FC Barentin (8937) won the first edition of the Hattrick Masters. It’s now time to make a first evaluation regarding the concepts of the HM. Is there a way to make things better?

I think it’s been quite interesting to read HT-Tjeckens reflections about the first edition of Hattrick Masters. We sure had our favourites for the title but it was in the end FC Barentin, the outstanding team from France who run at as champions. Like HT-Tjecken and many others on the first HM gameday I was excited and couldn’t wait for the first round to be over. Finally we would get to see who really has the best team in Hattrick, without nationborders causing any obstacles.

But was it really that interesting? Wasn’t this really an easy prediction? Meaning - around new year Barentin bought 15-17 players, all with a TSI over 2-300, the median probably being around 500k. The divine player problem again, I don’t know the entire background about this ridiculous capital investment (if it even can be regarded as an investment since the expected profits are likely to be… zero) so I wont really make any speculations about that. However, if this was an entended strategy to win the HM - contragulations, terrific effort.

We saw this kind of development last season, that time coming from the major dominant team in Sweden Inter Sthlm and it’s main contendor for the title team ekos. Of course, Inter always has a strong side and huge capital but team ekos pretty much went “all-in”, buying players from left to right and eventually ending up with ten divine players and one utopian - pretty much considered the best clubteam starting eleven at the time. The outcome? I’m sure everyone has heard already - ekos lost and ended up losing the title. It’s now more or less a bot-team. The capital invested didn’t return the yields he was hoping for and it was to much to bare I guess.

Where am I going with this? Well, if we look at it. There are several major contenders for the title, not because the have the best team necessarily - but they have the greatest resources to get one. There will always be teams around the world who are fed up with national titles, teams that probably eventually will get tired of winning the national cup and topdivision - and can’t wait to get their hands on the HM title. Personally I can really identify with such managers, why shouldn’t they try to grab the finest titles of them all if they can? However, the devlopment towards not the best team, not the best manager but the team with the greatest resources feels pretty disturbing. Note that I don’t want to take anything from Eldelbor’s (coach of FC Barentin) effort. I believe that with the engine being the way it is and the general conditions being the way they are - his effort and strategy was nothing but the best - obviously since the outcome was how it was.

I don’t know whether or not the HTs think that this is a good progress of the game, the HM leaning towards “the NT-problem” with farmteams. Players moving around and eventually staying one or two weeks during the HM-championship. But what can be done? Suggestions for measures towards highly trained players we wont get in to since there are about a million suggested solutions - as usual - some are better and more likely to occur than others.

However, I strongly believe that in order for the competition to be a competition between teams and not resources some restrictions and measures has to be taken. Since HM is now being played so intense, this pretty much induces teams with resources to buy in divine players for that week. I don’t think it’s likely that Barentin (yet again, just an example, since it’s the only one out there) will hold on to his seven (!) NT-players for the rest of the season. He would probably go through the championship almost undefeated anyway.

Of course, Hattrick Masters had its unexpected results as any other league. Some used Playing Creativly and Counter Attacking to beat a superior opponent, but should CA really be the only way to do this? If you don’t have the resources to buy new players for the clash?

[b]Up for discussion[/b]; Could there be a restriction, let’s say a transfer deadline? A transferwindow for registrations of players to the HM? Is there a possibility to have a “players entering the cup must have played at least 3 league games ..” sort of thing? Should registration of players for the HM championship occur earlier? Could it exist at all?

Yet again, we take our hats off for FC Barentin, they are worthy winners and we’ll follow them throughout the season. Congratulations for winning the first Hattrick Masters, your name is forever in the books!