The 2012-13 Season reviewed (not by me)

"IFL MADRID 2012/2013 SEASON REVIEW

The IFL Madrid raised their glasses to Atlético Cero, who made theirs a treble as they won the first division championship, the Nuez Web Solutions league cup and the Nuez Web Solutions Madrid Cup (the one-day open summer tournament) in the same season for the first time. 

The mostly Peruvian outfit outclassed the rest of the field with a probing, attacking brand of possession football, in which the attitude was ‘score one if you want, we’ll score three”. Their final goal difference backed that up almost exactly. Star striker Dani Espadín hit 85 league goals, a ratio of ‘only’ 4.5 goals per game played (he managed a record ratio of over 5 per game last term), which gained him his third consecutive Pichichi top scorer award.

The game that epitomised Cero’s commitment to goalscoring was the titanic cup semi final between the team with the best attack and the one with the best defence, where O’Neill’s United led 4-2 five minutes into the second half and Cero substituted their goalkeeper for an attacker. The daring gamble paid off: Atlético Cero won the tie 7-6 and went on to claim the cup against Santana in a repeat of the 2012 final.
Eight-times league winners Santana had come back from a poor start to the season to be the team who pushed Cero the hardest, beating them in both their league meetings before succumbing in that cup clash.

Yet it was the year’s revelation team, FC Twenty, who snatched the first division runner up spot from Santana and in doing so capped off a meteoric rise from being the fourth-placed side in the second division in 2011/2012 to becoming one of the league’s heavyweights. 

FC Británico also made a notable transition to the league’s top table after winning last season’s second division, although they lost momentum with midterm player departures. 

Madrid Reds had flirted with the drop to the second tier following the upturn in fortunes for others, but they stepped up a gear after Christmas and managed to equal the fifth place finish they attained this time last year.

O’Neill’s United had begun 2012/2013 as favourites alongside Atlético Cero, but suffered a disappointing year by their own high standards. 
They did, however, give us a flash of the sublime when they steamrollered all opposition at the IFL’s touring International Cup for the third time in succession, held this year in Valencia and contested by teams from Madrid and the Valencian capital. 
They also took Atlético Cero all the way in the final of the Nuez Web Solutions Madrid Cup, only losing out on the trophy they won in 2010 and 2011 in a penalty shootout, after impressing in the end of season one-day blitz tournament.
FC Dutch Gold claimed the prize in the consolation tournament that day, adding the Copita to the Vase trophy they won in the ‘best of the rest’ competition in Valencia. 

The recipients of silverware were rounded off by Triskel Tavern, who convincingly sealed the second division title as they did two years ago during their last sojourn outside the top flight.

The season’s greatest advert for perseverance was, the seemingly hapless, Rastro Bar-barians, whose record in mid-February read played 13 lost 13. 
They won seven of their nine remaining games and rose from rock bottom to fifth in the second division, leaving everyone wondering what they’d been putting in their Saturday-night drinks.

There was no such mystery with FC Red Calm, sponsored by the brand of Ribera del Duero red wine which gives them their name. It wasn’t exactly a vintage year for them as they found themselves bottom of the barrel, but the playing, and the drinking, was a lot of fun.

(Luc Ciotkowski for IFL Madrid, published in the July 2013 edition of InMadrid, updated to include Nuez Web Solutions Madrid Cup results)"

see this in full at:
https://www.facebook.com/IFLMadrid
http://issuu.com/inmadrid/docs/1306_inmadrid_july_2013_issue
background also to be found at:
http://www.inmadrid.com/magazine/regular-sections/sport/soccer/love-game

The Brave New World

We are on the cusp of the 2013-14 league campaign and FC Twenty has gone from strength to strength over the past two season, well from an initial point of weakness.
Season 1 (2011-12) Finished 4th in the inferior league.
Season 2 (2012-13) Finished 2nd in the superior league.

(Note: the league structure is that each team plays each other once then the league splits into a top half and bottom half then you play each team in that half once.)

Where will we finish the coming season?

How will we replace the players we have lost in the close season?

All these and many more questions should be answered in the course of the season.