Updates to the Rulebook

[Canadice]

SSL Organizations

With the previously announced change to eight SSL Organizations consisting of a minor and major league team, we have had to do a big rework of the Rulebook. We can now announce that the changes have been voted in and the Rulebook updated so here follows a summary of each bigger change. There were also some accompanying minor changes, like swapping every reference from teams to organizations when applicable that I will not cover here.

- Changes to the league structure
The SSL now consists of three leagues, the major league, the minor league and the Academy League. Each organization is responsible to field one team in each of the major and minor leagues with players under contract being able to play for each. The Academy League will as previous consists of players preparing for their draft.
The promotion/relegation system has been removed in favor for static leagues with the same teams being represented in each.

- Minor change to the SSL Cup
The SSL Cup will see no changes to its structure currently as the amount of work to the database would be vast and needs to be redone again next season when we move to FM24. We will most likely see changes to the Cup structure when that will happen.

One minor thing we adjusted that does not require vast amount of filework, is removing the away goal tiebreaker for the knockout rounds.

- Academy League eligibility
Players that have been drafted are no longer eligible to play in the Academy league. They should instead be assigned to one of the organization's teams in the minor or major league.

- Organization Managers
Instead of Team Managers, the user officially leading an organization is called an Organization Manager (OM). They can hire up to two Assistant Manager to help with the responsibilities with an additional Tactician to help specifically with tactics and their submissions.

- Removal of loans
With the concentration of active players we have removed loans as the purpose of that rule was to allow players in a different TPE tier than the team the possibility to play within their competitive level. The major and minor league system automatically has that possibility with assigning players to their relevant team within the organization.

- Removal of Activity Requirement
It is now no longer a rule that an active status contract will need to play a specific amount of games in a season without incurring a cap fine to the team. Similarly to the loans rule, the new league structure should allow for active players to get playing time within their organization organically without having to fully force the managers hands. We have however added another restriction that again incentivizes the organic development of active players.

- Organizational Structure
Each organization needs to field two teams, one in the major league and one in the minor league. In order to create two competitive leagues there are some restrictions put in place to allow for that to happen.

First an organization must have at least 22 players under contract but may not have more than 28 players. Each team within an organization may have between 11 and 14 players assigned to them.

The salary cap of an organization is 100 million but there are separate caps for the major and minor leagues. A major league team may not have more than 55 million of players assigned to them and a minor league team may not have more than 45 million of players assigned to them.

A major league team may not have more than three Inactive Status Contracts. An Inactive Status Contract is a contract whose player is either IA at the time of signing or has turned IA at the start of the season. (See F.1 of the Rulebook for more information on the contract statuses.)

Players can move freely between teams given the teams fulfill these restrictions.

- Majors Clause
An additional clause that can be signed to a contract is a Majors clause. This would prevent an organization from sending the contracted player to the minor league team. This is similar to the No Movement Clause but within an organization.

- Additional Transfer Budget
Each organization now has at most 200 million in their transfer budget, which replenishes by 100 million each season.


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Lots of little things here and there being changed with the hopes of providing some stability to the league as a whole which can allow for the development of other aspects of the league. As always, any questions can be directed to myself or any of the BoD members.