2025-09-17, 10:42 AM - Word count:
So as I mentioned before, I played house league soccer when I was a kid. I then refereed some very young kids for a summer or two. I went to a Toronto FC game like 10-15 years ago. I think I watched a good chunk of the 2014 World Cup? I vaguely kept up with the 2018 one because I was working with some migrant workers from Mexico and a couple of exchange students from Germany. I’ve tried playing Football Manager a couple of times, and I’ve always loved the idea of it, but never clicked in practice.
All of this is to say, that while my history with soccer is full of great memories and fantasy, in practice, there’s not a whole lot to go off of. I don’t actually enjoy watching good players play soccer, they’re just too good at it. There’s not enough chaos to keep me going for 90+ minutes. And as for management, I never picked up enough of the specifics of soccer to translate my oodles of Eastside Hockey Manager experience to Football Manager.
But, when I’m not in charge of all of the moving parts, the money, the scouting, the development, the staff, the tactics, the roster moves, and of course team morale and chemistry, I think I could get down with soccer really hard.
I love the fact that I have a million ways I want to apply my next TPE. I love that I have a million traits I want to explore, and a million positions and roles I want to learn more about. I love that I’m thinking about how many articles I’ll need to write to become the ambidextrous epiglottis of a team someday.
The very things that make soccer so boring to watch (sorry soccer fans), is precisely the thing that makes me so excited to have a player. The tactics matter, the traits, the roles, the interplay of attributes. They’re all critical, and they all have so many combinations, with the human factors of real members having their own ideas and actions, it’s the perfect optimization problem.
And if you know me, you would know that I am a sucker for an optimization problem. Now I just need the money to back up my experimentation!
All of this is to say, that while my history with soccer is full of great memories and fantasy, in practice, there’s not a whole lot to go off of. I don’t actually enjoy watching good players play soccer, they’re just too good at it. There’s not enough chaos to keep me going for 90+ minutes. And as for management, I never picked up enough of the specifics of soccer to translate my oodles of Eastside Hockey Manager experience to Football Manager.
But, when I’m not in charge of all of the moving parts, the money, the scouting, the development, the staff, the tactics, the roster moves, and of course team morale and chemistry, I think I could get down with soccer really hard.
I love the fact that I have a million ways I want to apply my next TPE. I love that I have a million traits I want to explore, and a million positions and roles I want to learn more about. I love that I’m thinking about how many articles I’ll need to write to become the ambidextrous epiglottis of a team someday.
The very things that make soccer so boring to watch (sorry soccer fans), is precisely the thing that makes me so excited to have a player. The tactics matter, the traits, the roles, the interplay of attributes. They’re all critical, and they all have so many combinations, with the human factors of real members having their own ideas and actions, it’s the perfect optimization problem.
And if you know me, you would know that I am a sucker for an optimization problem. Now I just need the money to back up my experimentation!
