International Squad Management

[Kick Wilstra]

I like starting my careers smallish, for example by managing by managing an youth national team. My current save I started unemployed and decided to take on the Canada U23 team an try to qualify for the Olympics. Where usually my first club 'raise eyebrows', this was approved by the in-game media, who agreed that managing youngsters was probably a good idea for an inexperienced manager like me. To be honest though, it feels a little bare boned. I miss certain features that are present in club management.

No board Vision

Although I do understand that board vision probably isn't as big a factor as it might by clubs, I do feel that federations would still have some objectives they would like you to achieve. For example

- Qualify for tournament
- Be competitive in tournament, survive the group phase, etc.
- Play attractive football
- Dressing room atmosphere
- Perhaps also something like time for a new generation when they want you to give some younger players chance

 

No Training

In the same vein, there's no match feedback from fans, even though I would argue that the national side has the biggest fan base of them all in many nations. Here in Holland there's a saying there are 17 million bondscoaches (federation managers). Even people normally not that interested in football still have an opinion about the national side.

Another I'm missing is training. I know I'm not there to develop players, but I'm still have to get them ready for the match right? before an international match there are a few days where the group is together an prepare for the match ahead. All I do however is team selection. It seems to me that especially during tournament there are interesting choices to be made with training. Do I focus on keeping them fit and do mostly recovery training, or do I take the gamble they won't keep injured and focus more on match preparation? Related to match preparation, since I can't do training I can't do tactical briefing either.

 

No Club Relations

Relations with clubs and club managers as a federations manager don't seem to really exist in FM. In reality there are often frictions and also sometimes cooperation. When I use a players who has just recovered from injury or is simply tired for a non crucial match, and then that player gets injured or jaded, I would expect his club manager isn't all to happy with me.

Recently here in Holland there was quite some discussion about some talented youngsters with multiple nationalities, Ihattaren and Dest in particular. Part of the discussion was how much the KNVB should do to get them to choose for Holland, or whether they should just leave it up to the players. With Ihatarren Koeman said he had also kept in close contact with Van Bommel about how the players was feeling about it and that Van Bommel also had encouraged the player to choose the Holland. With Dest, who in the end choose Team USA, apparently the Ajax couching staff had informed Koeman they should keep an eye on him when he started to develop a lot more rapidly recently, since even though he had played for the USA on youth levels, it seemed he might had enough quality for the Dutch national team after all.

it would be nice if you can have chat with in game with other managers and perhaps ask them to encourage the player to choose for your national side. Especially when it's a talented youngster who might not yet be good enough for your team, so you don;t want to cap him yet, but already be good enough for the national team of his of the rationality. It would also be nice if a club might inform you about a talented youngsters you might want to add to your national pool before it's too late.

 

No Player Interactions

Last feature I miss from being a club manger, it that I can't interact with the player outside of team talks. I can't say I happy I'm am with creativity of how disappointing I was with his tackling. When scores a goal they usually get a good grade, but sometimes I still want to comment on an aspect of his play O'm not to happy about. If say that in team talkwhile the player went from 6.3 to 7.2 after he scored goal he won't understand. In a personal interaction the sometimes do however. Also the interaction part could help with building relationships with players.

 

Finally mostly just a side note, if I'm playing the with Canada U23 vs USA U23, during the match the comment would mostly just say Canada and USA, no? Is there no short name available in the DB for this?

Edited November 19, 2019 by Kick Wilstra

[Kyle Brown]

Reviewed so locked.