Quid Pro Quo

Throughout the articles of the past few weeks we discussed the importance of training in the development of successful football players. Every training exercise is related to a specific skill and every skill affects the way a player performs during a match. Also there are key skills for each player's role (i.e. marking for defenders) but there is no specific pattern to follow in order to create a winning team. You can shape the team as you like, either really physical, aggressive, technical, or just plain beautiful to watch or even train eleven cannons ready to shoot from everywhere!

Once you have chosen your way, you will discover that the president of the team can offer you a way to boost your training and speed up your squad's growth. Yes, he is not just the guy who signs cheques at the end of the month, he keeps track of every aspect of the team, constantly analysing your job. He doesn't want to rush you off your feet, he just needs to have the right incentive to open his wallet. "Quid Pro Quo", you give something to him and he gives you something back. We call this "Challenges".

There are many different types of Challenges in the game, from goals conceded during league matches to keeping the mood of your footballers high. These "theme related" challenges unlock upgrades for your training ground, opening up more advanced buildings and releasing new training exercises. These new exercises will improve and increase your footballers' skills even further than before, as well as offer you new solutions to combat obstacles such as bad weather conditions. The new buildings will be more comfortable, offering you the chance to train more players at the same time, in more advanced techniques.

You will discover fairly soon in the game that you will not be able to deal with all the challenges at the same time, instead you will have to prioritise and focus on specific challenges that help you develop your playing style. Knowing the reward for completing a challenge will help with those decisions. But if you want to, you can ignore them and watch your training ground become prestigious, while following your coaching style without compromise.

Now let's take a look at an example to better understand how this mechanic works. The Challenge “score goals” analysis the number of goals scored by your team throughout the tournaments. There are five objectives, of increasing difficulty, to complete and each of these five objectives unlocks something new on the main training pitch. The first three upgrades will reward you with three new training exercises that maximise the finishing performance of the team, whilst the last two upgrades are new pitch surfaces that reduce the chance of an injury happening. One of these new pitch surfaces gives you an advanced heating system that will allow you to grow better and “safer” grass that will help overcome the dangers of training in adverse weather conditions.

There's also the flipside of the coin - are you sure your players will enjoy the new gear in the gym?