FM08 Blog: In-depth International Management

Miles and Nick (well, mostly Nick) take you through the new international management experience on FM 2008:

http://fm08.footballmanager.net/en/article/100/1717.html

Cheers,

Dave

Miles and Nick (well, mostly Nick) take you through the new international management experience on FM 2008:

http://fm08.footballmanager.net/en/article/100/1717.html

Cheers,

Dave

woo hoo!

looks to be an improvement certainly, look forward to giving it a go, haven't bothered on the demo.

Thats amazing, sounds a lot better.

One question are there squad numbers for World Cup Finals now etc?

3 days to go.I can't wait.The game looks brillant

well done SI

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jonfun1980:

Thats amazing, sounds a lot better.

One question are there squad numbers for World Cup Finals now etc? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

there was in FM07

This is definitely one of the ares that need the most improvement and it seems that a lot of effort has gone into this side of the game

excellent. all too often in FM 07 international management became an annoyance. Seems like a far more in depth experience

I like the fact you can go on hols until you pick the squad.

looks really good cant wait for this game to come out. one question can u still be manager at club level and international level at the same time, know u normally can, but thought i would ask as the international is now more in depth

doing a good job tho

What about pre-tournament friendlies? Are they finally included?

I hate the fact that in the half-year before a tournament you have one friendly game in march and then the next game is the first World Cup game (or European). For example in march you have a superstar in top-form, then he gets injured and in bad shape, but you don't know nothing about his performance ability for your national team when selecting tournament squad because the last game was almost 4 months ago.

Not to mention the players didn't play a single game together for almost half a year...

Good to see this area improved.

Well done SI

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Raniel3:

What about pre-tournament friendlies? Are they finally included?

I hate the fact that in the half-year before a tournament you have one friendly game in march and then the next game is the first World Cup game (or European). For example in march you have a superstar in top-form, then he gets injured and in bad shape, but you don't know nothing about his performance ability for your national team when selecting tournament squad because the last game was almost 4 months ago.

Not to mention the players didn't play a single game together for almost half a year... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's kind of how it is in real life?

Sounds decent. Not that exciting though. International management is still by far second best.

No, usually the national teams play 3-4 friendlies in the run-up to the tournament. In FM07 you could have one in march and sometimes one just before the tournament, but that's not really realistic...

mmmmm.....sounds better, but lets see on Friday. (I hope this is something that has really improved)

International management has been overlooked in the past, so I'm really looking forward to these improvements.

When I manage a national squad, I also usually take over the U21 team so I have a few questions about that.

1) In FM2007, players received squad numbers for U19 and U21 tournaments but still wore 1-11 in matches. Has this been fixed?

2) Are age limitations for squads still based on current age instead of year of birth as in real life? For example, players born 1.1.86 and later are eligible to play at the 2009 U21 championships. Players might be as old as 23 by the time of the tournament and still eligible. It is very annoying when key players during U21 qualifying turn 22 a few weeks or months before the start of the tournament.

It sounds like a big improvement on that area of the game.

I like that players on international duty are physically away travelling.

And presumably that varies depending on the location of the international fixture.

I think it also gives the human national manager a greater sense of feeling important. Each time you view a match, it affects performances and people notice you.

Also affecting players by commenting on their club form or giving some players hope that they are on the verge of the national squad. It is a big dream of a lot of players to play for the country.

Go on holiday till the next squad selection sounds good. Hopefully it makes it easy to skip ahead to the next fixture. And makes time fly by really quickly.

Apart from match engine improvements. I think international management will probably be the big step forwards in FM08. And it is an area that people have wanted improves for a while. So well done!

Sounds like international management is improving at long last.

I do have one question though, are international managers given a wage and a set contract like club managers in FM2008?

I just found it a tad unrealistic that international managers would not be subject to contracts and paid wages like club managers in previous editions.

Woo-hoo, Nick! I'm very excited. The ability to communicate with national-pool players is a huge addition, even if it is just in the "preliminary" stages.

It should make the difference between feeling like a match-day coach and feeling like a manager.

Asking a guy out of retirement is big.

Holiday-until-next-squad-selection is excellent.

Two things I didn't see mentioned - which I was hoping were parts of this release! - were:

1. Will there be friendlies immediately before big tournaments, e.g., a late-May friendly date for a June World Cup?

2. Has the dates-of-squad-selection been fixed, so that the Senior team selects before the two youth sides, when playing "same time-frame" tournaments? Without that, it was very frustrating to place the youth sides in control of an AI 'assistant', as they might call up that wonderkid 19-year-old whom you were planning to debut at the senior level.

All told, though, a very big update, I've been holding off on managing internationally for a while now in anticipation of FM'08.. so I'm stoked to read this blog!

Some nice and realistic additions

I've had a quick blast at Int Mgmt on the demo and it is pretty cool.

The only thing that annoyed me was the news that I'd left Gary Neville out of my first two squads, despite him being unavailable an injured.

Managed to get England qualified, by beating Russia away 4-2 (plastic pitch no probs!!), having suffered an agonising 1-1 at home. Robinson (true to form) conceded a long-ranger and I couldn't make territorial advantage count.

Interestingly El Tel doesn't rate Robbo, so no former Spurs bias.

I did go through it fairly quickly, but nice options around Scouting, viewing Premiership games etc, together with nice touches in the media with well-written news items commenting on the type of player, caps, goals, gaps between debut (eg. player has made 11 apps but over 7 years, like Barry).

KUTGW.

The changes sounds good too me, but I'm just wondering if there has been a fix in the way you switch to and from international jobs.

I find it very easy to be offered or given jobs when you apply to international jobs but harder going from success at the international stage back to club management.

Brilliant revamp of this area of the game, a much better representation of real life international management.

Well done SI.

The thing it misses for me is being able to tell a player he needs to move to a bigger club and/or move to play first team football. Just being able to tell him he needs to improve isn't really enough.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Parmie:

The thing it misses for me is being able to tell a player he needs to move to a bigger club and/or move to play first team football. Just being able to tell him he needs to improve isn't really enough. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I do figure that's the long-term direction Nick is planning on going with this. I mean, that concept alone you could really build out - I could probably riff off a full page of ideas along that line.

Make it a possible consequence for denying fringe internationals call-ups during friendlies - AI manager responds by trying to unsettle your player. Obviously, trying to unsettle a player in that way might cost you friendship points with his club manager.

You could also make it a big part of the consideration for established internationals in transfer negotiations. I want to see "Unwilling to move to your club because he's worried he won't feature", or the Owen situation "Not featuring, and wants to move this summer/winter so that he can get established in a new team and convince his international manager that he belongs in the World Cup squad."

... but there have been plenty of threads along that line, and I think we've got some key foundations laid with FM'08 for future enhancements. I'm very excited about it.

Amaroq - those are some very good ideas. I am surprised that SI did not include them in their revamp. Though the new module is definately an improvement.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Fevs:

I've had a quick blast at Int Mgmt on the demo and it is pretty cool.

The only thing that annoyed me was the news that I'd left Gary Neville out of my first two squads, despite him being unavailable an injured.

Managed to get England qualified, by beating Russia away 4-2 (plastic pitch no probs!!), having suffered an agonising 1-1 at home. Robinson (true to form) conceded a long-ranger and I couldn't make territorial advantage count.

Interestingly El Tel doesn't rate Robbo, so no former Spurs bias.

I did go through it fairly quickly, but nice options around Scouting, viewing Premiership games etc, together with nice touches in the media with well-written news items commenting on the type of player, caps, goals, gaps between debut (eg. player has made 11 apps but over 7 years, like Barry).

KUTGW. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Has this been reported as a bug because I've just had that as well!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by AR:

Amaroq - those are some very good ideas. I am surprised that SI did not include them in their revamp. Though the new module is definately an improvement. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not.. in many many ways this release feels like SI decided to go down a "Make sure we don't bite off more than we can chew" path.

Whether justified or not, they took some heat for "releasing half-baked features" in a few previous releases, and it seems like this time they've been working more on "making it brilliant" than "lots of new features to hype". Of course, now there are people saying "Gah, its just an update!"..

Some days you just can't win!

Its also worth noting that the blog doesn't mention everything they've got in.. leaving us stuff to find, like this gem:

(Quoted from a different thread:)

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jimbo22:

Currently managing Scotland, went to pick the squad and had a look at Christophe Berra of Hearts. Went to pick him but it wouldnt allow me. Why I wonder.

Well it seems Mr Berra has asperations(?) to play with France so is waiting to see if anything comes from that.

Excellent feature SI

A few little things like that will make International management so much better than it was before. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Amaroq:

Its also worth noting that the blog doesn't mention everything they've got in.. leaving us stuff to find, like this gem:

(Quoted from a different thread:)

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jimbo22:

Currently managing Scotland, went to pick the squad and had a look at Christophe Berra of Hearts. Went to pick him but it wouldnt allow me. Why I wonder.

Well it seems Mr Berra has asperations(?) to play with France so is waiting to see if anything comes from that.

Excellent feature SI

A few little things like that will make International management so much better than it was before. </div></BLOCKQUOTE> </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Brilliant.

Will scouts tell you whether they think the player can actually cut it at international level and also whether their personality will help them blend into the current national squad setup easily or not, like the ability/personality sections of the club scouting reports do?

I'm delighted international management has been improved on this year, the little touches although not groundbreaking will certainly help give you that international manager feel more and hopefully make international management a fair bit less boring. That said however, it must actually be quite boring from day to day in real life anyway when theres no international matches for months on end, its not easy to think what else you could add to really make it as playable as club level management is.

This sounds like a massive step on and I cannot wait to have a bash with the International side of things. Previously, it's not really held my attention, but with some of the changes outlined I reckon that it's going to draw more people into this side.

Well done

Sounds very good, hope the "attend matches" bug can be fixed in the first patch though (aka u select a match to attend but it attends another one, noted in bugs forum).

And what if you are the manager of say, Fiji Islands, would you still be able to send your "coaching staff" across the globe?

I was hoping that there will be some distinctions between countries to make it really realistic.

Amazon.co.uk are guaranteeing delivery tomorrow if we order before 5PM today. Has the release date been brought forward? Will it be in the shops tomorrow aswell? I wont be around tomorrow to accept delivery so not an option for me to use Amazon for this

The Amazon thing doesn't mean anything really. Friday releases are always listed as "in-stock" from about Wednesday, because that's when they have to dispatch preorders to get them to arrive for Friday.

When an item is listed as "in-stock" then you can use the Express Delivery option, so feasibly you could buy now and have it tomorrow. But the Express Delivery option costs about £8 - is it really worth it? (The answer is no btw)

It does mean something mate, it means they are ignoring the release date and releasing it early. They can't advertise guaranteed delivery if they don't mean it. On Amazon future releases don't show as "in stock" if yet to be released. Future releases are listed as just that with the option to pre-order. Yesterday the pre-order option was there now it says it will be delivered tomorrow.

This happened with FM2007 if you all remember and SI allowed the retail outlets to sell their's early aswell. Hopefully the same will happen now

When you pre-order, most companies ship the games to arrive the day before. I've ordered mine from GAME and it should be coming tomorrow.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nick:

Raniel3 - Regarding pre-tournament friendlies. I can say that these are unfortunately not in FM08. To schedule these properly across all the leagues we have in the game and not infringe on club commitments is a complicated task and there was not enough time to do this accurately for this version. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

But understood.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Amaroq - senior team should always take precedence over youth sides when playing "same-time-frame" tournaments as you put it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yay!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Overall, enjoyed reading your reactions. Keep them coming and I look forward to seeing how you get on with the full game. Cheers. Nick. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks for taking the time to read and more, to reply. Much appreciated from this quarter - and if I may just say, this is the feature I'm most excited about for '08. KUTGW!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nick:

Fevs - The 'Gary Neville' news bug has been fixed and this fix will be available in the first patch, along with a couple of other things; including the ability to hyperlink to the different squads from the national pool.

Parmie - all in good time, all in good time. As has been posted here, international management was in need of an overhaul with so much having gone into the club side of things for the past three years. It'll be an evolutionary approach henceforth. Like the ideas though and it's definitely how I see things moving forward.

Overall, enjoyed reading your reactions. Keep them coming and I look forward to seeing how you get on with the full game. Cheers. Nick. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey Nick and Co.

Congratulations on what you've done regarding the 'Int'l Management' aspect of the game.

Like you said yourself at the end of the blog, regardless of all the new things that have been introduced here, it still won't be much compared to 'Club Management' but I have no doubt, with all the work and time that's been spent here, it will be a BIG improvement over FM 07's Int'l management and a step in the right direction, therefore.

I'm glad to hear the "Gary Neville Injury" bug has already been fixed.

In terms of what "Parmie" said, that is one of the first things that came to mind for me. You need to be able to tell players that they need to get regular 1st-team football or move clubs if they are serious about getting in or retaining their national team place. Unfortunately, you can't right now but I'm glad to see, you think this is the way future should be as well and so hopefully for FM 09, we'll have a lot more options like this rather than just telling them to improve their form.

-----------------------------------------------

Last but not least, I have a question, Nick.

You said there is now a Club Morale and an International Player Morale, it sounds good if I'm understanding it correctly.

If they are separate however, do they still affect the 'other'?

What I mean is, let's say you have a youngster who is 20 years old and has 1 cap for England. He had a disappointing debut for national team and got a 4 rating and as a result has 'poor' international morale.

A few weeks has passed now.... since then and he is in an incredibly hot form for this EPL club and is banging goals left and right and his morale is sky-high!!

You select him for your England squad again for only the 2nd time due to his recent great form and high confidence. Does he still have that 'poor' Int'l morale? Or will high 'club' morale affect his performances and help him do better for his national team?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this whole thing but basically I just wanted a little bit more clarification on how the two affect each other or don't...

INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT LOOKZ REALLY GOOD BUT CAN YOU STILL MANAGE A CLUB AND A NATION AT THE SAME TIME LIKE PREVIOUS GAMES.

As long as you don't shout at your players like that as well, then yes.

Care to elaborate, EdL?

I know you guys don't want to give much away but I was just wondering in a given example like I gave, how would that sorta work now that we have '2' morales?

I'm really looking forward to this new system. It's sounding like quite a nice improvement.

I started the game playing as the manager of AC Milan. I'd like to apply for the Italian national team manager. How do I do this? Can I be a club manager and national team manager at the same time?

I'm in charge of Uruguay and struggling up front a little, there is striker (Edison Cavani) playing for my Lazio side that is a national but also has Italian nationality.

Is there anything I can do to encourage him to play for his country of birth?

Also, it might be a bug but I've just checked and he was born in Argentina but does not have that as a nationality available to him.

If a player 'declares' for one country, can they change their mind?