⭐ Training — Getting the Most from Your 25 Hours

25 hours a week. That’s your training budget. What you do with it — and who you have in your coaching staff — quietly determines how your squad develops over a season. Training won’t win you promotion on its own, but neglect it for long enough and you’ll feel it.

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🗓️ 1. The Basics

Every week you allocate your 25 hours across up to 8 session types, with a maximum of 10 hours per session. Your plan is set on the turnsheet and carries over automatically week to week — so once you’ve found something that works, you don’t need to revisit it every turn. That said, checking in regularly is worth it.

💡 Training hours cover the whole squad, not individual players. Your allocation affects everyone.

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⚠️ 2. Weekly Hour Reductions

Your full 25 hours aren’t always available. Certain events cut the budget for that week:

Situation	Hours Lost	Hours Remaining
Friendly match played	5 hours	20 hours
Cup match played	10 hours	15 hours
Squad holiday declared	15 hours	10 hours

Plan ahead. A friendly week means working with 20 hours. A cup week drops you to 15. Declaring a squad holiday is useful for managing fatigue, but it’s not the week to push hard on development.

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🏋️ 3. The Eight Session Types

There are 8 training session types, each developing different aspects of your squad:

#	Session Type	Primary Focus
1	Passing	Ball distribution and movement
2	Heading	Aerial ability and challenge
3	Five-a-Side	General play, sharpness, decision-making
4	Defensive Work	Defensive skills and unit cohesion
5	Offensive Work	Attacking play and forward skills
6	Strength	Physical power and challenge
7	Fitness	Conditioning and Injury Factor management
8	Ball Skills	Technical skill development

🔍 The exact skills each session feeds into isn’t published — part of the fun is working it out. Pay close attention to your training reports and patterns will emerge.

A reasonable starting point is a balanced mix: some fitness, positional sessions relevant to your squad’s needs, and ball skills if you’re developing younger players. Adjust from there based on what you see in the reports.

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👥 4. How NPMs Affect Training

Three of your five Non-Playing Member slots have a direct impact on training effectiveness:

NPM	Abbreviation	Training Effect
Fitness Coach	FIT	Improves the effectiveness of Fitness sessions
Skills Coach	SKI	Boosts skill-based session output — the better the coach, the faster players learn
Physiotherapist	PHY	Supports recovery from injury alongside Fitness sessions

Quality matters here. A low-rated Skills Coach will make a modest difference. A high-rated one can noticeably accelerate development. An empty slot means you’re simply not getting that benefit at all. Filling your coaching staff early tends to be worth the wage cost.

📋 See Hint Sheet #9 (Non-Playing Members) for more on hiring, ratings, and contracts.

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📈 5. Training and Player Development

Training is the primary route to skill improvement in Soccer Supremos. Players with higher Learning Ability respond better to sessions — they pick things up faster. Players with higher Hidden Potential have more room to grow before they plateau. A few things worth knowing:

• Young players generally develop faster, though age isn’t the only factor
• Learning Ability is a hidden attribute — you won’t see it directly, but you’ll notice it over time in how quickly certain players respond
• Players on identical plans won’t all develop at the same rate — some will surprise you
• Skill improvements feed into Rating: when skills go up, Rating can follow

💡 If a player’s Rating has been static for a long time despite consistent training, their potential may be largely fulfilled — or the session mix isn’t hitting the right skills.

📋 See Hint Sheet #2 (Hidden Potential & Learning Ability) for more on how development works.

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🏥 6. Training and Injury

Fitness sessions are your main tool for keeping Injury Factor (INJ) in check across the squad. A training plan heavily weighted toward skill work with little fitness coverage can let INJ creep up quietly — you may not notice until players start going down. Your Physiotherapist NPM works alongside Fitness sessions to support injured players and manage squad condition generally.

📋 See Hint Sheet #6 (Fitness & Injury) for more on how Injury Factor works and how to manage it.

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🎯 7. How Smart Managers Use This

• Don’t set and forget entirely. Check the training report each week — it tells you who improved and who’s flagging. It’s there for a reason.
• Adjust on light weeks. No friendly or cup match means the full 25 hours — a good time to push development sessions harder.
• Match sessions to your squad. Lots of young midfielders with potential? Lean into relevant sessions. Ageing backline? Fitness deserves more hours.
• Get your coaching staff in early. An unfilled Skills Coach slot from week one means development opportunities you can’t get back.
• More hours doesn’t always mean faster progress. The right sessions for the right players matter more than simply stacking one type.

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