Before starting, this isn't a random rant, Aldo was testing a new concept for reinforcements so it's worth analysing this stuff.
1) Aye but I deliberately left the 60's free to get Maradona.
He did too (Stoichkov and Mauro Silva clearly weren't picked to start all the way to the final as the 60s picks).
I did as well (even got Campbell as my sub to replace Desailly if I had the chance early on).
You got him because you went first. Cutch got Iniesta.
It does sort of make up for him getting Messi while you got Xavi, as you say.
2) Yeah double picks are great.. And in the first reinforcement round I had a 14 pick wait till my next go. Top of the draft only had 6 in the second reinforcement stage. No difference there really, both get a double pick.
But you were jammy in that you got Ronaldo to last 14 picks. I can imagine the tension as you realised it was actually a possibility...
The thing is going first in the second reinforcement round is no huge advantage, very much the opposite.
In the first one the pool is much deeper and the flexibility across decades much greater so you can pick a player like Maradona and just leave your second man to chance. You certainly don't run out of quality when the likes of Redondo and Cafú go unpicked, or Pelé and Facchetti in the second round.
But the further you've gone the more likely it is that a lingering issue will require two moves. e.g. He couldn't pick Zanetti because he needed to ALSO source a CB to replace Ayala if he were to do that. No chance he could count on that so he had to pick his fave and hope a good upgrade was left over.
The second reinforcement round isn't about getting big names but putting the finishing touches to your team and having your two picks as close as possible is absolutely huge because there are less options that will work now and the pool is narrower (leftovers from 4 teams instead of 8).
He got a couple of nice upgrades, while you basically went from having a badly protected leaky defence to having a solid defence that allayed concerns over your midfield.
Also, going first allows you to build your team around that star player than you inevitably get - part of the reason I was so against Isotope's team because he just didn't do that.
That is very helpful indeed, no question. Missing out on the key names tends to focus the other managers though, while the ones at the top get a bit complacent at times.
Doesn't matter anyway, probably Cutch preferring to be at the bottom and me preferring to be at the top indicates how hard the draft was.
As said, it does matter because we are trialling a different reinforcement method here. It wasn't an easy draft and a lot has gone down to the individual decisions made in the first draft, luck in terms of who was drawn with who, etc. You would have probably been sent packing had you not got paceme in the first round!
On paper, the second round of picking from a pool seems to skew things a bit. My take though is that much of its impact is down to the decades constraint. If that weren't at play the relative advantage of picking two players in one go or as close as possible isn't as relevant. I think it is probably a bettter/fairer way to remove the element of "luck of the draw" and, ultimately, if the constraint ties managers up in knots it's not like they didn't have the opportunity to plan for that.
All in all, good change IMO. Maybe one adjustment would be to keep the eliminated player pool enlarging rather than discard those that went unpicked. Same for the "picking from the opponent in the semi". Maybe you should be able to have first dibs at one player from your opponent but the other winning semifinalist can look at other players? E.g. Cutch getting Carlos Alberto from Theon would have allowed Aldo to pick Maradona. He he, I could see Cutch starting the final still with Suurbier then
Have Breitner doing that on the right DM job and Iniesta/Best and a deep-roaming Messi keeping Xavi-Tigana worried in the middle and everything Gio and Aldo said would be bang on the money.