NationStates

Changes to Trawadea finally announced

"Never change a winning team" is an adage that is clearly not popular with Magdalene Buchanan. After the Trawadea Knights coach's remarks about the team's status halfway through the Ounaian National League, she announced a few changes to the Knights' roster. This should mean good news for Maynard AFC fans, who've suffered long enough. "Never change a winning team" is also ignored for the Ko-orenite Top League side and as such the team has had five coaches in six years and four captains in that time span - all while there have been surprisingly few players bought or sold. Equestrian States' Meynard was a good addition, but one can't help but feel she was bought just for the sake of her name. Buchanan's reign over the Knights is far more stable, which is great news for Trawadea fans. Buchanan has taken the team to great heights on paper, especially as far as the check books go - the Knights are by far the most profitable team and the team with the highest value with no real comparison. On the field, things have taken a slight turn for the worse, now that the Karusha Dynamos have taken first place and refuse to give it up. Every single time the Dynamos spill points to the Aces, Magic, Warriors, or Lions, the Knights can't seem to win themselves. The gap between the two teams remains two points. It's been anywhere from 0 to 3, but never have the Knights taken over first place again. The difference between finishing first or second is monumental, with the first placed team going to the Champions' Cup, so it looks like the Knights will go to the Globe Cup instead. Chances that the Knights drop even further down the table are near-zero, with a 16-point lead over the Aces with five matches to go. Only if the team breaks the rules financially or on the field, and points are deducted, things can go south. There's, again, a near-zero chance of that happening, either.

In the upcoming transfer window, Maynard AFC is set to lose very little talent: two starters will move, but they have been rumoured to go to the second division otherwise, anyway. This seems to make room for two acquisitions from the Knights: one at centreback, one as a central midfielder.

For now, back to focusing on Trawadea. The stadium deal has made the club a very popular landmark actually, so Buchanan better not mess with the club too much. The support is numerous, though still a little volatile, and with three clubs added to the league for next season, competition for undecided fans is massive. If the Knights want to cement a status as one of Ouna's biggest clubs, she will have to focus on the Ounaian market for a few more years. Overall, the ONL is a huge success so it's already a great move to buy a club there in the first place.

Anyhow, these are the changes, effective as soon as possible:

- Upgrade Training to 3 ($5000)
- Upgrade Youth to 2 ($2500)
- Sell the following players (if unsold, simply do not extend contracts): Maza, Rudo, Mthokozisi, Siphelele.
- Move the following players to Maynard AFC: Chipo, Simba.
- Move the following players from Maynard AFC to Trawadea Knights: Wouter Wouters (striker, age 28), Warren Potter (left midfielder, age 21)
- Attract from youth system: GK, CF, Winger
- Extend all other contracts.

Pierre Garibouds on Yet Another Expansionist Wave
Vadborg, Ouna--Pierre Garibouds professed goal when he bought the Aces (originally the Wave) was to grow them into a sustainable and successful team on the national level. This was to be done through training, youth recruitment, and trading in order to create a highly successful group of professionals who could take the Aces to the top of the league in performance, drawing fans along the way. However, at some point along the way Garibouds apparently shifted his focus, deciding that such investments in transfers and facilities was too much to handle when starting out. Instead, a major initiative was undertaken to improve and expand Zawadi Stadium--the Aces' home field, named for Ouna's president but originally a quite small building.

Some fans are understandably disappointed, as the team, although performing a bit better than the beginning of the season, has not jetted to the top in the way that was hoped. The management seems to have decided that it is happy with a third place finish, and now even that is in jeopardy; the Aces' two most recent games have been a draw and a defeat, and the Muhanmaga Magic has snuck up to be only a single point behind--fully within striking distance. Rather than see the stadium improved in an unabashed effort to make more money for the franchise, fans would have liked to have seen investments in area that might have led to them being on a win streak at this point in the season. Had the last two games been won, Vadborg would be only 10 points back, rather than 8.

Thus, after their last game, Vadborg joins the rest of the league (the Knights being the only exception) in sharing the mathematical impossibility of taking first place. In fact, Vadborg can no longer advance at all--the Knights single point from their tie on Saturday means that even were they to lose all their remaining games and the Aces to win all theirs, Trawadea would still finish the season a point ahead. The Aces, therefore, will spend the rest of the season defending third place. In fact, disappointed fans at our last game against the Dynamos, who are easily in first, started ironically chanting "third place is the new first place" repeatedly. The game ended in a 2-0 defeat.

Pierre Garibouds and his ownership team, meanwhile, have decided to spend yet more money on a stadium revamp. Enough money has come in from the new, bigger and better stadium, that Groupe Garibouds has decided to double its larger size. For $10,810, Pierre Garibouds has announced plans to add another 4,324 seats, bringing the total attendance of Zawadi Stadium up to 8,648. In order to reassure fans that their team will become a sporting power and not just a cash cow, he has indicated that while he intends to continue to expand the stadium as funds permit, starting next season at the latest, the money that it makes will be put back into improving the quality of the team.

The first of the Qusmair Ounaian National League is already almost over--can you believe it? Time flies when you're having fun, they say. A lot of excitement has happened, on and off the pitch, and we here in Vadborg are already looking ahead to the next season with great anticipation.

This season, of course, has been over for most of the teams for a while now--for weeks it has been clear that the league winner would be either Karusha or Trawadea. However, apart from their total dominance, leaving the rest of the field in the dust, a couple very tight races have emerged. With only three games left to play, Karusha and Trawadea are tied on points. Either one of them could walk away with the title. The next game between the two of them will almost be a championship game! After that, however, each of other four teams will still have one chance to play one of the two leaders and act as a spoiler. It's very likely that the championship will be decided on the very last day, although it's possible that it might be clinched one week out.

Twenty points back from the leaders, all four of the other teams have kept alive the possibility of finishing third. Vadborg and and Muhanmaga in particular, however, are a game up on the other two teams and only separated by a point. They too will be playing each other this weekend, in what may turn out to be a very decisive game. The Magic will have the home advantage, so the Aces won't have the benefit of playing in their once again newly refurbished, expanded stadium, but we can be sure that they'll be putting their all into this game.

Exciting Stuff

Mere weeks before the end of the league, the Trawadea Knights seize control of first place again! Trailing the Dynamoes for nearly all recent weeks, the Knights first erased the deficit, and now established a full three point lead. In front of 2938, a record crowd for the weekend, the Dynamoes couldn't defend their status, in front of a home audience, against an onslaught of Knights. And that marks a wonderful twist for the occupants of Sucheberg National Stadium. With two more decent results, the Knights win the championship...

Next season we see the addition of three more clubs. Competition will only get stiffer with the added fixtures, and hopefully rivalries will become even deeper. Two out of three new clubs have already been acquired: Sucheberg by the Darmeni FA - and there's a perfect rivalry on offer: Ko-oren versus Darmen, fought all the way over in Ouna, with the Ko-orenite club's stadium named for the Darmeni club. It'll be hard to convince Ouanaians that this rivalry matters, but to us it's the cherry on top. Newcastle was bought by a Balticonian. VVV Newhaven is still on offer. Coach Jan Elbers gave us a peek of the Knights of the second season of the Ounaian National League, fielding a fairly standard eleven, but substituting into a slightly different look. Fokazi was taken off for Tandie, creating a 3-4-3 as the team runs dangerously low on defenders. Jan Elbers' personnel pretty much forces the team to play a 3-4-3 more often, which might be a sign of things to come for Maynard AFC over in the Ko-orenite Top League as well.

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ROSTER

GK Mart-jan Meinders
GK Sanele Fudu
LB Hein Boven
CB Antoon Slaghekke
CB Harrie Bloten
CB Marcus Teicher
CB Thamsanqa Vusi
RB Sithembile Phesheya
LM Evert-Jan Zwinsel
LM Naadir el-Agha
CDM Rogier Brummelenbos (C)
CAM Najeeb al-Ullah
CAM Hamdi al-Afzal
CM Wajdi al-Sadek
RM Jop Zawadi
LF Jurian Reuvekamp
RM Matt Windie
LF Nikolaus Heitmeyer
RF Anton Gruber

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KITS

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LINE-UP

Peto Blues

Information
Stadium: Peto Park Cap: 5.000
Manager: Victor Kierts
Kits: 1: Blues Shirts and Blues Shorts
2: White Shirts and Reds Shorts
Foundation: 2019
Sponsor: Visit Ouna
Propietors: FFB

Players

Goalkepers
#1 Lewis Kingunda (Ouna) 24 Years
#12 Frick Kig (Ouna) 18 Years
#13 Samuel Dingendek (Ouna) 19 Years

Defenders
#2 King Merdg (Ouna) 23 Years
#3 Ryan Lodarst (Bolgano) 31 Years (Currently in the Futsal World Cup)
#4 Patrick Shewll (Ouna) 19 Years
#14 Vick Terredes (Ouna) 17 Years
#15 Kevin Terry (Ouna) 20 Years
#16 Tog Kingde (Ouna) 22 Years
#17 Bader Gindgdom (Ouna) 18 Years
#18 Hans Kreller (Ouna) 25 Years

Midlefields
#5 Log Hindlel (Ouna) 30 Years
#6 Ryan Kindshel (Ouna) 29 Years
#7 Joao Ramarinho (HUElavia) 33 Years
#8 Tads Linkers (Ouna) 21 Years
#19 Kang Rogham (Ouna) 32 Years
#20 Ryd Ningkembe (Ouna) 20 Years
#21 Bag King (Ouna) 22 Years
#22 Fredery Ross (Ouna) 19 Years

Ofenders
#9 Ryan Konms (Ouna) 23 Years
#10 Tom Evans (Bolgano) 26 Years
#11 Sam Ghandel (Ouna) 20 Years
#23 Daniels Gongd (Ouna) 19 Years
#24 Romn Gongd (Ouna) 19 Years

Style: 3.5+

Signing Estrella-Tom Evans
For the second season in Ouna, a new Franchise was created, Peto Blues, its players were chosen by scouts for players who are in the City of Peto, Soccer and Futsal players were chosen to form this team plus other young people to form the quarry, other Ko-Oren players were also chosen and one from Datium, to finalize a list of Bolgano players.

But the most important is the team's 10, Tom Evans, this player is the historic scorer of the Bolgano national team, champion of the first Bolgano SuperLeague with Fedek ASS, but what is he doing here? the team in the second season descended to second division, Evans very bothered with this problem decided to leave the Fedek ASS and joined Peto Blues to start playing at a slightly higher level, it was not really a signing, he arrived as an agent free after leaving Fedek ASS, we all hope to see goals from this legend of Bolgano.

Welcome to the Sucheberg Cup, a competition between the three Suchebergan teams from the Ounaian National League. Challenging Head-to-Head for the glory of being hailed as champions of Sucheberg, and securing a lease on the coveted Sucheberg International Stadium for the upcoming season. The participants are as follows: The Trawadea Knights (league champions), Bagatoro Warriors and Sucheberg United.

All games will take place at the neutral ground of Sucheberg International Stadium, over the course of one week. There will be four games in total, firstly a round robin format where all teams will play each other once and then a final between the top two finishing teams to determine the winner. As well as a nice gold trophy the teams will be able to call the 25,000 seater stadium their home for the next year, which one can expect will bring in a huge boost of revenue through ticket sales - a grand prize indeed.

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Match-Day 1

Trawadea Knights 4–1 Sucheberg United

Match-Day 2

Bagatoro Warriors 2–2 Trawadea Knights

Match-Day 3

Sucheberg United 0–0 Bagatoro Warriors

Team Name                     P   W   D   L   GF   GA   GD   Pts                              
1 Trawadea Knights            2   1   1   1    6    3    3    4
2 Bagatoro Warriors           2   0   2   0    2    2    0    2
3 Sucheberg United            2   0   1   1    1    4   -3    1