I’ve made a video chronicle of Pro Vercelli’s offseason dealings in the summer of 2013. Follow our maneuvers as we get ready for the start of our second year in Serie B.
Song clip: The Welcome Wagon, “Half a Person”
Read More: Football Manager 2009, Pixel Dramas, Pro Vercelli
by Brian Phillips · March 12, 2009
Young blood coming in. If you can manage to hold onto the majority of the young talent at the Silvio Piola, I predict stable Serie A performances in two years.
I just had to sell Messi of Waidhofen/Ybbs (to Salernitana for €500k and 40% of any future sale) because he was destroying our locker-room harmony. I’m not too broken up about this, as he only ever had one good season for us, and in Serie B he managed three goals in 23 starts. And then, with the 4-3-3, I don’t need to keep so many pure strikers in the squad. I just hope I can keep my other want-aways (Askassou and now Sammarco) calm for the rest of the season.
Probably not a bad decision, especially if he’s not performed well for you.
I’ve got a couple of questions though:
-How is the game modeling an disgruntled player (i.e. do you get an in-game message or do you have to monitor stats)?
-Are you still recruiting coaches? What I’m getting at is trying to see how well you can improve a ‘raw’ player, or if you need to buy to the level you want to play at.
- Every player’s “personal” screen contains a general message about his happiness (“enjoying playing for the club,” “wants to leave the club,” etc.) and specific concerns (“wants to move to a bigger team,” “feels he deserves a more important role on the team,” etc.). If his unhappiness reaches a certain point, he gets an “unh” tag next to his name on your squad list. (Note that happiness is separate from morale.)
- Forgot to put this in the video: Yes, I’ve been recruiting coaches this offseason, as the board finally decided we could afford to hire more of them. I’ve now got seven stars in every training discipline, which is the goal, and a good mix of motivation, discipline, and working-with-youngsters abilities among my coaches.
How much players are capable of improving depends enormously on their innate potential, a number the game knows but that you can’t see; the closest you can get to it is to hire scouts and coaches with high “judging player potential” stats and then look at their reports. If a scout with a judging-potential rating of 20 says an average-looking teenager has the ability to become a leading star in the Premier League, you should probably think about buying him.
Whether the player can reach his potential at your club depends, as far as I can tell, on a wide range of factors, including the quality of your coaching, the quality of your training facilities (which you can monitor on your club’s information page and improve by asking the board), the amount of first-team football he plays, his specific training schedule, and his own innate ambition and determination (check his determination score and his personality description). Player improvement also tends to level off dramatically after the age of 24 or so (though there are exceptions) so all other things being equal a 17-year-old probably has more room for improvement than a 28-year-old with the same stats.
If you take all this into account, it’s definitely possible to take a raw player and turn him into a superstar, and to me it’s one of the most fun aspects of the game. Even at Pro Vercelli, where we can’t afford to upgrade our training facilities beyond “adequate,” I’ve seen some pretty terrific results. In the year I’ve had David, he’s gone from here:
To:
A two-point improvement to finishing, first touch, marking, and pace, a three-point improvement to passing, and a four-point improvement to decisions, all in one year. And he’s still just 18.
Do you try to level up “flair” at all?
It depends on the player’s training schedule. I think flair is part of the “ball control” training category.