#2 Rookie Season

[frithjofr]

Career PT #1

Sydney City.

15 Appearances. 1 Man of the Match. 28 Key Passes (7th). 17 Chances Created (T-3rd). 27 Dribbles (7th). 29 Tackles (7th). 1 Motivational Speech.

Life in Sydney was a slow start. Most of the academy slots had been divided up in such a way to send players to the team closest to their homes, often with other players who maybe shared more similar culture, language, or, perhaps, just a regional birthplace. Daniel Herrera, though, ended up somewhere on the other side of the planet from his native Mexico, in perhaps the one country in the world without so much as an authentic taqueria. The lone American (that is, anyone born anywhere in the Americas) on that S20 Sydney City squad.

Herrera found himself to be quiet, reserved, but hopeful that though his usual trademark work ethic and drive he could make a name for himself in his new (if temporary) home. Sydney started their first game on the bump, and while Daniel didn't really show out, he didn't really embarrass himself either. But, shortly after that first game, Sydney brought in another American - A Brazilian, Sandro da Silva. Sandra's natural position was as a wingback, and so was Herrera's. Who knows how exactly it was decided (CERTAINLY no machismo involved), but the two mutually agreed to have Herrera switch to a midfield position, playing out on the wing as he once did in his youth. All was well, and the American side of the pitch saw quite a bit of action throughout the remainder of the season. Sometimes, that cultural familiarity is important, even if the language is different.

Daniel worked hard on the pitch, often sinking back defensively to cover for da Silva's runs, a mutually agreeable venture that saw Sydney skyrocket through the season, landing themselves in the finals. 

Moments before stepping onto the pitch, Daniel Herrera spoke up for perhaps the first time, offering up a motivational speech based on something he had internalized from a coach in his youth.

"Greatness isn't something the average person can achieve. You can be above average, you can be good, heck, you can be the best. But to be great requires devotion and focus. You have to want it. More than that, you have to take it.

Greatness is not a status that is given to you, or a reward for success. It's a mindset. It's a routine. It's a habit. It's a promise to yourself.

No matter what happens today, you have to dare to be great!"

And with a raucous cheer, Sydney City hit the pitch and, well, the rest is history.

(436 words)

Approved

[SpiNz001]

Career PT #1

Nerve de Groot’s start to hopefully a long and successful career began with Sydney City. A noticeable trio came onto the team with the hopes of making history: De Groot, Yomo Hashimoto, and Roquefort Cotswold. These three entered Sydney City at the same time with all three becoming offensive threats. De Groot aspired to be one of the best offensive forces in SSL history, beginning as a Shadow Striker. Sydney City’s first game of season 16 started with a bang, owing both goals to the trio. Nerve de Groot achieved his first goal and victory all in one game, scoring towards the last minutes of the second half along with Hashimoto. This goal would be the first of many as his position would remain the same.

Season 16’s third game had Nerve achieve his first assist of his career in the SSL along with Cotswold’s first goal. That final score would be 3-0, a notable comeback to Matchday 2’s defeat. Keeping up the pressure, Match 4 had Nerve scoring again with this and Cotswold’s hattrick making the score 4-0. Match 7, De Groot scored against Victoria Falls in a massive 6-0 victory. Match 9 was a draw but De Groot equalized with a goal just as the first half was ending. Match 10, Nerve assisted along with Hashimoto scoring in an unfortunate loss against Stockholm, while in match 11, Sydney would see the same transaction happen with De Groot once again assisting and Hashimoto scoring. A string of assists was achieved by De Groot on Matchday 12 achieving two. On Matchday 13, De Groot equalized again to create another draw as opposed to a loss. The last match, 15, would see one final assist achieved among the five goals scored by Sydney City.

This season has certainly started a track record to say the least with 8 assists and 5 goals. Sydney City’s final standings for the season was in second place with a respectable 7 wins, 4 draws, and 4 losses. De Groot has stated that he is thankful to Sydney City for taking him on as a rookie to prove himself to the league. He has high hopes of remaining up front with his two colleagues.

Approved - The history books certainly shine favorably on De Groot!

[MetalTS]

CPT 1

After a great first season in the SSL Academy, playing for Port Royal F.C, it was time for Thomas Schwarte to move on.
Getting drafted to C.S. Rova Mpanjaka as a Round 1 13th pick Thomas was ready to show what he could do for his team in the minors league.

In pre-season Thomas would go on to change his position from his LWB role to the LB role as a request from his coaches.
As it is only a small positional change not much was to be learned for Thomas and from the get go he would be a starter for Rova.

Racking up 22 games as left back with an average rating of 7.25 in these games Thomas was one of the players that helped Rova secure their 3rd spot in only their second season playing in the minor leagues.
In total Thomas was ranked as one of the top 50 players in the league based on this rating, whilst getting player of the match one time.

With his 1 goal and 11 assists in his rookie season Thomas contributed to 20% of the goals scored by Rova in their season. Together with a passing percentage of 85% we can see that Thomas is a player to look forward to in the future.
One of the other things that stood out for Thomas in his rookie season were his interceptions. He had 61 interceptions which places him 8th in the league overall.
The thing that Thomas would like to look at to improve is his crossings. With only 19% of his crossings reaching his target this will be one of the things the coaches will look at to train Thomas for the coming season.

After having signed a new deal after his rookie season Thomas will be a player of Liffeyside/Rova for the coming 3 seasons. We hope to see Thomas make his debut in Liffeyside somewhere in the coming seasons and see what he brings to the table in the Major Leagues of the SSL.

Approved - Schwarte's career is just beginning. Excited to see where it goes!

[CuriousShadow]

---

#1 link to my previous first bio
[url=https://forum.simulationsoccer.com/showthread.php?tid=224&pid=73358#pid73358][/url]
Bernardo Fry.  Man.  Myth.  Not Legend.  To be honest. it's unclear why he's even here.  Nevertheless, Bernardo Fry was pulled from a parallel dimension to replay Philip J Fry in the quest to have a decent football player without the knee damage that plagues the average delivery boy in the current day and age.

Hair:  Dark.
Brain: Inactive
Knees:  Decent
Skills:  Very much lacking

Despite all this, Fry has been pulled across dimensions to provide spell-checking advice and proper knees for the player in the newly formed Space Football Association.  Philip himself was unavailable, due to unspecified knee damage from years of delivering poorly packaged packages across the local galaxy.

Bernardo, on the other hand... despite poorly formed football skills, his knees were in place.  Working.  Solid.  And in no way influenced by the incessant pings from the Discord server.

Season one.  Bernardo did his best, which was subpar and disappointing.  Despite his best efforts, he spend his entire season back on Seoul getting crushed by teams that were better.  Left footed, left attacking midfield, which was in direct conflict with his own selection of Left Midfield as his best position. In any case, he eventually settled into the Left Attacking Midfield position and scored a disappointing amount of goals but a reasonable number of assists across the season.  To date, the list of mechanical and biological enhancements have been insufficient, and to be honest the player has not been boosted far enough to be reasonably expected to reach the first division.  Money... Physics... Biology... All of these are required.  Professor - we require your services.  Please report to the training room.  Although Fry has not yet been updated, we feel your services will be required very soon.

Approved 

[lunaripcole]

CPT #1

Kelsier Summers’ rookie year was honestly nothing spectacular so far. He didn’t feel like he was contributing to the team as much as he could be. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to contribute more, he just felt the competition was so much higher than he was used to. Summers was beginning to realized that what he was currently putting up wasn’t going to be enough. He stared himself down in the mirror, he felt tears beginning to break, but he held them back. Why couldn’t he do more? He wanted this more than anything. He thought of his cousins who also played pro sim sports. Dalinar had an Ultimus and multiple awards for his performance, Waxillium has played a solid career for multiple teams, and Vasher had 2 rings. He was the only one disgracing the family name. Kelsier knew he had to work harder, but he just didn’t know what to do. He already felt like he was giving it his all. He called his Uncle Kal and asked for advice. Kal Summers had made all three of his sons ISFL first rounders, so he knew a thing or two about sim sports despite never playing himself. Uncle Kal’s advice was simple. He told me straight up, “You think you are giving it 100%, but you’re not. Do more.” He promptly hung up after that. Initially Kelsier was mad that he didn’t get any real advice, but he realized his uncle was right. He needed to reach out to trainers and coaches and stop trying to rely on his natural talent if he wanted to be a star in this league. So Kelsier got to work, hoping that his training and guidance would lead him to more promising future careers, maybe with a season rating that finally breaks 7.

Approved - a lot of good blood in Summers genes. I think Kelsier can make the leap to greatness

[Darthus]

Career PT #1

Shingo Takechi's rookie season was spent at AC Romana's minor team, Inter London. London had just come off a title challenging season in S17, so Shingo had high hopes going into the season. What actually happened was nothing short of a disaster. Takechi had a rough introduction to the SSL, in 14 games he conceded 39 goals, had the league lowest save percentage of 61.76%, had the tied lowest average matchday rating of 6.6, lost 8 games, had 0 clean sheets...you get the idea. Worse still, London went from competing for the Minor League Title with legendary keeper Elmis the Heretic (who conceded just 14 goals in S17) to finishing 1 point off the bottom of the table with Takechi.

Partway through the season, Takechi considered just cutting his losses and retiring then and there, to go work in finance like his parents, to give up on his dream of becoming a professional football player. But it was at his lowest moment, that he received a call from one of his best friends from his days in the SSL academy, Thomas Hohenhahn, he had called to check up on him. They chatted for a couple of hours, Hohenhahn had graduated at the same time as Takechi and was having a much better season playing for F.C. Kaapstad. Right before they called it a night, Hohenhahn made a remark, telling Takechi that next time he faced him, he'd score 5 goals past him. Next time, right, Takechi realised that he couldn't just give up then, he had rivals that were counting on him to push them to greatness, and so he vowed to stop thinking about retirement for now, take it one game at a time, and keep improving to be the best goalkeeper he could be, and maybe stop a couple of shots on the way.

Ultimately, it was a tough season for the Japanese rookie, but he had faith that better things were to come on the horizon, and so with his first season out of the way, he breathed a sigh of relief, as he knew it could only be up from here.

Approved 

[soevil]

Career pt1

Austin Morley had a very disappointing rookie season considering his lofty standards. To be honest, Morley felt lucky to be drafted at all, especially as a first round pick. He promised himself that he would work his ass off to make sure that Montreal wouldn’t feel as if they wasted their pick taking a chance on him. They had drafted him to change the franchise and to be a catalyst for the new regime, maybe even to be the face of the franchise. But after this rookie season, he’s sure the fan base, organization management, and even a little bit of himself is beginning to doubt that possibility.

As a defender, Morleys statline doesn’t always tell the whole story, even if in this case his stats aren’t much to shake a stick at anyway. As a primary defender, I think the areas that need to be looked at are presses, tackles, passes, blocks, interceptions, clearances, and possibly fouls. Looking at the numbers, Morley looked pretty terrible in basically all of those stats. He had a press% of 20 with 85 attempted and only 17 successful. He had 4 blocks and 24 fouls called against him with 3 yellow cards issued. He had a 66% tackle rating with 16 successful tackles on 24 attempted, 3 being “key” tackles. Finally, Austin Morley had 22 interceptions and 33 clearances. Morley fortunately also didn’t have any mistakes leading to goals.

Montreal finished the season with 1 win and 9 losses with a goal differential of -24. That is pretty atrocious and resulted in the teams relegation. Morley and the team shouldn’t be too discouraged, though. A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and we can consider this season that first march forward. On the bright side, there is nowhere to go but up!

Approved - Early career results won't tell the whole story. Morley has a lot of great games ahead of him I'm sure! 

[bjkman]

Career PT #1

Draft Voice-Over: Liffeyside Celtic FC has traded the rights to the upcoming pick; and with the 6th pick of the Season 25 Prospect Draft Schwarzwälder FV has selected the Goalie out of Port Royale Football Club...  Domingo Hernandez.

Reporter: We are sitting down today with Domingo Hernández to speak with him about his successful first season that culminated in being the highest drafted Goalkeeper this season. Domingo, how do you feel?

Domingo: I feel absolutely phenomenal, and I'm just happy to see 14 games of hard work turn out so successful. The only thing I can say was a disappointment was Schwarzwälder owners and coaches told me I would have been the #1 overall pick if they hadn't received such a good trade offer to move back; but I was also their choice at #6 and I'm very happy to be where I am.

Reporter: Of all the goalkeepers that participated in all 14 academy matches your statistics stood out the most compared to the other keepers. Winning 9 out of 14 matches, put you 2nd in the league and with an average player rating of 7.06 you were the best in your position. You were also #1 in the league at clean sheets with 4. Are there any other key factors to your performance last season that stood out to you?

Domingo: Yes! as you can see I'm a force to be reckoned with. You didn't even mention how I was 3rd in conceded goals and saves tipped, #1 in Saves Parried or 2nd in Saves Held. But the biggest stat here that wasn't mentioned was how I was top of the league in Save Percentage with over a 73% of shots saved. I don't know what else you could look for in a goalkeeper.

Reporter: Well there you have it; Season 1 is in the books for Domingo Hernandez and his first real test begins now.

Draft Voice-Over: Schwarzwälder Fußballverein have their Goalkeeper of the future and the future is looking bright not just for Domingo Hernandez but for this team as well.

Code:

345 Words

[rrf_1]

Career Point Task #1 Biography 

Through the Academy’s player matching process, Ekon was paired with the Victoria Falls Eagles along with 8 other rookies from across the globe.  Located in southern Africa at the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, Victoria Falls made for unfamiliar but exciting destination for Ekon.  He found a home in east Livingstone that was close to the team’s facilities and moved in with teammate Armero Staple, a fellow Spanish citizen that was coming to the team from the Catalunya region.  Sharing a native language and cultural traditions, Ekon and Armero helped each other adjust to their new and foreign surroundings.

Ekon’s season with the Eagles was a massive success, both on a personal level and a team level.  Most of his teammates were more aligned toward attacking, especially Armero as the team’s primary striker, so Ekon’s rare defensive skillset was especially valued by his coaches and made a huge mark on the Academy.  He led all rookies with 69 headers and 40 interceptions, and he was the only player to rank top 10 in headers, tackles, interceptions, clearances, and blocks as measured on a per 90 minutes scale.  These defensive contributions were clear evidence to himself and to the league that he had a special talent for defending, even at the professional level.

Throughout the season, Ekon was also eager to improve his areas of weakness.  With dedication, his teammates worked with him to learn to play more aggressively and intelligently when in possession.  His offensive skillset was still under-developed by the end of the season, but Ekon certainly improved his versatility to complement a strong defensive foundation.  The Eagles finished the season with a 11-2-1 record at the top of the league standings, securing the team's second consecutive Academy title.

Beyond the team's impressive success, one of Ekon’s favorite traditions while at the Academy was a one-on-one drill with his roommate that frequently ended the team's practices: Armero’s task was simply to dribble the length of the pitch without losing possession to Ekon’s challenges.  Even as the Academy’s top goal-scorer, Armero was successful only a couple times all year.

Due to his success in the Academy, Ekon received quite a few invitations from major league organizations to visit for a tryout.  League veteran Thomas Hohenhahn hosted Ekon for a trip to Shanghai, where they had a deep discussion of football tactics and strategy over steamed soup dumplings.  Central defender Matias Xavier of Schwarzwälder FV brought Ekon to Pforzheim to learn all about his cultural background and unique journey into football while exploring the hidden corners of the Black Forest and the bottom of a stein of Hefeweizen.  The mysterious striker No Face hosted Ekon in Tokyo for a diverse evening of tea and sumo wrestling to study his personality, interests, and locker room fit with the organization's young and developing roster.  And to wrap up his flurry of distant adventures, Ekon visited Kaapstad's Boulders Beach and Table Mountain with young star fullback Lucas Peioxoto to discover the rich legacy and defensive identity of the Hollywood FC organization.  Through the visits, Ekon learned that each organization had something unique to offer, and he was thrilled to  know that he would thrive with whichever organization drafted him.

Once the SSL draft day finally came, Ekon was selected first overall by the Tokyo S.C. organization to officially begin his professional football career.  Immensely thankful for all the support he received during his rookie season, Ekon departed for Cairo to train with the organization's minor league club and continue his ascent as a great player.