Football Manager

You read it right. Today I’m gonna talk about my strategy that I used when I was playing this game.

I started with a mediocre team in 2nd tier. I was their manager. My goal was to promote it to 1st tier. I knew my chances are not that good, so the first thing was to create connections with better teams. My team became satellite for better teams. This mean I would get better players, hot prospects from those teams on loan. I didn’t need to pay them full salaries, I was supporting like 50% because I didn’t had the money. After one or two seasons eventually I got promotion. Now in this case the teams that I got players on loan from would kill the deal that I got with them, especially if now I was in the same division as them. They didn’t want to make the competition stronger. After a couple seasons I realized that I cannot compete with the big budget teams. A change was needed.

Of course now my reputation was pretty good so I was hunting top middle teams for a manager position. Eventually I would got one. My objective now was winning the championship. I needed money to be competitive. I could not afford good players, so I sold my top players in order to start the reconstruction. For that money I got many young players with good perspectives. I needed to get out the best of those players so I started to look for better coaches(fitness, physio, tactics, scouters). I bought the best I could afford. After a few more seasons I finished top 3 in the championship which allowed me to get even more money by participating in the Europa League. Invested even more, continuously searching for the best players and coaches that I could afford. My budget was not looking good. My horizon was expanding and new opportunities appeared. I wanted ever more. I wanted to continuously improve my team to keep it competitive. I started to trade my players, searching for free agents because my reputation was constantly growing and players showed interest in playing for me.

Then started to win the championship. Suddenly I had access to Champions League, which means even more money and prestige. Invested even more in coaches, send them to trainings which in turn made my players even better. Did not stop the investments. Poured money into the team. Still I could not afford big players, they just cost too much. So I started investments in the junior academy, started to grow my own players. I would hunt junior players which were hot prospects. I had some kick ass scouts. I always listen for they advices. They knew their job and I was not my place to tell them how to do it. This was valid for all my coaches. Everything was set on auto. I had trust in them. My team was becoming better and better and after a few season I won the Champions League. I was playing with the big boys now.

Since I still could not afford big players, I shifted my attention to big coaches. They were all stars. They would give me advice on players, which position we need to cover, I had doubles on each position. Never retrained players on a different position. I wanted to get out the best of each of them, to be as effective as possible. Always keeping my eye on my prospects. Made some good trades. I was selling now good players if I had backups for them to attract more money. I was constantly winning Champions League trophy now. My team was competitive, chemistry was good and everyone was paid good. My stars were handsomely paid and were dragging the team to wins. I was the Bulls team from the 90s. I had Jordan with the points, Pippen with the assists and Rodman with defence and steals. Everyone played in the position in which they were the most effective. We were all world class.

Now, you are thinking. What does this story has to do with software development? Well if you replace

• hot prospects on loan with IT consultants
• young players with good perspectives with good junior developers
• championship/Europa League/Champions League with clients/products
• scouts with recruiters
• coaches with tech leads, team leads, architects
• players with developers
• manager with C-level positions

you now start to read between the lines. If you didn’t do it already.