Mediocre european leagues messed up? I know the danish league is...

Dear Sigames and fellow FM players.

I've been playing football manager since Amiga (I know it had a different name back then and that things were split up etc.) and something is really getting more and more annoying. I need to adress this issue now.

Since the 2005 edition the danish league has been virtually unplayable in the long run. Why? Because after 3-4 seasons all teams consists of 80% foreign players. It would seem that there's hardly generated any new danish players worthy of playing in the best danish league.

Now this was bad before, but in the 2011 version it was worse than ever. If you want a semi-long career game in the danish divisions, you'll soon feel like you're playing an adventure game - not a realistic football manager game. Apparently, after a few years, there are no qualified danish players to chose from at all. There are a few "stars" that will eventually travel overseas and become good internationals, but the "average-above average" players are simply not created by the game. Hence, after 3-5 seasons, every team in the top 2 divisions consists of at least 75% foreigners.

For the same reason I didn't buy your 2012 edition and this is the first time I played one I didn't pay for - I simply wanted to see if it was the same once again. And it is! It's the same, if not worse. I have bought at least 10-12 editions of Championship Manager and later on Football Manager, but I'm not willing to buy another one untill this is fixed. It's just too stupid and it makes the game completely unrealistic and uninteresting after a short while.

Is there any chance that you'll look into this? I realize that most people chose a top 5 european league and might not care about this, but some of us wants to play the less profiled leagues aswell, and for quite a while that has been impossible if you wanted just a shade of realism.

I'm eager to know if this also happens in other mediocre leagues (such as Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Scotland, Greece, Switzerland, Czech Republic etc (all ranked around Denmark in the UEFA country rankings: http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method4/crank2011.html) - or in the other scandinavian leagues (Norway, Sweden, Finland)). If so, this is a huge problem that should be adressed. If not, it still is - for me. I'd like to be able to play my countries league without everything being completely ****ed up after 3-4 seasons... please

A similar problem is that the non-league welsh exiles who play in England (Wrexham, Colwyn Bay and Newport) bypass the home-grown rules and do nothing but sign foreign players who are far too good for the divison that the team is in. But only when the AI controls them. We don't know why this is.

I like playing in some of the lesser leagues but I've never tried the Danish. Maybe I'll start a new save and see how it goes.

Well, to be quite honest, this really is a show-stopper. I want to play in the danish league, maybe reach a CL quarterfinal at some point, then maybe be appointed by a huge club or something. That is very possible, but after a few seasons, as I mentioned, the danish league is tarnished beyound recognition. After 5 years, there was 2 danish players out of 20 nominated for "Superlige player of the year", the rest were from exotic countries. That is just silly and I really hope Sigames will look into this.

You think that's bad, you should try playing a long-term game in Russia. You're only allowed to name six foreign players in your first eleven. Naturally the AI clubs sign every foreign player they can get their greedy hands on, and then are forced to play youth team players in league matches to meet the quota. Half the foreigners they sign never even get a game!

Well, that sounds terrible indeed. Can't we put some pressure on Sigames so they can fix this? The game really loses value if you need to play in UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, France or Portugal for it to be and stay somewhat realistic....?

You think that's bad, you should try playing a long-term game in Russia. You're only allowed to name six foreign players in your first eleven. Naturally the AI clubs sign every foreign player they can get their greedy hands on, and then are forced to play youth team players in league matches to meet the quota. Half the foreigners they sign never even get a game!

Strangely enough I was just thinking how the foreign restrictions in my Russian game have stopped this happening.

Well, to be fair, how many Danish players are ever in a Champions League quarter final? Just take a look at FC København that were in the 1st knock out round last year. They had like 3 Danish players in their line-up. And this year it isn't any better.

IRL every time a player has got some potential they are sold to a foreign club. Why? Because they have a better chance of developing in a foreign club because of much better training facilities and just a big a chance of getting first team experience. Danish clubs generally doesn't have the guts to field a 17-19 year old player for a prolonged period.

So if you want success in IRL and in FM with a Danish club you'll need foreign players. High potential Danish players will get better deals in foreign countries so it is difficult to get them to your club unless they start their career there.

So, Sikker, for the reason you mentioned, do you think that it is REALISTIC that 80% of the players in "Superligaen" will be foreigners in 5 years? Also, I tend to disagree with what you're saying. Surely, FC Copenhagen had many foreign players last season and it did pay off - but there are examples of the opposite aswell, just look at Odense? You're giving one example - one danish team that had a lot of success - and telling us that FM is realistic because the Superliga - and also first division - is turned into a league with 80% foreigners 5 years from now when you play FM? Do you really imagine Viborg or Silkeborg playing with 10 foreign players from obscure Brazilian and eastern european clubs 4 years from now?

Obviously you'll need foreign players to succeed. Never said you didn't. It's the frequenzy of them - and the fact that they're at a level that the game should generate danish players to match, but doesn't - that ruins the game experience. Many of these foreign players are not in any way all that good, they're just as good as danish players should be - the problem seems to be that the game does not generate the average or slightly above average danish player....

sikker he does not complain about high potential danish players

he says that even danish based players above average and average are not enough generated ( PA 100-170)

The quality of the regens from a country depends mostly on the quality of the teams' youth facilities which wont be very good in countries outside the top leagues

I'm managing lokomotiv plovdiv and even though the board upgraded the facilities, in 4 seasons I have only had 2 regens who would be good enough to make the first team and 4 or 5 more who would be good enough for the league

Im currently Peterborough ( in premiership) and I have about 10 Danish regens who have between 3.5 and 4.5 stars for their potential rating

I completely agree with the first post and I can say the same for the Norwegian league.

@Quitedk: OB has 1 young Danish player in their starting line up. A 20 year old Bashkim Kadrii (spelling). The rest are foreigners except for the 2 old defenders and the old midfielder. (Yes, they do occasionally use Danish players as subs)

The only other team that recently had success was Aab. And yes they did had a lot of Danish players. But once Herfølge won the league as well... If you want consistency in the Danish League you need cheap foreigners to complement the expensive Danish players.

In FM11 I had a 10 year save in the Danish superliga. And yes, the amount of foreigners did increase. How much I don't know. But the foreign players that came to the sub clubs in the top division were better than the Danish players they started out with. Also they were cheaper.

So why all the hazzle of training mediocre youth when you can buy cheap already trained foreigners? This being FM11 I don't know about FM12

I seem to remember a few weeks/month ago, some posting something very similar about Poland. Needs to be looked at SI, as a matter of urgency.

The main problem for FM is that the AI sucks at developing youngsters. And when you have a small country like Denmark where clubs generally have bad youth facilities then why play a youngster for several seasons before he can compete with a foreigner you can get for free (or close to).

As long as the AI can't make 5 year plans they will try to optimize the squad with the players they can get now and not what they might get in 3-5 years.

@ Shoshomiga

What you're saying is that the youth facilities in several eastern european and african countries are better than youth facilities in Denmark? It's not like the danish league is overpopulated by players from the top leagues, it's overpopulated by players from eastern Europe, Africa and South America. I just looked around in my current game, and there are 17 players from Uruguay in the danish Superliga, none but one of them with an average above 7.00 after half a season. None of them has international caps at all. To me, this makes no sense....

"So why all the hazzle of training mediocre youth when you can buy cheap already trained foreigners? This being FM11 I don't know about FM12 "

Indeed. This seems to be the problem! While you seem to say "that's how the game works, so let's go with it" I'm saying "this is not how it works in real life". Not only would it not be cheaper for the danish clubs to hire dozens of south-americans, there would also be culturel and social things to consider. I do not disagree that a country such as Denmark will not develop a huge amount of top-players, it's the sub-top players that are lacking. You are right that those should be developed by the clubs and that the clubs seem to chose to go for older foreign players, but that's not how it works in real life - for obvious reasons.

And from what I can see, it's even worse in 2012 than in 2011. Unfortunately, the game developers will not give a rats ass, cause we're talking smaller leagues here....

I completely agree and unfortunately it's the same for Sweden. Unfortunately, again, SI doesn’t care unless it's something that affects England so it will probably never get any priority even though it's something that affects most smaller/mid-sized leagues in Europe.

The main problem as i see it is that way too many players move abroad. In my current game where I’ve played for three seasons I haven’t sold a single player to a domestic club yet. If I look at the history for other clubs in the top division they usually sell their player abroad too. Occasionally they sell someone to another club in the top division. They never sell those who aren’t good enough to teams in lower divisions. Those players are always released on a free transfer instead. Even the reserves are usually moving abroad instead of going to a smaller domestic team. SI need re-write their code so that only the really good ones are moving abroad from smaller leagues. 30-year-olds who are squad players at most in the highest Swedish division shouldn't move to Portgual or the Championship. No matter how many (or few) leagues i have active or how many players that are loaded from the database. They also need to make the lower division clubs more eager to approach those who aren’t good enough for the top division. In general, top division clubs should be looking more at the best from the lower divisions instead of abroad. I think this could be part of the problem. The difference between the top division and the lower divisions are generally smaller in the smaller leagues than in England. AIK, my local team, came second as newcomers in the top division 2006 and was just a few points away from relegation as reigning champions 2010, as an example.

I don't think there's a lack of newgens with good potential though. They're there but maybe there should be a few more who are good enough to play in the top division at a younger age, but still not be anywhere near the national team or move abroad. Newgens are either awful or superstars from the start. We need more domestic newgens in the smaller leagues that will compete for a spot in the starting eleven but without being a star in the ages of 18-21. I would love to see newgens created with a CA/PA of something like 105/115. Making them good enough to get games at a young age but still nowhere near good enough for the national team of a transfer abroad in the future.

Quite frankly I think it would be cheaper if IRL Danish clubs mostly opted for south american and african players. That is if you are not having any other perspective than player ability contra player value (maybe this weighs too much in the FM AI).

As you mention, though, there are lots of other things to have in perspective. But how should they be implemented as they might be too subjective? E.g. when does a club need to focus on national players to reach the minimum (4/8). Or should the minimum be met at all costs? Do spectators prefer to watch teams dominated with national players or not. And the list could go on. The only really objective perspective is player ability contra player value (in game).

If anybody has fact and figures that show a problem (using a legitimate copy of the game) then please post in the bugs forum.

This kind of analysis is much appreciated if you can take the time to produce stats, thanks.