Asunto: US National Team

But remember he only spent one season there and has spent the rest at a division one Italian team

Im still new to the game and trying to figure everything out. How do you help out with the national team and such or what do you do? I appologize if it is a stupid question, just still trying to get a feel for the game even though my team is already doing great in my mind

Granted, you need patience in this game, but "boring" is in the eye of the beholder . To me boring would be if someone joins the game, in 2-3 seasons is in the top division, two seasons later becomes the champ. And is gone, when a season after that he doesn't do well.
PPM is a management game - not the tactics game. If one doesn't see any excitement in management, it's not "his" game. And that's, in my opinion primary reason why ppl leave.

The other reason - there's too little hockey in hockey, too little basketball in basketball. Can you see any real difference between playing soccer and basketball in PPM? I won't even mention minor things (like fighting in hockey - it doesn't have any impact on the match, it's just a picture here). Take the attributes. We just get "attack" is good for wingers and centers and negligible for defenders. Where's the space for original approach to the team? You just have to find that golden ratio of stats and it fits all.

Having said that, to me there's still enough excitement in seeing my team develop, finding ways to get enough reasonable quality US players to make my team both competitive and the one that can pass for an excuse for the real life namesake, that I am just accepting it's SLOW process here.

Just my 2 grosz... err, cents

yes, it is a management game .. supposedly. it is a money management: play with market. play in a league (country) that has several leagues so you make more money than other countries and thus can make more money and be better at the money management..


boring is to play against ghosts.. dead teams. bots!

either let ghosts be taken or every season they all go to bottom and promote teams so top divisions are always played with active teams.

you are in poland league with 4 levels in soccer/hockey.

we barely have 2 levels. half of our 2nd levels are ghosts ..

You're right. Misinterpretation on my part. Playing half of the matches causes even more teams to go bot.
In our 3rd soccer and hockey divisions there is plenty of bots, too. And unfortunately it's heading that way more and more.

In my opinion, the best for PPM would be to drop the lowest levels of all national leagues and randomly assign these teams (and new teams) to international divisions. Winning in these divisions would not guarantee promotion, only financial gains. Instead, throughout the season these teams would build their ranking. At the end of the season teams with the highest ranking (for any given Nation) would play relegation/promotion playoffs against bottom teams in the lowest level of respective National leagues.

_And_ instead of working on new sports, add hockey to hockey, basketball to basketball, ...

I have an announcement to make. Due to some personal issues and the holidays coming up I need to take a break from ppm. I will return after Christmas so I will be there for the world championships. But I need someone to become an account sitter for my teams. I am building up a Hockey team and I have my brand new basketball team I need to build up. Someone who is knowledgeable in both sports would be helpful. Please reply to this thread so I know who is willing to help.

hey captain if you are still looking for a sitter I could help with hockey and make an attempt at basketball. I read the guides so it shouldn't be to hard to do that. I will also keep an eye on the National Team

I am setting but please help with the National team.

It is me setting. I sent the last message from the Captains account.

You got it. I'll help with what I can of the NT

I'm also available for any help you guys need.

Tomorrow I will give an official update on the team and a scope of the World Championships.

Nice. Looking forward to it.

Goalies: At this point Kevin Clinton and Mack Gaudreau will be splitting time in the net for the first 4 games of the world championships and after that whoever has the better games will be the starter in the fifth game. Both goalies are nearly at the same level and its important to get Mack some starting time so he has experience. Most likely he will be the starting goalie for USA Hockey after this season.

Defensemen: The top 4 defensemen remain our best core part of the team. While the corps is getting older the CL of many of the older guys remain in the 2/6 range. At the very least the solid d corps we have will remain strong for this season and next season. Not to mention I do have a few guys in the pipelines ready to replace them.

Forwards Our Offense remains my biggest concern. The wingers we have is very good and I expect a lot out of them. Our centers are an issue because they are falling behind our wingers in terms of skill level. This is good and bad. Michael Robertson and George Warren are two future stars of this team. They are both already in the six our of squad in terms of Off ability and both are only 26 which means they have yet to hit there prime. These guys are going to at some point be the two wingers on the top line of the USA. The issue is there isn't a top flight center who can be in the middle of these two. Our Center corps is not quite at there level but I do have high hopes for Rodger Baker because he is not far behind in terms of skill level. Last season we got 4 goals from the entire team in 6 games. That is not going to cut it and we need to score if we expect to get past the first round.

Portugal: This team beat us last year and I would like to get payback. They are a skilled team making it to the semis last year and retain a lot of there players. We are at about the same level in terms of skill so this game could go either way depending on tactics.

Denmark: Denmark has in the past been a top division team. In fact they even won the bronze medal in the top division in season 11. Still under this new manager they got relegated to division I. The team is loaded with good players I expect them to win the group however they were not as good as Serbia(whom we beat last year 1-0) They are a tough roadblock to beat.

Brazil: Brazil is back in division I after spending last year in division II and is our opening opponent. The team itself is a mirror of our team in terms of ability. Its going to be interesting to play them because when they were relegated the tactics they ran were easy to predict. This year not so much.

Switzerland: The Swiss knocked us out in last seasons World Championships 4 to 2 so of course I would like to beat them. In the past we have played in different groups but this year the group pairings has us in the same group. the Swiss team has a lot of good players and when compared to us we are the underdogs.

Slovenia: Another team that has seen time in Top division and division II. Last year finishing 9th out of 12 teams. However this team does have some good talent and ability.

Overall: We are going to be fighting to not get relegated. As much as it pains me to say it short of a tactic series of wins we don't stand a chance on paper vs the other teams. A lot of these teams have much better players then we do and our best guys may be third or second liners on there teams. Still that is the worst case. At best we could possibly upset a few teams and make it to the quarterfinals. Past that is going to be tough but you never know.