1.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 14:59:09
Haha great article, Ed001! Very entertaining from start to finish! Amazing

Red Sandman.

2.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 14:59:09
Haha great article, Ed001! Very entertaining from start to finish! Amazing

Red Sandman.

{Ed001's Note - cheers mate, depressing though to research and see how his career died a death.}

3.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 15:56:07
Do you think things could of been different for the lad if he would have moved to us Ed? Or was it simplyk that he was not good enough? I sometimes wonder whether key moments on a players life (and in fact all our lives) dictate the sort of paths they take, was this the case for Cherno?

{Ed001's Note - I feel he was a bit of a Freddy Adu, physically developed at a young age, so looked way ahead of his actual ability. I think we actually got lucky not getting him.}

4.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 17:05:57
Brilliant article ed cheers!

{Ed001's Note - thanks Br glad you enjoyed.}

5.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 17:27:59
Im currently in 2074 and his regens regen is my biggest rival manager.

{Ed001's Note - 2074?}

6.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 17:36:26
Thanks for the article ed, sad how it all turned out for him.

{Ed001's Note - very sad.}

7.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 17:36:42
Do you think that some of these players are older than they say, Freddy Adu its hard to argue, he looked 20 at the age of 14.

{Ed001's Note - it is not easy to get away with that in the UK or USA, they are not like Taribo West, who was about 12 years older than he claimed. You have to have documentation for immigration etc as a child that would be difficult to scam. They just mature quicker. Some people do, I remember an ex-gf who was a Maori girl was telling me that NZ had an advantage in youth rugby as Maori males physically mature much younger than British males tend to.

I am not sure if that is true overall but there is certainly some children who physically mature much younger than others and so have a major advantage. They are usually ones who fail to make the grade later in life though, in every sport, as they tend to put in less effort because of their advantage.

There was a report I read about drafts in (I think) the NFL which showed that none of the first round draft picks had been top rank high school players. It is the late bloomers that tend to surpass the early bloomers due to having to work extra hard to make up for their disadvantage. I believe that is all that happens with players like Adu and Samba. They were both more physically developed than other kids their age.}

8.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 19:29:38
The Samba story is a great example of why there needs to be more protection for young players. Not a clue what form that should or could legally take, but if a 14 year old is being told he's great and is having promises of money tossed at him of course it's going to effect him. You wonder how many "failed" careers this has contributed to.

Champ / Football Manager vs. real life is always a subject I find interesting. Whilst it's improved a lot in recent years, those games are usually an exercise in exploiting the match engine quirks more than football knowledge.

Aside from the fact that he was genuinely highly rated at the time, part of the reason Samba was so good in CM 01-02 was the match engine puts a high weighting on physical stats for centre forwards, which pushed him from "good" to "best player ever to exist". Giant French striker Armand One (Google this guy, he's massive. In all dimensions), a journeyman who spent most of his career in the Scottish lower divisions, would also turn up scoring goals by the hatload in that game.

There were also issues when Sports Interactive hadn't got as good a grip on the data teams working from abroad as they have now. This resulted in the "Super Swedes" in CM01-02 (Bakirciouglu, Lunden and Selakovic) and most famously, the entirely fictional To Madeira, who a Portuguese data editor added in to see would anyone notice before retail release. Spoiler alert: They didn't.

9.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 20:13:15
Loved this article Ed. Got to re live the memory but a very sad story all the same.

Thanks

Crooky.

10.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 21:02:17
Nikiforenko and tsigalko bossed that game although I'm not sure if they're real players?

11.) 08 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 22:35:23
They're real, lerchy. Tsigalko was capped twice for Belarus. Presumably the Belarussian or Eastern European data teams got a bit overexcited about the potential of their young players.

Madeira's the only outright fictional CM player I ever heard of.

12.) 09 Nov 2017
08 Nov 2017 20:58:37
Great article eds, but with your backlog in a international break I was expecting/ hoping for 1 a day at the very least 😃.

{Ed001's Note - I will do my best, though that would still mean the list was going up not down!}

13.) 09 Nov 2017
09 Nov 2017 05:02:53
Cheers for the reply Ed, also interesting how physical advantages early on can actually become disadvantages long term - I remember we signed that giant of a teenager (Emeka Obi) - hopefully he does not follow a similar trajectory.

{Ed001's Note - fingers crossed, but the omens are not good. It is one of the reasons England and Scotland fell so far behind internationally was the constant decisions to recruit based on physicality at a young age. Recently there have been hundreds of studies based on this. A lot purely regarding how having a late birthday in an age group hinders a child's chances of making it in a sport because they are always a few month's development behind early births and that makes such a huge difference at young ages.}

14.) 09 Nov 2017
09 Nov 2017 08:49:25
Good book on that - Outliers I think it was, by Malcolm Gladwell. Bounce by Matthew Syed is also good read

Sad story on cherno and a good read, thanks Ed. Hope our current crop of talent in the academy can avoid the pitfalls but it’s clear that very few really get to reach their early potential for one reason or another. We also need to make sure we give our lads the right framework and bring them through when we can, no point in bringing them to the edge of the first team then letting them stagnate.

To be fair, Klopp has done well giving chances to TAA and Gomez, hopefully Woodburn next.

15.) 09 Nov 2017
09 Nov 2017 15:31:39
That's pretty interesting Ed and does make a certain amount of sense - makes you wonder at some of the potential that has slipped through the net because of this. Are there signs of this approach changing in the UK or is youth recruitment, and youth performance, largely reflective of physical development as well? If it's still the case we will be destined, as a nation, to continually fall short.

{Ed001's Note - it really varies from coach to coach and scout to scout, as well as club to club. Some still have not moved past the physical aspects, others have. One of the teams England put out in the summer, at the older age group (I think it was U20s) did look to be physically stronger than the rest when they won. To be honest, I never saw any of the others to know, as I was too busy when the matches were playing. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that they were picked or won because of it. There were certainly quality players in the group who would have been competitive no matter what.}