Coach

The coach is a very important figure in Hattrick, responsible for training and managing your team during a game. Coaches use their particular skill set to inspire players both on and off the field and can play in games. While all new teams get initial coaches who are of equal skill level (weak), over time you will need to replace your coach.

Abilities of a coach

Coach types

There are three different types of coach: "Offensive Coach", "Defensive Coach" or "Neutral Coach", affecting the teams' performance (and only performance) during the game. The type of coach that is best for your team will largely depend on your training type. See Coach tactics for more information.

• Offensive -- attacking nature, boosts a team's attack ratings. They stimulate a team to play more offensively.

• Defensive -- defensive nature, boost a team's defence ratings. It is often believed they are slightly more effective than offensive coaches, in part due to an increase in the boost to defence that was implemented with Hattrick 6.5.

• Neutral -- no preference, boost a team's attack and defense ratings equally.

Training Skill

A talented coach with a high training skill knows the right methods of training, allowing young players to improve their abilities faster and more effectively. The skill can never be rated higher than excellent.

Leadership

Leadership directly effects team spirit. A coach who has poor leadership will not inspire your players. As a result, their performance (total stars) during a game will suffer and team spirit will remain low. Coach leadership makes absolutely no difference to the effects of play it cool and match of the season game tactics.

This is an extract from the Hattrick rules, Chapter 17

If you have a good coach, special training will be more effective than if you have a bad one. Assistant coaches also increase the effect of training.

Changing the coach

If your coach disappoints you, you can always get a new one. There are two different ways to go:

External Coaches

External recruiting means that you hire a new coach from outside your team. First, decide how good you want your coach to be in training skill and leadership, as well as want type of tactics (attack, defence, neutral) you want your coach to use.

With external coaches, each combination of leadership/trainer skill has a fixed price. You sign your coach and he appears in your roster from an unseen pool of unemployed coaches.

Internal Promotion

Internal Promotion can be less expensive than external recruiting, if you have a player with the right coaching material.

There are a few restrictions:

• A player's experience determines how good a coach he can become.
• The more experienced a player is, the lower his price for a specific skill level.

Players keep their leadership abilities (already known to you) and you do not pay for their leadership - so, if you have a very experienced player with high leadership, this can be a real bargain. Players who become coaches are automatically healed of any injuries they may have sustained as a player.

To prevent daytrading of coaches-to-be, a player must be on your squad for 16 weeks to be promoted to coach. Thus purchasing a player with the intention of making them a coach will require some foresight.

Changing of the Guard

When you hire a new coach, he becomes the coach of your squad. When he arrives, the old coach steps down and becomes a player. You can then fire him, as no former coach can become a coach again and you cannot trade a former coach. This is to prevent people from day-trading coaches

Useful links to check your future coach are:

• Check the experience of the player you want to make a coach
• Calculator which has to be used with the Conversion price of the first side
• Check the prices for getting a new coach

Coaching Levels

All new coaches of a certain skill level are equal. When someone purchases a coach with passable skill, he is always "average passable". No new coach begins with "high passable" or "low passable".

However, the increase in the coach's performance between levels is, like with regular player skills, non-linear. This means that the gap between a solid coach and an excellent coach is smaller than the gap between a passable coach and a solid coach in terms of the effect of the training. So a high-level coach might not always be the best solution for you.

The general consensus on this is that a solid coach is both affordable and advisable for most managers. A passable coach with poor leadership is usually recommended for new managers.

Atrophy

Your coach's skills will slowly begin to deteriorate over time. This will not begin until after your coach's first season has ended. The reasoning for this is that a coach is bustling with energy and inspiration when he first arrives, but loses some of his edge and enthusiasm over time.

This deterioration is very slow. It effects player traits (playmaking, scoring, etc.) first, then leadership level, and finally training skill. Though it can take up to ten seasons to complete this progression, you will want another coach well before then.

A new coach should have both leadership and training skill. However, the balance will depend on how you want to run your team:

• If you plan to train players over time, you want high training skill with low leadership.
• If you plan to day-trade for good players, you want high leadership with low training skill.

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• For documentation on the introducing of the current coach system check the Hattrick 6.5 documents.