One of the places where BB missed the boat was when they created Utopia in the first place.
In another manager game that I played, you were able to buy 2nd teams in whatever country you wanted. I live in the US, but my preference would be to have a 2nd team in Scotland or Ireland rather than Utopia. I am sure there are other players like me who have an affinity for some of the less represented countries in the game. It would have be a natural way for players to help with NTs.
The problem with Utopia is twofold. As a manager, you start so low, it takes a long time to develop your club. So while you may have a player you want to develop, you probably don't have the facilities to do it. And if you sell the player, you probably won't get as much for him as you would for a US player. And there is no guarantee that the manager who buys that player will do a better job of developing him.
As a result, even though there may be more players available, they will probably be half-assed developed. So it still doesn't help smaller countries that much.
Ultimately, it's an impossible thing to balance. Short of having a World Cup Soccer style approach where someone may be born in one country and play for another because of heritage, I don't see a way to balance this. Unless you want to "naturalize" players (i.e. - a US player becomes a Mexican player after playing in Mexico for X number of seasons), I don't see a way to do it. And that would open a whole different can of worms.
When I first started following Soccer in the late 80s, people joked the FAI stood for "Find Another Irishman". Maybe that's what you need to do
Last edited by Gaillimh at 7/16/2022 11:57:14 PM