2017/18 Offseason Player Movement & Rumors

International roster spots' trade value varies based on the time of the season (when the Union traded a 2017 spot at the trade deadline last fall, it got $50K GAM). $175K of GAM is a good haul for a single season international roster spot.

 

That shouldn't be in red if your owner is named Jay Sugarman

 

Well then, I guess Chris Albright and Earnie Stewart can't be replaced by computers yet
#jobsecurity

 

Good event last night at Dave and Busters. Huge turnout. Lots of optimism from the fans. All of the players were gracious.

Some thoughts/comments:

-I believe that every player was there except for Dockal.

-Earnie told me that the Dockal signing had been official for several days but could not be announced until yesterday but would not tell me why.

-Chris said that he went to the Czech Republic, not China, to watch Dockal work out.

-Jim, like always, asked questions of me while we were talking. Most players/staff just answer questions and engage in small talk. Jim actually asked real questions about our interest in the Union, whether we go to games, what we're looking forward to, etc.

-Ilsinho said that he expects to be fit in 10 days. He will not be in the 18 for Saturday and hopes to be ready for 3/17. I asked if he's happier now that he can go back to the wing and he said, "Not really. I just want to play."

-Fabinho said he is 100% recovered from the leg injury that he suffered in preseason against Orlando.

-Herbers said he is 100% recovered from the injuries he had last season. He said it was horrible not to be able to play.

-Blake said that he has his green card. (Incidentally the Union turned his international slot into $175k of GAM.) I asked whether getting a green card was a condition of his new contract and he said that the green card process already was underway at the time.

-Rosenberry told me that he did not know whether he was starting on Saturday and that Jim generally does not let players know until the day before.

-We had a running discussion with several players about who is the fastest on the team. The four names mentioned the most were Accam, Fafa, Ayuk and Jones. I was surprised to hear players mention Jones. Haris claimed he was the fastest on the team which was met by lots of laughter.

It was a fun event. It sounds like I asked a lot of questions, but most of it was "Good luck this season" and "Will you pose for a photo with my son?"

 

Thanks Mattylip for this excellent report! Was not invited since I did not renew but after Dockal's signing I will renew.

 

This is more work than the beat writers put in all season. Well done.

 

Two additional things I just remembered:

1. Matt Real denied asking Curtin to go to the bathroom prior to being subbed into the preseaon. I tried to joke about that with him and he said it wasn't true, wasn't sure why Curtin said that, but was going along with it.

2. I said to Trusty that it must feel good to hear Curtin say that he expects Trusty to have a bad game or two but that he expects to stick with him because young players make mistakes. Trusty's eyes lit up and he said that he hadn't heard that. I told him he should watch Curtin's press conference from yesterday. (Jim did say that, right?)

 

You know, it's very difficult to sign players in this day and age.

 

Peegate

 

At this point, I'm just hoping some of these FIFA 18 scouting competitions the team has hosted will bear some fruit in the summer window.

 

Be prepared to be massively underwhelmed by the end of the summer transfer window, just like almost every other summer.

 

Wouldn't want to upset the chemistry that gets you to 7th place in the Eastern Conference.

 

Hey, it's worked in motorsports where unpolished drivers have been plucked from the gaming world, so no reason it couldn't work for soccer, right? Why pay for all those expensive scouts and academies when there is a huge untapped pool of future Messi's with controllers in their hands, just waiting to be plucked from their gaming chairs? #moneyball

"Set the bar low and you will never be dispointed."

- Confucius (probably, but may have been Ben Franklin or Yogi Berra)

 

Looking at FIFA 18 is not a great thing, but there are Football Manager scouts who've landed jobs at clubs big and small. The FM database may be the most complete and most accurate collection of player data available on the planet. I get the jokes from an appearance POV, but there are many inside the game who regard the way the game models performance very highly and when I read a bit about what they do and how they develop, I think there represent some of the sharpest minds in football.

 

I think there is a touch of merit to Football Manager scouting (as a supplemental piece, not your primary source of information) - but whenever I see people bust out FIFA ratings I roll my eyes.

at the end of the day relying on video games to tell you things is silly.

 

I don't disagree. My comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek about the Union using the E-Sports tournaments to convert gamers into soccer players, not uncover prospects whom are already soccer players. Perhaps I missed the mark.

 

FIFA ratings are crap. Football Manager is an actual network of real scouts watching these players. After a while, you start to gauge players using these traits. I actually looked into doing some scouting for them a while back, but I think our territory was covered already. It's something that I would like to try if I end up retiring early. Maybe Argentina or Chile.

 

I'd be interested in knowing what rubric is used for FM to maintain some consistency among the large scouting network.

 

United States of Soccer had one of the FM creators on about a month ago.. the interview was pretty interesting.

 

There's a great documentary about Football Manager and it's affect on not just gamers but on football itself. As someone who has been playing it since 2000, I found it a great film. Some teams use the database extensively.

I think it's available on youtube for free.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4046282/

 

So I recently started at the lowest level of English soccer, I think it's basically the 6th division. At this low of a level, things get a little extreme in terms of player attributes - some drop off dramatically. You might have a winger with 7 stamina (out of 20). A lot of the things are mental and technical subtleties such as vision, or work rate, teamwork, first touch, etc. It's funny how much impact some players glaring weaknesses have. I don't have to look at the game to gauge the following flaws and strengths. But when you have scouts evaluating these things, it's interesting to see how accurate they can be:

Flawed player examples (my fake attributes):

So you might have Danny Cruz as:
Aggression 16
Work Rate 15
First Touch 8

Or Aristiguieta:
Finishing 15
Work Rate 14
Pace 8

Or Roger Torres:
Creativity 15
Passing 14
Pace 9
Strength 6
Stamina 7

 

Dockal presser was good... personality is great, he'll be a fan favorite.. seems like he'll be a work horse. His answers also came off as thoughtful and intelligent.



Nobody asked about prospects of keeping him beyond 2018 or anything about the Accam TAM buy-down. So no real new information out of the thing, although it sort of sounded like Jim would be willing to bring him off the bench as a sub.

 

I don't know how FM handles it's data but there is no reason data collected for a 'game' should be any less legitimate than data collected for a non entertainment reason. It seems like they and their customers take it seriously so they must be putting a lot of effort into it. I deal in non sports related data collection and one of the cool things I have seen is when you start to apply algorithms not only to the raw data but the data collection methods and it's reliability. It would be cool to know how far down the rabbit hole they go.