Asunto: National Team

btw, i voted on 1st round only. I still have to vote in this 2nd round

what happened??? that dude deleted his soccer team and no longer a candidate.

Well, since I definitely do no want a non USA team as the manager ... My 2nd round vote goes to Runnyonion.

As i said before. This is why i dont vote for managers with low experience. They can quit any moment.

My concern is activity on the forums and in the game. If a manager has played the game for a while and posts on the forums regularly, then I feel that they'll do a better job communicating with the rest of us. They're probably also less likely to quit the game (assuming they haven't been posting for years about how the dislike the game).

Obviously to meet that criteria, a manager has to have a decent to high level of experience. However, high experience by itself is not enough to win my vote.

I suppose I'm not sure where the NT capabilities are at the moment, but personally, I'd like a NT manager that can build a team that can win now and win later, and moreover tell any listening club managers the sort of players/facilities that he/she needs to build that team.

Brazilian guy PM me again, and asked for my vote in the second round.

There is no reason not to vote for runnyonion, everyone needs to get their votes in so the kid pm'ing everyone doesn't squeak in because he got a bunch of barely active managers to cast a vote.

I even think its against the rules, PMing people and asking for the vote.

Wow I missed a lot.

Being that I'm the outgoing NT manager who led the team to a finish significantly below our expectations, I'll comment on a lot of these thoughts here. I definitely agree that this discussion is a good one to have.

As far as results go, we sucked last two seasons. No two ways about it. NT has a two-season term, with half of the qualifying tournament in each season. In the first season, I tried to mix in some of the upcoming younger players, both to save energy for the older players for the tournament and to get them some experience. I did this through the early friendlies and in the qualifying round games, building up the chemistry in a more all-around manner....there was probably 20+ guys with over 50-60 chemistry and maybe only a couple over 80. It was just not successful. I still think it should have been, and partially luck was not in our favor (the crowning moment was probably putting 7 shots on goal against Chinese Taipei without scoring, and then giving up a goal on their first shot of the game in the 89th minute). But it meant that I needed to change my strategy. So the second season, I built up the chemistry of the top 11 going into the first game...they were all at 100. We won two and tied two, but it was not enough to make up for the previous season.

We did have moderate success in the challenge cup as well, advancing out of the group stage (our only group loss was a throwaway game in which we had already clinched advancement) and then losing a nail-biter against a very good Russian team in the playoffs.

So, I feel like our success came when our top guys were playing, and our failure was when I tried to get a little too fancy with lineups to save energy and spread out experience. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have tried that as much.

In terms of using players from lower leagues, I would love to be able to do that, but I don't think it's really a feasible strategy because those teams just don't have the same caliber of player (believe me, I spent a lot of time scouring II leagues looking for potential players to add), and for the promising youngsters they pull, they don't have the same level of facilities to develop them into top players. It sucks because it perpetuates the gap between the top few teams and the lower ones, and because it means fewer US teams get to be involved in the NT process. I do feel the pain of the lower teams because I'm on the other side of that gap in hockey after starting in season 3. But as far as I can see, that's the way the game is built. Although I'd be happy to listen to arguments to the contrary, because it would be great to get more teams involved.

As far as specific star young players, to be blunt, we're not in fantastic shape for our 16's and 17's right now. When looking for players to add, I looked through every I.1 team and at least the top half of every II league team to find some good young talent. There's not a lot there that will really do great for us in the next couple of seasons. And a lot of the best ones are center mids and center defenders, where we have our best players right now.

Since Matt Hernandez in particular has been mentioned, I'll use him as a case study and explain why I picked him. When I was looking for players, he had the highest OR of any 15 year old in the country by a reasonable margin. The other players close to him in OR also do not have stellar qualities, and Hernandez is 6/6 while almost all of the other top 15yo's at the time were 5/6. Plus the Boilermakers have very good training facilities. And as Obryantj says, he's a side defender, and we're pretty weak in that area. Adding Hernandez at the end of the season also doesn't mean he's on the team forever. I just did my own analysis looking at all of these factors, determined that I thought he was the most likely 15yo to contribute to the team in the near future, and added him to get him some experience and training boosts. Whoever wins the election will be free to drop him and add other young players.

Ok, that's way too long of a post. I'll stop writing now. But I'm happy to keep discussing anything about the last couple of seasons while I was running things.

Same here. We should all be voting for Runnyonion.

After hearing the SD complaints, I uploaded several of mine who are decent, but maybe not NT quality. I'll be starting TF 15 in about a month too, for what it's worth.

i have a midfield with quality 90+ Mid, pas, tec, spe.
If anyone with great facilities and money willing to buy it from me send me a message and i put in the market. Kyle Mallory. he just turned 17 and is 6/6

he is an example of a top that i cant fully train cause not full facilities.
perhaps this is what we should try to do. have D1 managers to message lower divisions and make an offer for player. say how much would pay for the player so one can ut in for sell. it does not garantee the player will be sold to that manager

And as far as friendly. another disappointing result against Macedonia.

If we play low all match we lose 0.10 energy. With only 8 friendly we would not even lose a full point before the first competitive match of the season.

Friendliest do not matter for national teams. I believe there is Zero benefit? Let me know if I'm wrong. All energy should be spent towards international events.