SoccerProject meeting: A report by El Stino

T-man and el stino

It’s always hard to find a good opening line, when you’re looking to write a report of a certain event. Let’s try it anyway and simply say: “Hi, I’m el stino”.

It kind of happened like that on Sunday August 3rd when a bunch of SoccerProject managers came to Brussels for the 4th SoccerProject Meeting. Not only did it happen at the Meeting, but also on November 8th of last year, if I recall correctly. Managers Cantagallina, T-Man, Celtic and el stino came together that Thursday night, for the first time, in the pool café where the meeting came to its end. Some time ago, manager Celtic had to pull out of the organizing team because of his busy schedule.

We had to move on, however. The pitch was quickly found, an ideal location to host our game. We therefore want to thank the people of football club Nossegem for being allowed to use their grounds.

The weather really didn’t favour us too much, but we didn’t let it bother us. We had a roof over our heads and BBQ-ing provided the summer spirit anyways.

El stino took care of the meat, Canta was the veggies-man and T-man went about tagging everyone with their manager and team names.

The soccer game proved to be a success and playing snooker and pool afterwards was tons of fun as well.

For me, Canta and T-Man it was the first time we came to a SoccerProject meeting and it definitely makes us want to do this again.

Despite the fact that most of us only see each other only once a year, it felt like we all knew each other for years. A really great group, true friends, we finally saw all those managers in the flesh: from our little Isis to tall Hoevi, everyone with their own personality and the perfect combination to keep on playing this game for many seasons to come.

If I want to write down everything I did that day, this report will soon grow into a full size novel. Let’s just finish with a friendly note by saying thank you to all who came down, and….

Hope to see you all at the next meeting!!

El stino

SoccerProject meeting 2008 (Nossegem, Brussels)

Sorry for the Dutch captions, but I guess the names are most important and you are all smart enough to see that we had lots of fun Enjoy!

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For more and uncensored pictures see http://media.soccerproject.com/Meeting_2008/

And finally: when Sjarel meets Lord Random ….

The biggest Sjarel interview ever

Hello Sjarel

First of all, thank you very much for cooperating on this interview. We have had quite a few questions from the forum-members, and we also like to thank all the people who contributed!

To start off the interview, we will ask you some personal questions.

Turns out the people want to know WHO you are. So, can you tell us something about yourself?

Sjarel: I’m a 29-year old programmer from Belgium. My nickname simply was the first thing I could think of when I first had to choose a nickname on the Internet, I’ve been using it ever since. I don’t have many hobbies besides SoccerProject, but I do play some chess, participate in a contest similar to pub-quizzes and enjoy having a drink with my friends when I have some time. Lately that hasn’t been much however since my wife gave birth to a baby-boy just last month. A few years ago I moved to my own place, but before I lived in Westerlo, which is why I’m a fan of football club KVC Westerlo, a Belgian Premier division team which even won the national cup a few years ago. I try to visit a few games each year, but this year I’ve seen only one so far. Lately I’ve picked up reading since I’ve been in the train a lot for my regular job and I do enjoy a good glass of wine. I think that’s it

How were you as a kid. Were you a good boy or a little rascal? How and where did you grow up?

Sjarel: I think I was a good kid, never had any complaints

I grew up in a small rural town. Did a bit of athletics and played some basketball. I never did anything bad, or at least nothing I would like to share with the community

As for my dreams, I never imagined to be a programmer. I guess that word didn’t even exist at that time!

You are married for a few years now, right? And you became a father recently. How is it to be a father?

Sjarel: Yes, I married in 2006. Me and my wife were together for 10 years already, I guess you could say we married as a 10-year anniversary

I also just became a father. It’s a completely new experience, but so far it has been all positive. I’ve been getting less sleep, but that’s the same for all parents I think.

Your wife, how does she feel about SoccerProject? Does she sometimes feel like she is married to SoccerProject instead of to Sjarel?

Sjarel: My wife has learned to live with SoccerProject. Although she would like me to spend less time on my PC and more with her, she understands and hardly ever complains. Nowadays she sometimes even likes the anecdotes I share with her, maybe she’s even reading my blog…

What was the reason you started SoccerProject? The market is loaded with soccer managers, so what made you and ReesinG decide to make another one?

How much time do you spend on SoccerProject on average?

Did SoccerProject change your life a lot, and did you ever think it would be such a success?

Sjarel: When we started working on SoccerProject the market wasn’t loaded yet, and we never even heard of games like Hattrick and others. We were playing another game ourselves and felt we could create a better game. When the other game stopped to exist, we put our words into deeds, and one year later SoccerProject was released. We never had any expectations and could only be glad to see it grow so fast. I also never expected it would take this much time from me, but so far I am able to keep it going. I really hope we’ll never have to end like www.roekoe.be, a game about pigeon racing that grew so fast that the plug had to be pulled.

According to my wife I ‘m spending about 20 hours on SP every week, and she might be right

So, yes it has changed quite a lot for me. Not only has it taken a lot of time, I’ve also met a lot of new and interesting people, be it mostly online only, and of course I’ve learned really a lot during the years. Not only technically speaking, but also about marketing, advertising, languages all over the world, etcetera.

Do you think you will ever be able to generate enough income from SoccerProject to stop working? Would you even want to be in that situation?

Sjarel: All depends on the numbers of managers, which countries they are from and the numbers of paying SPFA-members. On the other hand I also like my current job, so that is not necessarily one of my goals.

After three years of SoccerProject, and all the good and bad times that come with it, did you ever feel like you had enough of it, like you wanted to quit it? Has it become a duty or is it still a lot of fun for you? And did you ever consider starting another online game?

Sjarel: Sometimes it’s a duty, if the website is down it’s a must to get it online asap. Also solving problems in the community and fixing very minor hard-to-find bugs are not really what I call ‘fun’. But most of the time I enjoy working for SoccerProject.

Creating something completely different could only be done, if managing SoccerProject would take less time. At the moment I’m not adding really much new features, yet it still takes me a lot of time. A week has only 7 days for me as well.

In your position, you have to try to stay neutral and keep some of your thoughts to yourself. Does that drive you crazy sometimes? Managers as well as forummers do stupid things and behave badly, but you have to behave good at all times. Does it ever want to make you scream? Do you have a special something where you can release such frustration? Like a sport or a computer game?

Sjarel: Not really, I only find myself telling about such occasions to people I know IRL, I think that’s how I cope with it.

Many managers are competing for Isis’ love and affection, yet she seems only to have eyes for you. What is your secret?

Sjarel: She has been begging for player portraits ever since I told her about SoccerProject. By delaying the introduction of this feature I guess I just keep her ‘always wanting for more…’

To finish this part about you, how do you picture your own future and the future of the game?

Sjarel: I have no idea really, no long-term plans. I take it day-by-day and always try to do what’s best for SP imho. By that I mean what is best for SP in the long term of course.

The T-shirt is a gift from reesinG.  It is actually an acrostic with the letters of my son’s name.  It says: SoccerProject fan, caressable, natural talent, little rascal, angel, mess maker

Now for something different. Some managers are pretty interested in what it takes to create a website like this. Would you like to share some knowledge about this? Are you educated in web-applications?

Sjarel: I’m just your regular 13-in-a-dozen programmer, but there is one thing I learnt over the years. The only way to learn stuff, is to try it yourself. At least that’s how I learn new stuff, also for SoccerProject.

SoccerProject is completely written in PHP, and the data is stored in an MySQL-database. Currently 2 public web servers and 1 database server are sufficient to fill the needs of this application, but we have been looking intensively at DB-replication, which means we are ready to add some extra DB-servers if needed, for example if we would have to add an I-division. Adding an extra web server shouldn’t be too hard either, as we already have a load balancer set up to divide traffic between the two current web servers. In total we have 4 dedicated servers all running Gentoo Linux.

Sometimes the website gets into trouble, like the server-crashes last season. Are these crashes mostly to blame on external factors, or are they also human errors within SP or programming errors? What can you do to prevent this from happening in the future?

Sjarel: Crashes mostly have different causes, because most causes are fixed after they occurred once. Last month for instance we had problems with the hard-disk. Of course some crashes are caused by human (programming) errors, I guess you can’t rule them out completely. There have been some changes however in the process. Hard to explain exactly, but it would take even longer after a crashed simulation if it wasn’t for these changes.

But external factors can happen as well, we’ve had badly-plugged-in cables causing severe troubles as well in the past. I can tell you it’s really hard to find that out being hundreds of kilometers away from the actual data center.

Lots of managers are curious about what the future will bring. First of all, do you read all the suggestion-posts in the Requested Features forum? Do you give them a lot of thought?

Sjarel: I do, at least I try. Some of them are really good. If possible I implement them immediately. Otherwise I write them down. Unfortunately my list has become very long. Other suggestions are not good, those I ignore.

As you noted, the Romanian community badly wants a Sheriff of their own. This would solve a lot of communication problems, since not all Romanian managers speak English.

Do you plan to improve this situation in the near future?

Sjarel: I just have

Talking about Sheriffs, what is your opinion on the current system of fighting and punishing cheaters? Did you think al lot about changing the system?

Sjarel: Any good ideas are welcome, but so far it turns out really hard to make good additions. The sheriffs have made some suggestions of their own, but not all of them were possible.

A few managers were curious about the staff- and stadium-options.

Both are fairly limited in diversity and function. Do you think this will be improved in the future?

Sjarel: We might change that a little, but it really should not become to complicated for new users. I think SP is hard enough already for newcomers. On the other hand I don’t think that is the part where SP needs improvement the most.

Discussions on this subject always show lots of people for it and fairly many against. However it always generates a lot of interest: do you see National Teams in the future of SoccerProject?

Sjarel: I would really love to implement this, but the consequences are huge. How to handle injuries, fitness, moral and costs for example. Can a manager be obligated to give his player to a National team risking an injury. Or who will be the National manager and what are his options ? This will really take some thinking, implementing and testing…

Some managers think the tactics in SoccerProject should be improved. What is your opinion in this matter, and are there any ideas to make SoccerProject even more challenging?

Sjarel: I can agree with them to a certain extent, but tactics only really matter if teams are more or less alike. The A-division would be a good example for this, but I’m not sure in how many games this would be influential enough to change the outcome of the games.

Do you have great changes planned in the near future? Would you like to share some of them with our readers?

Sjarel: Except for the IBP (Instant Buy Price, already implemented), raising my son will be my most important concern for the near future. I will be very glad if I can keep SP up-and-running during this period.

Maybe I can share one future feature in this interview. One of our translators is busy translating the site into Persian. Just another one, you might think, but it’s not as simple as that. Apparently these guys want their texts from right-to-left instead of from left-to-right like we do. In order to be able to create a complete Persian (or in the future e.g. Hebrew) version of SoccerProject, almost all pages will need to be adjusted.

Were there ever big changes that you wanted to make, but couldn’t due to technical problems or a lack of time/resources?

Sjarel: Only lack of time. So far nothing else, except maybe for the money to advertise during the Olympics

And now a question that worries lots of addicted managers: What if, for whatever reason, you and ReesinG are unable to continue your work on SoccerProject. Did you ever think about that? Do you have a back-up plan for this? Would someone take over, or would the plug just be pulled? Needless to say, many lives would be destroyed if this would ever happen.

Sjarel: Chances of both of us giving up at the same time seem very small. There is no backup-plan, but like one of our former prime ministers used to say: “I only try to solve existing problems, not the ones you make up”. What I mean is, we’ll do our very best not to let that happen.

Now to finish the interview, is there any message you would like to send to the managers?

Sjarel: I suggest you all invite 1 extra manager to SoccerProject, if that works we’ll soon be able to create that I-division I was talking of.

Thank you for the Interview, and infinite thanks for SoccerProject J

Contributors to the questions:

Ultimate, Wojt, bats1903, robstje, saman13, Woko, Sex Pistols, snowflake, Maximoesje, el stino, Lexicus, mcmagik, oslicek, SBroccoli, Ivo08, and speaking for a bunch of Romanian managers: Bunicutzu. Thank you all!

SoccerProject country: Romania

Official name: România

Capital: Bucureşti

Location: Romania shares borders with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south. Romania has a stretch of sea coast along the Black Sea.

Area: 238,392 km²

Highest mountain: Moldoveanu Peak 2544 m)

Population: 22,276,056

Number of SoccerProject managers: 3757

SoccerProject translation: The Romanian translation was the second official

SoccerProject translation. It was finished on January 2005 by budist. He was the first non- Belgian moderator as well. Nowadays the translation is kept up to date by diamon.

SoccerProject survival tip: “Te rog nu imi da ban, dardar, cealalta echipa ii apartine fratelui meu” (Don’t give me a ban, dardar, that other team is my brother’s.)

Community: The Romanians have a very lively community with al kinds of initiatives.

Manager Bunicutzu is the highest ranked Romanian and he will (together with Decebal-Traian) enter the A division next season.

In the news: Romania has been in the SoccerProject news lately for their brand new sheriff. ~dardar3~ is the sheriff the Romanians have been crying out for for such a long time. Outside SoccerProject Romanians play soccer as well. This week Victor Piturca announced that he renewed his contract and will stay coach of the national team for two years longer. Romania shares a group with France, Holland and Italy for the next European Championship.

Who is hot in Romania?

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Community news

• Manager dino_001 has become father of this beautiful daughter ‘Evaluna’. Congratulations dino!
• 
  Manager Noppp is back home after 7 weeks of hospital. In the meantime Nop’s heroes have been lead to the A division by Picco and they are still in the cup. Noppp: “I hope to play a role there too. Maybe we will win two trophees this season! But my health is what really matters …”
• I have been writing about managers who are leaving SoccerProject a lot. But some managers also start up a new team after some time. There is Quansey for example. His new team is called Hoboken Wanderers and can be found in H1029. We hope to welcome him in our newsletter group again within the not too distant future
• SoccerProject is conquering China. Sjarel found a forum from which a number of people have subscribed to SoccerProject. If only there was a Chinese SoccerProject translation ….

Winner Banner-project

In the latest big update of the Newsletter, we have appealed to our loyal readers and forumvisitors, to create a banner for ‘The Naked Chef’ Cicco’s newest project SP-Cummunitiez. This is the perfect moment to announce the winner of the contest! Cicco has notified his decision, and the winner is…

The winning banner is created by b3h3moth!

We want to congratulate b3h3moth with his beautiful creation and win, and we want to thank everybody who has been working on this project and contest!

The Newsletterredaction & Cicco

Create a banner for SP Communitiez!

Sp-Communitiez and the Newsletter organise a banner-action. The purpose of this all is that you create a banner, that meet with the requirements described below. All the explanation you need, is also to be found below.

The banner has to meet with:

- Size 234×60
- Mention the name ‘SP Communitiez’
- Mention that it’s for free
- Mention that it’s available in : English, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Chinese
- It has to be English
- Mention thatThe most active blogger at the end of the month, will be rewarded free SPFA-membership of 5 euro (18 weeks)

The winner of this competition will also be rewarded by free SPFA-membership of 18 weeks (5 euro)
The competition lasts untill November 30th. The winner will be made public by the Newsletter

The entry can be sent to : banner@spcommunitiez.com

Good luck!

Cicco & the Newsletter

News

• This weekend we had an immaculate transition from season 19 to season 20. Senior managers remember other kinds of season simulations: SoccerProject was offline for more than 12 hours sometimes. So, we have to agree on this: Sjarel is doing a great job there!
• 
• The title in A was conquered by The Skunks. We saw a breathtaking battle between the four strongest SoccerProject teams ever: The Skunks, FC X-Tenzo, Maccbi Natanya and FC Vesalius. The latter also managed to get into the Cup finale. But manager Claudia came off worst and the title went to opponent Noppp. Nop’s Heroes won the SoccerProject Cup with a rating of as much as 146. Stunning performance on a Friday. Congratulations to both The Skunks and Nop’s Heroes.
• More news about Noppp: he soon has to go to hospital for a few days. Picco will manage his team in the mean time. We wish Noppp a speedy recovery!
• A division welcomes the youngest manager ever this season: brainman of FC De Rekenbreinen is only 13 years old. So please guys, go easy on him!
• Newly weds jimman23 and Aura have been spending a lot of money: they have bought a house! Their garden is now big enough to keep a whole bunch of pets and to host the annual SoccerProject meeting.
  
• 
• Sad news from the Portuguese community: Both the teams of Nespereira (Nespereira) and jaluis (SCS) have been deleted. I was lucky to be able to speak to both managers. How different were their reactions! Nespereira: “I know that my team is deleted, it’s a pity, but I have other priorities now. I finish studying this year and my girlfriend and me are thinking about getting married. I was simply too busy for SoccerProject. I didn’t want to say goodbye, that would have been too hard on me.” Jaluis has a different story: “Ooooh no, my team! Is it really gone? I haven’t been active the last few months but I still wanted to keep my team. The least I could have done is give it to my nephew. I lost 100 million here I kind of lost interest, but maybe one day, I’ll start again!”

News

Manager stent had some bad news.  Stent:”I have been ill for ages, but they only recently found out what’s going on.  I’ve been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. The doctors have reassured me that the treatment for it has become a lot better and that I shouldn’t worry about it too much.  But it’s the time I have to spend in hospital that I dread the most.”  We wish you all the best!

Isis is cutting back on her SoccerProject community time.  She has agreed to start teaching evening classes on Mondays en Thursdays.  Isis: It will be terribly busy the next few weeks and I feel kind of guilty towards my kids, that’s why I will spend less time on SoccerProject and the newsletter.  But I will keep writing!  The next newsletter is to be expected in three weeks time and it will contain an interview with Frrfrr.”

Also Sjarel has started writing.  He now has his own blog about SoccerProject.  Sjarel: “I started this blog because I couldn’t talk about certain things in my press announcements or in game messages.  It’s basically about what’s going on behind the SoccerProject scenes.” 

One of the things we can read about in Sjarel’s blog is the birth of SoccerProject on YouTube.  Manager sex_pistols has made the video.  Sjarel seems to be very enthusiatic about it and ponders about using videos as a quick start aid for new managers. 

Matt and Silverblast, two SoccerProject brothers and mods of the Dutch forum decided to quit SoccerProject.  This comes as a shock to the community since they were a few of the founding fathers.  As a moderator, the will be replaced by yockr.  Welcome yockr and hope to see you again Matt and Silverblast…..

Sybke won Mother Sliv’s drawing contest.  She made the illustration that accompanies Sliv’s story.  Thanks again Sybke to illuminate our Newsletter with your work!