International management: suggested improvements

International management is slightly improved in FM09, but it could still use major improvements. Although not all of these ideas may work in practice, here are some ideas that I think could work:

Friendlies

- At present, we can arrange friendlies with whoever we want, a situation that is unlikely to be the reality.

My guess would be that in some situations the national FA want a high profile money making friendly to be organised (the recent Scotland v Argentina game for example) and in others the manager would give an indication of the type of opposition he'd prefer to face. The FA probably wouldn't allow Fabio Capello to organise a friendly against the Central African Republic.

- This could be extended to the much needed warm-up games for major tournaments. It's not uncommon for a nation to play 2-3 matches in preparation for a tournament, but in my experience we're lucky to get a solitary match. Not only do we need these matches to happen, but a manager should be able to offer some sort of opinion on who the matches would be against. For example, we could ask the FA to find potential opponents who play in the style of one of the teams in our World Cup group, we could ask for teams that would really test our players ahead of a tournament or we could ask for easy opposition that we could thrash as a moral boosting exercise.

- The usual flakey international withdrawals - see Giggs missing most Wales friendlies, Gerrard having surgery just before the international break.

Staff

- The national team manager doesn't select the U21 and U19 managers and can't change them at will. They should have similar targets as any other manager that effect their fate and working contracts.

- The national team manager should have contracts that influence his changes of being fired or being taken by another club just like the game has with regular managers. If Capello had made a huge mess of England's qualification so far, would the FA spend huge amounts on his compensation or would they cut their losses and hope for an improvement?

- I still find staff really hard to recruit when it seems in reality that reasonably high profile individuals are interested in joining the international set-up. There should be a simplified process.

- Managing club and country. Does anyone believe that any of the leading nations would allow a manager to manage both? Why not leave it as an option only for nations that might realistically accept such an arrangement.

Player interaction

- There isn't much at present and it seems to have little or no impact. If I tell Ben Foster that he needs first team football, nothing happens. We could expect answers and reactions along the lines of, "Ben Foster loves Man Utd and wouldn't dream of leaving", "Foster is willing to see how his chances of first team football change over the course of the season before reaching a decision" or "Foster is desperate to make the World Cup squad and is eager to leave the club or go out on loan to boost his chances."

- More options; "Tell Michael Kightly that he could be in England contention if he was playing in the Premiership", "Tell Gareth Barry that he needs to be playing in the Champions League to cement his England place", "Tell Gary Cahill that a move to a bigger club could help his international prospects."

Media

- Obviously it needs to be drastically improved across the entire game but a few international specific ideas...

- More realistic questions. "Why have you obmitted Shaun Wright-Phillips from the squad?" "His club form isn't impressive at present / he's not match fit / he needs to play regular first team football / he hasn't delivered for England / he's behind Joe Cole and Theo Walcott in my thinking."

- Less basic errors. If a player is out injured, that doesn't mean I've dropped him, it means he can't be picked because he's injured. If I select a squad of uncapped teenagers, that doesn't really count as being "no real surprises in the latest international squad."

News

- Unless you repeatedly trawl through all the lists for top scorers, best average ratings and so on, it feels like you manage far away from anyone's opinions. We need more reports on people's opinions; "On Football Focus, pundit Martin Keown expressed disbelief that Matt Derbyshire has made the England squad", "Gianfranco Zola asks what Robert Green has to do to make the national team", "Writing in The Guardian, journalist Kevin McCarra questioned why Ashley Young's consistent performances aren't earning him international recognition.

- More intelligently selected news updates. If I don't have a match for three months, I don't need to know that a player is out for a week with a facial injury. If he's out for three months, that would be useful to know. If a key player's club has been relegated or if he's moving clubs, that would be useful to know.

National pool / player search

- I'm not a fan of using the national pool to search for players as it always feels like someone obvious is going to be missing. If I use the player search to look for English players, I can't collectively view their domestic club statistics. Can we somehow work on a better system?

Dual nationalities

- Players should be more intelligent in choosing their international future. Few players would decide to represent Sierra Leone when they have the potential to play for England just because Sierra Leone asked first. Similarly, some players would put their national pride before their career.

- Players struggling to break into a League One side at the age of 22 shouldn't still be dreaming of their England call-up. They should either take the option of their weaker second nationality or they should declare no interest in playing for the other nation.

- You should have the option of pursuading players to select your nation or to give up hoping. "Tell Angelo Balanta that he has a big future for the England team and to resist a Colombian call up" or "Tell Balanta that he has no chance of playing for England and should grab his chance should Colombia be interested."

- Different football associations should have different ideas. Tunisia and Poland fast tracked a Brazilian into their citizenship so he could player in the last World Cup. I think (although am not 100% certain) that the British nations have agreed not to call up say Almunia or Arteta. Whether that would change if a world class left-winger became eligible is another matter entirely.

Scouting

- You can assign your scouts to different competitions but they only report on the same 15-20 players time and time again. Obviously that's useful but we need more options. "Look for promising youngsters", "Identify potential options on the left-wing, "Check the progress of all English players at Man Utd" and so on.

Training

- This is really tricky. Copying training at club level is largely irrelevant as a few days training internationally isn't going to make much difference. Could we instead balance between a few options that would make a minor difference? Things like, "Focus on playing a unit", "Focus on keeping players in top condition", "Focus on set pieces", "Focus on practising penalties", "Focus on building a playing relationship between Lampard and Gerrard", "Focus on keeping morale high".

International retirements

- I've never seen one of these but several players retire from international football after every major tournament. A selection of reasons would be good also - being too old for the next tournament, being repeatedly left on the bench or played out of position (Scholes, Carragher), realising that not being selected for a tournament marks the end of your international career (Andy Cole did this amongst others). And the other extreme too - the occasional player declaring that he's getting older and realises that he's not going to be an automatic choice, but would still be willing to play for the country.

Great post.

I agree completely and your ideas all seem sound.

Excellent post.

Personally I love the International management and agree that it needs more work to be a better package.

Currnetly I'm a Scot at Man Utd that just got the Argentina job!

It allowed me to sign Messi for £40m, he didn't want to sign until I became his international manager.

My cunning plan worked!

One really basic thing I forgot was for your staff to have more obvious purpose - as far as I can tell at present, your best attributes for selecting a coach are his scouting abilities. How I don't know, but if training is developed that would be the obvious link.

I don't think international matches generating high revenue will help the international manager, he has nothing to spend it on

I meant that football associations in reality pick games for the money that can make from them.

Obviously the manager couldn't spend the money, it was part of a few small ideas to make international friendlies more realistic in general.