Specific Retraining Advice to Ageing Players

I always had this idea, but never really got round to putting it down on the forum.

It would be nice if you could specify skills that an ageing player should pick up in order to help extend his career. Currently in the game, it seems that say you had a really good young winger. So he develops winger skills. But once he grows older and can no longer accelerate people at say age 30 or so, you have to dump him. I think this is not what really happens in reality. We have seen many times players gradually move deeper or more centrally as they grow older.

For example, Ryan Giggs no longer bombs up and down the wing, but he now has developed a passing range better than any other point of his career and gets a second life as a central midfielder. Or Paul Scholes, who also used to score plenty coming late into the box. He now rarely gets into the box, but actually also has developed his passing range over the past couple of years. It is also not uncommon for a striker to move a lot deeper once he gets older. I know Chris Sutton moved a lot deeper as he got older as well. Or even Gilberto becoming more of a central defender later on. I'm sure there a heaps of examples and it would be cool if that could be reflected in the game.

I think what needs to happen is that we should be able to tell an ageing player "Ok, you are getting old. In a couple of years, you can no longer out sprint players etc. However, you might get a second lease of life if you develop this or that aspect of your game."

Anyway, I heard training is also redone to some extent, so maybe I can hope this might be in!

i agree was thinking same when thr other day i read SAF's statement on giggsy

yeah i like this idea tbh, it is a bit of a shame when you have to completely overlook or offload players because they arent as good as they once were, even if you know they can be decent in other areas... sure, they wont show as much (if any) improvement in their attributes but they would become more "accomplished" in that role....

this is a super idea, id agree with this