Early Retirements

Is it just me or are there a lot of players retiring before they turn 35 in FM10. I have just completed a season where I was promoted to CCC and 3 of my 34 year olds announced there retirements yet I still have a 38 year old in my first team (Beckham). I also noticed that a lot of my favorite players like Harry Kewell had retired at 33 and became a manager, this doesnt sound right to me. What do you guys think?

I think it's quite realistic. Harry Kewell for example may have retired quite early as he was a very injury prone player and may not have wanted to carry on playing too long, and if he has become a manager of a small club could also be realistic. But in real life he'd probably be a coach first.

That is true about Kewell but 2 of the 3 guys who retired from my team were important first team players and played most of the season without any injury concerns which I find very strange. On top of that 1 of the players was still playing international matches. I have also noticed many other top players retiring early.

Ronaldinho retired at 33 in my current save, although he only had 2 appearances in his last season at Milan. He's now a youth coach at Club America. I doubt a player like him would retire at 33. He should have asked to go to a smaller club and could have kept playing.

Yeah 33 is way too young, it seems to be a common trend in the game. I wonder if retirements are random or if they are set into the database and if they are random I wonder what gets taken into consideration when retiring a player.

Some players will retire early if they arn't getting enough games and or don't think they can still perform at the highest level. Seems realistic to me.

I don't think you would see ronaldinho playing in league 1 at 35 just to keep playing. Its called quitting at the top.

Its not very realistic as far as Kewell is concerned, he hasn't been injury prone since he left Liverpool and he has stated that he wants to play for as long as possible and he really admires plaers like Maldini who went to the age of 40 playing at a high level. Michael Owen in my game is a coach at Man City at the age of 32, it seems pretty ridiculous as i expect a lot of players would want to play for as long as they can.

Is it just me or are there a lot of players retiring before they turn 35 in FM10. I have just completed a season where I was promoted to CCC and 3 of my 34 year olds announced there retirements yet I still have a 38 year old in my first team (Beckham). I also noticed that a lot of my favorite players like Harry Kewell had retired at 33 and became a manager, this doesnt sound right to me. What do you guys think?

I snapped up Harry Kewell for my Portsmouth team and he is amazing, still going strong at 35.

Well worth £2.5m, pinched straight from under Real Madrids noses.

I would have signed him but he retired so that killed that idea.

I would have signed him but he retired so that killed that idea.

Perhaps signing him would of prevented this from happening, Lesson learnt.

I couldnt afford him unfortunately, thats why I waited so long to make an offer. Could have got a good 4 years out of him.

Plz stop trying to justify how buggy is game is.

Although it does depend on the manager. In one of my saves Carragher kept getting his contract renewed so he stayed and the same goes for Gerrard. I personally refused to renew Carragher's contract and only renewed Gerrard once or so, so they retired earlier.

And personally its pointless to keep signing old players unless he need a stop gap. I rather sign younger players and cash in on the old players. Young players are just as good and can only get better plus they have cheaper in wages. I usually only sign old players if I'm Portsmouth and have no time to scout for talent, plus old players are then available on a free.

When a player's contract is about to expire, they are more likely to retire and become a coach (especially if you have planted that seed in the media). And especially if they have made very few appearances that year.

In one week, I had Van Der Sar, Scholes, and Giggs whose contracts were expiring June 30. None had played much, so all announced they would retire, and I signed them all to coaching contracts instead.

Just thought I'd pop in with a tidbit that I read in the tabloids the other day - Harry Kewell's agent said that he never really had a chance at Liverpool because the medical staff in England (in general) were complete rubbish! Pretty amazing!

Turns out Rafa contacted Harry's management and asked what he did, because when they sold him they'd written him off as "unable to realistically recover to be fit to play" and now they're panicking about Torres. Yuck!