[FM20] Santástico - The hunt for the Next Neymar

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 8 is here!

A special episode where I take a look at training in Brazil and the challenges that comes with a season that never ends!

Content:

• A confession
• The Brazilian season
• Training periodisation
• The creation of new training schedules
• A comparison with the pre-made training schedules

https://mikaelinhofm.com/2020/04/24/santastico-ep-8-the-confession-training-in-brazil/

[_Ben_]

6 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

Episode 8 is here!

A special episode where I take a look at training in Brazil and the challenges that comes with a season that never ends!

Content:

• A confession
• The Brazilian season
• Training periodisation
• The creation of new training schedules
• A comparison with the pre-made training schedules

https://mikaelinhofm.com/2020/04/24/santastico-ep-8-the-confession-training-in-brazil/

One of those where I'll dip in and out over the next few days as I encounter fixture planning etc in my save - but wonderfully written, as always!

Really hoping that this is the thing that can help your players get to the next level!

[Mikaelinho]

10 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:

One of those where I'll dip in and out over the next few days as I encounter fixture planning etc in my save - but wonderfully written, as always!

Really hoping that this is the thing that can help your players get to the next level!

I really hope so too! By simply looking at the comparison the feeling is that at least on a theoretic level this should work. However, things rarely turn out that way...

[Jimbokav1971]

Just looked at your opening post @Mikaelinhoand it's a really interesting slant on youth development/club dna. 

Will you be offended if I tell you that Neymar is bang average though and has no right being even mentioned on the same page as Pele? 

* Please note that I usually put player names in bold take make them stand out, but Neymar is so bang average that he only gets italics. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Jimbokav1971]

On 29/03/2020 at 14:44, DazRTaylor said:

All the best though would be keen to know when Neymar won the World Cup.  

Oh yes. I can see I am not alone. There is going to be some proper Neymar hatred in here before too long if I get my way. 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Jimbokav1971]

On 01/04/2020 at 10:30, Mikaelinho said:

On Friday the next episode covering the 2021 season will be out. I'll give you one sneak peek though of an unpresedented player development!

Meu Deus! A 68 attribute point increase over the course of one season! Truly astounding! Could this be the Next Neymar!?

I don't know how you did that, but it's absolutely fantastic.  The 2 pictures cycling I mean rather than the impressive player development. 

Assuming you haven't explained in the thread already, would you mind explaining how please? 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Jimbokav1971]

On 15/04/2020 at 14:55, Mikaelinho said:

It turns out that actual rating in games is a factor, which in combination with us losing games, made me come to the conclusion that playing a 17-year-old striker as wing back, getting sub7 ratings and losing games was bad both for manager and player.

Are you saying that poor match rating has an impact on player development? 

[Jimbokav1971]

On 20/04/2020 at 08:02, Mikaelinho said:

2023 season

Unfortunately the 2023 youth intake was a huge disappointment, with only one player worth keeping, João Arroz. With a Ginga Rating of 52 he's useless for this challenge though...

Have you considered that the HoYD/Ass Man/Whoever is wrong and that some of the players are significantly better/worse than the initial ratings suggest? 

[ShaunG95]

6 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Are you saying that poor match rating has an impact on player development? 

Anecdotally speaking, I'd say that is definitely a factor. Poor performances yield less improvement arrows I find.

[Jimbokav1971]

8 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Are you saying that poor match rating has an impact on player development? 

 

1 minute ago, ShaunG95 said:

Anecdotally speaking, I'd say that is definitely a factor. Poor performances yield less improvement arrows I find.

Yes, I completely agree with you. But if we assume that the player was playing at WB because he couldn't get a game elsewhere, (1-4-0-6 formation anyone?), isn't game time out of position AND at a low performance level better than no game time? 

[ShaunG95]

1 minute ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

 

Yes, I completely agree with you. But if we assume that the player was playing at WB because he couldn't get a game elsewhere, (1-4-0-6 formation anyone?), isn't game time out of position AND at a low performance level better than no game time? 

I think that ultimately depends on how good training facilities are. Joe Gelhardt for example performed very well for a couple of seasons for me at Wigan but he hardly improved because the training facilities were poor. However, since improving them to an 'excellent' level, he has improved a lot since. Also, I am training Lazar Pavlovic to be a RB and he has improved quite a lot playing in the u23s in that position as opposed to playing in his usual position so I think your theory holds credence.

[Jimbokav1971]

5 minutes ago, ShaunG95 said:

I think that ultimately depends on how good training facilities are. Joe Gelhardt for example performed very well for a couple of seasons for me at Wigan but he hardly improved because the training facilities were poor. However, since improving them to an 'excellent' level, he has improved a lot since. Also, I am training Lazar Pavlovic to be a RB and he has improved quite a lot playing in the u23s in that position as opposed to playing in his usual position so I think your theory holds credence.

I get that. Everything is relative. 

But what you need to do, (irrespective of the facilities), is compare playing in the wrong position and performing poorly in a losing team to...... the player playing with the kids or not playing at all. 

I get what we need for the upper-end of development, but that's not what the question is. The question is in comparison to "base" development with no playing time, (which is the other option). No? 

[ShaunG95]

3 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I get that. Everything is relative. 

But what you need to do, (irrespective of the facilities), is compare playing in the wrong position and performing poorly in a losing team to...... the player playing with the kids or not playing at all. 

I get what we need for the upper-end of development, but that's not what the question is. The question is in comparison to "base" development with no playing time, (which is the other option). No? 

I think you are bound to see development in some capacity, it isn't optimal but it'll be effective, surely.

But to expand on this, I'm aware that playing out of position gains familiarity and therefore allocates some degree of current ability points to the positional knowledge which can take away from a player's overall development in attributes.

Edited April 24, 2020 by ShaunG95

[Mikaelinho]

Wow, here I go spend a few hours of family time and come back to the most interactivity I've experienced so far, mainly fueled by Neymar hatred. Lovely!

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Just looked at your opening post @Mikaelinhoand it's a really interesting slant on youth development/club dna. 

Will you be offended if I tell you that Neymar is bang average though and has no right being even mentioned on the same page as Pele? 

* Please note that I usually put player names in bold take make them stand out, but Neymar is so bang average that he only gets italics. 

You know how it is these days, you gotta please the kids. They don't know who Pélé is. They're not like you and me who got to experience his glory in the 1958 World Cup final. It's sad that we've come this far, but I felt I needed a player to use for my Ginga Rating comparison and Pélé's FM profile was a bit hard to find. And calling Neymar bang average is a tad harsh...

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

  On 29/03/2020 at 15:44, DazRTaylor said:

All the best though would be keen to know when Neymar won the World Cup.  

And to revisit this; I hate to break it to you Neymar haters, but he actually won it in 2022! You feel pretty stupid now, don't you!?

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I don't know how you did that, but it's absolutely fantastic.  The 2 pictures cycling I mean rather than the impressive player development. 

Assuming you haven't explained in the thread already, would you mind explaining how please? 

I did it in GIMP. Step by step:

1. Open the oldest screenshot (the one you want to be showed 2nd - not very important since they cycle)

2. Open the latest screenshot as a layer

3. Align them manually to please your OCD

4. Export as...GIF

5. Change all the red boxes

6. Export

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Are you saying that poor match rating has an impact on player development? 

 

6 hours ago, ShaunG95 said:

Anecdotally speaking, I'd say that is definitely a factor. Poor performances yield less improvement arrows I find.

Yes, I completely agree with you. But if we assume that the player was playing at WB because he couldn't get a game elsewhere, (1-4-0-6 formation anyone?), isn't game time out of position AND at a low performance level better than no game time? 

Yes, my experience is that it has an impact. I can't determine how large the contribution to deelopment is compared to other factors, such as game time out of position, level of facilities etc. There were two reasons for the change though, the other was that we were losing too many games playing 17yo strikers out of position all over the pitch. I had to keep the job...and the only way to keep the job was to start winning again.

6 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Have you considered that the HoYD/Ass Man/Whoever is wrong and that some of the players are significantly better/worse than the initial ratings suggest? 

Yeah, of course I have. Every player was ***** Ginga wise in this particular youth intake, so the decision to ship them all was an easy one. I've cared less and less about star ratings when it comes to PA the longer I've gotten in the series. I mainly focus on Ginga Rating now and see how far I can get the player's development regardless of PA. It'll be interesting to see what this gives.

Thx for reading and caring enough to interact, guys! I really appreciate it!

[Mikaelinho]

It's finally happened! I've managed to sell a player to Europe! Towards the end of a splendid season last year, European clubs started to show a bit of interest in the 20-year-old Renyer. An occasional scout visiting games once in a while suddenly turned into several scouts each game. When the January transfer window opened clubs started firing like in the good old wild west, where clubs starting to try and outbid each other. In April, after a frantic bidding war Real Madrid came out victorius. An unprecedented £80M transfer fee for a player from a Brazilian club was impossible to resist, but the actual move wouldn't take place until July.

This means that I have a little more than three months to do everything in my power to get Renyer from 74 to 100 goals before the transfer is finalised! Impossible you say? Well, I'm gonna try my very best by playing him in the striker position and putting him as our first penalty taker! If I don't get him to 100 I have to bring him back later on in his career, but I hope to do it now!

[Mikaelinho]

80 million pounds, what are you going to do with all that money, you might ask. Well, my initial plan was to spend it all on bringing Neymar back to Santos FC.

Neymar is our spirit animal if you wish. He's always with us, commenting on player performances, reminiscing over old derby feelings, hailing MikaelinhoFM as a true Santos legend after finally winning the São Paulo State Championship. Yes, you read that correctly. We finally managed to win the Paulistão!

Back to Neymar. Our initial plan was to sign him and he expressed an interest to "come home". The only issue was the price tag. PSG turned down our £80M bid. And or £100M bid. And our £120M bid. I offered them £140M, which is a tad much for a player we don't actually need. PSG stalled the bid and I thought "whatever, he's only got one year left on his contract and wants to come home. If they turn down this bid I can wait for him". While they were stalling it, Neymar signed a one year extension out of the blue and was all of a sudden not at all interested in returning to Brazilian football. This pissed me off and in a fit of rage I spent the entire transfer budget. We'll get back to that shortly.

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 9 is here!

It covers the 2024 season, player development, two transfers to Europe and much more! A crazy season! 

You can read it here: https://mikaelinhofm.com/2020/04/28/santastico-ep-9-2024-a-santastico-goes-galactico/

[Mikaelinho]

2025 season

We've had our intake preview and it's not looking too bad!

When the intake preview news item came up I just saw plenty of yellow text and prepared myself for the usual disappointment. Then I saw it. The line of text every FM manager hopes and dreams for, this intake "has the potential to be a real golden generation for the club". I know that this is in no way a guarantee for anything, but at least it makes it tingle in my tummy!

[Mikaelinho]

Inspired by @_Ben_ I've been playing around a bit with Excel (isn't Excel a man's best friend?) and constructed a couple of top lists.

I'll drop the Total Ginga top list here for now and return later with top lists for each age.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Mikaelinho

[_Ben_]

So I've missed a lot!

Firstly, great to see that you finally got someone to Europe - and I'm surprised that it wasn't Kaio Jorge, who seems to have fallen out of favour a little bit despite being your top scorer? I also noted, on the GIF, that Gilberto was out on loan at Dynamo KIev? Is there a future fee involved there or have I spoiled a post now?! Hopefully the international job will put your players in the shop window a little more.

(Obviously) a big fan of that 'Ginga list' - what I'd really like to see though is their Ginga rating from entry to current point. You've shown a lot of how they've got on over one year but do you have a five year trend, for example, for these players? That'd really ask some interesting questions!

 

[Mikaelinho]

11 hours ago, _Ben_ said:

So I've missed a lot!

Firstly, great to see that you finally got someone to Europe - and I'm surprised that it wasn't Kaio Jorge, who seems to have fallen out of favour a little bit despite being your top scorer? I also noted, on the GIF, that Gilberto was out on loan at Dynamo KIev? Is there a future fee involved there or have I spoiled a post now?! Hopefully the international job will put your players in the shop window a little more.

(Obviously) a big fan of that 'Ginga list' - what I'd really like to see though is their Ginga rating from entry to current point. You've shown a lot of how they've got on over one year but do you have a five year trend, for example, for these players? That'd really ask some interesting questions!

 

It's like you've read my mind! There might be something to the saying "brilliant minds think alike" haha. I'm currently working on trends, both from the first five years and individual ones for players from 15 to 20. In there lies the answer to why Kaio Jorge is still with Santos FC, on the bench more often than not. He hasn't developed at all during his time with me. I might be forced to offload him to China just to get rid of him, since he's now more or less just blocking the way for younger, more talented players.

Regarding Gilberto he came to me wanting playing time that I couldn't offer him, so he spent the second part of 2024 away on loan. He has continued to develop and is coming back for the 2nd half of 2025. I have high hopes that Gilberto will be one of the players that reach 100 goals.

[Mikaelinho]

Here are the lists for the individual ages so far:

15-year-olds

Alécio came through looking like the next big thing, but as you'll see in the other lists he's been a huge disappointment. He still tops the Ginga Rating list for the 15-year-olds with 71. Gilberto is 2nd on 70 and Marcos Leonardo and Pedro are joint 3rd on 67. No new players have managed to reach the list in 2023 0r 2024. Let's hope that the 2025 youth intake provides new players for the list!

16-year-olds

With an 8 point increase to his Ginga Rating in his first season, Marcos Leonardo jumps from 3rd to 1st place. On the opposite end of the scale Alécio had an awful first year and actually lost 2 points of Ginga Rating, falling to 8th place. Eudi and Daniel came in as 16-year-olds in 2024 to join the list in joint 2nd and 10th place.

 17-year-olds

Marcos Leonardo still tops the list, but Gilberto and Pedro, both with consistent development, are getting closer. 

18-year-olds

I just noticed that I have to re-do the 18-year-olds since I forgot to include the players that spent the 2024 season away on loan! I'll upload this later

 

One final list:

It's the list of total Ginga Rating increase during one single season. Here five players have managed a 10+ increase, which must be considered massive development. Brandão tops the list after his tremendous 2022 season, but Cesinha is just one point behind with an 11 point increase (including +2 Flair!) from 2021. Three players are in joint third, all from 2020; Fabio José, Kauhan and Ronaldo Love (what a name!). Neither of the trio managed to follow up this great season and sadly they've all left since then. One surprising thing with this list is that it's not at all made up by only players in their 15->16-year-old season. There are 8 of them, 4 players in their 16->17-year-old season and most surprising 5 players in their 17->18-year-old season!

Edited April 30, 2020 by Mikaelinho

[john1]

Wow, incredible amount of money for Renyer   

[Mikaelinho]

2 hours ago, john1 said:

Wow, incredible amount of money for Renyer   

Yeah, it turned into an outright bidding war! I think the initial offer was around £20M, but things got crazy!

[Guest]

This thread is fantastic. Great work.

[Mikaelinho]

2 hours ago, Crazy_Ivan said:

This thread is fantastic. Great work.

Thank you very much for your kind words! I really love both playing the save and writing about it!

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 10 is here

I’ve had this growing feeling of frustration as the seasons passed by in this challenge. “Nothing is happening” was a thought that kept popping up. I enjoyed playing and I still do. I also enjoyed blogging about the save, but whenever I put together a season review the feeling was that I was writing the same episode over and over again. I mainly attributed this to the fact that I couldn’t get any players to Europe. However, in the 2024 season I finally did! And not only once but twice, as Renyer left for Real Madrid and Talles Magno for Lazio. But the feeling remained. The feeling of frustration and unfulfilled goals. The aim of the save felt almost unattainable so I had to find a bit of new energy and a bit of comfort. A reassurance that I was going in the right direction with the save perhaps.

I felt lost.

I know that many of you have been in my place when it comes to FM (and of course in real life as well) whether it’s a blog save or offline. Things are going too easy or they prove too hard. The save becomes monotonous or you fall out of love with it for other reasons. I’m going out on a limb here and guess that this feeling more often than not has led you to abandon your save, either for an FM break completely or a brand new save. Well, I’m not about to go in that direction. Instead I’ve gone for a bit of soul searching.

Read the entire post here

[Guest]

Your Carrington series is brilliant too, not getting enough attention and would be of a massive help in the Tactics and Training section.

[Mikaelinho]

23 hours ago, Crazy_Ivan said:

Your Carrington series is brilliant too, not getting enough attention and would be of a massive help in the Tactics and Training section.

Thank you!

[_Ben_]

An interesting post @Mikaelinho - at a stage that we all go through with our games!

I wonder if you've put a little too much pressure on yourself with the Ginga rating? I know Neymar and Pele have hit that magical 90 mark but I keep reading 'I've been let down by his flair' and 'the Ginga rating is a little lower than I want.' I absolutely love your efforts into learning why it's low and trying everything to develop it and, often, the escape from the struggle is the most rewarding part but have you thought of a different algorithm you could use that offsets the weight of flair?

 

I will take 'prime' Neymar as the example and compare him to Gilberto - your highest current player:

Neymar:

• Dribbling - 20
• Technique - 20
• Flair - 19
• Acceleration - 18
• Agility - 19

Your Ginga rating: 96

Mean: 19.2

Harmonic Mean: 19.17

 

Gilberto:

 

• Dribbling - 18
• Technique - 17
• Flair - 13
• Acceleration - 18
• Agility - 18

Your Ginga rating: 84

Mean: 16.8

Harmonic Mean: 16.53

---

You could also weight the attributes (x by 1.2 for example for 'key' and x1.1 for 'important' with a x1 for 'desirable') depending on what you think is the most ideal in helping them get where you need? I love flair, but I don't see much difference on the pitch between and 13 and a 18, for example - but that's not really the case for dribbling.

 

Just some thoughts! I absolutely love your work though.

[Mikaelinho]

11 hours ago, _Ben_ said:

An interesting post @Mikaelinho - at a stage that we all go through with our games!

I wonder if you've put a little too much pressure on yourself with the Ginga rating? I know Neymar and Pele have hit that magical 90 mark but I keep reading 'I've been let down by his flair' and 'the Ginga rating is a little lower than I want.' I absolutely love your efforts into learning why it's low and trying everything to develop it and, often, the escape from the struggle is the most rewarding part but have you thought of a different algorithm you could use that offsets the weight of flair?

 

I will take 'prime' Neymar as the example and compare him to Gilberto - your highest current player:

Neymar:

• Dribbling - 20
• Technique - 20
• Flair - 19
• Acceleration - 18
• Agility - 19

Your Ginga rating: 96

Mean: 19.2

Harmonic Mean: 19.17

 

Gilberto:

 

• Dribbling - 18
• Technique - 17
• Flair - 13
• Acceleration - 18
• Agility - 18

Your Ginga rating: 84

Mean: 16.8

Harmonic Mean: 16.53

---

You could also weight the attributes (x by 1.2 for example for 'key' and x1.1 for 'important' with a x1 for 'desirable') depending on what you think is the most ideal in helping them get where you need? I love flair, but I don't see much difference on the pitch between and 13 and a 18, for example - but that's not really the case for dribbling.

 

Just some thoughts! I absolutely love your work though.

I really appreciate you taking the time to try and take the burden off me! When I created the Ginga Rating I tried to make it as easy as possible by choosing 5 attributes, giving a total of 100. I usually incorporate some sort of rating system into my series, where I tend to use more complex algorithms with weighted attributes just like in your example. However, here I wanted to keep the actual rating simple. 

The concept of Flair IRL and in FM20 differ a bit. As you say, the difference is not huge between 13 and 18 in-game, but IRL (and therefore for my narrative) the difference could be huge, for example the difference between a good Ligue 1 attacking mid and a world class player. For the sake of the narrative I want to keep a focus on Flair and keep the high/almost unattainable Ginga Rating aim of 90, simply to set the bar so high that only an exceptional player can reach it.

When it comes to actual output, that comes secondary to Ginga Rating atm. In future posts, I'm swaying a bit more towards what you're doing, at least with new players, comparing them historically to others, and as the years go by I'll have enough data to actually start tracking long-term player progression based on a number of factors such as starting Ginga Rating, potential ability, personality etc.

[Mikaelinho]

I'm playing around a bit with Excel and this is the result so far:

A scatter plot showing the correlation between starting Ginga Rating at the beginning of the year (x axis) and increase/decrease in Ginga Rating at the end of the year (y axis). The different colours/ages are:

15 to 16: red
16 to 17: orange
17 to 18: yellow
18 to 19: green
19 to 20: blue
20 to 21: purple

As you can see the trend is fairly easy to spot. A low Ginga Rating at the start of the year is correlated with a high Ginga Rating increase during the year. Perhaps not that surprising and I'm not even sure if it's the negative correlation between age and development that we're seeing or if it's actually a negative correlation between starting Ginga Rating and Ginga Rating increase. Probably a bit of both!

[_Ben_]

3 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

I'm playing around a bit with Excel and this is the result so far:

A scatter plot showing the correlation between starting Ginga Rating at the beginning of the year (x axis) and increase/decrease in Ginga Rating at the end of the year (y axis). The different colours/ages are:

15 to 16: red
16 to 17: orange
17 to 18: yellow
18 to 19: green
19 to 20: blue
20 to 21: purple

As you can see the trend is fairly easy to spot. A low Ginga Rating at the start of the year is correlated with a high Ginga Rating increase during the year. Perhaps not that surprising and I'm not even sure if it's the negative correlation between age and development that we're seeing or if it's actually a negative correlation between starting Ginga Rating and Ginga Rating increase. Probably a bit of both!

I really like this analysis and I think I can add some more evidence in which we can begin to corroborate and come up with some kind of 'target player.'

---

I find that players who have a) a positive personality and b) start lower (obviously, I am using mean of attributes and you are using Ginga rating) tend to progress quite well. Below, I have filtered any players who have a positive personality (taken from my analysis of personalities and overall first year development). For ease of averages etc - I will take the bottom 10 from this list:

The average development of these 10 is a massive 1.5 points, compared to my overall cohort average of 0.87.

If I then take my top 10 from the list of players this list:

Their average first year development is 0.8 - below the average and 0.7 points below the average development of those who started the weakest.

---

Now, if I flip that and look at the average development of all with negative personalities - the average there is 0.6.

Let's take stock of that:

• Poor starting point but good personality - 1.5 average progress
• Good starting point and good personality - 0.8 average progress
• Any starting point but poor personality - 0.6 average progress.

----

I think that, for you, the ideal player at intake is/has:

• High Flair (seems hard to grow)
• Good personality (to help growth)
• Quite a low CA (you can mould the PA to the attributes you want and they'll maybe grow 'better?')

Just some thoughts (and sorry for derailing with my own data...)

[Mikaelinho]

3 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:

I really like this analysis and I think I can add some more evidence in which we can begin to corroborate and come up with some kind of 'target player.'

---

I find that players who have a) a positive personality and b) start lower (obviously, I am using mean of attributes and you are using Ginga rating) tend to progress quite well. Below, I have filtered any players who have a positive personality (taken from my analysis of personalities and overall first year development). For ease of averages etc - I will take the bottom 10 from this list:

The average development of these 10 is a massive 1.5 points, compared to my overall cohort average of 0.87.

If I then take my top 10 from the list of players this list:

Their average first year development is 0.8 - below the average and 0.7 points below the average development of those who started the weakest.

---

Now, if I flip that and look at the average development of all with negative personalities - the average there is 0.6.

Let's take stock of that:

• Poor starting point but good personality - 1.5 average progress
• Good starting point and good personality - 0.8 average progress
• Any starting point but poor personality - 0.6 average progress.

----

I think that, for you, the ideal player at intake is/has:

• High Flair (seems hard to grow)
• Good personality (to help growth)
• Quite a low CA (you can mould the PA to the attributes you want and they'll maybe grow 'better?')

Just some thoughts (and sorry for derailing with my own data...)

First of all, I don't mind one bit that you're in here with what you call "your own data". I love your level of interaction and I feel like our series are slowly but steadily intertwining as we work our way towards the same goal, but down two different paths! Secondly, I think you're certainly on to something in your description of the ideal youth/intake player. I'll incorporate Personality into my analysis later on as I don't have them in a different Excel file. I plan to compare the Personalities with the actual development per season, both in absolute numbers, but also as a comparison to an age weighted mean. I'm pretty sure I'll reach the same conclusions as you have. 

[quee]

On 17/04/2020 at 22:08, Mikaelinho said:

He started the season at a lowly Ginga Rating of 59, but look at this development!

 

How did you do the changing image?

Been reading on some of your progress, interesting approach, just like Ben's!

[Mikaelinho]

3 hours ago, quee said:

How did you do the changing image?

Here's a step-by-step guide for you!

On 24/04/2020 at 23:38, Mikaelinho said:

I did it in GIMP. Step by step:

1. Open the oldest screenshot (the one you want to be showed 2nd - not very important since they cycle)

2. Open the latest screenshot as a layer

3. Align them manually to please your OCD

4. Export as...GIF

5. Change all the red boxes

6. Export

 

[quee]

2 minutes ago, Mikaelinho said:

Here's a step-by-step guide for you!

Thanks!

[Mikaelinho]

The 2025 season post is here!

Ok, isn’t there an awful lot of red in the column for “total changes”? Yes, unfortunately there is. Only three players, all of them in the U19 squad, managed 30+ point increases, with a whooping eleven players not even reaching the 10 point mark.

When looking at Ginga, things look less grim though. Compared to last season our group of talents is older, but developed only slightly less.

I don’t see any real need to change training, since the players keep developing in general, even though I would have appreciated even more development of course.

Despite pretty average increases, we do have several reasons to be happy. The first one is the fact that a player is actually closing in on the magical 90 Ginga Rating aim in Gilberto.

An increase in Agility and one in Flair (his fourth so far!) means that Gilberto‘s Ginga Rating is now 87, only three points short of our aim! At 21 our scouts believe that he is fairly close to reaching his potential, but it would be absolutely awesome if we could squeeze out another three points from him in coming years! No matter what happens he is our Ginga Rating record holder by quite a margin, though!

The other two players we’ll look closer at are the two best performers on the training pitch. First off is Ytalo José...

You can read the post here: https://mikaelinhofm.com/2020/05/05/santastico-ep-11-2025-we-are-the-champions-of-the-world/

[_Ben_]

Going to read over your post and comment tomorrow once I've taken it all in...

However, one thing that sprung to mind!

What do you do with the preferred foot of each player? It is common knowledge that there is a 'skew' for two footed players which 'reduces' their visible attributes, but has no impact on the pitch. For the greatest Ginga rating - are you then focusing on 'Right Only' and 'Left Only' players to maximise that? I say that as I notice Gilberto is yet looking back at your old flame Kaio Jorge, he is just 'Right' footed.

I don't even know if that is a question, maybe more of an observation!

[Mikaelinho]

On 06/05/2020 at 00:15, _Ben_ said:

Going to read over your post and comment tomorrow once I've taken it all in...

However, one thing that sprung to mind!

What do you do with the preferred foot of each player? It is common knowledge that there is a 'skew' for two footed players which 'reduces' their visible attributes, but has no impact on the pitch. For the greatest Ginga rating - are you then focusing on 'Right Only' and 'Left Only' players to maximise that? I say that as I notice Gilberto is yet looking back at your old flame Kaio Jorge, he is just 'Right' footed.

I don't even know if that is a question, maybe more of an observation!

I've known that two footed players have reduced attributes compared to one footed ones, but I haven't given it that much thought. After spending yesterday in the FM Editor (not the in-game on of course...) playing around with values and going in-depth looking at each attribute's contribution to the CA total, it looks like the difference is actually HUGE!

If we use my Gilberto as an example:

He has "Right Only" as preferred foot, which means that his left foot attribute is at a 7 at most. If I create a new player in the editor based on all that I know about Gilberto I end up with a Recommended Current Ability of 155 if I make his left foot attribute a 1. If I make it a 7, the highest number that the left foot can have with "Right Only" as Preferred Foot, the RCA becomes 164. If I make the left foot attribute 14, which is the highest number that the left foot can have with "Right" as Preferred Foot, the RCA becomes 172. With 20 in both right and left foot (any value 15-20 returns "Either" as Preferred Foot) the RCA rises to 179. That's a 24 point RCA difference between the weakest possible and strongest possible left foot. Changing ALL of the Ginga Skills that are counted towards RCA (Flair doesn't) to 20 would only raise Gilberto's RCA by 11 points. So what I'm saying is that a lot of the RCA towards a player's PA could be "eaten up" by being two footed, hindering a player's development in the skills you are looking to develop.

I really appreciate you highlighting this for me @_Ben_, I'll certainly take this into consideration in my scouting strategy as well as my general approach towards player development!

 

[quee]

That's a shame, I like either-footed players and planning to have a few in my squad.

[Mikaelinho]

1 minute ago, quee said:

That's a shame, I like either-footed players and planning to have a few in my squad.

Well, I guess it has its advantages, but in my particular "experiment" this could basically mean the difference between a Ginga Rating of 80 and 100!

[quee]

4 minutes ago, Mikaelinho said:

Well, I guess it has its advantages, but in my particular "experiment" this could basically mean the difference between a Ginga Rating of 80 and 100!

Good point. I think players that are already close to reaching their potential shouldn't be a factor in a normal save.

In a development save like yours, it can be the difference to reach that Ginga Rating.

I'm learning new stuff everyday

[Mikaelinho]

U20 coaching staff overhaul (part 1)

I've started the coaching staff overhaul that I mentioned a while back, and I'm starting with the U20 coaching staff.

Let's start by looking at the current U20 coaching staff, are there any ones to keep there?

No, not really. Therefore, let's get rid of all of them! You might think that I'm crazy and maybe I am, but a change is needed. Let's take one step back and look at what the U20 coaching staff actually do.

The first insight is a bit counter-intuitive, but the fact is that they don't contribute to actually training the players in our U20 squad. Below you find the overview of coach workload and lead coach rating for the U20s training.

The star ratings remain the same whether I use the U20 coaching staff or not, since our HoYD, the entire Reserves' coaching staff and the manager, goalkeeping coaches and fitness coaches of the first team also participate in the U20s training. This means that without the U20 coaching staff I already have 18 people directly involved in the day-to-day training of the players.

The second piece of useful information is that, at least according to the brilliant work by @_Ben_ , most likely the HoYD is not the only staff member responsible for the personality types of youth intake players. There is also a link between the rest of the youth staff (and perhaps all other coaching staff, but let's take this one step at a time) and the youth intake players.

Therefore I want to take advantage of that possible link by hiring a staff filled with members with desired personality types, pretty much completely disregarding how good they are at actually coaching.

[_Ben_]

2 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

I've known that two footed players have reduced attributes compared to one footed ones, but I haven't given it that much thought. After spending yesterday in the FM Editor (not the in-game on of course...) playing around with values and going in-depth looking at each attribute's contribution to the CA total, it looks like the difference is actually HUGE!

If we use my Gilberto as an example:

He has "Right Only" as preferred foot, which means that his left foot attribute is at a 7 at most. If I create a new player in the editor based on all that I know about Gilberto I end up with a Recommended Current Ability of 155 if I make his left foot attribute a 1. If I make it a 7, the highest number that the left foot can have with "Right Only" as Preferred Foot, the RCA becomes 164. If I make the left foot attribute 14, which is the highest number that the left foot can have with "Right" as Preferred Foot, the RCA becomes 172. With 20 in both right and left foot (any value 15-20 returns "Either" as Preferred Foot) the RCA rises to 179. That's a 24 point RCA difference between the weakest possible and strongest possible left foot. Changing ALL of the Ginga Skills that are counted towards RCA (Flair doesn't) to 20 would only raise Gilberto's RCA by 11 points. So what I'm saying is that a lot of the RCA towards a player's PA could be "eaten up" by being two footed, hindering a player's development in the skills you are looking to develop.

I really appreciate you highlighting this for me @_Ben_, I'll certainly take this into consideration in my scouting strategy as well as my general approach towards player development!

 

That is a considerably bigger difference than I ever thought at first.

It's a shame that you're going to have to make a choice between Ginga rating and how good they are on the pitch with their preferred foot but I guess than you really 'want' a rating of 8 for their weak foot (just so it's Right or Left without the 'only') so you can get the best mix of footed-ness and ginga?

[_Ben_]

8 minutes ago, Mikaelinho said:

U20 coaching staff overhaul (part 1)

I've started the coaching staff overhaul that I mentioned a while back, and I'm starting with the U20 coaching staff.

Let's start by looking at the current U20 coaching staff, are there any ones to keep there?

No, not really. Therefore, let's get rid of all of them! You might think that I'm crazy and maybe I am, but a change is needed. Let's take one step back and look at what the U20 coaching staff actually do.

 

The first insight is a bit counter-intuitive, but the fact is that they don't contribute to actually training the players in our U20 squad. Below you find the overview of coach workload and lead coach rating for the U20s training.

The star ratings remain the same whether I use the U20 coaching staff or not, since our HoYD, the entire Reserves' coaching staff and the manager, goalkeeping coaches and fitness coaches of the first team also participate in the U20s training. This means that without the U20 coaching staff I already have 18 people directly involved in the day-to-day training of the players.

 

The second piece of useful information is that, at least according to the brilliant work by @_Ben_ , most likely the HoYD is not the only staff member responsible for the personality types of youth intake players. There is also a link between the rest of the youth staff (and perhaps all other coaching staff, but let's take this one step at a time) and the youth intake players.

 

Therefore I want to take advantage of that possible link by hiring a staff filled with members with desired personality types, pretty much completely disregarding how good they are at actually coaching.

It's hilarious that your youth coaches actually have no impact!

I can't wait to see what you find out. I reckon you may find some interesting nationalities too, if you go for that approach of the M.Citizen ex-players. 

[Mikaelinho]

U20 Coaching staff overhaul - Part 2: Best personality types for youth development

What are the best personality types for our coaches then? Well, this is not an entirely easy question to answer. A players FM20 personality consists of the attributes Determination and Leadership along with the hidden attributes Adaptability, Ambition, Loyalty, Pressure, Professionalism, Sportsmanship and Temperament. Determination, Ambition and Professionalism are the three attributes that are thought to have the biggest impact on a player's training performance and development. Determination is the easy one out of these three since that's a given. The other two attributes are hidden, and therefore you don't know their actual values. However, by looking at the player's actual Personality type you can get some clues at least!

There are six personality types that include a high Ambition, but not all of them are useful here, since we need a combination of high Professionalism as well! That rules out Fickle (Ambition 16-20) since it's coupled with <17 Determination and <18 Professionalism. Driven looks promising, with 18-20 Determination and 12-20 Ambition, but it says nothing about the player's Professionalism, so that doesn't work either. Ambitious of course comes with high Ambition (16-19), but excludes the highest Determination (<18) and Professionalism (<19) and that's no good. That rules out both Ambitious and Fairly Ambitious on the same grounds. This leaves us with two personality types:

• Perfectionist
  • Determination 14-20
  • Ambition 14-20
  • Professionalism 14-20
• Model Citizen
  • Determination 14-20
  • Ambition 12-20
  • Professionalism 15-20

The Model Citizen personality type also comes with other positive personality traits, such as high Loyalty, Pressure, Sportsmanship and Temperament and is considered "the best" personality type. Model Professional is usually also considered one of the best types, but since it says nothing about a players Ambition, we won't be using that one. I'll use Perfectionist and Model Citizen, since they appear to be the best two when it comes to player development, at least for me.

[Mikaelinho]

U20 Coaching staff overhaul - Part 3: The new coaching staff

So, what happens when we put Personality type: Model Citizen OR Perfectionist into the staff search filter?

First of all, 123 at least potentially interested people are found. Since I decided to include my own staff in the search I found first team coaches Dennis Bergkamp and Jens Lehmann and Reserves coach Iarley in the search, which made me happy.

What made me even happier was the fact that the search also returned perhaps the most important man of all, our HoYD Sebastian Pait.

This meant that I "only" had to focus on replacing the U20 coaching staff in this first step.

The staff search returned some cracking names in the form of former players, and of course I had to try to get an all star lineup of coaches in. Who could work as better guides for our young players than these former world class players? I was also primarily looking for coaches with good enough coaching attributes to actually contribute in training (Spoiler: There were basically none) and secondly for coaches with no or low level coaching badges, since these badges are the only way to improve a coach. I also considered Determination, the higher the better, when looking for my new coaches.

Above you see the new U20 coaching staff, basically an amazing list of former players that agreed to join the club. Zabaleta, Palacios and Falcao return to the club and are joined by a quite dynamic group of characters. Imagine a training session involving all these guys as coaches!

EDIT: Pecka was the only contract termination that the board blocked and Carlos Roa was brought in the second after I had sacked all the original staff, since I had missed to set myself as responsible for U20 coaching staff recruiting, Well well, at least he's a Model Professional...

Edited May 7, 2020 by Mikaelinho

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 12 is here - A Model Citizen experiment

It's based on what's written above, but if you want to read the episode in its entirety you can do it here!

[_Ben_]

9 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

Episode 12 is here - A Model Citizen experiment

It's based on what's written above, but if you want to read the episode in its entirety you can do it here!

I'm not sure that James Milner and Zlatan could co-exist on the same training field!

Never the less, another great post - and I'm really looking forward to your results. Coincidentally, I read somewhere that Squad Personality (viewable only on the club profile page) has a big impact on youth players. I have no evidence to believe that - but what is yours?