Re: Synchronated Updates

While not blue it s also clearly not the same colour as Roma and is mathematically much closer to blue (SWOS blue is 143 out on red, versus burgundy being 229 out on blue plus an extra 34 out on red, if your values are correct - not even sure there is any blue in the SWOS burgundy/brown, can t check it while at work, whereas violet and SWOS blue are both 255 on it). I think this is a personal preference thing and the user can fix it at their end if they disagree

I am Fiorentina fan and I use brown for Fiorentina..
a very shame purple it s not present.

Anyway the wrong washing it s a legend, if you read Fiorentina s books and historical sources, was a proper choice of the current president, the Count Rifolfi of Verrazzano.

Heya

Looks great and this would (as it stands) be one of the best standalone files, but this is maybe going to need a bit more work (as if it hasn t been enough already!) if it s going to fit consistently with the rest.
You have attackers playing in (defensive) midfield, central midfielders on the wing, right backs at left back and so forth. The position attribute matches the player s actual position in the lineup in the other leagues.
I spotted a nationality out (Ryoichi Kurisawa is Brazilian here; so is Go Nishida, maybe there are others).
Also the stronger players are quite a bit stronger than Japanese players of similar ability in the European leagues, so there might be some tough balancing to do.

I know you ve already put lots of work into this so let me know what you think and if you want me to do any of the legwork on the fine-tuning!

I ll look into the nationality issue, I knew some of them would ve slipped through lol, my bad. ;D

About the roles...aside from a couple glaring mistakes that I will fix asap (just noticed I had most AMF/DMF couples backward in 4-4-2 s, like Endo, Michael and Ogasawara playing in the back, probably because the editor shows the GK on top and that sorta threw me off) the rosters look fine to me.

The problem is that either some players have played out of position in the actual J.League throughout the year (like Mu Kanazaki @ Nagoya, he plays as a right-wing in an asymmetric 4-2-3-1, so I made him as the right forward in a 4-3-3 in SWOS without changing his role) or their teams use tactics that don t translate well into SWOS (like Sanfrecce s 3-5-1-1 or Kyoto 5-2-2-1). Should I override the real life data and roles to make them fit in SWOS?

Regarding the skills, none of the star players is stronger than Keisuke Honda (who is likely the most valuable japanese player right now, with Kagawa coming into a close second) who acted as a sort of benchmark, especially for the strongest MF/AMF s.

I don t really understand the players of similar skill playing in europe bit though. The point is, should we consider all of the japanese players who play overseas more skilled than the top-dogs in the domestic league beforehand, solely on the premise that since they play in europe then they must be better?

The answer is no, most japanese aces either fled from europe (Ogasawara @ Messina and Sota Hirayama docet) or refused to move (Tulio and Endo come to mind) because there s a lot of prejudices toward them over here.

Case in point being Kagawa, for the rest of the world he was a no-name playing for a J2 side just a couple months back, fast forward to December and he s one of the best Bundesliga players even though his FIFA 11 rating out of the box is what, 73? Talk about bias lol.

Also, are Matsui, Soma, Kisho Yano or Morimoto any better than Maeda, Ishikawa, Koroki or Kengo Nakamura? Hell no, regardless of how many seasons warming benches in an european team they got under their belts.

Trust me, I wake up early on Sunday/Sat morning to watch the J1 matches, then in the afternoon/evening I get to see Inter because my fiancee s a nerazzurri supporter and honestly I don t see that much difference between Serie A and J.League, skill-wise. If anything J.League is a tad more entertaining since teams don t play defensive football 24/7 as they do in Italy.

Furthermore, only 5-6 players got the 4th full star treatment (take Endo, Nakamura Shunsuke and Kengo, Ogasawara and Shinji Ono for instanc,e they re all former AFC MVP s/J.League MVP s, most of them played overseas - Shuske and Ono were Reggina/Celtic and Feyenoord main men at some point - had a great season unlike say, Koki Mizuno, and are prolly the finest JPN players to ever grace a football pitch, overall stronger than Hasebe for sure and this is coming from an Urawa die-hard fan) whereas only the J.League 2010 MVP nominees (Narazaki who was also this years MVP, Marcio Richardes, Rafael, Tulio Tanaka, Maeda and Kennedy who were the top goalscorers of the tournament, etc.) and a few more super talented guys (Ponte, Edmilson, Kashiwagi, Naohiro Ishikawa, etc. and a couple superstars-in-the-making from J2 such as Havenaar and Kakitani) got the 4th half star.

In fact I had to tone down most of the ratings from JWE in order to get the overall balance right and match this season performances.

GK s ratings in particular were ridicolously high, half of the J1 guys were above 78 in goalkeeping skill with Seigo being 82 and Sogahata 80 while none of the J2 GK s were below 72 even though players like Junnosuke Schneider wouldn t even get to play in Italian Serie B lol.

Positions - yes, make the best formation fit you can and then use SWOS positions for the players according to where you ve put them. This is just a convention lasting from original SWOS; I didn t use it for the Legends update (mostly because its nature made it very difficult to do so) but I did use it here.

The ratings - the players playing in Europe are regulars for the Japan national team (usually ahead of most J.League players) and have earned their big moves to leagues full of international players. That is why they can legitimately be used as a standard. Yuki Abe at Leicester is £450k from FIFA (and this seems low to me, however at club level it fits, since he s in rotation with players like King £300k there), and he is a regular for Japan; Kagawa is something like £850k, so to have players who are behind them in the national team pecking order (or who retired from the national team years ago) at four stars just throws the balance way out. Especially given that how the skills have translated from FIFA, a player has to be a pretty high level to reach £2m. eg Nani is not much over £2m, Park Ji-Sung is £1.6m IIRC (and not in squad)... Kagawa is now being outshone by Nuri Sahin at Dortmund as well and his FIFA rating doesn t really look too low now. In the national team Honda is the only four-star player really. transfermarkt.de/de/japan/startseite/nat...mannschaft_3435.html and how many players on PES2011 (for instance, on the Japan team there) are actually at a high level? Abe is at 67 which may be lower than his FIFA rating (and they are on more or less the same scale, some players higher in one game, some players higher in the other); only Tulio is over 80 on there. Seems like you might be using Steven Gerrard to explain that Jermaine Jenas is great, or maybe the attributes are calibrated differently on the J.League game. South Korea also has no four-star players, not even Park. If you made a Japan team out of all these four-star players it would be among the very best in the world, in terms of the attribute levels on this update.

Examples of other four-star players at less than £3m - Robinho, Pirlo, Di Maria, Ozil, Khedira, Pedro, Modric, Bale... there is little to support several of your four-star players being at that level IMO. Maybe the level across the board, just in terms of this update, is a bit lower than you had considered it - and that wouldn t be too tough to address

Goalkeepers - well yes, basically on PES all goalkeepers are very similar, they really didn t think through the attributes when starting the system a decade or so ago!

By 4-star players, do you mean 4 full stars or does that also include the players with 3 big ones and 1 small one (e.g. 3 1/2 stars)?
There s certainly a case for making a bunch of Japanese players 3 1/2 value, but there s also no strong case for putting more than one or two at 4 full ones.

While not blue it s also clearly not the same colour as Roma and is mathematically much closer to blue (SWOS blue is 143 out on red, versus burgundy being 229 out on blue plus an extra 34 out on red, if your values are correct - not even sure there is any blue in the SWOS burgundy/brown, can t check it while at work, whereas violet and SWOS blue are both 255 on it). I think this is a personal preference thing and the user can fix it at their end if they disagree

Oh, colors are linear?!?

@dimetrodon
Actually yes

@MIJB#19
I mean four full stars, and on PES2011 as well as any other sources, most four-star players (players who are four stars in this update s calibration) are much better than anyone in the Japan side apart from Tulio (and I would not object to four stars for Tulio).

BTW Shinji Kagawa was not an unknown, that s a myth. in 2010 he scored 7 goals in 11 games for Cerezo Osaka in J.League 1 (for Cerezo Osaka across both divisions he scored 57 goals in 127 appearances) and by the time he moved to Dortmund was already an established full international with ~15 caps.

The ratings - the players playing in Europe are regulars for the Japan national team (usually ahead of most J.League players) and have earned their big moves to leagues full of international players. That is why they can legitimately be used as a standard.

(...)

Yuki Abe at Leicester is £450k from FIFA (and this seems low to me, however at club level it fits, since he s in rotation with players like King £300k there), and he is a regular for Japan; Kagawa is something like £850k, so to have players who are behind them in the national team pecking order (or who retired from the national team years ago) at four stars just throws the balance way out.

This is a common misconception among observers who aren t into japanese football.

Most of coach Okada s call-ups were players he thought would suit well his tactics and not necessarily the best japanese players at the time. Anybody who s followed the Japanese NT for the past couple of years would tell you as much, he kept calling his favourites over and over and never ever gave anybody else a chance despite the lackluster performances the NT racked up prior to the World Cup.

Please read these (qute funny) quotes from the guru of the english-speaking japanese-football professional writers:

For the past two years in a row, the Kashima Antlers have won the J.League, and Kawasaki Frontale has come in second. If you knew absolutely nothing else about Japanese football, how many of Japan s NT players - roughly - would you guess play their club football at one of those two teams? Well, here is a little point of trivia for you:

When Kengo Nakamura came on as a substitute in the second half of this match, it marked the first time in 240 minutes of football that a Kashima or Kawasaki field player had taken the pitch for the Samurai Blue. And the last time a Kashima player has appeared? Well . . . that would be the Bahrain match, way back in early March. Im sure it is just a coincidence that this was also the last time that Japan won a game.

If Takeshi Okada could somehow overcome his self-destructive insistence on putting the worst eleven players he has available into the starting lineup, Japan might actually have a chance of picking up a few points in South Africa. But if he persists in his stubborn attempt to prove that everyone else in the world is wrong, the results are going to look alot like the one at the top of this page.

After Okada announced his player selections, about ten days ago, the press harrangued him over the selection of several individuals who have never demonstrated any real sign of being national team material, and have repeatedly let the team down when called upon to start. In particular, this criticism focused on Yoshito Okubo and Yasuyuki Konno. So naturally, in the first preparation match, Okada decided to start all two of these players. Ill show them , you could almost hear him declare. THIS time my favourites will come through, and produce the results that I have always believed they can. Then everyone will have to admit that I was right, all along.

If this was the first time that Okada had gone off on one of these bizarre flights of folly - trying to prove that he is right about his favourites, and everyone else in the world is wrong, perhaps it would be a bit less clear-cut. But the classic definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results - is far too pertinent to ignore any longer. If Okada is not actually insane, he is certainly deluded about the abilities of some of his players.

Those who didnt chortle in derision when the lineups were announced only managed to keep a straight face for a few minutes.

There really IS only one possible explanation.

Yoshito Okubo and Keiji Tamada must give incredibly good head.

Sorry to be crude, but thats the only possible explanation left, to account for why coach Takeshi Okada continues to call these two players up, and insistently put them in the lineup when there are so many other CLEARLY superior options available. We have exhausted all the football-related options. There is not a single sportswriter, blogger or marginally experienced football fan I know of who still views Okubo as a legitimate choice to play at the international level, so the only possible explanation for his continued presence is that he must be doing a good job of keeping the coaching staff and all his teammates happy, in the locker room. Besides, anyone who is offended by the above comment should be even more offended by the sight of the Japan NT bending over and willingly taking it up the backside from an understrength and pitifully skillless Chinese eleven.

(...)

While we are on the topic of blatantly obvious, forehead-slappingly simplistic coaching blunders, why not consider one which the Rising Sun News expounded on way back in April of last year. If you want your team to score goals in international matches, it might help if you selected players who are capable of scoring goals against run-of-the-mill J.League opposition. So tell me . . . what do the following players have in common:

Ryoichi Maeda, Naohiro Ishikawa, Hisato Sato, Kazuma Watanabe, Shinzo Koroki, Yu Hasegawa, Hiroyuki Taniguchi, Kisho Yano, Hiroto Mogi, Tomoaki Makino and Yosuke Kashiwagi

Still dont have a clue? Why am I not surprised?

Every one of them scored MORE goals in the J.League last year than either Okubo or Tamada. Oh yeah . . . there is one other thing they all have in common -- they were NOT in the starting lineup on Saturday night.

...thus, taking anything from OkadaJapan as a standard in order to figure out japanese football level of skill would be foolish. Nonetheless, Japan managed to achieve 4 stars out of 5 in the FIFA World Cup game (see screenshots below).

Especially given that how the skills have translated from FIFA, a player has to be a pretty high level to reach £2m. eg Nani is not much over £2m, Park Ji-Sung is £1.6m IIRC (and not in squad)... Kagawa is now being outshone by Nuri Sahin at Dortmund as well and his FIFA rating doesn t really look too low now. In the national team Honda is the only four-star player really. transfermarkt.de/de/japan/startseite/nat...mannschaft_3435.html and how many players on PES2011 (for instance, on the Japan team there) are actually at a high level? Abe is at 67 which may be lower than his FIFA rating (and they are on more or less the same scale, some players higher in one game, some players higher in the other); only Tulio is over 80 on there.

(...)

South Korea also has no four-star players, not even Park. If you made a Japan team out of all these four-star players it would be among the very best in the world, in terms of the attribute levels on this update.

Since you seem to be swearing for FIFA ratings, here s FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa latest ratings for Japan:



Please note that the two Nakamura are out of position, as AMF and SMF their ratings are 1 point higher. Everyone else is in his ideal role.

As you can see there s plenty of players around Honda s level and some even surpass him in overall rating, Kagawa is severely underrated as expected (he must ve had one hell of a summer to get from 69 to 75+, lol), Hasebe, Yano and Nagatomo aren t the strongest players despite belonging to european clubs and all of the star players are from the J.League.

Also you keep referencing PES 2011 as if it was a straight JWE port when in fact PES (and its japanese port, World Soccer Winning Eleven 20xx) and J.League Winning Eleven are two different games that share the same producer.. I know nothing about PES 2011 aside from the fact that it sucks, that it s developed by a completely different team and primarily made to appeal to the european market and to the casual gamers.

there is little to support several of your four-star players being at that level IMO.

Be honest, how many times have you actually seen Nakamura Kengo or Mitsuo Ogasawara or any other J.League player who s never played overseas in action? How can you be so bold in your statements with so little 1st-hand knowledge on the matter? FIFA ratings about japanese players are clearly skewed, prejudicial toward those who don t play in european teams (see Kagawa before and after) and contradictory (just look at FIFA WC latest update Vs. FIFA 11) so if that s all you got to back up your opinion you re prolly better off trusting my experience in first place.

BTW Shinji Kagawa was not an unknown, that s a myth. in 2010 he scored 7 goals in 11 games for Cerezo Osaka in J.League 1 (for Cerezo Osaka across both divisions he scored 57 goals in 127 appearances) and by the time he moved to Dortmund was already an established full international with ~15 caps.

My point exactly (I was being sarcastic). FIFA editors probably didn t even bother to check Wikipedia lol.

- - -

Anyhow, it s pretty clear that we have diametrically opposed views on the matter, that being said I respect your work and I m fully aware that you re a trustworthy and exceptionally competent editor so I won t argue about this any further, we ll just agree to disagree

I ll fix the few mistakes that you ve pointed out in one of your previous posts, switch around a few players positions in order to fit better into the SWOS gameplay mechanics and then make the file available for those who are interested (not many people probably haha) as my own personal take on the matter (although 90% of the data came out straight from JWE) while giving you credits for the preliminary work obviously (some rosters were spot-on), please feel free to re-balance the skills out and use the database for your big updates if you see fit, if not, oh well.

Merry Xmas!

contradictory (just look at FIFA WC latest update Vs. FIFA 11)

That s called updating the skills based on what happens in real life between those releases. Things change. If they were the same, then you d have a real problem! As it is, Honda is better on FIFA 11 than he is on the WC game, because he had an amazing WC in between. He s now 80 on FIFA and thus fewer of those players are at his level (in fact only Endo is). Messi was crap when he first appeared on PES, should they have left him crap?

My point exactly (I was being sarcastic). FIFA editors probably didn t even bother to check Wikipedia lol.

Alternatively, they clearly were paying attention and boosted him 4 points from 69 to 73 in the space of 3-4 months... and it looks like Japanese players are a LOT stronger on the WC game than on PES2011! I think maybe you are giving them no credit.

However - I accept now that probably some of the ratings are OK, I m more worried about players like Ono who could maybe have been presented as a four-star/£2m player when playing in Holland, but only in an update calibrated for higher values than this one. I apologise for making assumptions about the Japanese national team which might apply to most others but might not apply here.

I m happy to use your attributes now, once the lineups/nationalities are fixed - and I will tidy up anything that is still awry - so please go on and do so and post the file.
If you have any trouble with a specific line-up, post the formation and the players preferred positions and I will make it fit.
I will also update the Japanese national team using the players from here as well as the ones already there from Europe. The non-Euro players are currently made up due to lack of a better source than transfermarkt + watching international games.

If only the J.League was in the other games too - otherwise without another source we outside Japan are led to make these assumptions!

Have a good xmas

I ve finally gotten around fixing the few nationalities/roles issues, could you please give it a check to ensure that I haven t missed anything though (4 eyes are better than two!)? ;D Thanks in advance!

Btw i did not use hyphenated names for korean footballers because I made a point to stick to the J.League official website Romanji denomination for non-japanese players (with the exception being JEF s Alex and Kobe s Edmilson to avoid homonymy, neither of them even come close to Nagoya s Alex and Urawa s Edmilson popularity/career achievements so the latter two got to keep the shortened names).

File s attached (although there s like a dozen TEAM.055 files on my desktop right now, I just hope I haven t tagged the wrong one haha) lemme know if there s anything else you d like me to tweak.

EDIT: I got a question, what happens if I relegate/promote 3 teams from each division manually through the editor right after the end of the season and then load back up my career? Will it crash?