You all know how it worked before, don’t you? All players got their birthday when the last day of the season was reached. This had 2 big effects:
- The transfer market was like a rollercoaster between the end of the season (before players get one year older) and the beginning of the new one (when fresh 17 years old players arrive and when some training slots suddenly become available)
- The new user, getting his team right before the end of the season, saw his players getting older before they even played a single game.. while the another, getting his team right after, was able to play a whole season before his players turn one year older. This was very unfair.
The birthday has been introduced to fix both effects (even if the silly season had a kind of spicy taste and wasn’t really a problem when you were used to it).
Each player has now a birthday and ‘lives’ 133 days (19 weeks of 7 days) before getting older, whenever in the season they are created. This will make the transfer market more balanced during the season, but you’ll have to be extra careful when you buy a player, and watch out for his birthday because he may get older the day after you bought him, even if the season has only started.
Each player created before the introduction got a birthday too. The way it has been calculated could have been different … but whatever. The important thing is that they got one, please don’t worry (and don’t ask about ‘how’ and ‘why’). More than 95% of the existing players get their birthday on the day 133, which means no change for them: They'll keep getting older on the last day of the season.
Did this explanation help?
Chris.
