FurYak here, current u21 manager seeking to be re-elected.
I have briefly summed up the last two seasons of work in another thread on the boards (should still be front page of the USA threads). So i will be brief and suggest that we improved our standings over previous years, but fell short of the gold that we desired as a unit. I accomplished two of my three goals for that term, and will now list my goals for this term should i be re-elected.
1) Win the Semi's in Americas, Win the Gold in Worlds - The Americas semi finals victory ensures a round 1 placement into worlds. It is more important than winning americas gold by far, because America's gold only gets you a small trophy on the country page. We haven't won gold in some time for a handful of different reasons, so that has to be the end goal for me this time around.
2) Improve on u21 talent's league performance by influencing Gameshape - This goal is more or less a subset of us losing out on a potential Gold this season. We had 3 or 4 players in our semi-finals matchup against Taiwan in 9 GS, and only another 3-4 in 8 GS. the rest were in 7 gameshape or 6 gameshape. I dont know what the gameshape literally equates to, but as for my "feeling" for gameshape, it's like this.
9 GS = Each rating of your player is multiplied by 1.2
8 GS = 1.1x
7 GS = Even to your players ratings
6 GS = .9
5 GS = .8
4 GS = .65
3 or worse = dead player.
While my ratings may be slightly inaccurate, the feeling amongst the top players of the community is that higher GS means significantly better play than lower GS. Higher GS for me means you play a player for between 50 and 75 minutes in most weeks in order to keep said players in good standing (meaning they fluctuate between 8's and 9's mostly, occasionally 7's. Never 6's). This means a player at most starts two games a week (gets put in as a starter, but not as a backup or reserve), or get's in once for 48 minutes and once for backup/reserve (12-22 minutes usually). The second is more ideal for teams that are training, but if you must be competitve at the club level and only seek to train two players, option 1 can work too. Regardless of which you choose, understand that once your player hits about 75 minutes in a week, the gameshape and his effectiveness for your club games will start to go down. Don't overexert your players!
3) Continue identifying alternative training regimens - We have mostly relied on Guards and SF's getting 1v1 @ FW for quite some time. However, other opportunities do exist, and in order to be able to combat our opponents with multiple viable strategies, it is important to continue having teams approach training from different angles. It helps club teams too if they have a different way they want to build their player for their club, then this provides those opportunities.
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My promise for potentially improving on our worlds results is my own stake. I have sacrificed both my club and my utopia team to train players, and I have 1 big that is potentially eligible for Americas at age 20 because of where he is at in his build, let alone worlds 21. I have a second big capable of fighting for a worlds spot, and i have two guards that are on the main team. All 4 of these players are likely to hold high gameshape, which will give me better opportunities to field competitive lineup cards for each world game. That is how bad i want to win the next worlds.
I will be scouting a lot over the next couple days for the database, but will try to answer any questions on the debate and mail within a day or so. Good luck to all other candidates as well.
Josh