Turning players into coaches?

I have always wondered how to do this on FM09 and have never figured out how to do it.

Is it that you are able to offer any of your players a coaching role if they are other 35 or something?

Or does the player retire and then you can offer him a coaching role?

Just wondering if anyone on the forums knew how to do this as I would like to give this a go sometime

Basically your player will inform you when/if he takes his coaching course and from that point on you can sign him as a coach, usually happens around the time he plans on retiring.

It's something I quite like doing for players that have been loyal servants to the club and I more often than not waste money keeping them at the club despite not needing them so they'll coach when they retire. They usually end up being rubbish coaches and I don't sign them.

If you want a player in your team to become a coach, scout etc go onto the interaction screen and you can say they would be ideal to do X job once they retire. This can help in persuading people who don't want to stay in the game to do so. I don't think it always works but it's worth a try.

I have found best bet is to wait until they actually retire as their salary demands are more realistic then

You can sign your player as coach if he have "Staff profile" section under his "Player profile" section. If he is going to retire you can offer him only staff role, if not he can also accept player/staff role (sometimes it bad because if he will retire only after 10 months, I can use him as player/coach for that time but is not able to do that).

After any of your player will have 30 years, the "long-term plans" line appears in their "Personal" section. He states there what are his thought about his career after the retirement. He can state that he want to be a scout, a coach, a manager, "less traditional role" which usually means physio or that he will not stay. Every career choice have different stages, from the "Would prefer to be a <someone> if stay in the game" up to "Definitely will be a <someone> after retire" (the wording is slight different but i'm writing from the memory, still the beginning words - Would and Definitely are surely there).

You can also suggest your player a future path of career through player interaction - there are three options - will be a good manager, will be a good coach and will be a good scout. You cannot suggest physio role.

After choosing one of the options, he will respond next day. I've seen only two types of respond - the first one "it's too early to speak about it and he want to concentrate on his player career at the moment" and second one "agree with manager and he will seriously thinking about it". The second one means that he have advanced at least one position up on his long-term plans for that career. First one is often if player if in his early thirties, second if he is closing to retirement decision and/or he respect your decisions (obviously somehow related to his hidden and mentality skills and the level of his attitude toward you).

So with choosing the coach/manager/scout option every half a year or so, you can make your player be on the highest, "Definitely ..." level of long-term plans. Theoretically it means that he will got his "Staff profile" at the moment when he will decide about retirement date. I have not seen in my games when a player takes a coaching/scout course without setting the retirement date. Unfortunately in 2007 and 2008 version there was a bug and sometimes players with "Definitely ..." level have chosen to retire completely from the game. I'm not sure if it was fixed in 2009, so it could be safe to stay at the second higher level of the long-term plan, the probability of staying is there quite high.