My Hattrick Journey

This is a brief summary of my time spent here with the game most of us enjoy. What happened in the past, what's going on at the moment, possible future plans and some random thoughts along the way.

It all began back in early 2006. A couple of my friends had already gotten a team, and since I both played soccer IRL at the time and like all kinds of games, I thought this would be a nice combination so I applied for a team myself. The early stages of my gaming experience was what I believe is quite common for many managers in this game, in that I didn't have a clear plan on what to do for several seasons. Training and selling players for a (small) profit, trying to do the best I could in matches with the limited knowledge I had, and just messing about and enjoying the game. I can't even remember anymore at what point I discovered the forums, but that's when I gradually started to put some more thought into what I was doing. I have always liked to read, so the forums kept me occupied and even provided me with a welcome escape from my regular day-to-day life. This was also back in the golden days of Hattrick, where you could spend hours upon hours reading and learning new things.

It was also through the forums that I discovered the National Teams, and the NT scene provided a whole new aspect to the game. I started to follow the Finnish NT, but I've never been a hardcore user domestically in terms of training any players. Instead, I got involved in a couple of smaller NTs, helping out in whichever way I could, and I even had (and trained) an NT WB for a while. Getting a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the preparation for a match was really interesting to me, and I would say I learned a lot from my days being an unofficial part of the coaching team(s). One of the most surreal experiences for me personally in regards to Hattrick was back when we used to have pre-match "tactical meetings" over Skype. There I was, sitting alone in my small apartment, and on the other side were three Italian dudes sitting on a couch, asking for my opinion or input about the upcoming game. We all spoke in our second - or maybe even third language, but somehow we made it work. That was a long time ago, but it still works as a reminder of what the community side of Hattrick can be. Good times.

When it comes to my own team, I haven't had much success worth mentioning. I'm competitive by nature, and I try to do my best even if my team would be inferior by a huge margin. My main problem is my game philosophy, namely that I can't seem to talk myself into playing the game in a conventional manner (like a balanced team mainly built for a 352 setup, etc), and I've rather opted to go for an alternative build. My first two (truly) competitive runs were made using almost solely Counter Attacks. I find CA wins weirdly satisfying, and I managed to get to div. II that way - although to be fair, it was a lot easier back then in my opinion. Other managers weren't as knowledgeable, and attack ratings were also a lot weaker than they currently are, just to name a few reasons.

I'm currently in div. IV, and what I went for this time around was Long Shots. I have always had a thing for training most of my players myself, partly due to the fact that the transfer market is really not a place I enjoy spending time in. Going mostly homegrown kind of takes the financial element out of the game, and that suits me well, I guess. I rarely have a strict plan when it comes to team building, but rather a rough guideline of what levels I'd like to achieve in each skill, so I try to keep it flexible whilst having fun doing it. I'm more than aware that my way of playing won't bring me the Masters title, but that's not a problem. A somewhat realistic goal could be to win one of the consolation cups one day, but for me it's more about the journey, and not the prize.

So, what does the future hold in store for my team? Well, I'm celebrating 16 years in the game in a couple weeks time, and my LS project is a work in progress. I was also fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a free (three months worth of) Gold Supporter, thanks to a fellow manager and Hattrick's holiday campaign, and that has revived my interest towards achievements, flag hunting, feds and other stuff that comes with it. I had Supporter back in the day when it was between 20 and 50 bucks per year, which I found to be a reasonable price. Even though the price nowadays is "out of my mental comfort zone", I'm currently leaning towards renewing my subscription for the first time in almost a decade, just because of all the added content it still brings. Whether I do or not, I'm still looking forward to spending many more years with the game I've grown up with.

Link directly to this article (HT-ML, for the forum): [ArticleID=22596]