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a view from the peanut gallery:

this recent exchange has clarified some issues in my mind. the beauty of this game is the immense range of choices available to the manager; priorities are important, as is long-term planning. i made a decision some time ago to train balanced players for a balanced team; i don't know if this is the best way, i had some initial success, then ran into a brick wall, and now may be figuring out how to climb over that wall; i know this approach suits me psychologically / philosophically, so i am determined to make it work. i gather the game engine is drifting in this direction, rewarding such players / teams; i am unsure, but even if true, i am sure it would be closer to a tweak than a major change in direction.

one consequence of all this is that i don't see how i could be in a position to train a player for the U21 team. i took one look at that player profiled a few posts previously, and saw nothing but holes that my league opponents could exploit. my training process means i could take an 18 year old (i favor 19 year olds for better value -- sort of like buying a one-year old used car) and work on him, but he will not be in a position to even start for me until he is 21 or 22; i think it is a rapid development if he is getting playing time by 20. this is for division play. i am trying to develop an entire squad; the training necessary to develop a player to extraordinary levels before 21 i simply will not do. it is possible, i am suggesting, many other managers may be thinking along these lines.

that said, in two-three seasons i hope to have the type of squad i feel confident about, and will then begin to train single players, hoping to get a routine going of intensely focusing on one player a year. even then, the idea of trying to make a player with atrocious FT skills work just rubs me the wrong way. nevertheless, the game rewards, in various ways, the development of such players, but i want those guys standing on the shoulders of balanced players.

Ok, Coco was a little harsh, even if he did hit on some of the real answers.

In HT, it is a simple equation. Take a mainskill guy and train him in nothing but that 1 skill until he's an u21 player. Over here, there are many more skills that influence a coach's decision. I'd argue that your normal user doesn't know which skills are valued for which position and which ones are the most important to train.

Yeah, well, this is one of the reasons we like BB. The player variety makes it much more interesting, but it also makes it much harder to say "your players need X, Y, Z to make the u21/NT". That said, there are probably some minimum requirements we could post (like, for next season, I probably won't consider any guards with OD <14 and JS <15). This still leaves a lot of variability in the player pool, which is good. And Coco's right, the database is definitely the best way to compare your players to the rest of the pool ((http://bb-usa.netsons.org)).

Lastly, I'll ask. How are we behind anyone in the world on the NT stage? This is a US based game, right? Why aren't we the class of the world? Is it userbase? Is it training issues? Is it organization?

Well, we're not the biggest userbase (4000 users vs 5000 for Italy, 6400 for Spain, 4000 for Poland, etc), but I don't think that's the main factor.

I think it's partly a salary thing--creating a good club player is not always the same as creating a good NT player because of the salary structure (especially at PF/C). We don't have many users who want to just train NT'ers to the detriment of their club team (not can I honestly encourage them to do so).

Part of it is also organizational--you've got tiny countries like Switzerland that have massively coordinated their training to put together a solid NT. And a country like the Philippines who has a decent player base, but has somehow figured it out all of a sudden (they went from having 1 40k+ 21yo in season 10 to 22 40k+ 21yo's in season 11... that's bafflingly amazing). Whatever they've figured out is obviously something it would be beneficial to emulate.

And part of it is, frankly, luck. There's a tremendous amount of parity among the top u21 and NTs, for a number of reasons. I mean, look at Spain and Italy. The Spanish u21 team missed worlds this season, and Italy is currently sitting at 0-2 in the NT Euro qualifier after two equal effort losses.


All that said, both our teams are doing pretty well lately. Despite Coco's recent depression, the u21 still has an outside chance of making the top 4. And the NT is set up pretty well in America's qualifying. We've seemingly had really good communication with trainers and are getting a handful of elite guys that are trained perfectly for our teams.

The best way to start getting involved is probably to hop into the chat during one of the u21/NT games. Coco and I are almost always there, as well as about 5-10 other folks, including many that really know the game well. It's a great opportunity to chat not only about the game, but about your trainees, your club team, or any other questions you might have. BB-mails, posts here, or posts on the off-site also generally get pretty quick responses.

Xarn you used to be one of the most active posters on the BB Forums with your team mentoring thread. Through that effort I'm sure you learned valuable information to help develop your team. If you choose to put in some of that past effort on the offsite forum I'm sure you will get the same results. I've noticed you've posted once on the offsite forum and have not logged in since May 2009. We would love to see your activity on the forum in the future.

a view from the peanut gallery:
i made a decision some time ago to train balanced players for a balanced team...

one consequence of all this is that i don't see how i could be in a position to train a player for the U21 team... i am trying to develop an entire squad; the training necessary to develop a player to extraordinary levels before 21 i simply will not do. it is possible, i am suggesting, many other managers may be thinking along these lines.

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion: if I want to draft/train my players for the long-term in the balanced way that I think will be best for own team, it's hard to see how it will be possible for me to get any of my guys up to the level of a u21 player.

Even after I build a solid base of players and move from 2 position to 1 position training eventually, I still have a hard time envisioning being able to build a guard for example with 14-15 JS and OD while also getting secondary and inside skills up to the levels I think are important. I remember reading a post somewhere by someone that basically said u21 is all about the primary skills and I think I would agree, but it seems like that might mean that u21 is a difficult nut to crack for teams focused on making balanced players their priority.

I personally believe that my best chance of getting anybody on the u21 team will end up being 18yr olds drafted as C/PF or PG/SG who end up being classified as SFs by their 21st year due to a stronger focus on their secondary skill development in the early years. So they would move along their multi-season training arc from:

18yr-->21yr-->24+yr
Guard-->SF-->Guard
Big--> SF --> Big

Which may not be such a bad thing; balanced trainers still have a opportunity to get people on the u21 team, and the u21 team gets a larger selection of more balanced SFs. But I would agree with your assessment that it seems tough to reach the primary benchmarks you need as a guard/center while also adding something to the secondary skills, all in four seasons.

I agree I'm willing to bet most of the top countries have more "farm" teams than we do that focus on single-position training some monsters.

However, I drafted Dan Billingsley 6 seasons ago and double-position trained him onto the U21 and NT squads while training 4 others at the same time, so it IS possible. Granted, he's not a dominant player on the world stage like the single-position guys, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

You seem to have taken offense at my comments. I did not mean to indicate that you have not been an extremely active and helpful mentor. You have. You were one of the few people who participated in the mentoring threads and then the "closer look at 1 team" thread in a positive manner on a regular basis.

However, the public information on what it takes to be an u21 player is lacking. Despite having learned quite a bit from you (as I mentioned above) regarding how to run a club team. I am no farther along in understanding what it is that the u21 team wants out of its players than I was 3 seasons ago. Do I need to be spoon fed? No. Do the forum users needs some form of general guideline? Absolutely. Is it your job to provide that guideline? If you're the u21 coach, you bet it is.

I'm not talking about making distinctions between player A and B. I'm saying generic stuff, such as "a guy on the tracking list at PG should have a minimum of "wondrous JS by age 19" but he also needs X handling, Y passing and the u21 doesn't want a player who isn't at least Z in Free Throws or stamina, etc etc.

I'm not trying to dictated what those parameters should be as I'm clearly telling you I have no idea what the parameters are.

To say that I have been lazy is a shortcut and unfairly dismissive. You will have to forgive me if I don't want log into yet another website to find out basic guidelines for the NT/u21 teams. You call that lazy, so be it. There may come a time where I'm interested enough to log into the offsite forum but that time is not now. In the meantime, you're losing lots of prospects on teams just like mine because the word isn't out there to the general public on what skills are valued at what levels for what positions on the u21 team and therefore there are lots of managers who are training guys with real potential ineffectively by u21 standards.

For example, in HT if a player came out with Head, Solid winger and solid playmaking, we would want him trained in playmaking but if the same skilled player had Quick. You can be darn sure, I'd do what I could to get him a winger trainer.

I'm rambling now and this very well could be an apples and oranges comparison. I just know that I'm lost in BB when it comes to the u21 and I'm willing to bet that a lot of other users are too. if you care to shed some light, great. If I'm just way off track, I can live with that too. Rest assured, I'm not asking because I'm being lazy. I'm asking because I want to know.

EDIT: A thought occurred to me that perhaps this is more like footstar.org where there are more skills to train than in HT. Even still, my coach (and the u21) coach was able to very clearly tell me. "if you want to be an u21 player, here are the skills that are valued for a defender" (tackling, positioning, game vision, speed stamina then add....etc etc) I had very clear defined goals and have been able to be on the u21 team at the age of 19

Last edited by Xarn at 2/28/2010 4:02:11 AM

However, the public information on what it takes to be an u21 player is lacking. Despite having learned quite a bit from you (as I mentioned above) regarding how to run a club team. I am no farther along in understanding what it is that the u21 team wants out of its players than I was 3 seasons ago. Do I need to be spoon fed? No.

You will have to forgive me if I don't want log into yet another website to find out basic guidelines for the NT/u21 teams. You call that lazy, so be it. There may come a time where I'm interested enough to log into the offsite forum but that time is not now.

I find these 2 statements funny. There's an NT database which outlines all the current players' skills/ages. I don't know what more you can ask for. It gives you a really good idea of what it takes to make the team, because you really can't even set general guidelines, like "X JS and Y OD by age 20" stuff, there are too many combinations of skills that work on an entire team.

You don't want to be spoon fed, yet you don't want to be bothered to log onto one other website.

Last edited by GM-namssor at 2/28/2010 11:40:36 AM

Respectfully disagree for two reasons. You can't see which players are on team (as simple as putting those players in bold or highlighted) and as you said there are too many combinations of players that work for a team to say X is enough. I have a player who is arguably better than players on the NT but as of now he is not on the team. Why not? I can't tell from the database why. I know why because I talk to Wozz (and others before him).

You really can learn a lot though from the off-site forum though where we can go into further details on tactical choices and training schemes.

Why is it necesary to go to another website to get general guidleines?

I'm not asking for strategy or game planning tips. Hell I'm not even asking for current roster specs.

I'm asking for a general discussion of what the minimum skills are to get a player considered for the squad.


I don't want to be involved in the NT/u21 here in so far as I don't excited about the tournament, the pregame match strategy, etc etc. I am, however, willing to train my players in a manner that might make them useful to the u21 team. I guess what I'm trying to say is that because I'm a manager who attempts to manage my players effectively and religiously, I can be of value to u21 team without having to be part of the u21 team organization. Yet, that doesn't seem to be an option here.

My choices are participate in the off site forum or don't be involved. In that case, the u21 team loses.

Last edited by Xarn at 2/28/2010 1:53:57 PM