The black hole

Every single day, SoccerProject-managers experience 5 black holes during the 24 hours a day counts. During the day 4 minor simulations keep the addicts away for 15-25 minutes, if nothing goes wrong accidentally. But overnight (to us, Europeans) the server has to perform much more than on a basic simulation, which only takes friendly (cup)games and training sessions. During the week it has to face loads and loads of league games, calculation of rankings, automatically handled transfers and training sessions. During the weekend the workload is way less, and when the Cup has passed some rounds, every round there are less games to be simulated.

To be honest, we simply can’t complain anymore about simulations. There are hardly no problems anymore (a problem can always occur of course), and the length is very acceptable. The situation has evolved enormously in the positive way, something which earns a big applause to developer Sjarel!

To get a better view on those simulations overnight, I’ve kept all my emails I received from my league games. When you receive these emails the site isn’t accessible for somewhat 5 minutes, but that doesn’t make such difference. I’ve put all data into a graph…

(The vertical ax presents the time from 4 AM until I received the mail in my mailbox)

(The horizontal ax of course presents the matches)

There are some conclusions you can make, but this graph of course doesn’t tell it all.

- The average length of a simulation in the end is somewhat 45 minutes longer than one at the beginning of a season.

- The difference between the shortest (day 1) and longest (day 30) simulation is 88 minutes.

- Although there is a clear growing trend, not every simulation is longer than the earlier one.

- During the season the data that the site has to carry from the earlier days makes the simulations longer, but there are other factors that influence the length (server speed, number of transfers that have to be performed, …).

- Before 7 AM, you should be able to check your score every day.

- We don’t really have to mind about the simulations, everything’s running smoothly!

ByBB

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!

Talking dirty

SoccerProject is great because it is a versatile game. There are as many reasons to play SoccerProject as there are managers. Some like trading, some like the community most, some like building a huge stadium and some like talking dirty ….

These are the results of my, once in a few weeks, SoccerProject crusade to eradicate all these four-letter word team and manager names.

The words fuck, shit, lul (Dutch synonym for penis), tet (Dutch for tit) are very popular. Sometimes I also find references to politics and racism.

You might start thinking that I’m a bit of a nun. But I’m not. I simply think these words (names) don’t belong in an environment like SoccerProject. And in general the sheriffs agree with me. As you can see, they agreed with me this time as well: they changed the offensive names into something else. And sometimes the new names are hilarious! (Thank you sheriffs for that!) Mind that some of the names aren’t changed, but those are the names of teams or managers that received a permanent ban for other reasons than their names.

 

If you want also want to catch foul-mouthed managers: go to manager / other managers / cheaters. You can even make suggestions which name you want the sheriffs to change it in. (Great fun!)

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!

SoccerProject news

SoccerProject News

The face of SoccerProject has changed a lot since our latest news was published. Lots of new people have been employed by Sjarel and a few new features have been implemented by this godlike SoccerProject hero. I’ll give you a list of things that have changed.

First of all there were a few new sheriffs appointed. As you could read in the interview Badbuffalo is one of them. The other one is patqa, he is Czech and is now deputy next to Foxir. This was necessary since the Czech community is the largest and fastest growing community on SoccerProject.

There were also a lot of new moderators employed on the ever growing SoccerProject forum. In the Dutch part, we now have el stino as a mod and sjoerd as a moderator of the transfer topic. On the Czech forum dramji is new and Geronimo is now in charge of the general transfer topic. Two new forum sections have been opened as well: a German (EbaIba is the mod) and a Turkish section with Helios as a moderator.

Geronimo about his new job: “I had a bit of experience moderating on another forum. So, this is not quite new to me. I think I am rather strict in applying the rules but the result is there; almost no topic titles are wrong anymore. Sometimes people seem very stubborn and keep doing it wrong, but most of the times it turns out that they don’t understand the rules then. I’ll explain it to them and then we are cool again. There is some confusion now and then because of the fact that the rules are different on the other transfer forums but by and large everything is going fine.”

Manager cicco has designed a totally new website http://www.spcommunitiez.com Here every SoccerProject manager is given webspace for his own personal SoccerProject website or blog. We thank cicco for this great initiative. Blogging together with OscarCookie, Badbuffalo, dragosh, pipkin en frankie_doparoma will be the new SoccerProject hype, so if you are interested, please take a look!

The last weeks a few managers announced their SoccerProject retirement, some of them are being bored (Smiley), others don’t have time (Alisa) and a third category thinks he is going to stop but is too hooked to pull the plug. (I guess we could say Furax belongs to this category.) Akki (ex rollerbal) was forced to stop due to a ban. The Newsletter talked to him recently and this is what we have learned about Akki: “I’m doing fine really, me and my girlfriend have just bought a piece of building land and I have to leave to go to the bank actually. I started up a new team and had to begin all over again in H. I became second and I got promoted to G. I think I will stay here a few seasons now.” When I ask him how his team is called Akki replies: “I’m not going to tell you. Not even my friends know the name of my team. Only my girlfriend knows. She makes fun of me now because I’m in a lower division than she is. Her team, FC Soepkieke, can be found in D16 nowadays. Aura of FC Mira has been trying to find out what my new team is, she has been searching for hours without result. When I come to A again, I will change my team name to rollerbal again and then everyone will know ”

More news about managers and their real lives: Aura of FC Mira and Jimman23 of FC Bruggenhof are engaged now. They set their wedding date on the 18^th of August. We are looking forward to see pictures of the bride and groom Manager dino_001 is going to be father again soon. Congratulations for that! Sad news has come to us too. Rpg_gamer’s father has deceased. We offer rpg and his mother our condolences.

News

• 

Silverblast made this cartoon. He won our cartoon contest on the forum. If you have ideas for more cartoons, please let us know!

• Sjarel about the cartoon: “I like it very much, ReesinG already had two sons, now I have one too. ”
• SoccerPoject has 30 000 managers, most of it male. The majority of them are in their teens, but some of them are older. When you browse SoccerProject and read the press announcements or take a look at the logos, you have a big chance of running into a proud young father. We know that ReesinG has two sons born since the start of SoccerProject. And recently Robborover, an important member of the English community has become father again. His oldest son Callum has a baby brother now. Robborover in his own words: “On Tuesday morning myself and my partner (Rhona) left home at 6:30 am. At 11:14am Liam Thomas Robinson was born. He weighed an impressive 9 pounds 9 ounces and is fully healthy.” In Romania tiramitsu has become a father: he has a baby boy called Eric Solomon. Congratulations to both fathers and their families! Robborover and his son, Liam
• If you thought that SoccerProject is a game for nerds and machos only you’re wrong. SoccerProject is a romantic place. This is what we read in Czech manager pindolino’s press announcements: “Manager Martin Ceral made a request to his long time girlfriend Bohuslava Krejcova to marry him. He is awaiting her answer now.” I asked him to comment on this: “And the good news is that she said ‘yes’! There is no date set yet. It wouldn’t be a good time right now, because Bohuslava is going to university first. We are engaged and I asked her in a traditional way. We had a romantic dinner together and then I asked her while I gave her the engagement ring.”
• In the last week of the season 32 teams struggle in the last rounds of the SoccerProject Cup. Experts expect Westel or FC Vesalius to win.
• We of course also want to congratulate manager kenny of kfc de pomp. In the last competition game he managed to secure the title in A. He is happy to have achieved something that really matters in SoccerProject and hopes to find the motivation to go on like he did before.
• SoccerProject seemed to have a lot of problems the last few weeks. Sjarel announced a new server but SoccerProject turned out to be so slow that playing the game wasn’t much fun. The problems are solved now and we ask Sjarel about it: “It was a very annoying period, looking for a needle in a haystack. Constantly worrying about what could be the cause. I was constantly discussing with ReesinG and changing code to try to improve things. What’s positive, during the last few weeks the game engine has been optimized and we have a lot of ideas for further improvements, that’s what happens when you go more deeply into it. The feeling I most remember was the relief I felt on the night that it started to dawn on me. Actually we thought that the new server was the problem, but the friendly pool turned out to be the culprit. I had to change three lines of code and that was it!”
• Do you know this site? http://www.freewebs.com/buffalolo/index.htm This site has a lot of interesting information about and records of SoccerProject. It looks like there is even a Romanian version of this site on the way.

Visje69 in the SoccerProject jungle

Visje69 meets ‘Random’

Recenlty it was decided a column would be regularly posted on the SoccerProject Newsletter. Not a bad idea, I first thought, until we discussed the first subject: Random….

First I thought of killing myself, no way was I doing that!! But then again I started thinking writing this was a better option. I met a huge task to describe and discuss the most controversial subject in the Soccerproject history. As for myself I’m not the perfect person to say anything about that, since my team has won only one game in two seasons time. Because of the entire change in my team I haven’t found the time to study upon the random. So therefore I went looking for some games that ended with the ’smallest’ difference or an ‘unjust’ draw. Where else to start my quest than on the forum, THE place where managers make each other’s life a living hell.

After a few pages I ran into a manager (not literally of course) that claimed the random had become worse, but as fast as he put on that statement it was taken off the edge by some more experienced managers in the game. A change in random seems excluded, because Sjarel should have said something about it then.

The first two matches that I investigate in my own division, nothing strange happened there. First we have a 0-0 draw with a line difference of 1 and in the other game there was a 0-1 victory with a line difference of 2 in the advantage of the winning team. Also in the next two matches that I watched, nothing strange happened. It seems like random doesn’t strike in my division? Or maybe Sjarel loves me and saves me from Random? So I went to division A. The first match between the glassbell and rollerball was very close but won by rollerball despite of a line advantage of 7! But also in the other 5 close games in A, nothing strange happened. So after investigating 27 games in E12, A, B1, B2 and B3, there was only one case that could be seen as a case of random. In the match between Team#soad and FC Diepenbeek, where the home team had a line advantage of 3, but the match ended in a 0-0 draw. Not that much of a surprise right? My personal conclusion: The random is not so marked as most people think (certainly not with me, thank you Sjarel!), but it seems like that because people complain when it works in their disadvantage!! But since I’m not playing this game alone, more opinions are required.

So I looked for some managers that knew more about this and asked for their reactions.

bLo0dHunt3r: “Well, everyone is fanatical about the random, but I’m glad that it’s there. A team that can’t manage to score, can play a superb game, but it shall never win. It makes it more realistic, you’re a trainer with a worked out strategy, but in the end it’s up to the players. Without the random, everything would be too determined.”

Alisa: “Oh well, of course it’s a shame for the team that was better and lost. But in real life it happens too that the better team loses (Vitesse – Ajax, 4-2). Because of that there still is some tension in the game. Otherwise if you played a game between an A and a D team, you would know beforehand that the A-team would win.

Random isn’t only to be found in matches, this shows after I heard this story from Loreback (aka David Joosen): “I had a youth coordinator that didn’t give me enough players, and if I received one after all, he was way too aggressive! So I decided to fire my youth coordinator and hire a new one. But when I looked back to my old one, I saw that in his new team, he immediately delivered a superb player! So you see that random strikes everywhere!”

Also the story of Akki makes us think about the random: “I have the bad luck that 5 times in a row, my youth player was rejected because of the random, my patience is running out. Random itself should be there, I don’t mind that you lose a game once against a team that’s supposed to be weaker, it happens in real life too, but it has to be realistic. You shouldn’t lose 5 games against a weaker opponent in one season, but 2 to 3 times is all right.

To make a final conclusion, after this investigation we did not get much further. (Wasted all this valuable time!) Random is hitting randomly but not as bad as most people think. Random doesn’t have to change. And for the managers who think they are harmed by the random, don’t worry, because it doesn’t occur that much and only makes the game more realistic. If perhaps you feel the uncontrollable urge to kick your computer out of the window now, try to reconsider, because there are better options

By Visje69

We want to thank Sybke for this wonderful cartoon. She won our cartoon contest this week. Several other people did a good job as well, they might want to try again next week. And if you’d like to see your cartoon in the newsletter, please enter our contest on the forum!