[official] Football Manager 2009 - Some MLS changes

Cool, should improve the realism when managing in America.

Will the CONCACAF Champions League be included?

Why do the MLS make it so complicated. Been playing FM/CM since CM2 and still failed to finish a season in the US

kool cant wait some good changes there

Miles -

First off thank you Miles for paying attention to MLS and addressing the issues. Lets hope this year it is truly playable.

Secondly I think MLS and the USSF owes SI a thank you for this series. I never payed attention to "soccer"

in my life until about 8 years ago when I purchased my first copy of CM. It took a while for me to catch on

but today I am a consumer of the MLS product and supporter of US Mens National Team. I can't get enough

the beautiful game. I know there are many others like me out there...

I truly think that SI is the St Patrick of Football and the USA is your Ireland....Please free us from the baseball

and basketball pagans!!!

Thank you for the update, Miles, as well as for the attention to detail in this area.

Has the "developmental contract becomes a Senior contract" bug been sorted?

I'm with meter- I didn't pay too much attention to MLS (and football in general) until I played FM06 and signed with DishNetwork (Fox Soccer Channel.) Now I watch MLS every chance I get, even catching the Sunday games on one of the Spanish channels, and football has become my favorite sport (I can't even watch the NFL now.)

As for the changes, thank you SI for your continued dedication to a league that, in all probability, actually contributes little (if anything) to your bottom line. You have earned yourselves a small, dedicated following that I'm sure would be more than willing in offering any help with your product as it relates to our odd little league. I understand demo's won't be made available to the public for testing, so I encourage you guys to keep an eye on the various MLS threads and approach us with any questions you may have about how to improve the playability of the league.

Fantastic news, love managing as New York and seen a couple of errors so good to know there being rectified.

I will be giving it another try then.

Nice to hear. I am really starting to look forward to this game.

This is good news, I will definatally be giving the MLS another shot now that these things are fixed. Like another poster said, will the CONCACAF Champions League be in this version?

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Ben7 - there is a long thread in the Bugs forum containing all of those items and more, I think .. we don't need to use this thread to collate the problems. That said, I am hoping that SI can confirm some additional fixes, e.g., things off of that list that they know have been addressed.

thank you for making some progress, Can't wait to play with TFC

Why do the MLS make it so complicated. Been playing FM/CM since CM2 and still failed to finish a season in the US

I don't know, thats why so many of us have been trying to get the USL (USA Lower Levels) into the game, with no luck as of yet.

I live in America currently and am part of USA research but there is to me little point in playing the game with USA league as it is very restrictive and there are no sub-leagues available as of now.

Yes! Allocations.

I'm ready to rule the world (at the least the MLS) with TFC on FM09!

Well done on making strides to improve MLS. Allocations have been a major missing piece of the puzzle, and improved DP slot AI should do worlds to help playability.

Sound interesting, might give the MLS a try now. Still for absolute relaism there should be new team each year. ;-) Never saw that option in a game but in Madden though.

Speaking of realism: I´d like too see a feature in the editor where you can force a player to stay in a club due to studies (I know there was such a feature in some version of CM). The reason is I like to add a large number of IRL US talents to the DB, and I do not want to see them sign for a MLS-club right away as they are in various colleges and universities (sp.).

Sorry if this is OT.

Viking - give them a future contract (pre-contract). Then they can't transfer until the future contract starts. You may be able to represent this as a transfer, e.g., have them "transfer" for $0 from College A to College B .. three years down the line. They won't be able to sign a professional contract until their contract with College B starts.

Viking - give them a future contract (pre-contract). Then they can't transfer until the future contract starts. You may be able to represent this as a transfer, e.g., have them "transfer" for $0 from College A to College B .. three years down the line. They won't be able to sign a professional college until their contract with College B starts.

Great idea. Thanks!

Cool!!! But will the waiver draft work this time?

I started off my last game in MLS but not having the draft work after the first year made the league unplayable. Hopefully that gets straightened out. Also, this may or may not be related but the quality of the US National team deteriorated markedly over time in that game--the quality of players the U.S. was producing was very bad, at the same time Mexico became a top 5 world power!

It would be nice also to have the USL divisions playable (as they were years ago) but I imagine that's not in the cards.

also good would be a way to scout college players so you don't have to rely just on the draft combine results. Ability to draft well has become an important factor in shaping MLS club success--look at New England Revolution--and a lot of that is rooted in scouting.

There were a lot of documented problems with the CA/PA figures of players coming out of the draft. That may explain why the US National Team got worse and worse over time -- none of the newgens being created were good enough.

Part of the problem is how younger players are developed. I bumped up the training/youth facilities for all the teams in America and Canada to see if it would help player development, but to little success. Players I loaned to Canadian teams made small gains (with Good facilities) while the players I loaned to the Toronto Lynx (a former USL team that became a development squad when TFC came about) actually decreased in ability, despite having similar buildings. I understand that the Development League isn't very competitive, but shouldn't it at least help to, I don't know, develop the talent of players?

Btw...what is MLS?

Btw...what is MLS?

MLS stands for Major League soccer.......... its the league in the USA, the one that david beckham is playing in.

There were a lot of documented problems with the CA/PA figures of players coming out of the draft. That may explain why the US National Team got worse and worse over time -- none of the newgens being created were good enough.

Follow-up, for those who have not followed those threads.

This and the "development" problem were tightly related. In general, aside from the few players at the very top of the draft, players generated for the MLS draft had such a low CA that they wouldn't get playing time even if you loaned them out to teams like Seattle, California, etc .. and they certainly wouldn't get playing time on the MLS teams, especially the AI-controlled teams.

This lack of playing time stunted their development, and ensured that they would never reach their full PA. However, they would develop just enough to perpetuate the cycle .. by reaching a level good enough that they'd keep the next crop of young players out of playing time. It led to a depression in talent as measured by CA for MLS and the U.S.A. overall, which led to the U.S.A. getting worse and the MLS becoming very easy for a clever human player to rise to dominance in after several seasons had passed.

Great idea. Thanks!

You're welcome!

MLS stands for Major League soccer.......... its the league in the USA, the one that david beckham is playing in.

I get you now, cool.

No mention of whether the problems of the poor quality of draft players has been addressed. But good to see the MLS get some attention. I can't quite hack it myself, although I know I'll be tempted to try.

thats exelent!! can you tell us, is the new format of the concacaf champions league is include??

I wonder if any of the new teams which will be coming into formation will be coded to come into the league when they are due to do so?

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I'm pretty sure SI will have the actual 2008 MLS license = 14 Teams and the current rules. No future expansion teams (Seattle, Phili etc) yet

In the worst case just swap your team (ex. Seattle) for the MLS team you rate the worst/don't like at all.

But couldn't they just put he future expansion teams in the game but not active (sort of how the USSR is there, but unplayable), so that we can input them ourselves if we so want (if you or anyone else gets what I am saying! )

Licensing issues makes that impossible.

I truly think that SI is the St Patrick of Football and the USA is your Ireland....Please free us from the baseball

and basketball pagans!!!

That has to be one of the strangest analogies I've ever seen. Well put though.

well if they're not going to have Seattle and Philly in there (Seattle's already signed some players, like Kasey Keller) there's not a lot of point in playing MLS in the game, if you're looking for a simulation. I don't really see why a deal couldn't be worked out to include them. sigh. maybe MLS will be playable in FM 10.

It won't, because it will be missing the 2011 expansion teams

Sure it sucks that a couple expansion teams won't be included, but I'd prefer that they get the league to a long-term playable state.

It's all irrelevant unless the draft is fixed. That's the only thing I need to hear about the MLS.

Americans complicate things too much, then this is what they get

Americans complicate things too much, then this is what they get

I don't think that's it, actually.

MLS, when it first started up, couldn't decide if it wanted to appeal to football fans, or to fans of the American sports. So it tried to appease both ... and missed its market entirely.

At least we've done away with the most egregious problems: the "there's no such thing as a tie" rule, and the crazy hockey-style "start from the halfway line" penalty shootouts.

Things like the draft, the playoffs, and the salary cap are all perfectly understandable to Americans because they exist (in some form or other) in each of our other sports.

Historically, when you look back at, say, the NASL, salaries accelerated to a point where, to win, a team had to spend more than it could earn .. but if it couldn't win, it couldn't attract enough fans to even pay the wages. The salary cap, the draft, and the "MLS rights to a player" rules are all designed to keep clubs out of bidding wars, and enforce that they spend within their means ...

... and also to ensure that "every club has a chance", because for some inexplicable reason we tend to like "parity", defined as "you can't predict who is going to win any given match with real confidence".

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I don't entirely see why these new teams can't join the MLS down the line in the game world, especially if SI know the dates they are joining. If anyone has played in the German Regional leagues in FM08, they'll know that the game created 2 new divisions after the first season. Basically, after the 1st season, 38 teams who were unplayable suddenly entered the league system due to restructuring.

I don't know what's happening in MLS with regards to new teams coming in, but if it's simply a case of on such and such a date, Seattle and Philly join the MLS, and the league is expanded, then this has already been done in Germany. If there are already deals for players to join these clubs as well, (someone mentioned Kasey Keller) then surely a simple "is scheduled to join *insert team name* on mm/dd/yyyy" on the players contract screen is not outwith the boundaries of reason.

I hope this is coded in for you guys. Best of luck in your "crazee" league setup.

But you can do what you like for a league you dont have the licence for?

I mean, I know it's not "technically" the actual German leagues in the game but it is a pretty strange situation that an FA you have a relationship with (MLS) won't let you factor in these changes but the DFB can't do anything about the German ones.

The worlds of business politics and licensing laws are very strange indeed.....

But you can do what you like for a league you dont have the licence for?

Nope, definitely not. The contract will be very specific in its terms.

I'd love it if the contract gave SI the right to include any planned expansions announced prior to the release of the game, to occur in-game on the date that they are announced for, but clearly such a clause is not in the contract. Perhaps when it is renegotiated - but possibly not, as MLS may be intentionally excluding such from the contract.

The worlds of business politics and licensing laws are very strange indeed.....

Amen!

Well, last night I used FMM on my saved game to soup up the draft picks. All 125 players. Going by a quick glance at the database the typical MLS rookie has a 95 or so CA, give or take 10 points. But for the draft to have any talent I had to typically bump player's CA level 20 to 30 points. The PA ratings were possibly on the low side, but there was a few 170's and 160's to be found- too bad they had CA's of about 70, and were 22 years old. So it is possible to have an effective draft with the current format, so long as you're willing to work at it!

I was expecting another year of mediocrity as far as MLS realism goes, but this sounds awesome. I hope the rest of the new rules make it into the game, I.E. waiving a player releases all rights that a club has on a player, and there now being 8 tradable international spots regardless of age, etc.

I also hope to see all of the bugs worked out. I assume SI knows about them, but I would be happy to provide a (long) list should someone need reminding.

All in all, its sounds promising. What I think I enjoy the most about all of this is that it seems that SI put a little extra effort into MLS this year, which makes me believe that it will have much less bugs than 08.