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Interview with s74 Irish double winners!

Written by doubs

Here’s an interview with stefan11 (6816047), coach of The NONONOS (280239) in the Irish Premier. Stefan won the league and cup double last season, read on to learn about him, and the secrets to his success..!

Thanks for doing this Stefan. First question, how did you discover Hattrick, and what keeps you interested in the game?

A friend of mine told me about Hattrick in 2007. I like football and strategic games - so very quickly I became addicted. I liked the idea to compete against real people and not a computer.

I like to develop players and teams - develop a training strategy and find a good mixture of success with the team and the financial issues. I was never a trader, so the financial side of things is even more important.

The last years I also really enjoyed trying to achieve the maximum in terms of team success within the higher/highest leagues, when your players are 30+ years old. For me, this is a second interesting aspect of Hattrick because the focus changes from development to team tactics, and optimising players' form, stamina etc.

You're from Germany (I assume) and the NONONO's are your second team. How has your first team RHCP gone over the years - have you had much success in the German league & cups? I'm guessing you are a Red Hot Chill Peppers fan?!

Yes, in 2007 I was a big chili peppers fan - that`s why the team name is RHCP.

I started in German league X and promoted within the first 3 years to league V. I`m self-taught and wasn`t active in the forums, so it took a while before I began to understand the game.

Since then I developed 3 teams to German league II. When I promoted the first two times I sold my entire team to start developing a new team. With the last team I tried to have the maximum success and almost promoted to league I. It is very competitive in the German leagues and sometimes you need a bit of luck (match engine, form, injuries).

In the cup, I once reached the quarter final, once the round of 16 and several times the round of 32 - and sometimes it was very close to go even further. But I think that is quite a good result if you consider that I was competing against 16.000 other managers.

Yes indeed! Moving on to your second team then - you established a team in Ireland in 2013. Why did you choose Ireland?

I was an exchange student und studied for one year in Dublin (DCU) in the 90`s. It was a great year and I like Ireland and Dublin. Ireland was my first choice.

It's a good spot. Where did the team name the NONONO's come from? Congrats on the double last season, an outstanding season! When did you start building the team that got you there?

The NoNoNo`s was the band I played in when I started with my Irish team in 2013. I thought music and Ireland fits together well.

I started with my current team in 2020. I had two interesting trainees from my youth academy and wanted to train them as forwards. It was the first time that I tried to develop a team by training forwards. I wasn`t sure if that would work because you don`t train any defense. But now I think it is really an interesting training strategy. The team is strong and can play for at least 3 other seasons.

Sounds like a successful strategy! Can you talk us through it in a bit more detail - you started with some scoring trainees, how long did you train them for and how did you build the team around them? Did you switch training for a bit, or buy in players for the other positions, etc?

The strategy was to train 3 normal forwards until they are really good (from 17 to 29 years) and built up a team around them. For that you need to train scoring (until 16-17), wing (9-11), playmaking (12-14) and passing (12-14).

I started with training 6 trainees in scoring for a couple of seasons. Then I sold 3 trainees and switched to wing training. After that I bought 3 central midfielders and trained them together with the 3 forwards in playmaking, passing and a bit of scoring. Wingers got a bit of training in playmaking and passing.

Because you don`t train defending you need to buy wing backs and a central defender. And you need goalkeepers, wingers and central midfielders that have had already training in defense.

To implement this training strategy you need quite a lot of money building up financial reserves. I was also lucky because I earned in total nearly 20 Million additionally by selling youth talents from the academy (from 2020 to now).

Awesome, sounds like a lot of planning, but it's paying off! Have you got any tips for other managers - what do you feel are the strongest game strategies in Hattrick at the moment for example?

And the last questions - you picked up the league and cup double last season, how do you feel about that and were there any particularly big moments during the season that stood out?

And lastly, what are the hopes for this season? :)

My tip: If you are not a trader - and I think the big trader time is over - you need a lot of patience to develop a team. At the beginning you need a long term training/development strategy and then implement it. The short term team success is not important, it`s all about the long term team success.

I made good experience with training forwards, central midfielders and wingers. But there are also mix strategies, for example wing/wing back or wing/central midfield or forward/central midfield that can work quite well.

I was very happy to win the league and the cup last season and to qualify for the hattrick masters. You always compete against other really good managers/teams and usually it`s not possible to win anything without being at least a little bit lucky.
The next seasons I will try my best again and hope to maybe win the league or cup again.

Thanks again Stefan, and good luck this season!