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!
I am one of the old users who likes to do my own research to learn how the game works. I like that this is a thing in Hattrick. Not everything should be mentioned in the rules. I also like the federations where you can have some real tight friendships. More than some friends call Hattrick a forum, with a soccer-game attached to it.
My best Hattrick memory was when the city where I lived (L'Aquila, Italy) was hit by an earthquake. I received a lot of support, a lot of help, a lot of love. It was a very hard time and Hattrick was there, with its community, with me. I will never forget that.
I was ranked 1st of all teams in Botswana after the first league round, that was one of the best achievements for me in Hattrick. Of course there's a lot of luck involved there, but hey, they're never going to be able to take that away!
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!
I started playing Hattrick in the summer of 2002 when a friend, who I played "Fantasy Wrestling" with online, told me about Hattrick. I made many mistakes in the beginning. At that time there was no such thing as mentors or beginners' guides. So my very first club was bankrupt after only a few weeks. Luckily, I was able to restart with a new club shortly after that and then I did a lot better.