'll be playing Germany first on their own court, which means we might as well forget winning this game. Germany still is a top European nation, and i'm surprized that they didn't qualify for the World championship. Altho, questions should be asked about how their NT manager has selected his roster... When first looking at the roster, it seems that it's been selected to preform inside attacks only, tho a motion vs a 2-3 zone will kill you anytime...