Another year has passed, another year in which my virtual son has made me proud father. I know it sounds awfully sad, but it’s quite satisfactory to see a little pixelated man with your family name score a bunch of goals, knowing that he calls you “dad” in this particular save-game.
Just a wee bit of fun in between all the seriousness. A little FM trivia quiz for you all. Wonderkids from years lore, a few tactics questions, the odd challenge and a lot of “oh yeah, him!”-experiences lie in store. Play and let me know your score or stories regarding some of the players mentioned.
As the boy has now become a man, a proud (virtual) father stands before the task not to look back, but forward, to see what might be in store. As it happens, I am quite happy with the way Roel has progressed as a player. Tutoring by some of the finest players I had at the club has paid off and Roel has matured into a fast and lethal shadow striker.
It would appear he now favours Argentina as a nation to play for. I’m not entirely happy with that, but hey ho, what are you going to do… I’m also not entirely pleased with his ideas to move to Europe and play for * shudders * Chelsea… After the break, you can see some of the goals my boy has scored.
Since I managed to spawn my own virtual son, I’ve decided to follow his career with more than just moderate interest and well… Now you all get to follow his career as well. Every year, I will look at his career and update you all on the progress he has made with some screenshots and brief match clips. Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
Roel at intake. He didn’t look like much, but most coaches get it wrong. The raw potential is there, so we get some of the best tutors in the squad to help him develop. Combine that with some blatant nepotism and this young lad saw far more first team action than warranted.
A year later and he looks like quite the little gem. Slowly, we are polishing him and turning him into an absolute little star. His time will come, I am sure of it. Fortunately for him, he has a position that suits my strikerless needs, which means no time is lost in retraining him into a more suitable position.
On the verge of adulthood, Roel is developing into a quite nifty little shadow striker. Fast, aggressive and deadly. He has scored a few goals by now and he’s a solid starter in games versus opponents from the bottom half of the league.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had finally managed to spawn some virtual off-spring and well, I’m goddamn proud of my ability to reload a save-game numerous times, so I am going to follow his goddamn career. He looked average during the initial intake, but we all know our coaches and scouts tend to get it wrong with younger players. I have brought him into the senior squad to train with the best coaches around and given him some chances in first team, as well as letting the experienced squad members tutor him. A year into his career, he has developed nicely.
I have played Football Manager and its predecessor Championship Manager for maybe 15 or 16 years now. So far, I have never been blessed by having a newgen appear who I can call “son.” Last week, I was fed up with this and I decided to reload my save as often as necessary to finally get a virtual son. It turns out I needed to do this for about 90 minutes, reloading and assessing the intake roughly 40 times. Just as I was about to call it a day, the virtual stork decided to visit.
In an age where football (and thus the games that simulate football) is becoming less about individual skill and finesse and more about team tactics and defensive responsibilities, sometimes players and their style of play are like a breath of fresh air as they surprise you with some sort of unthinkable move.
Fans and spectators want to be entertained and it’s generally not the team players who provide most of this entertainment. It’s not the hard-working, combative Nigel de Jong’s and Nemanja Matic’s of this world people want to see when they go to a football stadium.
People want to see players who are prone to skipping past defenders elegantly, people want to see a great piece of skill and entertainment. Sure, we admire the defensive qualities of players like Chiellini and Terry, or the crossing abilities of someone like Di Maria or even the cool killer-instinct of forwards like Cristiano Ronaldo, but it’s the flair players—the ones who do unexpected things—that generally entertain the most.
Almost all of us, the commons fans, love watching players who can do special things with the ball, players who can surprise us. We might not like it when they do it against our team, but as a neutral, it is exciting and fun to watch. (more…)
Mrs. Strikerless and my good self are moving houses, which means dodgy new internet connections as well. It could take us a few days to get everything working again, priorities are unpacking boxes, not sorting the internet. So if there are no frequent updates, don’t worry, they will resume shortly.
If you have never heard of The Deep Lying Podcast, for shame. Start listening. Besides this blatant bit of unsponsored advertising, there’s a secondary reason for me to divert your attention to the guys from the DLP (I like abbreviations, sue me…). Yours truly as well as regular blogger and fellow Strikerless fiend @cdeekyfm have appeared on this podcast in the past few months.