Oh come on!

I'm the manager of Barcelona and Spain, and obviously rival managers from Real, Valencia and Sevilla do not like me. But doing this when I call up their players for a Spain friendly? What the hell. It would be nice to be able to convince players (as the national coach) to talk to their managers so that they can still compete in the national game. Because this is ridiculous:

13 players out of 23 selected were withdrawn... C'mon...

does happen unfortunately, the exact same thing happened to me when i was at Anderlecht and Belgium manager, its only a friendly though, but they are handy to get a feel for the team

I haven't tried international management on FM 2009 yet but it looks like a good feature. In previous versions I would just overexert my rivals players (max closing down). It's nice to see that they're naturally suspicious of a manager with two conflicting roles.

It's only a friendly and i dont think it has anything to do with rival managers.

It's only a friendly and i dont think it has anything to do with rival managers.

Yes it does:

Hmm to be fair, this might have less to do with your role as Barcelona manager and more to do with the fact that it is a (meaningless) international friendly with a lower-ranking country (no disrespect to Egypt), like what another person mentioned.

I might be wrong, but you most probably would see the same outcome as well as that same 'Spain players withdrawn' news article had you just been the Spanish national team manager without the Barcelona job on the side. Unless in the past, you have been actively bad-mouthing the managers of those other clubs in the press? Perhaps that might be a reason as to why they would seem to have a vendetta against you.

I think I experienced a similar pull-out of players from an international friendly by a club when I was just managing a national side in FM 07. Though the big difference between my experience and yours is that mine only had Chelsea pulling out their players, whereas yours had four clubs going crazy.

One thing we can do to know for sure though. Would you happen to have an earlier save where you have yet to announce the call-ups? If you do, load up that game and resign from Barcelona. Then, proceed to call up these same players and watch if these four clubs would still withdraw their players from the friendly.

You could also experiment by resigning from the national side and create a new manager to take over the national side and proceed to call up these players again. With a new user-manager, relationships with the other four managers should now be fresh and cordial and should hopefully bare no impact on withdrawal.

Its good...I like all this little interaction bits in the game. The game is starting to get more and more intelligent in some areas.

Yes it does:

it says that everytime a manager withdraws a player from the international squad, it would say it about you if you withdrew someone from ABC nation, XYZ would be said to have a strained relationship with you.

Hmm to be fair, this might have less to do with your role as Barcelona manager and more to do with the fact that it is a (meaningless) international friendly with a lower-ranking country (no disrespect to Egypt), like what another person mentioned.

I might be wrong, but you most probably would see the same outcome as well as that same 'Spain players withdrawn' news article had you just been the Spanish national team manager without the Barcelona job on the side. Unless in the past, you have been actively bad-mouthing the managers of those other clubs in the press? Perhaps that might be a reason as to why they would seem to have a vendetta against you.

I think I experienced a similar pull-out of players from an international friendly by a club when I was just managing a national side in FM 07. Though the big difference between my experience and yours is that mine only had Chelsea pulling out their players, whereas yours had four clubs going crazy.

One thing we can do to know for sure though. Would you happen to have an earlier save where you have yet to announce the call-ups? If you do, load up that game and resign from Barcelona. Then, proceed to call up these same players and watch if these four clubs would still withdraw their players from the friendly.

You could also experiment by resigning from the national side and create a new manager to take over the national side and proceed to call up these players again. With a new user-manager, relationships with the other four managers should now be fresh and cordial and should hopefully bare no impact on withdrawal.

I'll try that resigning method you pointed out next time I'll make up 'la seleccion' if I notice the players are withdrawn. Good idea btw.

@lawsie: you're probably right, it seems like old news that the newspapers blow up something like that to an assumed fight between me and the teams.

Just out of interest have you ever played any players with "45 minute" instructions for over 45 minutes in previous friendlies? I did that in a previous save and had a lot of trouble with players being pulled in subsequent friendlies

had the same with brazil...i was juventus manager...and all the key brazileins played for as milan, inter or roma...

i was gutted..so i quit..and then they offered me the job againn...couldnt resist