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I don't know, except Ekleptysmenos, who is candidate for u21 Cyprus Team... anyway...

Even if Fabio (TheCippis) did a good job in Cyprus he was mainly focused on his 16-18 players recruited for the season... after my departure someone should take care about cypriot young players... do you have some new ideas about recruitment and scout program?

Even if I am not one of the canditates for the U21 NT atleast not for this year this is my opinion on your questions.

1. Looking just at the salaries is not an indication to me. It is a good indication if you do it on the end of the previous season and you compair it with the beginning of the new season. Thus you get a pretty good idea on their development. Otherwise to me the salary is only half the story of the player. Scouting should be based on the games they play. Taking in concideration what their manager plays and surely what the opposing defense is. For example how well does a sg do against a defense 3-2 when his team plays r&g and how good he performs defencivly agaist a teams tactics LI. These are what I will look for. The more games you have, the more accurate is your facts on the player.
2. depends on the enthousiasm I would want to have. In my opinion I would try to talk it over with the manager. If he still doesnt want to train then he is out of the NT. As simple as that. If the player is a super player much more stronger than the rest of the U21 players then I would keep him in the NT. If I would advise the manager to sell his player to someone that is willing to train him, surely. If he doesnt care for the players developmnet surely I would advise him to sell the player to someone else and I would keep track of the player. i rather sacrifise some games for the develpment of a super player that would help the NT in the years to come.
3. It depends on how many can I bring. For example if I can bring 18 then I will surely have atleast 14. I would fill up 4/5 of my empty places and the rest 1/5 keep it for teams that are banned and players that would get lost. Minimum empty spaces 4 or 5. I would ask the coach of the NT of over 21 and see what empty spaces we have together and decide. As for complains I am sure that if we have a protocol stating the minimum skills a player must have to be in the U21 NT then noone will complain. For sure players 18 years of age are to weak to be in the U21 NT.

Last edited by Pistoleros at 3/24/2010 9:40:47 AM

We all have to help following the training of the new talents. As Steve has mentioned before we need members of the community to have a chat one on one with the managers. You can count me in. This is my opinion. Divide all the teams of Cyprus to some managers and check every single one team, sending emails. This way it will be easier on everyone.

Some interesting points are set by Steve. Let me try to answer one by one:

1. Scouting.
Scouting of national teams is not as easy as scouting for championship. This is because there are many great players in national teams that make it very hard to scout. Their scouting needs to be done not only by scouting the NTs but with scouting through their teams and attributes. But where will you focus your attention on? There are various ways to tackle this questions.
Firstly, and my favourite, is by tracking down their strengths and trying to eliminate them. After identifying these strengths the best way would be by observing how other managers tried to stop them and what was the effect. This begins a back and forth series where you try to identify linkages between performances. Of course in the beginning this will be difficult to achieve but as time goes by with experience gained it will be easier.
Second way is by identifying their weakness and trying to enhance it. By observing the team plays and identifying the linkages between performances, weaknesses will be identified.
For both ways of scouting you should get to really know your players, their strengths and weaknesses. This will help you to know where to search for weaknesses to exploit or eliminate of strengths. You should always have in mind that the other managers also have some ways of scouting and would be waiting for your moves.

2. Draftees
If the manager is not willing to train a prospect for various reasons and the player is considered to become a future NT player i will take the following steps:
a) Try to convince the manager to train the player

b) If the manager is not changing his training schedule for this player, is he is training guards but the player is c, see if he can fit him in his training schedule for a season. In this way the player will pop up, less than by getting trained as a c. Then either convince the manager next season to change training schedule or sell this player. This player will probably sell to someone willing to train bigs, otherwise why buy him, and train him as a big guy. This way we may come to create a very good SF, something that is extremely rare.

3. Called up players.
Roster spots are valuable. Of course no one can determine the amount of players called as this will be determined by the judgement at the time of the decision whether a player is valuable or not in comparison to other players and also in comparison to managers willingness and knoweldge to train. Positions should always be open so that if some talent appears out of nowhere, ie bot teams, to be able to put it on the market and not get lost.

I hope I have answered your queries.

Here is a question I have for all candidates. Dont get me wrong I dont wish to insult anyone. I am just trying to understand how much of the game do we know and how can the NT benefit.

1. A player of height 2.01cm age 19 SG from one team and a player of height 1.96cm age 21 SG in another team. Both players based on your opinion have low JS and you want their managers to train JS. What would you advise regarding their training. How would they achieve the highest rate of skill increase?

2. A player of height 2.13cm and a player of 2.04cm. Who would grow faster in RB and who in ID? Or will one of the two grow faster in both?

I will not ask about the salary cap cause I assume we all know the numbers.

:) Thanks

After a few conversations with Johnny B GM here is a question that has evolved during this periods quest for an U21 NT coach and for the next seasons NT coach. Should we vote for a domestic coach from CBBA or should we prefer an outsider coach ( like in the case of Steve Makis).
The reason for this thinking is whether the new domestic coach will benefit from his advantage of knowing the CBBAs players and thus in a few words have an inside in opponents teams. In this way he can program his defenses and offenses better against the opponents matches for the championship. Surely something the foreign coach wouldnt care since he is not in the CBBA league.
Secondly since all of us have domestic players perhaps the new domestic NT coach will be affected by personal benefit and bring to the NT his own players or friends players. Once again a foreign coach most likely will not possess any NT material Cypriot players and thus perhaps its choices will be more correct.
Johnny B said that this is the best time for us to become coach of our own NT. I dont agree that much with this statement. Why is it our best time? He says we know the game better, I agree we learned a lot but are we ready? Do we know that much about the game? Why would we benefit from a domestic NT coach? How would we benefit? Johnny B said due to communication. Communication? I dont think that if our NT coach doesnt speak greek is a problem cause we all know English and for the ones of us that do not we can always translate the coach messages for him. I dont think that is a problem.

Thus I would like to open a conversation with all of the community on this subject. Being a member of the community and especially if you are interested in the position of NT coach U21, means you have an interest for the community and the NT. So here is everyones chance to state the most possible solution to my question.

Thanks.

Some serious questions are set by my friend pistoleros. He has a point in all of his questions.

Let me explain first of all why we should prefer a domestic coach rather than a foreigner. As we all know the community of Cyprus is not only small it is also young and inactive. This makes us first to be in an evolving stage where every single day we are learing more about the teams how they operate and how the game goes. Every single day every single login is a new opportunity to learn new things about a game that for me has become very addictive. But if we do not take control of the Nt then we are missing the opportunity to be actively in charge of the various issues facing NTs. This has the disadvantage of not knowing how they advance and what are the differences between teams and Nts. Although a foreigner with more experience may be suited more in the short term i firmly believe that a domestic coach should gain the expertise of running a Nt so that he can share the expertise with other managers. This will be much better for OUR NT in the long run. By voting a new NT coach we are not looking at short term benefits but for long term. The elected Nt should try and rip the knowledge by the current NT coaches, feel free to ask them what he wants, so that he can pass the knowledge to other managers.

The database is a delicate matter. In the database only two people will be allowed access. NT and U21. These people by nature have the advantage of knowing the skills of players in the database. The question arising is how many Nt players are currently playing in Cyprus leagues? 3 out of 12 in NT and 3 out of 16 in U21. As you can see most of the players are trained outside Cyprus which is another grand issue. Therefore the advantage that will be gained is mediocred by the fact that not many players are playing in Cyprus. As for the players in the database in the begininng they are not core part of the team and the manager always has the chance not to use the player in the match against the U21 coach if he thinks that he will abuse his position.

Communication is another point. We are an english literate country but remmeber that many users are young in age and not that fluent in english. It is difficult for a foreigner to talk to this youngsters. ALso to bring the community it will be better to have someone to go to or to organise things. The beginning has been done by GM and now by U21, hopefully. I have tried to bring active players closer (Pistoleros you still owe those beers!!) and will try more in the future. This will allow us to become even more addicted to the game and not quit.

Ekleptysmenos
Cyprus U21 candidate