Managing a U21 Generation: a growing experience

Do you know how Nigeria U21 staff is organized? Have you ever wondered what exactly U21 Staff do in order to create the best U21 team? Or have you always thought that whoever gets elected starts from scratch?
In this press I am sharing with you my view based on my experience of the last three years.

I am Arka669 (13744434) and I am part of the U21 Nigeria staff, I am now in charge of managing GEN38. You can find some information about me on my manager page, let's just say here that I am very much attached to Nigeria as my lovely wife is Nigerian Edo, and so half of my family is Nigerian...well much more of half in truth! More like nine tenth of it 😉🤣

In the following I will try to share with you what it means to manage a NT U21 generation, how much work and time is required, how much commitment is needed and generally speaking how Nigeria U21 actually obtained the recent above average results.
First of all I want to say that what follows is my point of view. I think it is more or less shared by many fellow NT (U21 and National Team) but is very much influenced by my role in the U21 team and my personal view on it.

I opened my team in Nigeria the 23 December 2021, and started cooperating with Nigeria U21 NT staff in January 2022, working as U17 Scout. Working with the Head Scout U17 Yurc3 (13666633). I learned how to discover U17 players, how to search for them in the Rate My Academy site and on hattrick itself using the available queries.
I enjoyed the task very much and soon I needed more involvement, so I agreed to start an “alternative” commentary of the Continental Cup tournament focusing on Luck, which as we know is always an important factor in the game. If you are interested you can find some here (17484740.85). Later on I was offered the opportunity to manage GEN38 players, together with Camortiscia (6081725). In January 2023 when the players were about to be born I began my work as U21 GEN38 responsible.

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So here we are:
I have been doing this since Jan23 and my task will be finished for Continental Cup players around September 24, and for WC players on December 24.
So one of the first things you may notice is that I am actively dedicating my time (together with all the other NT staff members) for quite a while to this deeper side of the game.
We are talking 1 year real life time to see and learn how things should be done doing specific supervised tasks and then finally getting the opportunity to manage a Generation, and 2 years real life commitment for managing it.
Right! That's quite a long time commitment isn't it?

Ok but what exactly means to manage a generation of players?
Well, I suppose everybody knows, but it does not hurt to specify that a Generation of players are all the players who are born on a specific time and have the correct age in order to play Continental Cup (CC) till final possibly, and World Cup (WC).

We may divide a Generation in three groups:
- CC players, born 80 weeks before the CC final, which is 5 seasons, roughly 1 year and 8 months in real life time!
- WC Round 1 match 10 (or something more) players, which are the players that may play the first elimination phase (Round 1, which is the longest) of the WC, these are born 9/10 week later than CC players.
- WC finalist players, who are born 20 weeks later than CC players, be aware that between Final and Round1 Match 10 there are many turns and so sometimes also players that age in between must be considered.

So a Generation are all of this player. They start to be born 80 weeks before CC final, they continue to spawn for 20 weeks (or something more) and then they all live for 80 weeks, the total real life span of their management is 100 weeks: 2 year real life time.
Gen38 obviously refer to all the players that will play CC 38, and WC 38 in case Nigeria qualify.

Of course I and Camortiscia are not doing this alone, we also have a team of scouts:
Veneik13 (13726329) is managing Central Defenders and Defender Counter Attack players
Daves83 (12534966) is managing InnerMids
Rapid79 (6484763) is managing Forwards and Winger.

That said, I'd like to explain a little more about the work we are doing. We can divide a GEN creation in 3 phases:
- U17 scouting: in which the U17 Head Scout works constantly with other roles scouts in order to discover the best players that are in the academies and assure that the owner is training them properly.
The team must literally search for players with constant work on Hattrick and RMA, contact the owners to get information, discuss the training plans and help the owner on any tough decision assuring that each owner dedicates the proper training to maximize the future U21 prospect, even if this means discarding other nice potential youngsters!
The main objective is to create a reliable information database for the interesting “prospects” to be born, to know which player will be put on the market and which one will be trained in their own team.
This is key information for the next phase as much as the next phase is key to the success of a Generation.
This is difficult and very tough work. As much as the scouts work there will always be some players not in the list, some players lost for many different reasons. All this information is Gold for facilitating the next phase.

- Placing: in this phase the players are born, The GEN responsible and his scout team using the information of the previous phase will assure the players are possibly bought from reliable managers. This simply means that we signal the best players to the interested managers that we know are reliable, understand U21 needs so that they can try for the bid.
If a player is bought from an unknown manager we contact him, in order to discuss his intentions and start to talk about the training plan, more often than not inform him of the player potential, right, unbelievable but some manager does not even understand potential of some players from “small” team-pool country like Nigeria.
This is a frantic phase, the market command, and all the players need to be followed up. The team uses different methods available in HT or HT portal in order to be aware of interesting players that were not in the U17 list and that are suddenly listed on the market, or are born and remain in their own team.
All these methods require time and “presence”, once a player you were not aware of is listed on the market you have three days to evaluate what needs to be done and act. A lot of time is spent in HT mail and to organize the overall list of prospects, to insert the player on HT portal, to start preparing the training plan, to ask the owner not registered to access HT portal.
To whoever is not involved it may seem strange but many players with potential that for various reasons are not bought from reliable manager, are lost because whoever buys them does not align with U21 needs. As you probably know, U21 players are very specific on specialty and skill for roles and so many managers just spend tons of money for a player that they like, that fits with their own plan but not at all with U21 needs.
So this phase is very important and has a big impact on the Generation as a whole.
An important result of this phase is that working on it step by step a network of active and committed owners is built. This is very precious both personally, for future experience, but more important for other staff members that may need these owners for future generations. Sharing information and team working are core to the continuous betterment of U21!

- Training and controlling: In this phase the Generation responsible defines the training plan for all the players, and his Scouts communicate with the owner to see if they agree or what they are planning to do.
A lot of time goes on checking the advancement of training, discussing with owners who have different ideas on the target, convince them on the train setting and have the player play consistently possibly in official matches.
Every minimum detail is checked and tuned: how much stamina, how many assistant coaches, what kind of match the player is playing, etc.
Player need different training and not all owner are available to change their own plan so the team must also work in order to safely relocate players who need to change training, to be sure that whenever an important player is put on the market, or does not follow the right training we catch it and act for solving the problem.
This is a long term phase (80 weeks) and in that time a lot of things can happen. You'll be amazed by the number of players with potential that are lost during this phase because the owner does not cooperate, stops playing, does not answer, simply has no idea on how to create value for his own team.
I estimate that even with such an organized U21 staff team we lose 10-20% of prospects just from owners that are not cooperative or do not care about U21, and sometimes have spent good money for the player in some cases forcing him out of a reliable know manager and later they train him poorly.
Gen 38 has the peculiarity that many players are in HAL leagues farming teams. So on top of the usual management in this phase I and Camortiscia must also plan and manage the orderly way out of all interesting players from the HAL teams before the league is killed, while taking maximum advantages from these farms.

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I hope that you can see how much hard work and commitment there is in managing a generation.
But I must say there also is a lot of satisfaction in seeing all of your prospects grow and become jewels for the new U21 National team.
Very well, now you may wonder, who decides what to train and how to have the player grow? You may think that all players are simply created based on standard targets...but this is not so.
The Generation Manager is responsible.
He decides what training to give. He decides if a winger should have more winger or more playmaking, if it is more important to give a forward attack, or maybe winger at some point, he decides how all players are assorted in the skills, he creates his own dream U21 team!
Of course all the U21 staff is available to discuss ideas and options, but in the end, he is the manager. He is building his own dream team, and he dream one day to be actually Coach it!

Not all U21 teams are so well organized. Even with my limited experience I can assure you that it is very difficult to find really committed people. It is also very difficult and moreover it requires a lot of time to create an U21 staff group that work in such an organized way.
Most of all it is difficult to have a Vision on the management of U21. As with every enterprise the successful management of an U21 team requires Vision and strategy, it is not something that you can improvise.
Proof of that are the results:
The current organization started to be built after September 2021 when DemaJr (7311436) ran for Coach for the second time and won. He continued the work done by Pecu(13209572), senator of Nigeria HT community.

In September 2021 CC 33 Nigeria U21 did not do more than 4th place in the qualification phase, eliminated again. Meanwhile the first seed of a new organization for players management was being built. Gen34 was still young enough to refocus the training.

In CC 34 starting April 2022 Nigeria get first phase on the qualification phase, and then literally stomp through quarter final and semi final matches. It is Silver! That is the first ever trophy in Nigeria history, but it won’t be the last. In the World Cup Round 1 Nigeria is second, Round II is fourth place. The higher results ever.

In the CC35 qualification phase, with some unluck (I know because I reported it 😉) Nigeria finished third, which is World Cup Access. WC Round I second place again, Round II 4th place again.

In CC36 Nigeria qualified second, and after that got to the semi final for a bronze medal.
Two Medal in three seasons is not a small feat! Some unluck and in Round I it is only last place.
Only is the key word here, because for a small pool Nation like Nigeria to be allowed to aspire to more than Round I WorldCup and to deem a not good year when a medal is not won, is a great achievement. Now we can even be a little pissed when we win a medal but WC finish too soon 🙂
It means that the Staff is doing a great job! BTW it is important to notice that CC36 coach was JohnSparta (11433110), very experienced, but more than that working on the organization from a long time, building on the same project and manager of his own generation.

I want to conclude by saying that in participating in this adventure I learned a lot. The know-how, the methodology, the secret tool box, and all the mechanisms that underlay the U21 National competitions were available to me as soon as I demonstrated my reliability and commitment. Nigeria U21 is not only a great organization for Nigeria, but also a sort of school for National Managers, where everybody is happy to help and the only payback asked is your work for the team and also some gratitude for the opportunity and subsequently some respect for all the community!

So if you would like one day to be coach of a National team, but more important if you like to commit yourselves to learn how to be a coach, and in the meantime have fun within a lively community, I hope now you know how you could proceed: join the community, propose yourself to the current coach, be ready to invest years of real time life to the job, do a good job, be active, propose new ideas, support the community, and you will learn a lot, have real fun and one day for sure you will have the experience to really run for coach.

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