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National Teams in India - A Theory of All Eggs in One Basket

Written by Maidichtling

Overall, the article presents a holistic approach to developing and strengthening the Indian national teams in Hattrick. It invites readers to join the India forum and participate in the national team projects to contribute to India's success in the game. A comprehensive strategy for developing and strengthening the Indian national teams is presented, which currently is in a phase of focusing on the U21 and its transition into the senior national team. Here's a breakdown of key points and strategies mentioned:

Community Engagement: The article emphasizes the importance of community involvement and collective effort in building strong national teams. It calls for motivated managers who are committed to seeing India succeed in international competitions.

Roles and Responsibilities: Various roles within the national team project are identified, ranging from scouting to coaching and strategic planning.

Long-Term Vision: The article stresses the importance of long-term planning and commitment. It acknowledges that building competitive national teams takes time and requires sustained effort over several seasons.

Youth Development: The focus on nurturing young talent is highlighted, with an emphasis on scouting and training players from a young age.

Cooperation and Collaboration: Collaboration among managers, scouts, and coaches is emphasized as crucial for achieving success. Cooperation is necessary for scouting talent, training players, and devising effective tactics.

Know-how: The article promotes education and knowledge-sharing among managers to improve their understanding of the game and enhance their managerial skills.

Expansion and Growth: There is a call for expanding the user base in India and increasing participation in the game.

National Teams are somewhat a possibility to connect to your home nation, if for example staying abroad. While remaining within Hattrick, a somehow virtual reality going on in a parallel universe with triple speed, you get the feel of contributing a higher purpose. “To serve the home nation” may sound a bit beyond the scope but essentially, that is what makes National Teams in smaller nation competitive. Being Indian, it was always the final frontier for myself to make India a Hattrick powerhouse. While we are still far off from achieving this for the NT, our efforts put into for the India U21 has already made its presence palpable all around.

The first step was to strengthen the U21 as young talents need to be nurtured, cultivated and later orchestrated. A scouting network needed to be established and the U21 team ratings only get as good as the managers who train the prospects. There is help for the managers, there are position scouts, there is a larger vision, but first and foremost there is a need to motivate the community to participate long-term and trust the involved core contributors. National teams often tend to be reduced to a one man show. This is not the case with us here in India.

We have formed a larger group of people who contribute in different ways. There are different roles in this project:

- Head Scout
- Position Scouts (GK, DEF, IM, WI, FW)
- Generation Scouts
- Youth Academy Scout
- Tactical Assistants
- Visionary Advisors
- Portal Tracker Manager
- Head Coach & official Assistant
- Prospect training Managers
- Farm Team Managers
- Indian Team owners
- …

Some of these roles need an experienced and knowledgeable manager to take tough decisions, to guide the prospects in a way that they become weapons. Head Scout, Generation Scout and Visionary Advisor – all of these roles should be occupied rather mid- to long-term. It is impossible to take over a pretty much “unscouted” team and make it competitive within a few weeks or months. No matter how much work you put in, the results will only show with a lot of lag.

We started with 15-year-old academy talents in 2019. As you can see, five years have passed since, and still it is only U21 we are talking about as a strong team. Our NT did well this campaign, but rating-wise NT India is one of the weakest World Cup participants. While U21 is aiming already to go to Round III and beyond, qualifying to this World Cup was a huge achievement for NT. Looking at the Asia Cup, U21 is one of the favorites to win a medal, season after season, NT barely managed to get into the Wild Cards.

The first generation of U21 stars are slowly growing into NT age. They will make an impact, probably raise the level to become a top team in Asia. We are waiting eagerly to run the Asia Cup as a team who plans to fight for top spot. Will there be a first medal for NT as well in the next campaigns?

It depends on how well the prospects will be trained and managed from now on. The pipeline looks good and strong but the managers need to sacrifice a bit of their team strength to push the NT further. Stamina settings, training regimes and avoiding double appearances in crunch weeks are as much part of it as financial resources to afford wages, to buy prospects or the facilitate optimal staffers. Do we have enough managers in India and around the World to settle NT India sustainable?

This will depend on the biggest groups in the roles we have:

- Prospect training Managers
- Farm Team Managers
- Indian Team owners

We need youths to be taken care of. They need optimal training and promotion with 17 years and only a few days. It requires managers who have the financial strength and recognize the purpose if a player has to be bought for entirely more than they are worth, if a bid war arises. Managers are needed who cooperate maximally at the right moment in order to be able to achieve the short-term goals of the U21 or later NT, even if this sometimes does not lead to optimal decisions from a purely club perspective. The more compromises the NT/U21 has to make, the less likely they are to compete on the biggest stage, the World Cup. In addition to the Football Powerhouse nations, there is now a rapidly increasing number of small countries that can also compete for the crown due to self-sacrificing work and strong networks. Can India become one of latter?

There have been efforts to sustain the quality in India over campaigns which looking at U21 results worked pretty well. Translating this to NT though, will be a much more exhausting task. Looking at “Time-to-Market” (from first sighting of a player to seeing him play competitive), which is like 5-6 seasons for U21, the NT players have a life-cycle of around 20 seasons from 15-years-old to 35-years-old. For me personally, looking at roughly 15 seasons of National Team engagement in India, we are heading into the final phase of penetration of NT from players scouted since academy level.

We do need more managers joining our network. I am looking especially at Indian managers to fulfill this role. There has to be inner motivation to see India win, the purpose is too central for NT as the timespan is so long that personal life circumstances may even change multiple times before a prospect is ready to play his first games. Many managers leave Hattrick just like that, if the personal situation demands a change of online behavior. Losing prospects after several seasons, after planning with them long-term, is a main issue with smaller nations. The resources are scarce. While Germany can choose from up to 20 top class prospects in each category, India will be happy to scout 20 top class prospects for all categories combines. If half of them get lost, as common tongue estimates, the team is quickly reduced to below par. Hence, attached managers who keep their team, who fully train their prospects and don’t give up on the long-term plan for NT India, are needed, are sought for, are invited to introduce themselves. After all, all this is about community engagement and group effort.

The team behind my engagement in India has grown into a circle of friends with a common goal. We all met, traveling from different parts of Middle Europe to have a blast and watch NT India go deeper into the World Cup by advancing to Round II. As you can probably read from my dedicated words, a basis has been reached from which leads to success. A success we all celebrate together, not just within a small group but the entire Indian community. The smaller group has different strengths, ranging from visionary thesis (like target skill discussions) to tactical tricks (assisting certain games) to hard work in the Hattrick Portal Tracker (main scouting work). The community has shown reliability. The quicker “Time-to-Market” game which is U21 has shown the results only possible with an Indian group of managers buying a bigger number of prospects, cooperate with the scouts, meet the requirements and, finally, prepare the players for the big stage.

There have been so many success stories in India in the past seasons. Hopefully many of you reading this article will remember theirs! If not, maybe you want to start your journey to become a better manager, to strengthen your team and by doing so help NT India. Obviously, a player for NT India will lead to a strong rating at club level as well. We have seen quality in I-League increase for some time now.

The increase in I-League ratings over the past seasons reflects the growing quality of Indian players around the country. This goes hand in hand with know-how being spread across a lot of interested managers who participated in the campaigns and discussed plans with our scouts. There is a need to educate yourself about the game if you want to win trophies, choose the best line-ups or groom strong players for NT. This will not happen by chance. The scouting regime, therefore, understands its tasks as advisors, as supporters of the team need, as communicators to help. This game is much more fun, if there are 30-40 strongly managed Indian teams around and not only 5-10 as it was for more than a decade now.

All this shows that there is already so much achieved in India. Nonetheless, it feels like HT India is still in its childhood, taking first steps at international level. We want to cherish this moment and hold our breath for a moment. In times of frequent change and a decreased user base in general Hattrick, we are still getting started in the huge market that India possesses. Football is a game which we love in India and a statistical game with slow pace seems to be an exciting business model even for the upcoming generations. Here’s hoping for doubling the number of Indian teams in the upcoming decade. Let us make this game popular and talk about our success with HT India in real life while trying to convince managers all around the World to open second and third teams in our beloved country. There haven’t been (m)any medals for Real Life (youth) teams from India in Football. We are one step ahead, here in Hattrick. This makes the location more interesting and we can bank on the experience the active team brings in.

Let us celebrate the status quo and keep going!

Are you out there? Reading this text and wondering what this was all about? Maybe you need to join the India forum (16828888.1). Even if you are not a Hattrick Supporter you can join the NT and U21 feds for free. All the magic going into the campaigns is being presented there. You will find prospect lists, player skills, tactical preparation, communication from and with the coaches, past campaign, target skills, scouting guides and much more. Come in and find out!