What does a captain actually do?

In terms of the game, does anyone know what the benifits are of a good Captain? Ive played the game over its various forms over the years but its not something Ive taken too much notice of, just picked someone with high influence and determination, but how do they benifit my team and in what situations?

Influence affects how easily a player makes friends with his team mates.

It is good for morale if your players are friends.

It also helps morale to have a captian who is friends with several team mates.

Also, I have read that if he have high stats for Aggression, then the team as a whole will be more likely to recieve yellow cards. And that if he is determined, then he does a better job at motivating the team when they are behind.

In every case, a lot of influence will cause a player's motivational state (complacent, okay, motivated, nervous) to "rub off" on other players. With a captain, I assume this effect is amplified, so picking a Captain who is easy to motivate will help motivate the rest of the squad.

It's also good to keep the rest of the team calm, so ideally you would have as a captain someone that can handle pressure.

On another save i made the mistake of picking a really young captain that felt he was being put too much pressure for being captain so young, so he would play nervously and get a lot of his team mates nervous as well, that season really didn't went well and i think it was mostly because of that..

The best captain shouldn't just be defined by his influence attribute as a very unprofessional & ill-disciplined person can have a high influence figure.

Whether the game works like that is something that remains a mystery to me, might deliberately pick the wrong person for the job & see what happens.

It does work like that, in my experience. I had a captain that dragged the motivation of the whole team down every time he started playing nervously. Took me a while to figure it out, but as soon as I changed captain the behaviour stopped.

Also, recently my league 2 relegation candidates were actually sitting in 4th spot with 3 games left. Over the next couple of weeks I had a few news items saying my captain was trying to rouse the team for one final push for promotion. He has high determination and influence. I can't prove it, but with low stats he probably wouldn't have said that.

Determination and Influence are important attributes for a Captain, but it is his personality that is the most important. Professional, Driven, Resilient and Resolute are good personalities to transfer to the other players on the pitch. Leader and Born Leader should also be good, but these may have temperament and dirtiness issues, I think. It is important that he is one of your more reputed players, so that the others look up to him and thinks he is an important player. Ambition is good for him to have, but too high Ambition + too low Loyalty may disrupt the harmony at the club.

It's more about not having a bad captain than having a good one imo. A few times I have seen my assistant telling me a pre-game that the players were finding it hard to get motivated with 'generic player' as captain.

It's more about not having a bad captain than having a good one imo. A few times I have seen my assistant telling me a pre-game that the players were finding it hard to get motivated with 'generic player' as captain.

This is either because their Reputation is much higher than the captain's, or they have personal issues with him. It is not a reflection on his attributes or suitability for captain per se (though a low Reputation does make him somewhat unsuitable).

so to summarize a good captain should have

good Influence

good Determination

and

good Professionalism (hidden stat)

is there something else?

I like them to have good teamwork as well. As shake pointed out, a high reputation compared to others in the squad may be needed.