Valanora Times
On the Road Again
Some months on from yet another penalty shootout loss in the regional championship, the Marauders look once more to dust off their shoulders and begin anew in their quest for another championship. Ellzidan has put her footprint on this squad and it has shaped all so slightly to fit more within her image, even if there are many within the Eternal Empire that would prefer her to take the team to a more traditional route. However two appearances in the Arrosia Regional Championship Final has shown that the manager is able to handle the stress and rigors that come with the job. The players seem to respond to her and she seems to have a fairly good amount of control and respect among the team, able to make changes how, when, and where she sees fit to. Although last World Cup ended in disappointing fashion, the fact that the team had a giant bullseye on it from the word go with their illustrious ranking meant that it was never going to be an easy first cycle for the Drawkish elf, yet with that experience at the helm now under her belt, this cycle should hopefully see the Marauders ready to give chase once more to the elusive sixth World Cup title.
As one might expect, there has not been great changes made to the national pool that the manager is set to select from during the qualification campaign, with the biggest changes coming at keeper with the reintroduction of Nikolai Simonsen and Li Lindholm, after both had fantastic domestic seasons to earn their spot back in contention for the backup keeper positions. Tobias Propst continues to be a revelation there and he gives the Marauders a sense of confidence at the keeper position that is not often there and may be one of the reasons why the team has in the past been as ultra attacking as it has been, feeling like they could not count on the defense or keeper to make pivotal stops. Earning the starting position at Pasargan giants CA Paulinthal at twenty, his growth and development has been huge and why he has taken over the number one spot on the national team, winning titles with the massive Rushmori club and getting used to a culture that is all about winning. At this level, plenty of players are blessed with enormous natural talent and it is their personality or knowing how to win that is the difference and Propst has learned that with his time with the Hurricane.
Elsewhere the squad mostly stays the same, the same starting eleven that went out for most of the campaign last cycle should be expected to do the same for this season, as the few changes to the pool comes more in the reserves area. The strength of the team is built on its starting eleven and when you have a player like Laborious Hawk at your disposal it is hard to think that you are ever not a favorite for any game, he is a walking myth at this point. Surround him with generational talents like Lucas Winkel, Imre Haaland, and Julia Strömberg and you have a team that looks on the surface to be a team that should be there or thereabouts come the end of the knockout phases of the tournament. What the team will have to show for the upteenth time though is discipline and the respect to their opposition, that patience to take everything a game at a time and not allow complacency to sneak in because on paper they are supposed to beat the team in front of them. It is a recipe for disaster and we saw the team at times last cycle fail to give their opponents the respect they were due and were punished for it, I doubt the manager is going to allow that to happen again.
The campaign does not start off easy as it is a trip to Anaia to face Ochre Islands, every trip to that region sees whatever Vanorian team that travels there meet with a certain level of hostility. Games away from the Empire in hostile environments were a large part of why the last qualification campaign looked like it was sputtering at times and why the team perhaps failed to deliver in the knockouts when they were heavy favorites to win the entire competition. After going to visit the fifth seed, the team comes back to Capri to host the fourth seed Nova Calania, a team who looks to play above their seeding and gives both the Marauders as well as second seed HUElavia fits in the fight for qualification out of the group. That does not mean that you should overlook third seeds Qusmo, though the Rushmori outfit seems like they are struggling a bit to get things ready for this cycle and could be ripe for a team that is hungry like Nova Calania to overtake them. Rounding out the rest of the group is Brusseldorf, The Golden Harp, Archalit, Oscioru, and unranked Sadame. These are the games that the team need to get six out of six from to show they have learned and grown from the struggles of last cycle.
On paper, it is a group that might be more tricky than one might expect for the second ranked side to try and navigate out of, their rank and the sheer amount of talent on this Marauders roster suggests that it should be a fairly straightforward walk in the park. Yet in this seventy-first cycle that the team is taking part in, they know better than most that these games are not simply determined on paper but sides who are supposed to be better than the rest, you have to go out and earn it. The team did not earn the five stars adorned on their badge simply because other teams stepped out of the way in sheer awe of the team, they went out and played with everything they had to earn those victories, putting enough of them together to win their titles. HUElavia, Nova Calania, and Qusmo might be the most obvious of the difficultly but every match matters, three points earned from the high pots count as much as the ones from the low pots. The first goal is to win the first game, then the second and so on until they ensure they finish in the top three of the group and qualification, from there more grand goals and dreams can be had, especially with the World Cup taking place in the Marauders own backyard in Arrosia.
