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Interview with Bissy

Written by Bissy9

Bissy has recently been re-elected as the England National Team manager after winning the Silver Medal for us in the World Cup, a couple of weeks ago.

He's taken time out from the pre-Europe Cup preparations to answer a few questions here, posed by HPE-Bink (his assistant manager).

Congratulations on winning a silver medal with England’s National Team. You must be delighted?

Thank you for your support and congrats to you as well. A huge part of this success was possible thanks to your involvement with building such a great generation allied with your unstinting support as an active part of the management team. Delighted is an understatement. I am extremely competitive and the fact that we have been able to go all the way to the Final after 18 real years certainly makes me happy, it's a really nice feeling.

What is the best sandwich?

Because I love a bit of controversy, I’d say that the best sandwich is a cheeseburger with pickles and fried onions. What do you mean by “a burger is not a sandwich?” :)

“And the match engine throbs in time with your beating heart...” is how the Duran Duran song “The Chauffeur” lyrics are being sung by the crowd. Just why was The Chauffeur your favourite player from the last campaign?

It all started with not having an older PNF for this campaign so we had to choose from some younger ones to invest XP in them. The Chauffeur was one providing the best contribution and he was in form at the start of the last Europe Cup. We decided to go give him his opportunity and he repaid the trust, maintaining useful form for 2 seasons, making 30 appearances and scoring 16 goals to become the top goalscorer at the WC. Every manager loves a reliable player that will lift the team up when we all need it.

What’s the one thing that you own that you should really throw out?

A snowboard that I've owned for more than 15 years. I brought it from Romania to England, moving from house to house and it has never been used. :)

Luck can play a big part in NT success. Which games would you say were the ones where luck had the most significant impact in the last campaign?

England 2 - 1 Austria (24810353) & England 2 - 0 Peru (25879467) where the respins were clearly against us but luck was on our side. We cannot forget about England 4 - 0 USA (25879464), England 3 - 0 Finland (25997874) and England 5 - 0 Bahrain (25625532)(5-3-2 vs 2-5-3) either. These last 3 were ones where we set up well but the luck helped us to score many goals which in turn helped us to build a very nice (and useful) TC advantage.

Do you think that hattrick players will ever die, or do you believe that they will live forever?

I’d like to believe that HT-Johan will never let hattrick players die.

An integral part of your match preparation involves predicting what your opponent will play, and their expected ratings. Who was the toughest opponent manager to predict during the last campaign?

With the risk of sounding a bit full of myself, although I prefer to be more of a modest person, I cannot recall having any big issues with the reading any of my opposing managers, except perhaps the Peru manager in this game: (24810067). This was mainly because we were in a tough situation, I recognised that I wasn't able to read him & so we've decided to play PIN for safety, because we desperately needed the win. Italy is always a strong opponent, and their ratings can always improve if they decide to call 1-2 players that will bring way more to the table than you were expecting, but I cannot remember any other.

What’s your favourite action movie?

This question is harder than it seems but I'll go with Fast & Furious 1-5.

You have mentioned elsewhere that England were not converting many chances that were ‘other - direct set piece’ events. Given that England made the Final anyway (and looked favourite to win the replays that would have resulted from draws in a penalty shootout), and given the potential compromise to outfield skill (required by calling a Divine+2 SP player), what do you think needs to be changed, if anything, for the players you want to use in the next campaign?

It is best not to take the respins in the final as 100% accurate because there have been some research on the respins and 100 are not really enough to provide a precise conclusion. The margin of error can be argued to be around 10% (which might make it 45%-55% instead of 55/45) but the fact that we have scored very little from IFK, pens, & none from DK is a fact. I wouldn't seek to change things significantly but I must admit that I'd prefer to have a bit more SP in most of the players, and especially for the ones with lower (sub excellent) levels of SP because it will not take very long at all to add some to them. I must also say that I'd love to have an SP taker good enough to outfox the NT GKs, but I can't really see where we will get one from at the moment. :)

Other than hattrick, what is the most used app on your phone?

Slack. For both work and personal matters, including our NT communications.

Defensive forwards are no longer a useful option for NT squads. Discuss?

I'd say that main reason for this stems from the ever growing popularity of PNFs which are contributing to midfield more than our 'normal' strikers, as the ME favours the PNF chances more than say a Tech vs Head SE, and so it also provides better match respins, resulting in what I like to call "a better random seed".

What was the last book you read, and song you listened to?

Last book was Eloquent Javascript (https://eloquentjavascript.net/) and last song Duran Duran - The Chauffer which I have been listening to since the start of this interview. :)

You manage a real life football team. Please tell us a bit about that, and whether there are any skills that are required for both hattrick and your real team?

Having played professional football, managing a real life football team was probably the natural step for remaining involved in football and giving something back to the game that I love the most so both have initially in common my huge passion for anything related to football. I love the beautiful game in RL, Hattrick, Fantasy PL, Football Manager, Fifa, you name it.

I'd say that communication with my colleagues from the management staff both in RL and in Hattrick is pretty similar because as you've already seen, I don't espouse a bossy style of management, but more a collaborative one, and being a 'people's person' has massively helped with the behind the scenes communication but it's also helping me massively with getting my message across to my RL players.

I'd say that playing football at a very competitive level and the coaching has developed my hunger for success, work ethic and composure under pressure which helps a bit but are less decisive factors. Some might say that our composure and consistency in not making big mistakes lead us to the final and I'd agree with that to a certain extent. All the rest was love from the ME.

Congratulations on your re-election. What’s the most exciting thing for you looking forward to the next competition?

Having to work again with you guys and with our very supportive community of player owners. Making new online friendships behind the scenes and enjoying the games together with the opposition managers, although we are "rivals"(fun fact, I have exchanged more than 150 ht-mails with ciuffo, manager of Italy) and probably to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the community whether the previous campaign success was purely luck or if repeated success is actually possible when things are done a certain way.

If you could suggest any one change to improve hattrick, what would it be?

Some sort of optional improved graphics or introduction of some more visual element for the games in order to be able to compete with all the new posh games like Fifa and Football Manager. When it comes to retention of current managers + attracting some new I think this could make quite a difference. Of course, it's a must that the old school managers like myself or others retain the ability to decide whether they want to stick to the current way of watching the written match reporting from games or if they'd prefer to switch to a more "modern" visual graphic.