DF: WTF?

So the sharp-witted among you are reading about the Cleveland friendly with chagrin: "Justin Mapp, man of the match? We thought you exiled him."

And I did, I did. I shipped him off to Colorado for Pablo Mastroeni. I played through preseason and the first couple of matches with that roster before a power spike shut down my computer ... and corrupted the savegame. Arrrrgh.

Fortunately, I have the game set to three-file rolling autosave, so I was able to get the game back. However, the save I'm working from was before the Mapp trade, and looking at the roster again, I felt Mastro would make too many defender-types who'd bitch if they weren't playing every game. So this time I didn't exile the shmoopy but tantilizing Mr. Mapp.

Oh, and this time I sent Dasan Robinson to KC for Claudio Lopez, not Calen Carr. For some reason Carr's year-long injury ties my hands - I can't trade him, can't cut him. I hope I'm getting cred from the Fire's imaginary fans for my compassion.

DF: The first friendly

First up, the Cleveland City Stars. Now, I'm a big believer in not burning your team out over the course of the season, so I stress that this is just a friendly in the pregame talk. Plus, I'm reasoning the team is a little shaky since two players blew out their knees in practice 48 hours ago.

In any case, I've put out a pretty raw side:

--------- Rolfe --- Mama-----------

Mapp -- Pause -- Lily -- Thorrington

Lebeau -- Soumare -- Helguera -- Kelly

-------------- Anya ----------------

This is what is saved as 'family442dm1.3.' The two strikers are offset, with Mama coming back to hold possession (and the team is playing to her incredible feet), while Rolfe plays off the shoulder of the last defender. The wings are expected to be daring but to also work hard; Pause is a straight-up terrier, and Lily is a pivota-style linking midfielder. Helguera is in the sweeperish role, while Soumare pushes up a little. Kelly and Lebeau have a lot of license to get up the field.

Annnnnd we come out flat as a pancake. After a hopeful first 8 minutes or so, Cleveland collapses into the defensive crouch familiar the world over. Their midfielders, under no pressure, lob the ball into our corner to kill more clock - in the 22nd minute. That sort of thing.

Our Fire respond by doing very little, seeming confused. They do earn a few corners, mostly thanks to the industry of the limited but unflappable Thor. Finally, in the 53rd, the aforementioned God of Thunder chases down an aimless pass at the end line and first-times a cross that rakes through the penalty area, where a grateful Mapp taps it home.

Then subs, then circus, but nothing of moment. In the old ticker style, this snarl of preseason confusion looks a simple win: Cleveland 0, Chicago 1; Mapp 53.

DF: Gah, time for new physios

I always forget to go shopping for physios - I try to employ as many 19- and 20-rated physios as the board will allow, but somehow I forget about it, usually until the first rash of injuries.

Something about the leap year or something, but McBride sprained his knee (out 6-7 weeks) and Seannie tore a ligament in his knee (out 6-9 weeks) in training on Leap Day. That's crappy.

Del Fuego: Preseason decisions

As usual, I had my coaching staff working the players hard physically and with the ball. I find that if I train set pieces and shooting too much too early, the team never coheres sufficiently to become the kind of possession panthers I want them to be. So it's high ball control and tactics all through March, right up until the first MLS game. And I don't have to make much of a decision about shape - I prefer a low-tempo diamond 442 with a fairly deep line and active fullbacks, and we've got the personnel to make that work (basically), so good.

Which means the preseason is about a couple of things: Making sure everyone gets a fair amount of minutes in the friendlies, and making the all-important roster decisions. MLS roster restrictions, when compared with the leagues it feels are its peers, are insanely parsimonious. 28 man roster, $50 thou a week for salaries - oh, and 10 of those contracts are the notorious 'developmental' cat-food-diet contracts. Somehow several of my wunderkinds have agreed to these insane pittance salaries, which means that I have a pretty deep roster in MLS terms.

The roster is pretty strong, but I have another factor: The club has a rich owner who expects changes. That's right - he insists I spend money.

As a longtime Fire fan, I know the areas I want to address, and let's start with Justin. Fucking. Mapp. Good lord, this kid has driven me insane with his mopey inconsistency for something like 750 years, despite being only 24 years old. And so, after a refreshing romp on a pile of the owner's money, I send Calen Carr to play in a minor league baseball stadium and summon El Piojo from Kansas City ... Calen Carr and, umm, 1.5 million dollars.

Yeah, that's right. My only excuse, really, is that it's someone else's money.

And, yeah. I need some more veteran leadership. Or better veteran leadership. So ... ehh ... Pablo! Mastroeni! for CJ Brown. And 3 million, because I really want Colorado to turn a profit this year.

Remember: Someone else's money.

At this point a madness gripped me. Gripped was I by a madness! Veteran leadership - seasoned, credentialed veteran leadership - couldn't possibly have a downside on a side carrying six (6) wunderkindsess under the age of 18. Right? RIGHT? So, gee ... Ivan Helguera. 33 years old, 47 caps for Spain, played for Valencia last year (!) and Real Madrid (!!) the 10 years before that. Available on a free (?!?) ... for the second year in a row (!?>!).

I'm working under the assumption that, for players to develop a cosmopolitan sense of the game, they need guides. And so I'm trying to provide a multitude of guides for our pile of Fire wunderkinds - Blanco and McBride, yes, the trickster and the stalwart, but also Mastroeni (the terrier) and Helguera (the dude who played with all the other dudes). I tried my damnedest to use reallife(tm) to guide my draft picks, turning two second-round selections into Chris Pontius and AJ DeLaGarza.

On a sad note, the distinguished careers of Diego Gutierrez and Brandon Prideaux came to an end earlier than in our world. The new blood crowds out the old, and round we go ...

Del Fuego!

Another year. Another year. No matter what, those two word ground away at the back of his mind. Another year of the cycle of practice-film-practice-film-practice-scrimmage-practice-film-practice-walkthrough-game. January in Chicago, trying to play football. Ice-cold rain whipping in sheets off the lake - miserable. The world as painted by a goth kid. Always this idea, never acknowledged out of superstition, that the whole thing would be redeemed by a moment of greatness, a perfect, transcendant goal or cup win or dynasty. Chris Armas trudged to the first workout of the 2008 season without an inkling what he was about to see: An American soccer Golden Age, just being born.

The coach was new, some wild-eyed scout who'd found a bunch of players on an immigrant Argentinian cattle farm in central Michigan. Sean Spence talked his way past security to Andrew Hauptman's executive suite using a shared family background at Williams College and a gift for gab. Once there, though, he had the incredible Youtube footage he'd loaded earlier: The Argentinian-American kids from the pasture zipping the ball around effortlessly, juggling, scoring goals for fun. A spate of youth contracts later, the Fire possessed the future of American football ... for a little while, at least.

And now, Chris Armas' task begins. How to advise the genius kids? How to teach what you cannot do?

The rain blats down. The sound of leather spheres struck sweetly races out the open gym door.

* * *

So here it is: The 4,123rd blog about someone's Football Manager game (sorry, I'm in North America: Worldwide Soccer Manager game). This is a scenario I've tried a couple of times in the past, and always enjoyed, for reasons which will become obvious. After finding my way around the match engine and sharpening my tactical nous, I'm ready to give it a go in the latest iteration. 3D match engine! Exciting.

The idea here is that I'm running an MLS team which suddenly finds its bounty overflowing - a golden generation blossoms in the American Midwest. I named the added players after people in my family, because ... well ... I have three daughters, and they wonder just what in the world I'm doing over here on the computer every night around bedtime. I call this game 'the family game' for a reason: My wife, my children and I are the stars of this one particular storyline. The girls are all boys in the game, since you can't designate girls as players. (They hate that fact, if you must know.)

I've run several iterations of this idea on Championship Manager dating back to the 99-00 edition, I think. I've found that for this to have any real zest I have to adjust some of the background hoodoo a bit. Firstly, I tend to bump up the prestige of the club, in this case the Fire, to prevent the Random Scout Scenario.

Random Scout Scenario strikes when a low-prestige team starts the game with high-potential players - the first scout that runs into them suggests an academy slot, and off they run to the higher-prestige club. In other words, I start the game to find that all the youth players I just created were snatched in utero by some Euro team with a great scout. Feyenoord, usuallly. Willem II. Good lord, Seannie once wound up at Brentford.

Speaking of narcissism (weren't we?), the best young player in the game - the leader of that Golden Generation - is named after me. Yeah. Sorry. But there it is. An interesting aspect of CM/FM/WSM is the randomization of the attributes and personalities, so expect this blog to be as much about the glimmers of personality that shine through the slow interaction of the numbers. I absolutely love that shit, and I'm not sure why - if someone can figure that out for me, I'd love for that discussion to develop.

So, without further ado, the players Andrew Hauptman saw on that series of YouTube videos:

Seannie is 16, rightfooted attacking mid, keeps the ball on a string, passes anywhere, great ideas, incredible upside, and looks like he'll be starting before his 17th birthday. In a best case scenario, Blanco takes him under his wing. It's also possible Blanco could suck and he'll get pushed in early. I'd like to keep him under wraps for a while, but it seems a foregone conclusion that this kid will transfer in the January window after his 18th birthday. In every iteration, Seannie becomes one of the elite attacking midfielders in the world. This time, I have no idea. I pegged his passing, creativity, dribbling and technique, the rest is random.

Mama is short (5'5") but her striker technical stats are insane: 20s in long shots, first touch, creativity, 16s in finishing, heading and dribbling. Only average athleticism makes this believeable at all. Another 2-years-and-thanks-for-the-memories player. I think I pegged her first touch and long shots.

Kaia's the big strong striker to Mama's technical one. A finisher, though. In several of the iterations Kaia becomes a dominant striker. Pegged strength, stamina, finishing, anticipation (not sure about anticipation, honestly).

Lily is the balance to the group. First off, Lily is discovered at the ripe old age of 23 with his siblings, so he's ready to play immediately. Secondly, Lily is a thoughtful, cerebral hard-tackling midfielder, unlike the three scorching attacking talents above. Lily starts off the game on the radar of several Danish clubs no matter what you do, but the good news is he's very loyal and amenable to a long-term deal.

Anya is our class clown child, the labile one, the actress ... so of course, in the game Anya is a keeper. 20 Eccentricity! Yes! Get used to it, because he'll be world-class for about a quarter-century. This iteration may be the best one yet - some of the pure keeper stats are insane.

Kelly and Lebeau are family friends who appear in the game as a matching set of fullbacks. Like everyone else I added, they're better than I meant them to be.

A note: I really didn't mean to have the players be this good this early, but here we are and we'll deal with it - heh. The rest of the roster looks like this:

I've gone on a coach-recruiting binge, the results of which I'll post shortly. For now, I'll leave you with the work of my assistant manager, Mike Matkovic, who apparently believes that more games are better in the preseason - holy shit! He's arranged a game every two days for a couple of weeks there. Nutty.

It's nice to be right sometimes

I've written before about my team in Trophy Manager, FC Flint Utd. I've written about my determination to make a West Ham- or River Plate-style football factory a reality in this virtual space.

Trophy Manager is a thoroughgoing sim of the finanace of a professional football club. I wanted to thrive basically wholly with homegrown talent. It's been ... difficult.

I started, way back in season 4 (it's now season 12) in the fourth division of American football, and the level of the club has grown incredibly. Varden Pomeroy was the promising young player in those days - he won the U21 player-of-the-year for league 4.1 in that first season. Now, he's a 27-year-old who's more coach than player. He hasn't made the matchday squad this season.

The team, as it is now, is almost entirely FC Flint academy products, and I'm a couple of decent results away from winning 3.5. In any case, it'll likely be back to the second division next season - we'll see if my boys have the two-promotions-in-two-years trick in them.

I've got a team loaded with attackers. My best player, though, is a defender, Phil Dickson, who is 20 and has a couple of USA caps to his name already - but I've got 3 strikers about that level around that age, a couple of other defenders, and an assssssload of midfielders. I'm excited to go back to the 2nd Division without my hat in my hand.

If anyone wants to look, here's my Trophy Manager team.

The most unlikeliest result of all the unlikely results

Somehow, unlike in the real world, the English language won the football in my FastDice Soccer simulation. Here we are, ready for the final, and they're singing God Save the Queen (40 years on, what a story, who'dathunk, kin'abringsatearin'nit?) and ... I shit you not ... the Star-Spangled Banner. England v. USA, the mother country v. my mother country.

But first, a quick depiction of the semifinals I just simmed, while I can remember some of the ebb and flow ...

Argentina 0, England 1 a.e.t.

England surprised the confident Argentines by establishing a cerebral passing game and sticking with it. The Albiceleste defended well, but the English midfield duo of Gerrard and Lampard - so often disappointing when together in real life - were incredible in this game, completely unsettling Cambiasso, Riquelme et al.

England's dominance faded as the game went on, though, and the goal that seemed so close wouldn't come. The massive pro-England crowd grew pensive and pessimistic, and it wasn't hard to see the strain on the players' faces. As extra time beckoned, Argentina brought on England-killer Saviola for the inevitable dagger.

The dagger, though, when it came, was for the South Americans. Joe Cole's persistence in storming off the left flank paid off - his whistling diagonal pass slicing toward Rooney just past the spot; Maxi Rodriguez, hustling back into the penalty area, realizing the danger posed by the Rooney, contorting himself to leap at the pass. His desperate, glancing header. The ball in the top corner, in ultrasuper slomo in every television in the solar system. England in the World Cup Final.

USA 1, Spain 0

This one was conventional, if unlikely. Spain pinged the ball around a la Arsene's Arsenal, but (like that lovely outfit) didn't make all that much happen. The Spanish turned a nearly 4-1 possession advantage into a magical 4-3 lead in shots.

When the Spanish did break through - Fernando Torres in particular tortured the US defense for the entire 90 minutes - Kasey Keller was there, diving and tipping and just averting disaster.

This one might have gone the full two hours if it weren't for one magical finish. Brian Ching wrote his name into national lore when his screaming volley finished off a simple, clinical counter-attack for the Americans. (Play-by-play: Bocanegra to Reyna, Reyna pauses and steps into some space, Reyna with a direct ball to CHING!!! WONDERGOAL FROM CHING!!! was how it sounded in my head.)

So, in Excel spreadsheet simulations, english wins. yay english.

yay beer. boo angry ruling class.

Fast Dice World Cup '06: The Update

I'm up to the semifinals of Copa Mundial '06, and it looks like this:

Argentina v. England
USA v. Spain

Yeah. USA v. Spain. I SWEAR! TO! GOD! I'm not cooking the frickin' numbers. I wondered about my influence as observer earlier - it goes deep. Check this out:

To get to the semis, the US had about the cushiest draw imaginable. Croatia and Japan laid absolute eggs in the group stage, and an average Australia team slipped through. The US dominated possession and slipped by with a single goal, 1-0, and on to the quarters.

I mean, holy shit, the quarterfinals of the World friggin' Cup. Who's it gonna be? Brazil? France? Italy? England? The Netherlands? Spain? Germany? Argentina?

Ehhhh, heh-heh. Heh. No. The USA settled down after beating the Aussies to take in the majesty of Switzerland v. Saudi Arabia. Yeah! The Bankers v. The Barons. Fantastic. The world was on pins and needles to see which branch of the oligarchy played us, lately the world's villains. This wasn't how we assumed it would be in 1982. The Swiss rang up two in the second half to win, 1-3.

So it was the Swiss for Uncle Sam's boys. Mastroeni sprung Beasley behind the D in the 74th, and good gosh a-mighty, the US is in the semis. Now Spain awaits - the first really good team the US has played since group. Weird.

Anyway, I'm gonna sim the rest, then post the whole shebang. Dig.

Good lord, I'm a dingo

So today I'm posting a comment on Adam Spangler's This is American Soccer - which everyone should read immediately - and I follow my own name-link here, only to find that the last time I posted was almost exactly EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

Holy crap, am I a slacker. That, on top of being a slacker: Behold the birth of Slacknerd.

Yikes.

So, err, hi there everyone. (Meaning, of course, 'no one,' but whachagonnado?) I'll be back soon with updates on the FDS World Cup, my Trophy Manager experience, and other fun soccer-and-gaming stuff. If anyone wants to read it, well, it'll be free, so at least worth what you've paid for it.