Changes to Off-Season

[Chris C]

Howdy,

I just started a new save with Brisbane Roar, with the start date, Brazil December 2012, as I like to play the Asian Champions league group stage fixtures in early 2013.

In the last save I started, some months ago, just after the beta ended, I was able to organise a bunch of friendlies against local clubs to build up the players match fitness.

This time, every single team I approached anywhere in the world for a friendly gave me the same response - Schedule too busy, even though none have fixtures set until mid 2013.

I can understand European teams being set to not accept friendlies in january 2013, as january seems like a busy time football wise over there, but the Australian non a-league

domestic competitions play over the Australian winter, and should have nothing better to do in January. I ended up playing my youth team every 4 days for 2 months.

But I get through the group stage, and they all go on holiday, and the season starts as normal in October after the ACL knockout rounds.

At the end of the A-league regular season, I get my non-declinable end of season team meeting, and they all go on holiday. 10 days before the as yet undrawn major semi final.

I'm drawn into the finals, make the grand final, and during both matches, player conditions plummet - both games I didn't finish with an outfield player above %50 condition.

So I assume behind the scenes something is ticked that although there is a fixture, they are on holiday.

But it was the same for the other team so I sneak a lucky win. And afterwards they don't go back on holiday, my assistant, in charge of training, changes the focus to fitness-very high.

The injury toll is rapidly rising, -there's no fixtures upcoming for 7 months, but they are in training every day kicking seven bells out of each other.

2014 world cup rolls around, and all the players conditions plummet through the tournament. In my last save, started some months ago, lost to a hard drive failure, I took different teams to 4 world cups.

In the 4th of these, the player conditions plummeted like in my new save, I was Brazil in the quarter finals of the 2026 world cup and I had no outfield players with a condition above %60 percent to select.

So, after all that, my question is, in the most recent patches, was there changes made to the way the game treats the off-season,

specifically - whether players selected for international tournaments, (or other sundry mis scheduled club fixtures), which are not indicated as on holiday, do they still continue to train and maintain match fitness? They used to.