James.Clench

Thanks to everyone who contributed to my previous thread, I noticed that it has recently attracted some attention so I wrote this, I could have posted this in the original thread but I felt it deserved a thread of its own.

Ok I think I have a solution that will please all parties. It would be a model based on there been no P.A. Instead it would be a formulae which encompasses all the aspects below. You see the truth is that we could all become the greatest footballer in the world, if we had enough time. If I biologically froze at the physical age of 23 for the next 150 years then I could become the greatest footballer ever, in fact if I had 150 yeas to spare I could become the greatest anything! Golfer, Chess master, Poker player, anything, we all could, It’s just a shame life isn’t like that!

In real life there are two main aspects, and some minor aspects which determine how good you will become at anything.

1.Intelligence The rate at which you learn and can successfully implement new skills. (football wise)

2.Ambition Broadly speaking this covers determination, work rate in training amongst others, basically how hard, and how much effort a player puts in.

Now, players with high intelligence and high ambition make for world class football players, they have the ability to learn new skills fast, and they are always learning new skills because they train a lot, and work very hard. A player can still become world class with high intelligence and medium ambition, even in some cases low ambition, but not the other way round. For example my mum took her driving test 9 times, had 100’s of lessons and went through about 6 instructors, but never passed her test, she had all the ambition and determination in the world, but just never learned! I on the other hand took about half a dozen lessons and past second time. In football terms, if I had a choice, I’d rather be a lazy genius than a hard working ****** any day.

Now for the minor factors; In the original post I said that “if at the age of 14 I’d have gone to a world class youth academy, I’d be a lot better player than I am now” which is probably true, but the youth academy would of given up on trying to make me a premiership standard player after about a week, as I am, footballing wise, a lazy ******! The worst combination! But if this youth academy new that my body was “physically froze” for the next 150 years then they would have kept me, and taught me everything, as I would EVENTUALLY have learned. So we have to consider;

3.Environment Coaches and Training facilities. As well as first team experience.

This aspect would have little effect on players with high intelligence, such as Pele and Ronaldo, as they mastered how to play football in the back streets of Sao Paulo. But it would affect players with high ambition and medium intelligence, players who need a good coach and facilities to help them learn.

We also have to consider something that any player, even one with very low/non intelligence and ambition (as long as the money is good) can become. A brick s**t house! There are lots of players out there who possess either the ability to run very fast, or are incredibly strong, and athletic yet they don’t make the very best footballers. Spurs have two of these players, Aaron Lennon and Tom Huddlestone. Lennon is amazingly quick, yet by the time he’s learnt how to do everything else as good as C. Ronaldo, he’ll probably be about 45 years old, (I’m speaking as a Spurs fan, p.s. 5-1 yeah baby!!) don’t get me wrong I think Lennon is a good player, but unless he has high intelligence, and ambition there wont be enough time for him to become as good as C. Ronaldo (I suppose comparing him to the best player in the world is a bit unfair) Also there’s Tom Huddlestone, he’s an absolute man mountain, but he isn’t half the player Patrick Viera is, because he cant pass, position himself, run, play through balls, etc. etc. So again, unless Huddlestone has high intelligence, he’ll never be as good as Viera. So the physical side of a players game will have to be given a whole different formulae, since Intellegence and to a degree ambition have a significantley less effect.

We also have to consider the negative effects of making a player have more muscle, every player in the world would benefit from been able to run quicker, jump higher, and last longer, but due to the added weight and change in body shape making a player a greater physical presence, i.e. making Fabregas as muscly as Huddlestone could have a detrimental effect on his game, plus making a big player lose lots of weight in order to become quicker and more agile could also be detrimental so I guess this part of the physical side would be linked to intelligence with regard to adaptability. for example, a player with high adaptability would not see his technical and skill based attributes decrease as much as a player with low adaptability if they both started hitting the gym to either become more muscly, or if he is already big, to lose weight and gain speed.

As you may know (If you use miniScout or Genie) you can see some players peak at 23 i.e. they have CA 123 and PA 123, I had one such player, and as an experiment I placed him on a training regime with Strength and Aerobic set to intense, yet his strength stat only went from 12 to 13 in 4 years! I also put another 23 year old player whose CA was 115 and PA was 177 on the same training regime, and his strength stat increased from 13 to 18 in the same 4 years. This part definitely needs to be changed.

I think I’ve covered all the bases, so here it is. My model/formulae for Mental, Technique and Skill based attributes would look like:

A=B*(1/C)*(1/D)*(1/F)*e^(-G)


A= The time taken for that player to increase his rating for a specific attribute by +1
B= Current ability of a specific attribute (range 1-20), It’s obviously easier, and would happen quicker for someone to increase from 1 to 2, then it would to increase from 19 to 20, so the higher the current attribute, the harder it is to improve it.
C= Ambition, it’s calculated as 1/C so that the high the number, the quicker the player improves.
D= A clubs training facilities and Coaches setup, this number would not vary too dramatically form club to club, a free agent would have D= 1.00 where as a player at Man Utd would have D= 1.17, or something like that.
F= Intensity of training, again only a small variation, a player not training in a specific area could have F= 0.92 (so the attribute decreases over time) and a player on intense training could have F= 1.15 for example.
G= Intelligence, calculated as e^, as it is exponential because I think it is the most important factor regarding the time taken for a player to develop, and (-) negative so the higher the number, the quicker the time.

Note that age isn’t factored into the above equation as the attributes are not physical ones. Which makes sense if you think about it, for example at the age of 32 If someone with high Intelligence started to practise free-kicks or corners, they would get pretty good at them because free-kicks and corners don’t take into consideration a players physicality.

My model/formulae for Physical based Attributes.

A= B*(1/logC)*(1/2*D)*e^(2*-F)*e^H



A= The time taken for that player to increase his rating for a specific attribute by +1
B= Current ability of a specific attribute (range 1-20).
C= Ambition, it’s calculated as 1/C so that the high the number, the quicker the time, it’s a log function so that Ambition has less of an effect on physical training than it does on mental.
D= A clubs training facilities and Coaches setup, this number would not vary too dramatically, but it would still be greater than for mental attributes, that’s why it is doubled, a free agent would have D= 1.00 where as a player at Man Utd would have D= 1.17, or something like that.
F= Intensity of training, in physical training, this would be the most important aspect, that’s why it’s doubled, then an exponential function, someone not training would still have F= 0.92 for example, but it would have more of an affect, and the same is true for someone on intensive training.
H= Age, the second most important factor in physical training, as it is an exponential function, it means that increasing your physical attributes when you hit 28 and 29 would be very difficult. Just as a note, a 19 year old wouldn’t have H= 19, but instead a number, allocated for the age of 19.

Both these models are very crude, and would no doubt need major tweaking and even changing completely, but the basic outline for a new system of calculating a players ability is there.

In an ideal world each specific attribute would have its own “difficulty” ratio, and in a perfect world each attribute would have it’s own formula, as some attributes are harder to learn that others, but this would probably slow the game down dramatically, so for now I think it is good enough to at least split the Attributes into physical and mental.

In Summary these new models bring a welcome change to the “roof” on players ability we currently have, but it doesn’t allow Joe averages to become superstar’s just because they are at Man Utd. They also make a players training far more important, an aspect of the game that is currently lacking. I could make a young Joe average very good at free-kick’s, but I would have to allocate a lot of training for this which would see all his other attributes suffer.