Craziest match ever, must see!

In my game, I've taken Dutch side 'Willem II' from relegaton candidate to CL winner. Nothing too spectacular, since I'm in the year 2025, and the game gets pretty easy when the regen players come in. This year, I was unlucky enough to draw Barcelona in the 1/8 CL finale. They're a very strong side, so I was expecting a very close result. Which is what I got really..

I'll just keep this thread short and simple for now.. If people are interested in my tactics/players/whatever I'll be happy to upload more pictures.

This was the first match, which was played at home:

Home match overview

Home match stats

And then the second match:

Away match overview

Away match stats

Please note that I selected a full-strength squad in the away game too; playing well in the CL always makes my players values go up a lot, which I like. They were the same 11 players I played in the first game, and they were all at least 95% fit.

I've been playing FM for 5 years now, and I've never had this happen to me.. Has anyone else ever had a match this crazy?

EDIT: I've added some info to the opening post, since people seem to be interested in further details:

Like I mentioned below, both me and Barçelona have some world-class strikers. Their striker 'Felipe' is even listed as 'legendary striker'.

My strikers:

Lé

Rafael

Gabriel Castro

Barça strikers:

Felipe

Ruud Sabajo

This is another Barça player, just so you can see how crazy regens can get: Óscar Guerrero. I if remember correctly, 'Guerrero' is the Spanish word for 'warrior', which would apply to this player.

I've also uploaded the PKM's for the match, for those interested:

Home match (8-0) download link

Away match (1-8) download link

I played since 1993 (starting from CM). Yes this is crazy! But is suspect it is part of the programming to make the game more interesting, i.e. more unexpected events.

Wow that is amazing! What did you feed your team in between games?! lol.

Wow that is amazing! What did you feed your team in between games?! lol.

I didn't feed them the entire week, maybe that's the issue

On a more serious note: these are among the first games I've played with the 11.3 patch, since I've been inactive for a while. I've been using the tactic the entire season with very little goals scored against me, in patch 11.2. It could just be that my tactics need some tweaking for the new patch! As you can see below, the game stats for both games weren't THAT crazy. There's not even a lot of difference between shots on target. The biggest difference is in clear cut chances, which explains the amount of goals! Please note that both Willem II (my squad) and Barça have world class strikers, I've included some screenshots of those as well!

Home match stats

Away match stats

My strikers:

Lé

Rafael

Gabriel Castro

Barcá strikers:

Felipe

Ruud Sabajo

I have noticed that if you crush an opponent in the home 1st leg that you often get crushed in the away 2nd. Not sure what that is about, but I have seen this in my game.

the team is generally complacent if you thrash someone in the home leg, and the "victims" are trying harder

Yeah I guess that's always an issue.. But still: a 9-8 aggregate win is still unbelievable! Also, I always try to keep an eye on the players' motivation sheet in the match, none of them was looking 'complacent', they all started the match as 'looking motivated' or 'playing decent'. Needless to say, morale was very high after the 8-0 win. Also, the match stats don't make it look like I was underestimating them in the return.. They got 12 shots on goals, I got 8 (I tend to not take 'clear cut chances' too seriously; system is a bit flawed in my opinion).

Might just be the way the match engine works.. leaning towards keeping matches 'exciting.' I usually get the same thing with cup matches. In the league, I always win by at least 3-0, simply because my players outclass the opponent players so much. However, in cup matches, it always a close win/loss. This often goes trough my head; "Why the heck did I just draw versus this crappy opponent? Oh nevermind, it's a cup match, extra time".

One more thing that often feels 'forced' to me, is that my strikers always get out of form or injured when they're close to bagging an unrealistic amount of goals. My squad is one of the best in the world at the moment, in a ****** competition. Sometimes my striker has scored 30 goals when the competition is only halfway trough. When he reaches the 30-goal-mark, he always get a stupid injury. His page doesn't say "prone to injury" and his natural fitness is 17.. I keep 5 strikers in my squad for 2 positions, just for that reason

Has anyone noticed these kind of things happening, or can anyone confirm this is the way the game actually 'forces' the game to stay in bounds?

English isn't my native language by the way, don't be too harsh

Omg haha! possibly the oddest/ closest tie i've ever seen!

what a double leg!

Raphael Holzhauzer LOL...

He plays in 2025 amazing

Any chance for PKM's?

VibeTribe: Holzhauser is one of the few remaining 'real' players in my game He's 32 years old at the moment, his physical stats have slightly decreased, but he's still an absolute beast! He got 115 Austria caps, and 31 goals.

Scab: I've updated the opening post, I've included the PKM's there! There's some nice goals in there too.

...

One more thing that often feels 'forced' to me, is that my strikers always get out of form or injured when they're close to bagging an unrealistic amount of goals. My squad is one of the best in the world at the moment, in a ****** competition. Sometimes my striker has scored 30 goals when the competition is only halfway trough. When he reaches the 30-goal-mark, he always get a stupid injury. His page doesn't say "prone to injury" and his natural fitness is 17.. I keep 5 strikers in my squad for 2 positions, just for that reason

Has anyone noticed these kind of things happening, or can anyone confirm this is the way the game actually 'forces' the game to stay in bounds?

English isn't my native language by the way, don't be too harsh

No, the game's not cheating you. This is generally why strikers IRL don't score unrealistic amounts of goals - sooner or later they pick up an injury, or lose form. Pretty much every Man Utd season, Rooney's had one stint where he looked unstoppable and bangs in a goal every game, but apart from 2009/10, it's never lasted the whole season. And what happened last season? He got injured at the end, and didn't find form again til this year. Or think of Van Persie - it seems that every time he comes back from long-term injury, he scores 10 in his next 10 games, and all the Arsenal fans talk about what they'd have won if he'd played the whole season, but he's never had a 20-goal season in his life.

Whilst it seems logical that a ST who's playing well, scoring goals, and is fit should maintain that in perpetuity, that's not something that often happens IRL. It is, in fact, something that happens far more often in FM- a quick search willl no doubt show you hundreds of threads filled with STs scoring more than a goal a game over 10 yr periods, relatively injury-free.

The other stuff you talk about is usually just to do with player motivation (think personalities, think what bonuses you offered for each competition at the beginning of the year...).

Cup matches come with more pressure - perhaps your squad don't respond so well, whilst opposition underdogs will give it a real go ("magic of the cup" and all that).

The comebacks in 2nd Legs, I feel is down to the ease of motivating players in FM compared to IRL. Tottenham will probably come out tomorrow looking to put in a decent effort to make up for last leg's embarassing defeat - so they'll be a little more psyched up, but fall despondent immediately if Real score early - and Real will be looking to take it easy and prepare for their series of Clasicos etc. - so they'll be a little complacent - but in FM these factors work to such extremes that seasoned professionals will just as often as not come close to throwing away even the biggest lead.

If those regens aren't proof that strength training is overpowered I don't know what is. They look a bit overpowered as players in general IMO, far too well-rounded.

Dekker2: interesting approach on the strikers form. I guess you're right.. I'm not really one for conspiracies, but it happens so often that I start to hate it! You just can't influence every inspect of the game, since you're still only the manager.

You may be right about the game taking mental aspects into extremes. Then there's the aspect of home/away games, I've always felt like the home advantage is a bit too big in FM, even too it's obviously a big factor in real life as well. It's just another thing the game takes into extremes, I guess.

Pelicanstuff: I have to agree with you. Especially about the part where players look too much all-round. Just look at this Óscar Guerrero guy... I can understand that he's superfast and superagile.. But he's also superstrong, weighing just 75 kilograms and being 1.78 cm high. The man can cross like Beckham, push like Drogba, tackle like Terry, pass like Xabi and has Dirk Kuyt's workrate, combined with Ji-Sung Parks lung capacity..

I remember getting Hearts into the knockout stages of the Champions League in CM01/02. Can't remember who we played but we won the away leg 6-1 only to lose the return leg 7-2, conceding an injury-time goal and going out on away goals.

Devastating.