Football is very close to the heart for me. Too close for comfort. Back in 2014 when Argentina lost the World Cup final and Lionel Messi probably lost the only chance he'll ever get to lift that trophy, I cried myself to sleep that night. In 2014, I was not a kid. I was a 3rd year medical student!

I've been following football_(and cricket too)_ for as long as I can remember. I was 5 years old when Zidane magic trumped Brazil to lead France to world cup glory and I vividly remember the ambiance of that whole world cup!

Go, go, go! Ale, ale, ale!

Well, to be fair, almost everyone in the country follows a bit of football when world cup comes around! But for me that just wasn't it! I used to follow premier league games, la liga...United, Liverpool, Everton, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern....names my friends and cousins had never even heard of! My dad was an avid football watcher and I used to sit with him and nag him constantly with my endless questions...why didn't he pass to that on the right, why didn't he shoot, why is that guy tying his shoelaces...you get the idea!

By the time my friends started following european football in their mid-teen years, I could tell them I was cooler waaay before any of them learned what being cool meant! While my friends used to argue whether Manchester United would win the world cup (!!!) that year, I used to sit at home analyzing the flaws in tactics of Arsene Wenger, (Sorry, I hated arsenal. But hey, Thierry Henry was good!).

Playing FIFA till a certain age was a norm for me. I used to play all the leagues, EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga....I think I even played the Hungerian league once!

But then professional responsibilities started to get in the way. While I haven't played FIFA in a long, long time, I still stay up till 3-4 a.m in the night to watch the champions league finals!

So when I learn about this Football (Soccer [!!??]) managerial game called @rabona, it didn't take me too long to decide to buy the started pack! It was a no-brainer really! Not for me at least!

It was officially launched just yesterday and has already climbed to No. 8 on the hivedapps ranking.

Football is, without an argument the most popular sports on the planet. The FIFA World Cup isn't called the greatest show on earth for no reason! And having a football managerial dapp developing on HIVE can be really good for the blockchain. Look at what Splinterlands is doing for this blockchain. Last Friday we were having an in-depth discussion about the blockchain in general and the general consensus was that Splinterlands is the one sole thing that is kinda holding this place from falling apart.

Rabona can provide a good Assist in that regard (Oh boy! I LOVE this pun!!) and if it does take kick off, this can be very very popular! I have enjoyed what I have seen so far. No, I'm not an expert to analyze the developer aspect of things. I'm talking from a football fans' point of view. The depth of statistics on the player skills in outstanding and the level of complexity these stats are going to create in determining outcomes results of matches is quite unprecedented! I loved the skill specific training feature to improve certain aspects of your team's gameplay. I'm guessing once everyone gets the hang of it after playing a few season, every manager will develop a different training scheme based on the players they have.

I for example did Goalkeeping training yesterday, just because it was the first thing on the list and I didn't understand the dynamics. I looked more in to it today, I even scouted a player today!

So now that I look at the stats of this player, and also take into consideration the stats of some of my other players I have worked on a training strategy to improve some of the skill sets and take the team in an overall better shape. I have just played around with it less than 24 hours and I can't play till the current season ends, so I will not be going in depth of strategies and techniques as I myself don't know what works and what doesn't. I'm currently upgrading my stadium, because the more your stadium is upgraded, the more people it can hold and thus you can earn more from ticket sales and catering food.

Speaking of earning,

This is a game - not an investment. Yes, you can earn money if you play it wisely - but this is not the way you should think about it. Consider it as what it is: A game, for which you are willing to pay a small amount of money. You might choose to buy the wrong players, there might be bugs, there might be hacks, the rules of the game might be changed.

The top league is the League of Champions with significant higher RBN income. The position in the leagues decides the payout on HIVE rewards at the end of each season. A season lasts 7.5 days.

So there are ways to earn from this game, but I have learned my lesson from Splinterlands :

Play for the fun, not the money and you'll have much less headache.
-guru SimplifyLife

I wasn't even a fan of card games and I have enjoyed playing splinterlands quite a lot. So there's no reason for me to not enjoy something that is so close to my heart and I have enjoyed studying and coming with plans with all the stats so far!

Now the most important question...

How much money should I invest...?

I don't know. Depends on your strategy. You have to Buy a $5 starter pack after you login with hive keychain. And then it's really up to you. You get 280k RBN to begin with. You get an extra 25k RBN if you sign up with a referral link. Full disclosure : I get 25k RBN too when someone signs up with my link, win-win!

You can then go all guns blazing into the market and just buy good players like Real Madrid or Manchester City does. Or, you could take a more development based approach (this is my favorite) like Barcelona or Liverpool does.

Okay, okay before you guys start eyeballing me, I do not mean the current Barcelona. This current Barcelona board is in shambles and it breaks my heart to see my childhood love get destroyed by these money greedy fu***rs. But I mean the good old days of La Masia that produced the likes of Andres Iniesta, Xavi, Carlos Puyol, Gerrarp Pique, and a little some random guy called LIONEL effing MESSI!

It's up to you really. I myself have already spent a bunch of the intial RBN to upgrade my academy to Level 3 and is under construction for Level 4.

Final few words...

I think this can be really good for HIVE in general if Rabona takes off. As I said, the most popular sports on earth! I don't necessarily see these as competitors of each other. Well, from the owners point of of view, sure, they can compete! But as a HIVEan, this is only good for the chain! The more popular and successful dapps we have on HIVE, the more chances we have to outdo the other blockchains.

So if you wanna see what this is about and dip your toes in, here's my referal link again : https://rabona.io?ref=simplifylife

See you at kick-off! I will be there with my team,

𝓟𝓱𝓸𝓮𝓷𝓲𝔁 𝓘𝓷𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓶

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