U23 VIFA rank

U23 VIFA rank

After youth squads have got their own league system, it also makes sense that they get their own separate VIFA rankings.

This is what they got this morning, and it means that it is now easier to compare youth squads and see who's best, by looking at the U23 VIFA rankings.

Liverpools Year's youth squad has the honor of being the first youth squad at number 1 on the U23 VIFA rankings.

U23 World Cup

The senior squads' World Cup has always been for the 256 best squads in the game, and has therefore had a VIFA requirement of 256 or better.

Up until now, we weren't able to do that with the U23 World Cup because the youth squads didn't have their own rankings. This has meant that the U23 World Cup has been filled up and some of the youth squads that should have qualified have not been able to get a spot.

But, now that U23 VIFA rankings have been rolled out, we have also adjusted the U23 World Cup, so that you must have a VIFA rank of 256 or better.

We have temporarily increased the number of places to 512. This is to ensure that those who are qualified but do not yet have a spot can sign up immediately, without having to wait until the squads that are no longer qualified are removed from the cup.

Invalid Tactics Adjustment Indicator

In the last few weeks, we have also been busy looking into old bug reports.

During this (and throughout the years) our experience is that many managers believe that there are bugs in tactics adjustments. However, we have never been able to find any faults in the system, which, after all, hasn't been touched for many years.

2 things must be met for an adjustment to be made:

1. ALL conditions must be met
2. ALL actions must be able to be performed

Especially the last part is something that many managers don't really grasp. If just 1 of the actions cannot be performed, then the adjustment will not be performed.

People especially get confused when the adjustment includes a substitution of a player that is invalid because the player is already, or has been, on the pitch earlier in the match. It can also be invalid if you try to take out a player who has already left the pitch due to injury, having been sent off, or as a result of another rule that was performed previously.

Additionally, if the conditions of an adjustment rule are met at some point and all actions cannot be performed at that time, then this adjustment will be deactivated for the rest of the match. So even though it might later be valid, it will not be executed.

An adjustment rule can also only be used once. Once performed, it will not be performed again for the rest of the match.

Furthermore adjustments can not be made in the middle of a highlight, so if you set them to happen in the 89th minute, for example, it is not certain that they can be performed in time.

When there are so many bug reports due to misunderstandings, then it also becomes almost impossible to catch real bugs in the system if there are any since they disappear in the noise. Therefore, we have recently added an indicator that shows if a rule will never be executed due to an invalid or missing configuration.

Of course, the indicator can't know what is going to happen in your matches, so obviously it cannot predict situations, such as when a replacement earlier in the match invalidates another adjustment rule. However, I hope it helps a little, as it can at least inform you of the instances where a player who is part of an adjustment has left the squad and therefore makes the entire adjustment invalid.

At a later stage, I would also like to implement some form of logging during the match, which you can read afterwards to understand exactly why a certain adjustment has not been made.