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New and revolutionar show "The Managerial Test" will start tomorrow at 9 PM.
"The Managerial Test" has is a challenge between twelve managers, with FIFA coaching license. All twelve managers will get a random players who they have to form as a team within a week and in June, they will all face off in a tournament, where the winner gets an unknown prize handed out by Sky Sports.
All the teams will be formed of U20 players. The highest division where the players are taken from is the English Conference. Every team will recieve 5 players from there and another 15 from lower leagues of English football.
The contenders arefrom different countries and continents and the rules of the competition are obviously like in real life. Though the build-up for the competition is totally different from big cups.
The Build-Up
There will be 4 groups with 3 teams in them and the winner of the group gets to the next round where every group winner will play a match between themselves and after all have played with all, the teams that finished first and second will face off in final in the 30th of June, where the winner of final will get the special prize.
All matches will be officiated by Premiership or Championship referees and the final is refereed by Pierluigi Collina.
The Competitors
John - John comes from Glasgow, Scotland and got his FIFA coach licence in the middle of last autumn. He's hardcore fan of Rangers and likes the attacking style of football. John is 34 years old.
Vladimir - Vladimir is from Volyn, Ukraine and got his FIFA manager licence just before the show. He is supporter of Liverpool since 70's after he lived one month in England. Vladimir just got 40 years old.
Jacob - Jacob is from South Africa, from Queenstown. Jacob got his FIFA manager licence five years ago. He's die hard supporter of South Africa's club Orlando Pirates. Where he managed to play few games when youngster. Jacob likes to play a conservative style and not attack or defend too much. Jacob is 43 years old.
Alan - Alan comes from Dublin, Ireland. He ot his FIFA manager license half a year ago and is supporter of Celtic so there may be hot rivalary between him and John. Alan says "hell yeah" when it comes to attacking. Alan is just 27 years old and is second youngest participater.
Yin - Yin is one of the most excotic managers of the game. He comes from Lanzhou, China. He's another lover of attacking football and got his FIFA manager license just before the start of the adventure. Supports German team Borussia Dortmund and is 32 years old.
Mark - Mark comes from York, England. He got his manager licence in June 2003 and likes to play the games for sure. 32 year old manager is supporting Manchester City after he lived in Manchester for 10 years when he was a child.
George - Geore is another English manager, who comes straight from London and supports Tottenham Hotspurs. 37 year old got his FIFA licence at the end of the last year and doesen't call his football either defensive or ultra attacking.
Tanel - Tanel is the only Baltic competitor in this game as he comes from Hiiumaa, Estonia. The youngest participator Tanel is just 21-years old and supports attacking football & Inter.
Martin (Ne) - Martin comes from Helmond, Netherlands and supports PSV Eindhoven. He is the oldest participator in our game and is 47 years old. He likes old school defensive football which is quite non-dutch.
Martin (No) - Another Martin comes from Norway, Bergen. Coming through the rough life of Scandinavia, Martin also is picking the rough tactic to defend and then try to hit back on counter attacks. Martin supports his local club and is 36 years old.
Gianni - Gianni comes from Italy, Varese. He was an striker in local teams young side, until he had to retire after an injury and obviously plays attacking game. He supports Milan, so another hot rivalary between him and Tanel may pop up.
Rich - Rich comes from New York, USA, but has lived in England with his wife for 5 years now. Rich supports Liverpool just like Vladimir and likes to play attacking football. He is 34 years old.
Those people were selected out of 59 applications Sky Sports recieved.
Contesters met with their teams and with eachother. Each team and manager was sent to different places and training centres around London, where they will train for one whole week.
Day 1 - Most of the managers were looking at their players skills and some were not happy, some were more happy. Though Martin from Netherlands and Vladimir from Ukraine just met with the players and sent them off much earlier than the others.
Day 2 - All the coaches were starting with training excercises and some of them played a game to get even better view of the skills of the players. Though few guys planned the training game for tomorrow. Bad news came for Estonian Tanel, who had to live through the first injury as in his 5+1 match, one of his Conference players got injuried. "The physios said that he'll be out for few days so he misses a lot of important time where we gel together, but I hope we can still handle it," said Estonian.
Day 3 - Ukrainian Vladimir got impressed by his striker, who's from Conference and bagged 4 goals in his 7+1 match that ended 5:2. As the time goes on, more and more injuries are obviously popping up and Mark, Gianni and Alan are the latest strugglers.
Day 4 - Rich organized his guys to play a friendly with Charlton U19 team and it ended with a 2:2 draw. Though Yin had to handle a training ground bust-up between his defender and goalkeeper and the tension is getting hot between the players mixed up under unexperienced coach.
Day 5 - Jacob and John's side made a match between themselves and dirty tactics were being used to harm their opponents and John ended with two guys being brought out for minor knocks, but accoring to what he said later after the match meant that they guys are almost okay and will be back for tomorrows trainings. The match ended with 3:1 win for Jacob's side. The others were trying to relax and had light trainings after hard games.
Day 6 - Alan got the biggest bad news of the game so far as his first choice goalkeeper according to his words stretched out his leg while saving in training, and won't be back until the second group-phase. Meanwile, Tanel, Vladimir and George organized friendly matches with locals boys. All of them got big victories. Yin's training ground bust-up ain' tsolved and the same defender and goalkeeper were nearly fighting with eachother again.
Day 7 - The managers gathered around to see the draw of the groups and here the info and schedule of the competition. The draw was made in The Valley stadium where the games will be held along with Craven Cottage.
The rumours said that Martin from Norway had the best teams, so everyone was hoping to avoid him except from Rich, who tought that draw with Charlton U19 was a great showing of his potential and was sure he'll win the competition.
Group A
John
Martin (No)
Gianni
Schedule: 28th of May - John vs. Gianni (Craven Cottage), 31st of May - Martin (No) vs. John (The Valley), 3rd of June - Gianni vs. Martin (No) (The Valley)
Group B
Rich
George
Yin
Schedule: 28th of May - Rich vs. Yin (The Valley), 31st of May - George vs. Rich (Craven Cottage), 3rd of June - Yin vs. George (Craven Cottage)
Group C
Vladimir
Tanel
Martin (Ne)
Schedule: 29th of May - Vladimir vs. Martin (Ne) (The Valley), 1st of June - Tanel vs. Vladimir (Craven Cottage), 4th of June - Martin (Ne) - Tanel (Craven Cottage)
Group D
Jacob
Alan
Mark
Schedule: 29th of May - Jacob vs. Mark (Craven Cottage), 1st of June - Alan vs. Jacob (The Valley), 4th of June - Mark vs. Alan (The Valley)
Final Group
A1
B1
C1
D1
Schedule: 8th of June - A1 vs. C1 (The Valley), 9th of June - B1 vs. D1 (Craven Cottage), 13th of June - D1 vs. A1 (The Valley), 14th of June - C1 vs. B1 (Craven Cottage), 18th of June - A1 vs. B1 (Craven Cottage), 19th of June - C1 vs. D1 (The Valley).
Gianni miserably fell out and was very frustrated caliming his side to be much more worse than the others, but he hasn't got the manager talent to get gold out of sh*t. The predicted strongest side of Martin (No) fell out of the competion already in the first round at goal difference and it was exactly the tactics that played the difference between John and Martin (No). John was extremely delighted with his sides two games and said the win was well deserved and he hopes to put in a great show and win the special prize.
Group B
Results:
28th of May - Rich 1:2 Yin (The Valley)
31st of May - George 0:3 Rich (Craven Cottage)
3rd of June - Yin 1:1 George (Craven Cottage)
Suprisingly with all the troubles Yin had to face with, he came up with a great run and managed to survive the first big fall-out of managers and another favourite Rich was ruled out of the game. Yin was extremly pleased, but said he won't say anything until he has seen all the teams play in the groupstage and he'll try tactically adjust his team. George and Rich were both very disappointed and Rich was very sad that the first match with Yin ended with their loss from 80th minute goal and claimed they should've been the ones taking those points concisdering how good they played. But if you can't score Rich, then you won't win...
Group B
Results:
29th of May - Vladimir 0:0 Martin (Ne) (The Valley)
1st of June - Tanel 2:2 Vladimir (Craven Cottage)
4th of June - Martin (Ne) 0:1 Tanel (Craven Cottage)
Tanel was very happy that his team got through and he hopes to build on his little bit of luck in both of the games as againist Vladimir he felt 0:2 behind and then rised up to take the game to the draw and in the Martin (Ne) match he got a doubtable freekick that led to the goal. The last two of the group both said that it was a game about who has the most luck anyway and the won't be too disappointed and said that maybe this show helps them to get a new job.
Group D
Results:
29th of May - Jacob 0:3 Mark (Craven Cottage)
1st of June - Alan 2:1 Jacob (The Valley)
4th of June - Mark 2:0 Alan (The Valley)
Mark obviously made the most impressing game of the tournament up so far and the group ended rather one-sided. Mark was impressed by his lads and so were all the other managers. Mark had looked the best tactician up to this point by keeping the defence brilliant and attack very producive. Alan and Jacob claimed themself outclassed by Mark's tactical skills and said in the end the best won.
Participators: John (A1), Yin (B1), Tanel (C1) & Mark (D1)
Schedule: 8th of June - John vs. Tanel (The Valley), 9th of June - Yin vs. Mark (Craven Cottage), 13th of June - Mark vs. John (The Valley), 14th of June - Tanel vs. Yin (Craven Cottage), 18th of June - John vs. Yin (Craven Cottage), 19th of June - Tanel vs. Mark (The Valley)
First Round
8th of June - John 1:3 Tanel (The Valley)
9th of June - Yin 0:0 Mark (Craven Cottage)
The first round went very well for Tanel, while John fell into hard place to come out, but luckily for him, Yin managed to get a suprise draw from Mark, who's team was in the attacking for most of the game and experts thought Mark's team showed the best game, but also praised how Yin and Tanel worked with their tactics and won thanks to tactical brilliance.
Second Round
13th of June - Mark 2:0 John (The Valley)
14th of June - Tanel 0:1 Yin (Craven Cottage)
It will be very interesting final round, though John is out of the race. Yin, Mark and Tanel both have a great chance to make it to the final phase. It was very tactical round and no-one wanted to fall out of the race by losing. Goodbye John! No place for you in the manager world!
Third Round
18th of June - John 1:1 Yin (Craven Cottage)
19th of June - Tanel 2:2 Mark (The Valley)
So in the end the goal difference was making the difference and the winner of the secret prize will be seen in the clash between Mark and Tanel in the 25th of July. John and Yin were given also special prize of 10 000 pounds, but that won't probably comfort them. Mark looked the most impressing again in this round as his team is playing were conservative, secure and a bit open football. Job is well done by all of them.
Mark: "I feel great and I think I've got the way for the prize all open. This team is great and I feel I'm not having no problems managing them. I saw that I'm better than Tanel's team in our match and he had two lucky goals which weren't that well deserved"
Tanel: "I'm happy to reach to the final, but in the remaining 6 days, I've got a lot of work to do with my guys since Mark was giving us hell of a trouble today. I'll try to make some adjustments for the final and I think that what happened before doesen't matter and that one week before the game will be crucial."
Yin: "Damn... shitty Europe TV! I have worst players here! It was impossible to victory! I will go back to China and make own team. Then will kick balls!"
John: "I don't know. The team lost it's cool in the final stage. It was a bit my fault as I couldn't find new ideas how to attack or defend and the opponents had done their homework. Though hopefully that competition will help my CV a bit."
The teams of Tanel and Mark gathered on The Valley at 8 PM to play a match live in front of many TV cameras of Sky Sports. Estonian Tanel had picked a quite suprising 4-3-1-2 tactic which he hadn't used yet instead of the 4-3-3. The experts who had shown the previous games thought it may have been the balls lost in midfield that he was worried about and decided to cut out some attacking power instead of that. While crowd favourite Mark had no problems to play with his 4-4-2 tactic.
The game whistled by legendary Pierluigi Collina kicked off exactly at the right time and it was a open game from the start. But what else do you wait from Conference or lower class players. Mark was the one creating chances here and there, though Tanel was holding the ball a lot and we playing cat and mouse with Mark's players.
But in the 34th minute, Tanel's no. 5 made a very late tackle making it a yellow card and since it was his second, Tanel had to face a serious tactical battle. He decided to bring in another midfielder for a striker and continued with weird 3-6-1 performance until the end of the first half. The scoreline was 0:0, when going on break.
After half time, Tanel made another switch saying that the 3-5-1 isn't workin and bringed in an extra defender to make it 4-4-1. Though quickly after the half-time, Mark's team had a great chance - no. 9 runs foward with the ball, and on one on one with the goalkeeper, strikes the post, but on the follow-up situation midfielder no. 11 puts Mark up on lead and you could've seen the immense joy on the bench from Mark.
Then Tanel decided to bring in his 2nd striker and again switched the formation to 3-4-2. And it worked pretty soon, on the 67th minute, Tanel's side earned a corner and the defenders that had rised up for the corner, made a good combination with eachother ending no. 3 score a goal.
The game was going open with Mark trying to make extra use of that one more man, but Tanel side was tough at defending and in the 84th minute on a counter attack, Mark was ripped to pieces after a great game his side showed and Tanel's striker scored a wonderful lob over goalkeeper, putting numbers 2:1 on tablo and those stayed there until the very end of the match, giving Tursk the special prize.
Ceremony:
Manager Tanel was announced two possibilities to choose from. And both were quite tempting.
A) A 3-year contract as manager of Romanian Second Division side FC Universitatea Cluj and a very big job as manager of Cyprus.
B) 200 000 English pounds.
When most of the guys would've probably choosen the money, Tanel picked the possibility A, showing that he was really here to show his tactical skills.
Comments:
Mark: "The awards vere so tempting. Both of them, but I better be happy with my 25 000 pounds then. Which ain't bad either, but congrats to Tanel. He had it tactically right in the final. Though I hope some clubs noticed my manager talents from this final and competition."
Tanel: "I'm extremly happy. To coach the national side of Cyprus and also start off my club career. I'll go to Romania as soon as possible and then I'll meet with the roster of the littel Cyprus island."
Romanian Second C division side FC Universitatea Cluj has appointed a winner of Sky Sports TV show "Managerial Test" as their new manager.
People in Cluj are highly sceptical with the appointment of Tanel Tursk, though not the management of U Cluj who reportedly earned one million English pounds with the appointmet.
Tursk, who has born and lived in Estonia doesen't speak Romanian, but has promised to learn it in near future. But fans still rushed to the Ion Moina stadium to welcome the new manager, who they hope to guide them back to the first division.
"I think mr. Tursk showed that he is tactically well organized and knows how to play the game, so FC Universitatea Cluj management is sure that it'll turn out to be a succesful era between us," said Lucian Danciu, president of the club.
"I hope to stay here longer than my contract and do amazing things and get to Europe. I hope the fans stay behind me and so the players," said Tursk in English.
Web Page: http://www.ucluj.ro
Founded: 1919
Status: Professional
Stadium: Ion Moina
Capacity: 28 000
Division: Romanian Second Division C
History: FC Universitatea Cluj represents lots of different clubs from football to rugby. The football club became individual and professional in the 1994 and is one of the best supported clubs all around Romania becaue the students who go to the sports university in Cluj-Napoca support the club and carry their support after they quit the university. The players are nicknamed "red caps". U Cluj's greatest achievement is a Romanian Cup victory more than 40 years ago. The team is often just called as "U" and the fans shout is: "Haide "U"!"
Cyprus Football Association today announced that the new manager of national team will be Estonian Tanel Tursk who won the Sky Sports TV show "Managerial Test".
Tursk's appointment has resulted a widespread of dissappointment in Cyprus people and small protest actions have been made claiming the president Costakis Koutsokoumnis to be an idiot and the national team place shuoldn't be available for everyone.
"He has a FIFA & UEFA Pro licence and that proves he is capable of managing teams very well. We hope to start a long term project to develop the nations football team," said Koutsokoumnis.
Tursk, who also became the manager of Romanian side FC Universitatea Cluj was on Cyprus for today and also claimed that they hope to have a succesful project with the national team.
Tursk met with some of the core players of the team and also checked the national team stadium GSP.
Web Page: Unknown
Founded: 1934
FIFA Affiliation: 1948
UEFA Afiiliation: 1962
Fifa Ranking: 105th (487 points)
Capital: Nicosia
Location: Island in the Mediterrean Sea.
EU Member: Yes
Population: 818 200 (End of 2003)
Stadium: New GSP Stadium (Nicosia) (Neo Stadio Gymnastikou Syllogou Pagkypria)
Capacity: 24 400
History: Cyprus FA is one of the weakest members of UEFA and was founded in 1934. The island recored it's first victory ever at home againist Switzerland when they won 2:1 in 1968. They've enjoyed lots of famous results like a win againist Northern Ireland 1:0 with Pat Jennings defending the opponents goal (1974), a draw 1:1 with France (1989), a 1:1 draw also with European Championship holders Denmark (Euro 96 qualifying) and famous victories in Euro 00 qualifiers over Spain and Isreal. Their first away win was againist Faroese in 1992.
Leagues Running Normal: Romania (First & Second)
Leagues Running Basic: England (Premier), Estonia (Meistriliiga), France (Ligue 1), Germany (Bundesliga), Holland (Casino Eredivisie), Italy (Serie A), Portugal (Superleague), Spain (Primera), Turkey (First) & Serbia (First)
Additional Nations: Argentina, Brazil, Cyprus, Estonia, Lebanon, Malta, Norway, Ghana, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, Hungary, Ivory Coast, Ukraine
TV Makes Dreams Come True (Hopefully) 
:thup:
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