Hello hello!

As many of us, I started to play management football game with G r i d I r o n.
And as many of us, we switched quickly to RZA which is way better on almost all the aspects.

But there is one thing I loved on G r i d I r o n and I believe is missing in RZA: the World Cup!

In G I worldcup, a manager is elected at the end of the season to represent a country (not always his) and pick a roster with players from that country. Then a competition starts against 16 national teams. It was in my opinion great as the managers from each country were helping in building the roster and it was good fun on the forum. This is the kind of spirit I wanted when I created the RZA Teams World Cup.

As many of you know, I am quitting the game at the beginning of next season. I just need some more time to sell my roster I spend years to build. But before I do, I still wanted to see how a French National team would look like. You could call it my French All Stars.

The methodology I used was simple:
1/ Reviewing all the teams with a French Manager
2/ Reviewing the Worldwide All Stars selection
3/ Reviewing the statistical rankings
4/ Scouting the players based on their rating

I probably missed some players, but here is my selection (in bold the first stringers):


Source: https://i.ibb.co/RbGn8xL/French-All-stars.png



Overall, I am quite happy with it considering there are only 7 French managers in the game right now. With some luck, this team could win a major trophy. But most likely it would be in the second Tier of Elite teams. Position by position, here is my squad rating:

QB -

Yohan Maitre is the best rated QB (top of only the 3 getting 5*) in the game and he is only 30 meaning his exhaustion is fairly acceptable. I was very happy to see how good was Lilan Forest. He is definitely Elite material. QB3 is my current back-up. He can be a top QB someday, but right now at 24, he is just not ready. He still remain better than the other French QB available.

RB -

Manuel Tison is very good (Former World All-Stars). Alain Larcher too. But the squad would have benefit with one QB reaching 48.5 in skills and behind, Le and Nogues are just here for practice...

FB -

Same as for the RB, Yohan Revel (World All-Stars) is very good, but we could have hoped for better. And behind, Jegou and Munoz would not play a single snap in a competitive team in Elite.

WR -

I could even have put 5 helmets on this one. Gervais and Ferre are World All-Stars. Carrere is Elite material at WR3. Foucault, who is a former Duck, too. And behing Godin will be Elite one day if future manager keeps training him well. I would be OK to line-up Boutet at WR4 despite some skills being a bit too low for me. The main thing missing in this squad to please me is the lack of Track Star trait.

TE -

The weakest position of the team. Toussaint (another former Duck) is not even a TE right now. But as I trained his blocking in the past, he can do the job despite being a bit weak. Parra, Allemand and Laporte are not Elite material and I would not play any 2 TE formation with that them.

OL -

I am fairly happy with that squad. I like to use plenty of OL so the 9th of them will play the same amount of snaps. 6 players are futur ex-Ducks and 1 is already a former one sold from my Youth Academy. Most of them are 50 in strengh but wierdly the only 5* rated one is only in the 47s. Karim Guy may be a World All-Stars someday.

DL -

Another squad with lots of Ducks and 1 former one (Valette). I was super please with Métivier and I hope his manager will keep training him. Overall, some players lack intelligence and I would have liked to have more players at 47+ skills.

LB -

Another quite desapointing position. I value LB very very high and spent a lot in salary and in the transfer market to build one of the best squad of the game. But unfortunatly most of my starters are not French and I ended up selecting LB I sold because they were not good enough. If the OLB are decent with Damien Leon being awesome, the MLB both lack skills and speed.

CB -

I am pretty confident with that position. I would have like more Track Star traits, but the 6 players are Elite material. Morgan Capelle is even a 5* All-Stars. I switchs COlas from LB to CB and I was happy to s e l e c t the two former Ducks Labbe and Guy.

SF -

The SF squad is not as strong as the CB one, but still pretty decent with the World All-Stars JC Gandon. Billard and Brossard are very good as well. None of them have super high skills, but the SF position is not often invovled in the game and the current skill level should be enough to prevent mosy of the long TDs.

K/P -

I was hoping to find a gem at one of those two position. I did not. Rémi Delage has high skills, but low strengh. DElahaye and Jeannin are only her in case of injuries.

Here we go. I would love before leaving to see other manager buiding their own national all star. You can use my GSheet template if you want and I can provide the info of my non-French players.

It is a honor to have one of my players on this list. Ok, he is a former Duck but he has playing in Rio for some time.

I can say that the national teams are the greatest thing in G I and gives a manager something else to do.
The French NT would have been a monster of a team.
This is why i have 99% of the players romanian. Maybe Pete will add the NTs

I think national teams are fine for that manager working on it, but idiotic for all others, since they are more or less not involved.

Never liked the concept.

This is why you a have at least 32 NTs and there is a voting process.
As example, you can be an german team and coach the Finland NT if nobody wants to.

Still feels like some few managers do masturbating on the NT setups and the rest can watch it or ignore it, but have nothing to do beside maybe stating their opinion.

As manager in a manager game I want to manage, not watching other managers do something and at last masturbating over some sort of All-Star-Team.

Jack, but the point is - those not personally involved would not lose anything. On the other hand, those involved, not limited to the main coach because assistant coaches are also an option - can gain an extra reason to love the game! Basically, it's like being able to manage two teams instead of one . Well, make it one-and-a-half, because you don't get to train those players.

So, although personally I wouldn't have time to manage a national team, I definitely like the idea.

There is one doubt I'd have, though. How do you balance the major _imbalance_ in the number of players available from each country? Most of the teams are US based (mine included, even though I'm Polish), so I suppose the US would have an unfair advantage over, say, Poland ;-) . I'm not saying, unjustified. Only - unfair, on the chess game scale.

edit: Only to clarify - this new project should definitely have lower priority than _anything_ related to the part involving all of the managers. But in case, unlikely as it seems, Pete would find spare time for it - why not?

And you are managing your own team.
The NT is extra. You don't have to be the NT manager if you don't want to.
And you have to obtain the majority of the german managers vote to be elected as the NT manager in the first place.

Exactly, the other managers can give opinions, help with player development and one day they will get a chance to be the NT manager.
And we already have the All-Star-Team Challenge.

Our opinions are different Jack but the bottom line is that Pete's game is already complex with games almost every day and there is no time in a week to add something like the NT in the mix, so case closed.

The draft. Drafted players have different nationality.
Still, this doesn't change much since you can rename those players and give them your nationality.
So, you can draft players or youth pull or buy them from TM (without any stats for other teams), spend 3 credits, change their name and nationality to yours and train them.

I stated for ME that concept is idiotic and it will be forever, because of several flaws.

a) sure nobody is losing something, still I would feel second best, if there is a 'global' competition I did not even had a choice to play in.
b) fine I could try to manage one of those NTs, maybe even for a different country, but there is still the flaw jpnwrt did mention, that several nations are overstacked with teams, hence players, and others are not. And to be slightly competitive the list of countries with a realistic shot gets very short. So now as say 16th or 21st interested manager I have to deal with a NT of Burkina Faso or Greenland.
c) fine, I did go for Greenland and did setup everything, got the opinion of the less than a handful of managers playing with Greenland-flag and then play the meaningless games. But while doing so, there night be BOT-status coming and some of my players do vanish.

But fine, some people do like the idea for whatever reason, I personally would prefer:

I) Create a limited cup with X teams, for whoever wants to play in it, so 10, 15, 20, EVERYONE who wants to play in it, can play in it, or at least can subscribe to it.
II) Create a bank of NEW players, in Y-tiers, say 10. Each tier have X*2 players on several positions, each tier has a specific quality of players, so 1-tier, physicals between 49 and 50, skills between 49 and 50 on primary skills.
2-tier has 1 less on the primary skills, same physics, 3-tier as 1 less on physicals and same primary as 2-tier and so on.
Sounds complicated, but I think it's clear, each tier gets less attractive, but with some random factors.
III) make a draft on those players, 1 team selects 1 players, until X in 1st round, in 2nd round it's vice versa and so on until every team has 55 players.
iV) play the cup with Z games in pre round, then playoffs with top-whatever teams.

But that's just my 2-cents and I'm out of this, since I did not want to high-jack the thread.