training short potential DCs

[itay.bing]

i have 3 short youth players who i think about training to be CBs, for fun more than an actual need:

 16 yo DC 175 cm 10 JR 1 ca 1.5-2.5 pa (coach assessment, just to estimate if and how much room they have to improve, 1.5 gold stars 2.5 black star)

 16 yo DM 176 cm 10 JR 1.5 ca 3-4 pa

 17 yo DM 176 cm 8 JR 1.5 ca 3.5-4.5 pa (favorite as he is generally better, plus the DC has poor passing and technique and the other DM has very poor heading)

 a good DC with cover duty for my team would need at least 12 JR, 10 is someone i might play if i'm sure i'm going to win and want to give him some playing time. though of course ideally he'd jump as high as i can get him to.

i have no reserve team and my youth team is an u19, the rep of the youth league is probably not good enough to improve a 19 years old significantly. if i loan them, they would probably be good enough for a second division team, may even get them to a first division team if they had just gained promotion, though that would be punching over their weight. training facilities are good, and let's say i can't give them playing time unless it's the ending games of the season after my table spot is secured.

while actual players their height can (sometimes,that's not an expectation) have JR of 13-15, regens at my save (oldest are currently 24-25) need to be at least 180 and usually taller than 184 cm tall to get there.

to the point, how much did you managed to improve a single players' jumping reach? do you "hit a wall (or rather a ceiling)" below a certain height or after a certain age or growth (say "i usually can't make them gain more than 3 points during their career\over 10 when they are 168 cm tall (i think there is a top JR you can have bellow certain heights, but as i've seen a 167 cm player with 16 JR, this isn't really what i'm referring to)\more than 1 point after they are 25")?

i assume that loaning them later to a team that might train other attributes or even play them as DMs (even if i set their position to be DC in the loan deal, other managers don't tend to be very disciplined, definitely not when asked to play a poor jumper as a center back) will hurt their JR developement, but letting them play 4 games a season until they are 23 can't be very good for them either. so what do you recommend? let them improve more (ca\other attributes wise) in an organic way or train them so they have higher relative chance of improving their jumping, but at the expense of lacking general improvement?

 

i know that JR is not everything when it comes to winning a header and i'm sure someone has figured up a system that allows or encourages short central defenders, but this is mainly training rather than tactical thread, and you can save your virtual ink writing 'it's a combination of attributes" comments and consider them acknowledged.

[zlatanera]

Firstly, don't loan your players until they're 18 unless for some reason a team with superior facilities to you (training facilities, not youth as that's for the quality of regens, not your u18s/19s like a lot of us assumed).

I've never really found any great increases of jumping reach via training - sometimes you get a player who just grows and grows i.e. Willem Geubbels at Lyon starts out as a False Nine due to his height, think he has 16-18 Jumping Reach aged 19. 

I would advise either retraining them to DMs, or working out a system where you have one tall centre back and one short one akin to the "Mike" Smalling - Daley Blind axis at Manchester United a few years ago that was bizarrely not exploited that much by opponents. Perhaps if they're pacey, play one of the short guys on Cover to mop up the 2nd ball and a tall guy on Stopper to challenge for long balls? Crosses are almost impossible to defend against once they're delivered on this ME so I wouldn't worry about them getting out-jumped there, more just focus on stopping it coming in in the first place. Oh, and if you're using short CBs try to make sure you have some tall guys somewhere else and adjust your Corner routines so that they're not a weak link there. 

[RocheBag]

21 hours ago, zlatanera said:

Firstly, don't loan your players until they're 18 unless for some reason a team with superior facilities to you (training facilities, not youth as that's for the quality of I would advise either retraining them to DMs, or working out a system where you have one tall centre back and one short one akin to the "Mike" Smalling - Daley Blind axis at Manchester United a few years ago that was bizarrely not exploited that much by opponents. Perhaps if they're pacey, play one of the short guys on Cover to mop up the 2nd ball and a tall guy on Stopper to challenge for long balls? Crosses are almost impossible to defend against once they're delivered on this ME so I wouldn't worry about them getting out-jumped there, more just focus on stopping it coming in in the first place. Oh, and if you're using short CBs try to make sure you have some tall guys somewhere else and adjust your Corner routines so that they're not a weak link there. 

He literally just said he's not interested in a system to hide their height. It's a training question not a tactical one.

[herne79]

On ‎15‎/‎08‎/‎2018 at 11:58, itay.bing said:

so what do you recommend? let them improve more (ca\other attributes wise) in an organic way or train them so they have higher relative chance of improving their jumping, but at the expense of lacking general improvement?

Here's how one of my central defenders improved their Jumping Reach:

I wouldn't say that's a typical progression of JR but it is possible to improve.  Perhaps more so if you specifically train it (which I didn't).  But it really depends on what you want from your central defenders.  Height, not just Jumping Reach, plays an important factor.  Shorter central defenders are usually in short supply (pun intended) simply because they often need to deal with strong, physical forwards and lots of crosses.  There are of course exceptions to this - Cannavaro perhaps notably - but other factors would be used to make up for these short comings (pun intended again ).

Your young players will probably grow and develop their jumping reach naturally.  It's perhaps unlikely they'll turn into 190cm monsters or even get much over (or reach) 180cm.  So you have to ask yourself - do you want a relatively short central defender in your team?  If the answer is yes then 1) pair him with a taller defender, not a 2nd shorter one; and 2) focus on improving his other defensive attributes.  Keep an eye on how his JR develops though and consider training it specifically if you think it needs work - there's no downside to that.

And yes I need to work on my puns .

[zlatanera]

57 minutes ago, RocheBag said:

He literally just said he's not interested in a system to hide their height. It's a training question not a tactical one.

Yeah and all I said was from my experience you really can't train it, you just have to hope they'll grow and that tends to stop once they've hit 17 / 18, so gave my best two ideas. If anyone wants to come along and contradict me about jumping reach, feel free.

EDIT: And Herne has, at almost the exact same second I posted. So everyone wins!

[itay.bing]

7 hours ago, herne79 said:

 

 

thanks for everyone who replied.

i've actually seen this thread, and saw something interesting about it- the recommended JR chart. it seems to prove that every JR point is equal to about an inch higher than the minimum jumping reach. is it true? i've seen a few threads (not many) that are discussing lacking jumping reach growth. if it is true, we can compare the growth in JR to real life growth (say by comparing it to some forum users who tried to improve their jumping and measured themselves, while carefully applying it to more physically developed yet exposed to better coaching and who are more professional in the care they take of their bodies, and maybe more physically gifted, players) and see if it is consistent with FM's (while taking CA, PA and other things that might affect individual progress).

quick search on google suggests vertical leap programs that are supposed to improve your jumping by 9-15 inches in 3 months. assuming that it's a sheer lie (what?! the internet? our internet?) and possible growth is around a third, one might think that fitness coaches who are better than internet guides, and players who are more determined than people that are trying to dunk to impress their friends, might still get 3-5 inches of improvement using individual training, and i'm not even focused on the three months thing, let's say by a year and a half. also, again, it's not something i expect, and if i do than not from everyone, and i'm not even assuming i'm right about this.