Having rolled out our Totelfootball selections for Tuesday and Wednesday’s Champions League games earlier this week, we decided to revisit the performances of our respective sides in our bid to win some cash. Here’s how we fared…
With a handful of out of position prospects in our ranks, we had high hopes heading into Tuesday’s proceedings. The ability to tinker with our selection after the team sheets were announced saw us draft in Eden Hazard for Juan Mata, after news came through of the Belgian’s role up front. We also swapped out Juventus Mauricio Isla for team mate Stephan Lichsteiner – both were classified as defenders, though it was the latter who got the nod on the right of his side’s midfield five.
Shakhtar’s Henrik Mkhitaryan was the biggest disappointment. He drew a blank as his side scored five times at FC Nordsjaelland, with Luiz Adriano scoring a hat-trick and Willian bagging a double and assist. More frustratingly, that duo only had three and two shots respectively; Mkhitaryan had six efforts, more than the pair combined, yet failed to add to his four-goal tally this season.
In the end, our single goal came from an unlikely source. We had selected Ezequiel Garay mainly for his clean sheet potential ahead of the visit of Celtic but the centre-half instead found the net in a 2-1 home win. Our decision to draft in Lichsteiner at the last minute afforded us our only clean sheet in a night where only two host sides managed to keep out their opponents. With 56 points to our name, we crawled home in 76th spot.
Wednesday saw a marked improvement from the previous night’s shambolic display. At one point our XI looked to be in with a real shout of winning it but eventually settled for 15th spot, with 95 points – a single point from some prize money. At the back, Porto keeper Helton, PSG Thiago Silva and Schalke’s Christian Fuchs are returned clean sheets; the latter also notching the only goal against Olympiacos for a 15-point haul, while Milan full-back Mattia De Sciglio grabbed an assist for his side’s opener at Anderlecht.
In midfield, three out of four found the net. Porto’s Lucho Gonzalez and Dortmund’s Marco Reus vindicated out faith, while Stephan El Shaarawy of Milan went one step further with a goal and assist in a 3-1 win in Belgium. Zlatan Ibrahimovic provided us with an assist in for PSG’s opener in Dynamo Kiev, though a surprise blank for Klaas-Jan Huntelaar dented our hopes of picking up the pennies.
We were trialling TotelFootball for this round of the Champions League matches and, with the official game still “experiencing problems”, we’re considering continuing to support it over the remaining rounds. Let us know your thoughts on this and any feedback you have on the game if you got involved.
For those still curious, you can still sign up for an account and give it a whirl for this weekend’s round of Premier League matches.
If you want to know more on how the game works, check out our original article.
