I got introduced to the game in 2006 by a long-time childhood friend who was already playing. I remember my 16-year old self being really excited about having a bunch of guys with their own names who could play virtual football for me. It was also a way for me to connect with people from all over the world, and that was very exciting.
I would say the community is the strongest reason I have stayed in Hattrick for so long. The game too of course. After having trained my players and played in the French Division 2 for a while, I started focusing on training international players to help the Moroccan team. Today 80% of the defense of the Atlas Lions was trained by me!
What I like about the Hattrick community is that there are real people and you don't just compete against the computers. You play against each other, but you can also help each other in the forum and talk about everything.
It is hard to choose one Hattrick memory before the others. But me and a friend, who I met in Hattrick, organize a real life HT football tournament in Hungary every year. We also have guests from Serbia, Romania and other countries. This year, if it hadn’t been for Covid-19, we would have organized it for the 11th time - all of the last 10 were great memories. We even made a film about it!
The key reason I stay in Hattrick is the friendships I have made, but also the competitiveness and the feeling that I can still achieve more.I don't necessarily aspire to be number one in my country but I like to test some idea how things could work better and build a team that way. The goal is always to be top 10 in the country.
I love Hattrick because it's simple. It is not taking much time to learn the dynamics, but you can tweak it forever. I love Hattrick because to me it is like Subbuteo or Risk. It is simple to learn but hard to master. It's still exciting to wait for 90 minutes to see the result of a game, four months to see the end of a season. I love Hattrick because it is possible to set goals for several years, to see your team growing up, to learn the names of the players, and to build memories about them.