Staff Roles

Your backroom team is made up of staff members employed in distinct roles. Each staff role has its own standard responsibilities that require particular qualities, such as particular attributes. As a manager, you too are effectively a staff member with your own responsibilities and attributes. Your manager attributes are explained in the Manager guide.

The standard responsibilities of the staff roles, along with the effects and importance of each of the required qualities for these responsibilities, will be explained separately for coaches, scouts and physios.

You can also assign additional responsibilities to staff members, some of which themselves require particular qualities. These additional responsibilities and their required qualities are detailed below, along with an explanation of the director of football role.

Role Familiarity

A staff member can only be employed in one staff role at any one time but he may have a certain level of familiarity with more than one role, as shown on his staff profile. He might therefore work in different roles at different points in his career, although he may be less willing to work in an unfamiliar role or a role with less responsibility than he expects.

A staff member’s familiarity with a particular role will increase the more time he spends working in that role.

Staff Responsibilities

On the Responsibilities tab of the Staff screen there are various responsibilities that you can assign to particular staff members that they will take on in addition to the standard responsibilities for their roles. You can also choose to take on many of these responsibilities yourself.

Furthermore, your assistant manager or director of football has the responsibility of providing specific transfer assistance when requested, which can be managed on the Director of Football tab of the Transfers screen.

These responsibilities are summarised and discussed below.

Responsibility	Can be Assigned to
Board
Hires/fires director of football	Manager Director
Staff Recruitment
Hires/fires head of youth development	Manager Director of football Director
Hires/fires chief scout	Manager Director of football Director
Hires/fires all other staff	Manager Director of football Director
Transfers (Incoming)
Finds and makes offers for players for your first team Required qualities: Judging Player Ability Judging Player Potential	Manager Director of football Director
Finds and makes offers for young players for the future Required qualities: Judging Player Potential	Manager Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager Assistant manager Director
Handles new signing contract negotiations for players in your first team	Manager Director of football Director
Handles new signing contract negotiations for players in your youth team	Manager Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager Assistant manager Director
Finalises first team signings	Manager Director of football Director
Finalises signings for young players for the future	Manager Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager Assistant manager Director
Transfers (Outgoing)
Finds a new club for first team players you’ve listed for transfer/loan	Manager Director of football Director
Finds a new club for youth team players you’ve listed for transfer/loan	Manager Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager Assistant manager Director
Contract Renewals
Decides which first team players contracts to extend and handles negotiations Required qualities: Judging Player Ability, Judging Player Potential	Manager Director of football Director
Decides which youth team players contracts to extend and handles negotiations Required qualities: Judging Player Potential	Manager Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager Assistant manager Director
Decides if director of football should be given new contract and handles negotiations	Manager Director
Decides if all other staff should be given new contracts and handles negotiations	Manager Director of football Director
Scouting
Sets assignments for the scouting team	Manager Director of football Chief scout
Updates you on the players your scouts have found	Director of football Chief scout
Training
Runs general training for senior squads Required qualities: A coaching style that you like	Manager Assistant manager
Runs general training for youth squads Required qualities: A coaching style that you like	Manager Assistant manager Head of youth development Youth manager
Sets up individual training for senior players	Manager Assistant manager
Sets up individual training for youth players	Manager Assistant manager Head of youth development Youth manager
Runs match training for first team	Manager Assistant manager
Runs match training for reserve squad	Manager Assistant manager Reserves manager Reserves assistant manager Head of youth development Youth manager
Runs match training for youth squad	Manager Assistant manager Reserves manager Reserves assistant manager Head of youth development Youth manager Youth assistant manager
Youth Development
Brings youth players into the club, and informs you of their development Required qualities: Judging Player Potential Working With Youngsters Tactical preferences similar to your own* A positive personality and media handling style*	Director of football Head of youth development Youth manager
*The staff member responsible is more likely to bring in players that suit his preferences and have a similar personality to his own.
First Team
Attends press conferences Required qualities: A positive personality and media handling style	Manager Assistant manager
Attends tunnel interviews Required qualities: A positive personality and media handling style	Manager Assistant manager
Arranges friendly matches	Manager Assistant manager
Gives team talks Required qualities: Motivating	Manager Assistant manager (or most senior coach)
Sets pre-match instructions on opposition players (opposition instructions) Required qualities: Tactical Knowledge Judging Player Ability Preferably a favourable playing style	Manager Assistant manager (or most senior coach)
Manages team in friendly matches, and plays with your tactics	Manager Assistant manager (or most senior coach)
Reserves
Manager (takes control of matches only)	Reserves manager only, if employed Otherwise: Manager Any other coach except youth coaches
Plays matches with first team’s tactics (can help your reserves players to become more familiar with your tactics for when they are brought into your senior squad) Required qualities (if not ticked): Tactical Knowledge Tactical preferences that you like
Arranges friendly matches
Youth
Manager (takes control of matches only)	Youth manager only, if employed Otherwise: Manager Any other coach
Plays matches with first team’s tactics (can help your youth players to become more familiar with your tactics for when they are brought into your senior squad) Required qualities (if not ticked): Tactical Knowledge Tactical preferences that you like
Arranges friendly matches
Specific Transfer Assistance
Attempts to sign or loan in players who you add to your Transfer Targets list	Director of football only, if employed Otherwise: Assistant manager
Attempts to sell or release players who you add to your Unwanted list
Attempts to loan out players who you add to your Development list (players must be no older than 23)
Suggests transfer targets for a specified position (and role if desired) when requested (including transfers, loans, end of contract agreements and free transfers)
A player can be added to a list from his Transfers drop-down. Specific transfer assistance can be given regardless of whether you assign other responsibilities related to transfers on the Staff Responsibilities screen.

Responsibilities That Require Staff

As can be seen from the summary above, the following responsibilities can only be performed if you have particular staff members employed:

• Update you on the players your scouts have found.

• Bring youth players into the club and inform you of their development.

• All specific transfer assistance responsibilities.

Taking Control of the Club

Ideally, for your club to be run most effectively you should take control yourself of as many responsibilities as you can. For example:

• Recruiting staff yourself will enable you to benefit from a more effective backroom team, as explained in this guide.

• Finding and making offers for players yourself can allow you to build a squad efficiently, in particular, by signing players who are suitable for your tactics or can be developed into suitable players.

• Handling contract negotiations and renewals yourself will help you to control your wage structure and give you an opportunity to decide whether or not you should renew a player’s contract or try to sell him before it expires.

• Finalising signings yourself will ensure that any transfer targets who agree contract terms but who you no longer want to sign are not brought into your squad automatically. This can be useful if, for example, you are also negotiating to sign another player who you would prefer to sign instead and so you want to delay the deal, or if it turns out that a signing requires an EU nationality to gain a work permit (which could mean that he has to spend a few years playing for a feeder club in Europe).

• Finding clubs for transfer listed players yourself will help you to sell players for higher amounts, although if you do assign this responsibility to a staff member then you will still be able to choose which players he should try to sell and when he should try to sell them (by transfer listing the players concerned).

• Setting scouting assignments yourself will ensure that your scouts are utilised efficiently to help you to find new players and scout opposition teams.

• Running training yourself will enable you to properly prepare your players for matches and control their long term development.

• Taking control of press conferences, tunnel interviews and team talks yourself can help you to get better reactions from your players and therefore better performances, can help you to build up better relationships with your players and can allow you to avoid situations where your players are upset by what your assistant manager says in the media.

• Setting opposition instructions yourself can help your team to defend against the opposition more effectively.

• Arranging friendly matches and taking control of them yourself can allow you to optimise your club’s pre-season preparation and more effectively improve fitness and morale.

However, you may not have time to control all tasks. Assigning responsibilities to others can make your job as manager easier and allow you to focus on the tasks that you enjoy the most. In particular, finding clubs for your transfer listed players can be a tedious task that you may want to assign to someone else. Similarly, you may want to instruct your assistant to arrange friendly matches and take control of friendlies in order to progress through pre-season more quickly, or instruct your chief scout or director of football to set scouting assignments if you have a large scouting team to manage.

Personal Assistant Responsibilities

The Personal Assistant section of the Staff Responsibilities screen allows you to customise a few minor settings regarding transfers and backroom advice.

In particular, the Backroom Advice panel allows you to choose a staff member to give you advice in each topic area. This can be useful if you want to ensure that only the most knowledgeable staff member in each topic area gives you advice in that area.

You can check how knowledgeable a staff member is in each topic area on the Information section of his Overview tab.

The settings available in the Transfers panel mainly determine which options are set by default when performing an action related to transfers, such as offering a player to clubs. Applying these settings as appropriate can therefore make dealing with transfers slightly easier if you regularly set (or unset) particular options.

Director of Football

A director of football only performs those responsibilities that you specifically assign to him. It is therefore not necessary to sign a director of football at all if you are happy to take control of tasks yourself or to assign them to someone else.

However, if you want to make your job easier by delegating responsibilities then you should bear in mind that, without a director of football, many tasks can only be assigned to a director on the board, for whom you will not be able to view a profile or attributes. Employing a director of football allows you to have control over the quality of the person who carries out these responsibilities.

Furthermore, the director of football role is very flexible in terms of the number of responsibilities it can be assigned. Therefore, signing a good director of football can save you the expense of employing staff members in certain other roles.

Required Qualities

The required qualities of a director of football depend on the responsibilities that you assign to him. You can therefore refer to the required qualities detailed above.