Please address this in FM2021 - leave players out of champions when there's no choice

[TroubleMan]

Background:  I'm trying the Pentagon challenge, and I'm currently coaching Shenzhen FC in the Chinese Super League.  In the Chinese Super League the squad rules are:

1.  Goalkeeper has to be Chinese - all of them.

2.  One player in the playing 11 on the field has to be an under 23 Chinese.

3.  In your squad, you can have 5 foreign players.  One of the five has to Macanese, from Hong-Kong, or from Taiwan.  The other 4 can be from any where.  You can only have 3 out of the 4 non-Asian players on the field at any time, but the other can be on the bench.

So because of these rules, all of the teams get star players for the 4 non-Asian players.  They throw big money into transfer fees to get them, they pay them the highest, and their playing time is always "star player" or "important player." 

That's how all of the teams do it.  That's how the league is set-up - even the pay structure has a maximum of  salary of $1.68 million p/a for Chinese players and $6.1 million for foreign players.  That's the actual league rules.  So this isn't a case of "you set your squad up wrong by bringing in those foreign players."  The league specifically designed for you to do that, and every single team does it.

To emphasize this even more, my Chinese MC dlp won league MVP, led the league in assists, and tied for top scorer.  At the end of the season when they show you jersey sales, he was 5th in jersey sales, behind the 4 foreign players, even though he had a way better season.  The 4 foreign players are your showcase players. 

So the problem is with the Asian Champions League.  You can only have 2 non-Asian players registered on the squad (not playing - registered).  That means you have to leave two star players out of registration.

When you leave the 2 players out, their morale immediately goes to "abysmal" and they're upset.  Additionally in the social feed, you see, "I can't believe they left him out," and [the coach] "has a lot of explaining to do." With some players, about 1/4 of the ones I've had, you can explain to them it's the registration rules, and then apologize and promise to make it up to them, and they go back to being "fair" morale. 

However, a good 3/4 of the players are really mad at you no matter what you do.  They also complain to the team, which lowers the whole squad happiness and squad support for you one or two levels - even if the left out players were in the "others" social group and not influential players.  A day later or so, the squad will demand you have a team meeting about treating the player unfairly, and you have to apologize or they all get the sads.  They'll do separate meeting for each player!  Not only that, it drops your "loyalty to players" stat as a coach, which means some players might not sign with you later on...even though you had no choice.  The second season, I save scummed this interaction to test all of the available dialog options, and none of them worked.

 

There's no choice to have a team meeting beforehand to explain why; there's no way to interact with the player beforehand to explain why.  There really should be a way to do this without 2 of your star players ruining the squad morale and lowering your coaching stats.  Again, the league is specifically designed for this to happen.  The players IRL would know and understand the system.  Yes, it would be okay, if you talked to them ahead of time, and they still get sad, but it shouldn't have the whole team thinking you treated two players unfairly, and force you to hold multiple team meetings about it to apologize.

I would ask that in FM2021, the way this works is better.  You could have a meeting with the 4 players involved, or the whole team, saying, "I'm going to have to leave two of you out."  Then you could explain why....maybe because this guy has a better back-up, or this guy was with us last year when we won it, so let the new guy experience it.  I'm sure that's what happens IRL in some form.  There could be a back and forth about it, where a guy says he'll be pissed if he's left off, or another guy being somewhat okay with it. It shouldn't make your squad and the whole world think you're some backstabbing a-hole, who betrays your players.

It should be understood that this has to happen, and it's a tough decision.  Sure a player could get a little upset, but the way it's set up now is really bad.  I think all of the Asian leagues are set up like this, but I'm not 100% sure.

I'm humbly requesting that you look at this, and if possible, fix it.  Thank you.

[FrazT]

Good post, good point, well made

[sporadicsmiles]

Indeed, this is something you should be able to make clear when signing a player. Letting them know they are being signed for the domestic competition and not for the continental competition. Then the player can choose during the contract negotiations if they are happy with that or not. 

[DaveMac]

Seeing as these rules probably aren’t widely known by people can I just praise you on an incredibly well explained point here. What you’ve suggested makes total sense. 

[yolixeya]

Yes, but shouldn't this be in feature requests or bugs forum to have better chance being fixed?

[Britrock]

I'm sure when I managed Shandong in China I could have 3 non-Asian foreigners and one non-Chinese Asian foreigner in the Champions League? I messed it up in my first season because I wasn't aware of the difference between the CSL and the ACL and I had 4 Europeans, but for the second I made sure I had 3 Europeans and a South Korean as my foreign contingent and I went on to win the league by 20+ points and the Champions League final 14-0 on aggregate.

[JordanMilly]

I've moved this to the correct feature request forum, so it gets spotted by SI.

[TroubleMan]

13 hours ago, Britrock said:

I'm sure when I managed Shandong in China I could have 3 non-Asian foreigners and one non-Chinese Asian foreigner in the Champions League? I messed it up in my first season because I wasn't aware of the difference between the CSL and the ACL and I had 4 Europeans, but for the second I made sure I had 3 Europeans and a South Korean as my foreign contingent and I went on to win the league by 20+ points and the Champions League final 14-0 on aggregate.

I'll go into a little greater detail about it.

You can have up 3 foreign players registered for the Champion's League, but only two non-Asian players.  So you can have one superstar from Asia or the Middle East that's not from your country, which is considered foreign, and then two non-Asian players.  With the Chinese Super league, you have one spot for a Taiwan/Macau/Hong Kong player, so they'll usually take that spot.  

So you could use one of your 4 foreign spots for a superstar that's Asian.  If you did that, then you'd only have to leave out one superstar out (and you'd have to leave your Hong Kong/Taiwan guy out....some of them are really good comparitively).  So in that case only one star player would get mad, along with one guy who's probably a regular starter.  There are some pretty good guys from Iran and Japan that are worth considering in the save I'm in.

 

I thought about that - getting a Middle Eastern or Asian foreigner, just because of this.  However, it's a balance.  The best Asian and Middle-Eastern players aren't as good as the best European and South American players, at least in the save I'm in.  Also, those guys are highly coveted for that reason, you get in a bidding war or they'll blow your transfer budget out just for one guy.  You'd sacrifice your regular league competitiveness in order to be more competitive in the Champion's League.....that's an expensive gamble.  There is always some guys riding the bench at one of the top teams in Europe, who are way way way better for a small transfer fee.  There's always an aging star, unhappy borderline star, or an up-and-comer that's willing to make a few million in the Chinese league for a few years.  If you're patient you can get them for $5 million or less, so you can spend your transfer money on the Chinese U23's which are the key to winning - you always have to have one on the field in the Super League, so if they get hurt and you don't have a U23 sub, you're playing with 10 men.

 

11 hours ago, JordanMillward_1 said:

I've moved this to the correct feature request forum, so it gets spotted by SI.

Thank you for doing that.

 

Also, thanks everybody for the positive comments

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by TroubleMan
misspellings

[destmez]

@ yolixeya no i think the post is good here because it made a suggestion which could be used in other cases

Edited June 7, 2020 by destmez

[Kyle Brown]

Reviewed so locked.