Physical development and decline (Part 1).

Pre-season.

All six players reported back for training with no injuries or specific cause for concern. As you would expect after an end of season break the profiles of each player were largely full of red arrows indicating a losses in many of their attributes (the exception to this being Rogério who had maintained the vast majority of his attributes and even improved on three of them).

 

Physical development and decline (Introduction).

Today marks the start of a new series of articles which will take a look at six of my first-team squad over the course of an entire season. This will include looking at the condition the players are in when they return from the short end of season break in Brazil and at the end of each subsequent month. The idea of the project is to look at how the players’ attributes change over the season and hopefully to assess how much impact injuries, training and the number of matches played can make on the players.

 

Colombia

Tiers – Primera A and Primera B.

Cup Competitions – None.

Other Competitions – None.

Overview.

The current system of play in Colombia was introduced in 1999, though many systems have been used over the years (the 1996-97 season actually lasted 18 months due to the strange system used) . The current system is by no means popular with coaches, players or clubs and has received criticism for being unfair (America de Cali topped the league for four consecutive stages over two seasons yet failed to win a trophy on any occasion) and overly complex. Taking a closer look at the league suggests otherwise as it’s certainly no more complex than most other South American leagues.

 

Logo tutorial

As anyone who reads the blog on a regular basis will be able to tell you, my current game is based in South America, Brazil to be precise, and one thing that the Football Manager community lacks is a logo pack that covers those leagues. Yes, there are packs that cover the top divisions in Brazil, Argentina and most other CONMEBOL top divisions, but it irritates me when I face a ‘lesser’ side in a competition and the logo isn’t there. With this in mind I decided it was time to bite the bullet and start collecting logos myself.

 

Scoring from corners

Having looked at how to defend corners in some depth, I’m going to try and highlight how to get the most from your corners, especially as good set-piece routines can be the difference between losing/drawing and drawing/winning. As I’m sure everyone knows there was a highly successful corner routine available for both FM05 and FM06. Effectively a “cheat” routine the method involved loading as many players as possible onto either the near or far post before playing the corner to a long-shot specialist, standing on the edge of the area, who would then shoot at goal.