Fiffsa 5-a-side World Cup – Qualifying Week 4

Gameweek 3 saw some exciting progress across the qualifying groups . We are now starting to get a real idea of which teams will be going through to the next stage of the tournament and who might fall at the qualifying stage. Nobody has been knocked out yet but a few nations are now on thin ice.

Gameweek 3 Review

The average team score for this week was 300 points. There were some close ties in the CONMEBOL region this week which kept us all guessing. In particular was the match between Peru and Ecuador, with the Peruvians  narrowly edging out a win by one point, which ended 302 and 301 respectively. The ties of Brazil v Bolivia, Tahiti v Bhutan, Mexico v Jamaica and Zambia v Tanzania were all decided by a margin of less than 5 points.

The biggest win of the week was for the Cayman Islands who beat Canada by a whopping 84 points in a match that ended 309 to 225.

Costa Rica, India, Singapore, Wales, Netherlands and Zambia are all maintaining a 100% record but these teams are not safe and sound yet.

In contrast, things are starting to look tricky for Brazil, USA, Barbados, UAE, Sri Lanka, France, San Marino and Ivory Coast who all still maintain a 100% record of losing. Again, your future is still in your  hands at this point but you all need to start winning!

The Luckiest Team Award goes to Zambia, who scraped a win with only 275 points (25 points below average) and left them top of their group with a 100% record.

The Unluckiest Team Award goes to Italy, who lost their tie against Israel despite scoring a whopping 329 points. This would have been enough to win all but 6 ties this week.

The Worst Benching Decision goes to the game between San Marino and Iceland. This match was an example of how not to decide your bench with the 2 highest scoring benches of the week. San Marino benched Spectrum and his whopping 70 points. If Sess! had been benched instead, they would have won the match! Their opponents Iceland benched their own monster haul as Gilli Gold racked up the highest bench total of the week at 77 points.

Meanwhile, the Presser Award for Gameweek 3 Goes to Johnny Orphan from team Poland for his excellent take on Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”.

I would also like to give an honourable mention to Diva, who as a member of FIFFSA, is not eligible for the award but every week comes up with fantastic press conferences which enlighten the world into the inside workings of FIFFSA and team Seychelles.

Keep the pressers up! There are so many excellent contributors which have yet to win awards.If you haven’t submitted one before why not submit one this week? We are still waiting for Iceland to submit one based upon a Peter Andre advert!

Gameweek 4 Preview

There are lots of exciting ties upcoming this week and some teams should be able to secure their spots in the first round proper of the tournament.

Eyecatching fixtures fixtures include a make or break tie for pointless USA against the competition’s top scorers  Costa Rica.

Another interesting tie is Zambia versus the Ivory Coast. Zambia are the only team in the CAF region with a 100% record whereas Ivory coast have yet to register a point. However,  things are closer than they appear as Ivory Coast have only scored 2 less than Zambia over the duration of the tournament and must feel quite aggrieved to be without a win.

In Uefa group C there is a must win clash between San Marino and Republic of Ireland, with San Marino languishing at the foot of the table without a win. It is also an important match for Republic of Ireland as they have only got 4 points so far. This is a real 6 pointer at this stage of qualification.

A more detailed summary of this can be found on the player history tab which includes the rank history of every player in the tournament at our team sheets and tables spreadsheet.

Housekeeping

Firstly, we would like to clear something up as there has been a degree of confusion across our articles which came  to light this week. It was stated  in our article that the auto subbing policy would automatically bench the sixth player of each team if we did not hear from the respective team’s Captain/Vice Captain before the deadline. However, our charter states that your previous week’s benched player will be benched. This was an administrative error and I thought it best to resolve it this week.

As the sixth player was perceived to be the auto benched player, we will continue in this fashion and amend the charter respectively.

Secondly, we would like to address the matter of the deadline for submitting in your substitute. This is 2300 GMT on the Friday night. We are still receiving many mails after this time so please be punctual. This is due to the fact that, as we start adding substitutes to the spreadsheet, which all teams have access to, any late submissions could potentially have an unfair advantage.

Any future substitutions sent  to us after 2300 GMT will not be accepted and your 6th player will be benched. No Exceptions!

Further Information

A quick reminder of the format. Each Gameweek teams will pick a team of five players to go head to head with their opposite nation. The match will then be decided by the aggregate score of each teams’ Gameweek scores after hits have been accounted for. This week’s games can be found here.

Captains are required to submit their team sheets to fiffsa.exec@gmail.com by 2300 (GMT) by the Friday of each Gameweek otherwise their sixth player will be automatically benched.

Live scorecards will be up shortly before the early kick-off on Saturday at our score centre spreadsheet.

If you have any further queries, feel free to ask below in the comments or email us at: fiffsa.exec@gmail.com

Enjoy the tournament; this is the FIFFSA 5-A-Side World Cup. Accept no imitations.

As a final request, please do try and keep FIFFSA 5-A-Side chat to the comment sections of our articles.

The FIFFSA Executive Committee – President Sepp Balders, VP BabyB, VP Jaffalicious!, VP Diva, VP Blue Lion and Secretary General Jerome Cheeseoid.