It was an exciting first week for the group stage of the FIFFSA 5-a-side tournament. In Gameweek 23 the first seeds faced the second seeds, while the fourth seed minnows squared up to the third seeds across the eight groups. It is early days and with one match gone all teams have everything still to play for.
Gameweek 5 Review
The average team score for this week was 287.8 points.
Group A was the only group where no teams beat the average score, it’s group average was the lowest at 260 points. Top seeds Costa Rica being the highest scorers with a victory 282-272 against Belgium. Third seeds Indonesia had a much more comfortable victory demolishing Norway 280-230
Group B was a tale of two halves with comfortable wins in both matches. The average score in this group was 287.5, slightly below average for the competition as a whole. New Caledonia beat Egypt 303 to 253 (50 points!) and Montenegro beat Mexico 317-277 (40 points!). Egypt and Mexico will need to pick their scoring up in future matches if this group should come down to points scored for qualification
Group C contained Cuba, the second highest scoring team of the Gameweek, and  had the second highest average group score at 301.75. Cuba routed Italy 332-289, while in the other match was closer as Germany beat Australia 307-279
The largest win of the week came in Group D. Bosnia and Herzegovina put Peru to the sword with a 71 point win (319-248). This has left Peru far adrift of even third place by 62 points. In the other match it was a very tight affair as Djibouti overcame Malaysia for a three point win (313 – 310). This was another group scoring comfortably above the average score at 297.5
Group E had the lowest scoring match of the round. Argentina overcame  Northern Ireland with a lowly 265-249. Both well below the Gameweek average. Third seeds Zambia shook the group up as the only team to score above average for the week as they beat Israel 311- 262. Low scores from three of the teams getting low scores led to the second lowest average score for this group at 271.75
Third seeds Jamaica made Group F sit up and take notice posting an admiral 323, which was 48 points higher than any other team in the group. Sri Lanka could only muster 261 as they attempted to defeat Jamaica.  The other match was a much closer affair where Columbia beat Tahiti 275-261. Despite Jamaica’s high score this group was still below average at only 280.
Group G was an extremely high scoring group in the opening round with Singapore demolishing top seeds Portugal 341 – 319. This match contained the highest performing player of the week with Bronaldinho scoring a whopping 90 points. In addition, Singapore’s score was the highest of the round. Unsurprisingly this group had the highest average score at 313.5, this is 38.5 points more than Group A. In the other match Uruguay comfortably beat India 312-281. This looks like a tough group for everyone involved.
Group H was the only group where all the teams beat the average team score of 287.8 and it had the third highest average group score at 298.5 it looks like another tough group to be in and was another group where the top seed got beaten. Qualifying top scorers Wales lost to Finland 289 – 306 in a comfortable win. The other match in this group was much tighter with The Seychelles edging out Iceland 303 – 296. Iceland appear to have nobody at the helm but this “ghostship†is still very effective and will prove a danger to anyone it faces.
The luckiest team award goes to Argentina, who managed to beat  Northern Ireland with only 265 points. This was 23 points below average.
The unluckiest team award goes to Portugal who lost with 319 points. This is 31 points above average and the 4th highest team score of the entire week!
The worst benching decision goes to Wales. By benching Spencer’s 73 points they lost their match, if they had chosen differently they could have beaten Finland and would be sat atop of group H
The presser award for Group Stages Gameweek 1 goes to Oghash for his four part odyssey  as FIFFSA sides traded Fantasy Football for going in search of the cure. Part one can be found here, part two here, part three here and part four here.
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?
Gameweek 6 Preview
Gameweek 6 sees the top seeds playing the third seeds and second seeds playing the fourth seeds.
Already we have opportunities for several teams to gain automatic promotion to the knockout stages. If there are wins for Jamaica and Colombia in group F and Singapore and Uruguay in group H then both of the top teams in these groups will go through.
The other six groups involve teams on three points facing each other and teams on zero points facing each other. Neither a win or a loss would guarantee a side were through or out in these groups but to be on zero points after Round 2 of qualification would make qualification very difficult.
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.
Captains are required to submit their team sheets to fiffsa.exec@gmail.com by 1200 Noon (GMT) on Tuesday Feb 2nd otherwise their sixth player will be automatically benched.
Live scorecards will be up shortly before the kick-off on Tuesday evening at the above spreadsheet
If you have any further queries, feel free to ask below in the comments or email us at:Â 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
