Seeing your long-time captain and club legend retire is heartbreaking. He has given everything for the club, but you still do not want to let him go. You check his staff attributes, and they are a joke to say the least, not really close to being a good fit to coach your youth players or to be any other member of staff. But you still want to keep him around, hoping the stats will improve over time, since he is young according to staff standards. But do coaches stats really improve in FM22?
The answer is yes, coaches, scouts and other staff in football manager can improve their stats over time. Just like players, they have a fixed current ability (CA) and potential ability (PA) which they can fulfil given the right circumstances.
Therefore, signing your favourite retired players as staff members is not the worst idea in the world, and they can turn out to be world-class coaches, scouts, assistant managers etc after a few seasons in the game. Keep in mind though that how good they turn out to be will be determined by their Potential Ability, which is fixed.
If he has a low potential ability to start out with, no matter how hard he pushes himself to be better, once he hits his ceiling, that’s it. He cannot be better than that level. However, the only way to look at the potential ability of a player or staff is to use the editor, which I am not a fan of, as I find it to break my immersion which is an important part of enjoying a football manager save game.
Having a high potential ability does not automatically guarantee that a retired player will become a high quality staff member. Reaching this level will depend on a few factors;
- The personality of the staff member. A coach who is professional or determined will show more improvements compared to one who has a poor personality like balanced or slack.
- Employment. Coaches who are employed and get to practice their craft every day will improve more compared to those who are unemployed for long stretches of time.
- Coaching courses. Sending your coaches to study for their coaching badges will see them increase their attributes once they successfully complete the course. Whether they fail or succeed in taking their courses will also depend on a few factors including the coach’s professionalism, discipline and personality.
In order to send a young coach or a retiring player on a coaching course, select his profile, then hover your cursor over the overview tab, if the staff member does not have the maximum number of coaching badges, there will be an option to send him on a coaching course.
Doing this is not always 100% successful, as you will still have to convince your board that the amount of time the staff member will miss while studying for the course is time well invested. If you are in the middle of a particularly busy period while at the same time you have limited staff to take extra duties, the board might reject your request until the schedule lightens.
Finally, if you have a coach who does not speak the national language of the nation that you are managing in, make sure to send him on a language course in order to maximize his efficiency when dealing with players. His output will slightly decrease when he is studying, but once completed successfully, he will be much better for it since the language barrier is eliminated.
The process of sending a coach on a language course, is similar to the one we used above for coaching courses. The language course option is also available for new players who do not speak the national language of the country that they are playing in. Learning the national language as soon as possible fast tracks how soon they can fully integrate with the rest of the squad.
