A Hattrick of Cups

Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have known that Season 33 Singapore Cup Finals have just ended, with Isle of Flames crowned champions to make it an amazing hat-trick of cup titles.

To commemorate this special day, we have Skyfirex, manager of IOF, to speak on his team’s success, U20, and more.

How do you feel now after doing a hattrick of cup wins in Singapore?
Ecstatic. No team have ever done 3 cup wins in a row. It's my aim to set down targets/records for others to follow/break. Just like Herron. I really wanted to meet him in a competitive scenario, but by the time I was going up, he went down.

Indeed! A hat-trick of cup wins in a row is epic. How many more cups do you think you can win consecutively?
No idea to be honest. A simple maths calculation: Assuming that I have a 90% chance of winning every match in the cup(higher in the early cup rounds, and much lesser in the later cup rounds), to win the cup means I need to win 11 games, or 0.9 ^11 = 31.3%. There's no way I will have 90% chance of winning every match, so everytime you win a cup, you have to consider yourself lucky to an extent.

You have been saying how lucky you were after beating The Unbelieveable in round of 8, how confident were you when you decided that no reinforcements were needed to win?
Hmm personally I had it on a 50-50(or 40-60, me being 40) game. while Unbelieveable had the better ratings, I was pretty confident of blocking his "weak" wing attack and central attack, whereas I would score on the chances I get. Playing creative was my trump card as I had obviously the better probability to generate SE chances, however. However, even in the best case scenario, I would not think I had more than 50% chance of winning. which is why I felt I was lucky(or at least not unlucky) to win

You seem like you are really confident in your team set up. Talk us through your usual routine of preparing for a match.
I set a lineup for 3-5-2 and win. =P That's generally true most of the time. However on a more serious note, you have to see what your opponent has and what you have. In general, before considering cup matches, 3-5-2 is the 1st formation to go to. It gives enough defense(yes 3 defenders is generally enough) high midfield and a good attack.
However, once you have to factor in midweek matches, then you have to find a way to seperate your resources between the two. In general I scout my opponent for weaknesses and then swoop in for the kill.

Seems like you do do a lot of research on opponents pre match. What do you think about tactics in Hattrick? Should they be more powerful or are they too OP already.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I don't do much of it domestically. Unbeliveable, was the match that I scouted the most. Let's be honest, most teams can't change their tactics from a 3-5-2 midfield to a GOOD CA for example. Most of the time, the midfield team who changes to CA is changing from his most optimal formation to a sub-optimal formation
and if that's the case, how good can it be? My normal setup should be able to win it.
Scouting for me involves checking and predicting the skills of the players of the opponent, and then predicting/waiting for form updates if it's over a week.

(As for tactics) basically, it sucks. They should be more powerful and have more of a penalty. Right now, as far as I'm concerned, CA is the only real tactic. The penalty of 7% midfield is pathetic, It's not even 2% possession in a worst case scenario.

PC as I have used to great effect in the now famous match against unbelieveable is pretty much a double edged sword. It increases SE generation chance for both teams and when both teams are equally optimized, it is really useless. 2ndly, even if you are much more optimized, playing this can come back to bite u in the ass. I only use this when I'm desperate.

AoW/AiM, is again useless. Moving 40% of central chances to wings means even in a game when you get ALL 10 chances, you will be moving on average 2-3 chances. That's on average. Some times, you move more, sometimes you move less. However, I would rate AoW above AIM in the current match engine, simply cause wing attack is so much easier to generate than central attack right now, and thus, losing central defense doesn't hurt as much as losing side defense

Pressing, is actually a tactic I rate. However, I rate it cause I believe it does things that is not said. According to the manual, it destorys chances. Just that. No mention if it's your chance or the opponent's chance or the probability. What I believe is that: 1. It destroys reported chances. 2. It has a higher probability to destroy opponent's chances.

Lastly, the new tactic Longshots. It's probably the only tactic that I think is OP. However to get there is ridiculous. I tried longshots in my 1st cup game of the season, and I did not score against a bot keeper. Now It's not just that 1 off match, I have seen many bot keepers saving longshots. In fact it seems like you need a minimun of something like passable scoring and sn sp to have a good(>50%) chance of scoring a longshot against a crap keeper against a good keeper(high keeper+ sp), you need to get something like exc/formid in scoring and divine in sp. How is that possible to get without messing the rest of the stats up? As Longshots currently is, it's not going to be a usable tactic. ONLY specialised teams can use it effectively. That's my opinion.:)

What tips do you have for managers aspiring to emulate your success?
First things first, if you are going to copy me, you are not going to succeed. You need to do what I do and do it better or find something that I'm not doing. I mean how can you succeed if you are just following in my footsteps?(You have to) be better than me.
Other than that, have a long term plan, however make sure it's flexible and that it's a good plan to follow. and if it's not good, how do you change it? Hattrick is a marathon, not a sprint. Lastly, always try to win every game/promote. Get the winning mentality into you.
If you are willing to give up a match/promotion to have it easier, the next time you have a tough match, you will just say, I will try again next season

What do you think is your success formula?
Read a lot, ask a lot, question a lot. I spent quite a bit of time in Questions/Global in the past asking and reading. Nowadays I answer more. It's an easy game once you figure it out. The figuring out/explaining part is hard.

This must be your most asked question. Looking forward, which are the upcoming teams, new birds or old dogs, that you can foresee mounting a title challenge in the future, both in Cup and Sleague?
This is going to be a tough question. Really though, you have to look no further than Young Tigers. Finalist in the cup last season, 2nd in Sleague currently. Following very closely behind him would be Blackburn Rovers, who has a very good team. Those 2 are what I would call up and coming new birds.

As for the old dogs, KTH/Robbie are likely to be the 2 most danagerous ones. Especially robbie who will gain a bonus from loyalty/homegrown bonus Tanglin and Bass should be considered too, as they both struck me as good managers but they don't seem to be doing as well as before.
All this is with an eye on the near future(2-3 seasons max) as a lot can change in a matter of time. Btw, there is a team I know that WILL be moving up the leagues, but I have promised not to expose him, so just wait and see.

Err.. Something tells me you are talking about Rapala FC.
No comments.

Moving on, we understand that you had been the Singapore U20 coach for four terms already. How many marks will you rate your performance?
Out of how many? Well, either way it will be a big fat ZERO. I promised to qualify four times, and came close but never did I succeed. That's a 0 for me.

What do you think went right/wrong for you?
Nothing went right? =P Well I guess we managed to win some close games.

As for what went wrong, I could come up with a whole list, we had bad luck in close games(more than our good luck in my opinion) I made lineup mistakes in the campaign that we were set on to qualify(2nd campaign) in not one but two matches. Winning either of those would have made a lot of difference. Lastly, we have really bad luck in groups. For eg, the last campaign we got Italy from a low seed. That's just ridiculous. We have not had an easy group in the 4 campaigns I was u20 coach. However, this is an excuse, as it is possible to qualify.

So.. Will you be running for Singapore U20 again next season?
No. Trying the same thing(or same man) over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity. Albert Einstein said that if I'm not wrong. Maybe my managerid and the u20 team id doesn't match too well.
I might try in the future, but I need to take a break from it.

If not, who are the candidates you reckon are suitable for the job? I mean if even the mighty Skyfirex has failed…
Well the mighty SkyfireX is only mighty on the clubfront. =( I wouldn't want to name candidates, but really, does it matter? Did anyone expect Ravary to step up after Penguini and do as well as he did so far? There are many managers capable of it.

There isn't really a point for me to name one, but imo, the u20/nt manager should be someone with good tactical acumen and have been in div II/Sleague AND also gone to the late rounds of the cup in the same season.
It's not hard to go far in the cup when u are in div III/IV with the help of home advantage and just focusing on the cup. Having to balance league and cup is not easy. By the way, I'm not saying that lower-league managers do not have good tactical acumen. If they can show it somehow, I'm sure they will be voted in. It's just much harder to prove

Some trivia here, who are your real life friends in the game? Do you discuss tactics and transfer plans down to the nitty gritty? (I do lol)
tyhja or The Void Deck is a friend since a long time ago. He has a very good team, but lost interest and is now just hanging around. I still habour some minute hopes that he will come back in a serious mode. In general yes we do discuss tactics and transfer decisions, most of the time though, we have the same ideas on stuff(differ in small details) so it's more of a confirmation than anything. In the times where we disagreed, that's when it's important to rethink.

Penguini is another manager who I will consider a real life friend. We first knew each other in game, but being in the same course in uni our path crossed. We talk quite a bit on msn about stuff outside hattrick too managers like telefone/merlion angkor can be considered as somewhat real life friends, while we never met up, we are "family" in hattrick so to speak. *laughs* I discuss hattrick stuff mainly with tyhja or Penguini.

As a friend of snowver, I wanted to ask this for him. How do you rate gk training? (its ok to say it sucks!)
It SUCKS! =P

Okie seriously, I have never done it before, simply cause training 1 or even 2 player just doesn't entice me. However, GK training is VERY versatile and flexible, I mean you can play ANY formation with it. and a GK is argubably the most important position to be filled, even before IMs. If you are talking about profits, the most profitable way imo, is to train GKs in Defending and some SP (10 players). Basically you buy them with GK probably around SN or titanic, then train defending and sp.

You have said plenty of times one of the teams you will love to face off is Herron, what will be the first thing you tell borum if you meet him on the streets?
WHY DIDN"T YOU STAY TILL I CAME UP! Or, GET BACK TO HATTRICK. Or lastly, I beat your records. =P Seriously, I guess there isn't much to talk about. We are effectively managers from 2 different era.

Wow this must be the longest interview you have ever been. Huge thanks for the interview. <3 One last question though. You certainly don’t seem to be a stranger on giving interviews. How many interviews of you had appeared in the HT-press already?
Honestly I have no idea... I don't count that!

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