Can I get a manager job for a national team whilst managing a club?

[heinsburger]

Ik you can do it from the start but is there a chance it ever happens midgame e.g halfway through season 2 as let's say bhutan fc or something and china want you to manage their national team (stupid examples but it's a sunday)

[Neil Brock]

Yep, absolutely. Keep an eye out in the Job Centre/Job Security panels to see if anything comes up that you'd like to apply for.

Also if you're doing well enough, you may just get offered a job.

[Spelunker]

There are a few things to be aware of when you're a national manager.

1) You gain scouting knowledge of that nation.

2) Coaches can also coach both a club side and a national side, so you can ask some of your club coaches to help with your national side (they may decline though, so check before you sack the existing national coaches)

3) You can't rest players in the national team you are managing.

The exception to this is players you call up from your club team. This means in a tournament you have to rotate nearly every game to keep your players fit and players sometimes turn up completely knackered. Consequently it's worth selecting players from your club side if they're good enough as you can manage their fitness better through the tournament.

4) Not all players that can play for your nation will show up in the "National pool". Therefore it's worth doing a player search each year or so under "Nationality" and "Position" to find any omitted players and adding those of interest to the pool.

5) National teams have limited time to learn tactics. In order to become fluid I'd recommend choosing just one or perhaps two tactics. i'd also recommend one of those tactics includes the instructions "Low tempo" and "Take a Breather" as these will help your players stay fit over the course of a tournament. Also If you're clearly going to win a game sub your best players so they're fit enough to play in the next game.

6) It helps a lot with national teams if you players are familiar with each other and your tactics, so try not to make to many changes to your squad each time they meet up unless forced by injury. It's also easy to forget players left out due to injury, so before removing them from the squad check the date of your next set of internationals and add a note for a bout 10 days/2 weeks beforehand to remind yourself to bring that player back into the squad. Several times I've accidentally gone into matches without one of my better players because I've forgotten to bring them back into the squad.
- Adding your first choice national players to your shortlist will make them easier to spot in the national player pool.

7) Personally I'd avoid managing any U18 or U21 national sides as every time the squad comes together you'll find half the players you picked last time aren't available due to being pick for the next squad up or through injury. This can be a bit frustrating and means you have to spend ages each time scouting a new squad.

8) Lastly before accepting a national team job make sure that nations's league is in your game. I once accepted a job coaching S.Africa but didn't have their league in my game. This meant I had a VERY limited pool of players to select from, (just those playing in leagues that were in my game), sometimes I couldn't even find enough for a full squad . Even if you add the league it won't become available until July 1st the following year.

Hope that's been helpful.

[Spelunker]

Originally posted by Neil Brock:

Yep, absolutely. Keep an eye out in the Job Centre/Job Security panels to see if anything comes up that you'd like to apply for.

Also if you're doing well enough, you may just get offered a job.

Hi Neil,

Can I make a couple of suggestions for changes to make in future FMs regarding national managers?

1) Allow National managers to rest players in their squad once it meets up.

As things stand you can only do this if a player is also in your club team. In real life National managers can give players a rest or lighter training schedule if they turn up knackered or have several games close together, but we can't in FM.

2) Sometimes I'll pick a young player for my national team only to be told he's already been picked for the U21s and so is unavailable. I would be good if we could over-ride this as happens in real life and promote them to the first team.

Thanks.

[Neil Brock]

Thanks for the suggestions. If you have any others at any point the best place to raise them is via our Feature Request forums found here - https://community.sigames.com/forum/680-football-manager-feature-requests/

[Spelunker]

Thanks for the link Neil.