question about a couple of hidden attributes

[Neil Train]

what's the difference between pressure and important matches? surely if a player feels pressure, the match is important, but the two are separate attributes. anyone got any ideas on this one?

[Nocuous]

A good example would be when playing an easy game, and you tell a player that you're expecting a win. The match isn't an 'important match', but they will feel very pressured by the team talk, and if they can handle the pressure, it will motivate them, but if they can't they might become overcome with nerves.

[The Hand of God]

That's about how I understand it. Pressure dictates how you handle the day-to-day pressures of being a footballer: manager team talks, press conferences, media attention, comments by opposing managers, keeping your cool during an extended title run, etc.

Important matches, however, not only indicates how well you cope with the pressure of the big matches, but how easy it is to motivate you for those matches.

So a player with very high Pressure-handling may not get nervous, but he may not necessarily be very easy to motivate either whereas a player who loves important matches will, more often than not, get motivated for the big games.

To visualize this, a generally neutral player will have a motivation spectrum that looks like this:

---------Nervous------------------Motivated------------------Complacent----------

whereas an otherwise similar player with high pressure-handling would have a motivation spectrum that looks like this:

----Nervous----------------------Motivated-------------------Complacent----------

and the same player, if he has a high Important Matches attribute, would have a motivation spectrum that looks like this for a derby or title contenders match:

----Nervous-----------------------Motivated-----------------------Complacent-----

[Neil Train]

Thanks guys!

[athos7]

Can somebody clarify what would constitute an important match? Derbies, semi-finals, and finals are the obvious ones, but anything else? Shouldn't every league game be an important match unless the team is already won it early?

[phnompenhandy]

Any cup match against opponents of high reputation. When my non-league side gets drawn against league opponents in the FA Cup it's an Important Match. I tell them to go out and enjoy the experience and they do pretty well.