Hey Jerunderbar,
Long time no talk. I'll cut the pleasantries short. I have mixed oppinions off your idea and i'll state them below
why 'im against the idea:1) some managers don't like to train. They rarely have 'competitive players '(players who play game minutes in Championship games) that are below the age of 21 on their rosters. They just prefer not to waste cash in training and play for championships time after time. It's a valid strategy in the game. With your idea, you'd force them into training or picking up younger sub 22y old players. Assuming they won't want to train, you'll be wasting the talent of those players or forcing the team into investing in something they don't really want to. So you'd have to give managers the option to opt into this competition
2) you will basically require 2x the current server space for the extra amount of competitions that is being held. That means that BB has to have the finances to invest for that room. The alternative is to make it a supporter feature, but then you are turning it into a Pay to Win game, which will lose you a bunch of users!
Why i'd see some merit in this suggestion1) teams in the top divisions have a hard time training players to their specific needs. by doing this, you could tailor a player to your team needs, which would be a huge positive.
Now to reply for the arguements you've made:
1. New managers will be able to compete sooner;
The problem is that BB is such a complicated game and that the game manual is hopelessly outdated. The tutorial helps a bitt, but it's still not enough. New managers don't understand how everything works and with a lack of information and communication within the communities, it means that they can't find the new information, thus don't understand certain game results and quit out of frustration. BB is a complex game. it's not just something you start and improve with right away.
2. Existing managers can realize their ideas about players/teams much more easily;
valid argument. However, limiting such a thing to a U21 competition is wrong. To test real idea's, you'd need to train them completely to a lvl where they could really compete. For that to happen, you'd need a test environment. And currently there are enough problems within the game that need more urgent fixing (competition, game manual update, ...) I'm going to be making a couple of forum posts in the near futur about all those issues.
3. Training for U21 (and both training and U21 in general) will become much more appealing;
There are other ways to make this more interesting that require less coding. The problem right now is that the U21 & NT championships are boring for 70% of the teams. 10% knows they will qualify for future rounds. 60% knows they have no chance. So it's the remaining 30% that are fighting over scraps, only to be steamrolled by the monster teams who saved enthusiasm untill the very end... So there is need for a U21/NT reformation. i've made such a suggestion in the U21/NT fora. It gathered some steam, but nothing was done with it. So while i argee that Training needs to be made more appealing, there are easiers ways to accomplish this without putting such a financial strain on BB (see earlier)