Raising a Star

I think I have spotted a future star here, to be honest. He told me his name is Luke Skywalker and is 15 years old. Without any further training, this player will remain with passable Passing. Coach this player right and he will reach his potential of excellent Scoring before you know it! He is a natural in the air, and he will be able to use this edge both offensively and in defence. Do we sign him, boss?

Most of us are waiting for response like this when calling scouts every week with fingers crossed. Well, usually it goes more like clicking on scout by scout and denying 17 years old weak overalls. But what if...

What if that third scout, stuck somewhere in forests near Nelspruit who told you last two times, that he was unable to find any talent for you, tells you the message like the one in the lead paragraph? Yes, first moment you probably close your eyes and see him in U20 World Cup final in one of these crazy 89th minutes scoring a hattrick to turn the result to 3:2 for South Africa, making him an everlasting legend. But how to make this dream come true? In that final, he will definitely need something more than passable Passing and excellent Scoring potential for that. So let’s start raising him!

First of all, don’t be shy and show off. There is a special thread in the forum, where you can share your happiness of your new prospect, receive some compliments, some jealousy and some good advices too. People who take care of South African national teams are reading the forum regularly and sooner they know about talents, better they can build the teams. When you post to forum a player who has a chance to be in U20 squad one day, they will contact you very soon willing to help you and advise you how to make him as excellent as possible, excellent point something.

Here is the direct link for that thread: (14873046.1)

And then there comes his first match for your youth team. Don’t wait any other day and start to train him as soon as you can. No matter if you have some other quite nice players there already. Believe me, if you have a real talent, it worth more to train one hero than four half losers. And don’t worry, financially too.

Players for different positions need different approach, that’s why it is good to have someone more experienced to guide you and help you if you are unsure. But generally, it is essential to train him in his main skill as much as possible. So if you have for example a promising striker, set the primary training to Scoring and let him play as forward. Secondary training, you can use to boost main skill training (depending on the player age and main skill potential) or to discover potential in interesting skills for his position or to train secondary skills (a.k.a. B-skills). To know more about your future star, you can let him play with different tactics (offensive, defensive, towards middle or towards wing) and compare his performance to normal tactic. For this purpose, you can also let him play on different position, but preferably in friendly matches, not to lose much of main skill training.

So let’s get back to our model player, young Skywalker. Assume that we got some nice advices and we started to work on him hard, because he really has an age to play in World Cup final. He is now solid in Scoring already and Passing went yellow couple of trainings after we started with it. We have found out that he can have a Solid winger skill too and from our observations it looks that he can be somewhere at high inadequate in it now. We are on the really good way. We will give him as much Scoring as possible until it turns yellow and same with Winger (Wing Attack training) as secondary training. If he still has some time before turning 17 and his three main skills are yellow already, we can train him in other skills like Playmaking or Set Pieces. But as soon as he is trained to maximum in main skill an turns 17, he must be pulled from youth team to senior team. And this is the half way.

Now the player is on the crossroad. He can stay in his club to train more at home or he can be sold to train more elsewhere. Either way, U20 scouts are probably already following him and taking care of him to train properly. If you choose first option, you can expect that you will be asked to adjust your team to this exact player and couple of seasons later you will get your reward in form of excitement every Friday evening while waiting if he gets to starting line-up, if he scores, if the national team wins. And you will be the proud owner of this winner. But even if you choose to sell him, to allow him to train what he needs and in better conditions, you will not get only cash reward, but if he really scores that 89th-minute-world-cup-final-deciding hattrick, you will be the one who can say Luke, I am your „father“.

Editors Note: Please join the conference discussion at: (14921233.1)

Link directly to this article (HT-ML, for the forum): [ArticleID=12926]