IFIDA Update! - Youth Teams/Leagues and Attribute Increase from Matches

Time for an update from the International FIDA! And this time with some news that we hope you all will be very interested in reading about :) This time the news are about an upcoming implementation of Youth Teams/Leagues and Attribute Increase from matches.

1. Youth Teams and Youth Leagues

As a result of discussions held in the global FIDA initiative called ”the Activity Consolidation project” we’ve come to the conclusion that we need to create a controlled environment in which younger footballers (18-21 years old) can compete against similarly skilled footballers. We have therefore now started implementing something that we hope will change the competitive side of Footballidentity a lot by introducing Youth Teams and Youth Leagues.

The way that this new functionality will work is that a National FIDA can initiate the creation of a Youth League by inviting 12 main teams to have their Youth Teams activated as part of a new youth league. When all 12 teams have accepted the invitation a Youth League will be created and all those 12 teams will get a Youth Team connected to them (those two teams together will act more like a CLUB instead of individual teams). The Youth Team will play their matches at exactly the same match time as the main team. We believe that the youth teams will all have a specific and limited salary and transfer budget (same for all youth teams) at least in the first version of this.

The manager roles within the “CLUB” will change a bit with this new implementation. The manager of the main team will appoint the Youth Team Manager (and can also fire him if necessary) just like when employing an assistant manager. The Youth Team Manager will be able to employ an Assistant Manager for the youth team. All managers can be allowed (the main team manager will be able to set this access up in the system) to setup tactics and pick lineups for both the main and the youth teams but only the two managers from each team can participate in the match of their specific team. Please note that the main team manager will be allowed to have a footballer in the youth team (all youth team contracts will however be handled by the Youth Team manager) and the youth team manager will be allowed to have a footballer in the main team. The main team manager will also receive rating based on how the Youth Team performs.

Now, the way that footballers will be incorporated into Youth teams will differ a bit compared to main teams. Here’s a list of some main points:

[b]• Contract Age limitation[/b]
Footballers signing with youth teams can only sign contracts that end at the latest on the season when they turn 22.

[b]• Trial Contracts[/b]
Trial Contracts will be deactivated for main teams and this feature will only be available for Youth Teams in the future. This will ensure that new footballers (from new users) get “funneled” into the youth teams and we hope that this will cater much better to new users since the chances of finding an active team (with active management and people) is much higher in a youth team (where there is a “mother club” that controls it).

[b]• Main team appearances[/b]
It will be possible for the main team to call up youth team footballers to play in a specific main team match. The footballer will have the same chemistry during the match as he has with the youth team. We are looking at extending the amount of subs possible during a youth team match to 5 instead of 3 (if this does not require big changes in the Match Engine). This would allow for Youth Teams to maintain a bigger squad and avoid lacking from inactivity if one or two players are called up to the main team for a match.

[b]• Attribute Increase from Matches[/b]
Youth team players will get an extra increase in attributes from being active in matches (see point 2 beneath).

All characters in a “CLUB” (both main team and youth team managers and footballers) will have access to a CLUB forum in which they can communicate with each other.

[b]BENEFITS:[/b]

We believe that this new concept of Youth Teams will have many benefits:

• New users get a natural way of getting into the game in an environment which makes them compete on similar level as others. Trial contracts will be the main "funnel" into these youth clubs.
• A team now turns more into a CLUB. Where the CLUB has two teams = 4 managers and 44 footballer spots. We believe that increasing the size of a “team” with more people will strengthen the “team” and it will not become as fragile (currently if a manager and maybe 2, 3 footballers decides to quit the team or quit FID then the team risks falling apart). Now with youth managers it will be a small step for example for the youth manager to take on the main team manager role if the main team manager leaves.
• New users have a bigger chance of finding their way into a club where there is a lot of activity already (since there need to be some activity in the main team already in order for a youth team to have been created, this is up to FIDAs to make sure before inviting a team to create their youth team).
• We will be able to close down A LOT of leagues and consolidate the activity and competitiveness into a fewer amount of leagues (and their parallel youth leagues). We hope that FID will become a world where many users will fight for the places in a fewer amount of teams and leagues creating a highly competitive environment instead of having semi-active leagues with a lot of bot teams.

[b]IMPORTANT: We strongly urge any NFIDA who believe they have enough activity in their leagues (any division) to already now start investigating the interest (of creating a Youth League) from teams in their country, in order to be prepared to initiate this as soon as we release the Youth Team functionality a few weeks from now.[/b]

Your input on this is valuable so please use this forum post to discuss this topic: https://bit.ly/TrRN4y


[b]2. Attribute Increase from playing matches[/b]

Let me ask you a few questions first (and I will give you the answers myself :) ):

Q: What is one of the biggest issues in FID today?
[b]A: Activity in matches[/b]

Q: What is one of the strongest emotional attachments that users have (except for their team mates) in FID?
[b]A: Their characters and their character development[/b]

Now... WHY ON EARTH HAVE WE NOT CONNECTED THESE TWO THINGS EARLIER!?

[b]Why have we not made it so that footballers' attributes increase based on their activity in matches (and also slightly on their performance)?[/b]

Just ask yourself... if your attendance during match would help your footballer's attribute increase... would you then not have an even higher interest in playing matches? Because of this we are currently considering letting the system calculate an increase that would be distributed onto multiple attributes (the higher your attribute the higher the chance of receiving an increase in that specific attribute).

[b]For more details about this please read the IFIDA Press Release here: https://bit.ly/UpEgeT[/b]

Yours Sincerely,

International FIDA