"Tendency to move abroad"- a suggestion

This idea came to be whilst I was reading one of Mike7077's posts in the "Most realistic FM" thread.

Basically, Mike was saying that he didn't think some of the transfers in FM08 were realistic. SWP was at Valencia, Aaron Lennon was at Sevilla and David Bentley was at Juve.

The problem there isn't (in my opinion) the quality of players, per say. It's more down to one factor.

In real life, English players don't move abroad.

Okay, some do, but it's rare. In recent times (ie the players are still playing), we have:

• David Beckham, Michael Owen and Jonothan Woodgate to Real Madrid.
  
• David Beckham to LA Galaxy.
  
• Michael Ball to PSV.
  
• Terry Cooke to Real Salt Lake (or another MLS club).
  
• Darren Huckerby to... I forget, in the MLS.
  
• At a push, Simone Perrotta's career in Italy. I don't think we can count him though.
  

However, in the majority of those cases, there were very good reasons. Madrid are a huge club, LA Galaxy have loads of money. Huckerby probably wanted a final pay day, and nobody here was offering him one. PSV are a moderately big club. And by moderately I mean extremely. I'm not sure what Cooke's reasoning was.

With the possible exception of Beckham at Madrid, in all those cases, the players played worse abroad than in England. That's covered by adaptability.

However, the chance of them leaving in the first place, is not, to the best of my knowledge, covered. I suppose there's league attraction, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I'd like to see a blanket tendency to move abroad attribute added. This would reflect the likelyhood of players of a certain nationality leaving their country of birth. It would be set for the nationality, not for each player. It could be like "Game Importance" or "State of Development".

It could either be implemented on a scale of 1-20, or with phrases (nearly always, often, regularly, rarely, almost never). It doesn't really matter, though I'd prefer the original.

So, Italians would have this set at a low value, Englismen at a slightly higher one but still under 5, Spanish players at around 9 or 10, French players at around 12, Japanese players at around 15, and players from the Ivory Coast at 20. The higher the number, the higher the likelyhood of the player moving abroad is.

Let me get this straight. Even with 1, players would still have a chance of moving abroad. However, if they were English, they'd be much more likely to sign for Man U or possibly even someone like Villa than Real, much more likely to sign for Stoke than someone like Getafe, etc. It would stop reputation being the be all and end all (though obviously, players prefer Real to Woking).

Possible bugs:

1. Welsh players would be less likely to move to Cardiff, Swansea etc.- therefore, stadium location should be used. Perhaps there could be a way around this letting British players move to anywhere in Britain without this coming into effect?
   
2. Nationalised players might start refusing to leave countries. Therefore, first nationality should be the one that matters.
   

Thoughts? Suggestions?

It's ok but I don't see how you can label a whole nationality with one attribute.

Spot on - there are a few "trends" related to nationality i would like to see implemented, and this is one of them - in general many players from the top ranked nations (England, Spain, Italy) don't tend to move to one of the other leagues -obivously it happens (less so with english players as you've noted) but i think it happens too often in FM.

Not sure how they could incoporate this, but it would be nice to see the flow of english players out of england slow a little.

It's ok but I don't see how you can label a whole nationality with one attribute.

In the editor, there are attributes for nations. Give the nation this attribute. Then when a player receives an offer from abroad, a light lights up in his head saying "hold on! I'm Italian, this offer better be good otherwise I won't leave."

It's ok but I don't see how you can label a whole nationality with one attribute.

Whilst i think this is a very good idea I have to agree with Daniel. It just wouldn't really be realistic labeling a whole nation of players with one attribute because after all they're all still individuals. Of course it would be better doing it individually but i can see that there might be certain problems doing this.

Possibly would it be possible to have a certain value for each nationality and then a random figure for each individual based around what the national figure was. What I mean is that say you had a scale of 1-20 then countries with low numbers would only have a small percentage of players at the high end of the value, and countries with a high figure would have a greater percentage of players willing to move.

I don't know if that makes any sense lol, but just a thought..

In the editor, there are attributes for nations. Give the nation this attribute. Then when a player receives an offer from abroad, a light lights up in his head saying "hold on! I'm Italian, this offer better be good otherwise I won't leave."

It's possible, yes, but not feasible or realistic.

I am aware that every player is an indivual and therefore it doesn't apply to every player.

However, something like this to make it less likely that a player will leave his country of birth.

I like your suggestion of this equating to a random value for each player using a percentage scheme, fattyg.

I am aware that every player is an indivual and therefore it doesn't apply to every player.

However, something like this to make it less likely that a player will leave his country of birth.

I like your suggestion of this equating to a random value for each player using a percentage scheme, fattyg.

Thanks, I'm not sure whether that would be useful in terms of real life players, as some might have to have a figure determined by their career history. However, I think it could potentially work well in terms of regens etc

Something like this would need a lot of work. There would be too many issues adding this game and the first version of FM it is added to would be ruined in my opinion. Well the transfer system would be at least, I just think it would cause more harm than good.

Also like english players rarely leave england, especially nowa days. If you get to like 2020 there all in spain and italy.

I think the defining factor of a move abroad should be this:

Player is offered money, he thinks "This is a good choice financially" and then goes. Or,

"This is not a good choice, or a good enough offer" and stays put.

As Daniel Foster said in the second post, to label an entire nation with the same mentality would be nonsensical.

The tendency to move abroad is directly related to the wages offered in each country and the perceived quality of the players. If English players were paid much less than they are in real life and if they were good, foreign teams would sign them. But they are not good enough and they are too expensive.

While a see the point being made, the reasons for English players not moving abroad are far more complex than can be justified with a single restrictive variable. And i think adding this restriction would likely make things go too far the other way i.e. it becoming too difficult to sign English players abroad.

In recent years, Paul Elliot went to Pisa, Lee Sharpe played in Iceland, David Platt and Des Walker played in Italy (Sampdoria and Juve/Bari) and Steve Mcmanaman won the CL with Real Madrid. Hargreaves also won it with Bayern.

I think players are hesitant to leave England because the standard of league is very good and the pay is very much. Lampard was thinking about it so it proves that the players do consider it, its just that the pros of staying outweigh the cons.

If this were going to be in the game I'd prefer an attribute of something like "adventurous" rather than "moving abroad" because it would cover a wider variety of actions i.e. moving to a different tier of league in the same country or a smaller club, or even moving to a bigger club.

Colin Kazeem-Richards is English born but now plays his football in Turkey, but he does have a 2nd nationality of Turkish.

In recent years, Paul Elliot went to Pisa, Lee Sharpe played in Iceland, David Platt and Des Walker played in Italy (Sampdoria and Juve/Bari) and Steve Mcmanaman won the CL with Real Madrid. Hargreaves also won it with Bayern.

I don't think that someone like Hargreaves really fits into that argument. He was born and raised in Canada before going to Germany as a 16 year old. He had virtually no connection to the Premier League or any other British league, so it's not like he left Britain for some other place.

I think perhaps it is not the English players being hesitant to leave, more like Foreign clubs don't want to pay the inflated fee's English players have, so there are little or no offers for English players from abroad. I think it would be easier to set some attribute for each club, lets say French clubs would prefer African players over Spanish, German, English etc..... Arsenal will prefer absolutely anywhere over England