Qualifying for the knockouts

~3 days later~

Today is the next game. We will be playing against Iran, the other favorite of this group.

The matches before us ended with a win for the USA against Ghana and Columbia winning against India in Group A.

In Group B Mali won against Turkey and Paraguay against New Zealand.

Other Matches haven't taken place yet.

At 20:00(8 PM) our match against Iran will start. We are currently driving to the stadium in Margao.

~a few hours later~

The referee is currently signaling the start of the game with a whistle.

Today we will be playing with the same 5-1-3-1 as yesterday, but I am more defensively oriented as Iran is a very offensive concentrated team.

We will be playing defensive counterattack.

The first 10 minutes were played like a common game with defensive counterattack.

But suddenly someone advanced on the left side of their wing and our right side.

I used Lahm's famous tackle to get the ball and immediately started sprinting. I passed the ball to our 6 Yannik Keitel from Freiburg. He made a through pass to me. I now only had the last line of defense in front of me. With all four of their defenders running to me, I cut to the left side where I passed the ball to our winger Josha Vagnoman from Hamburg. He was now in front of the penalty area and made a body feint, after that he was stuck at the bottom line he crossed the ball to the other side of the goal. Sadly the ball was a bit too high for everyone but it quickly sank. I stretched out my foot and the ball was rolling in the goal.

1:0 for us.

Perfect start. Now Iran needed to invest more might into their already many offensive players, which made their already weak defense even weaker.

In the 22nd minute, we had a counterattack from a corner kick from theirs. I advanced from the right wing and made a cross, but Arp's header only shook the crossbar and didn't result in a goal.

in the 34th minute, we had a corner kick because of a long-range shot of Yeboah, which was saved by their goalkeeper.

Arp ran to me. I passed to him and quickly ran to the corner of the 16-meter space. Arp passed the ball to me again. I cut in and made a fine finesse onto the upper left corner of the goal. A corner tactic like in the books. Me and Arp celebrated together. We already studied this tactic in the qualifiers for the World Cup.

Till half time nothing special happened anymore.

After half time we had few good chances through counterattack as their coach seemed to want to play as defensively as possible for the rest of the time to secure their goal difference. They will qualify if they win against Costa Rica, where they are the favorites.

We won 3:0 in the end through a long-range shot by Keitel. I passed the ball to him moments before and gained a free assist. 

The other games ended with Costa Rica drawing against Guinea in our Group.

Spain won against Niger and Brazil won against North Korea in Group D.

In Group E France won against Japan and Honduras against New Caledonia.

England won against Mexico and Iraq against Chile in Group F.

Due to this we have already qualified for the knockouts in advance.