Gonner

Austria Salzburg, Season 13, 2036/2037 Season Recap : . Did not leave much suspense but BOY WE DID THE TREBLE !! We manage to do even better than last season in the first phase by drawing 2 and losing 2 only. Our schedule was somewhat weirdly constructed, we were facing RB Salzburg, Austria Wien, SK Sturm & SK Rapid in the first 4 games which meant the rest of the games were against supposedly inferior opposition. Both of our losses in the regular season were against our cross-town rival. But they lost some points against other teams so this is how we began the second phase : Over the last 10 games, we were amazing, drew both games against Salzburg and one at home against Wien, to get us 24 points out of a possible 30. It was way more than we needed because Salzburg had a very poor end of season and only hung on to 2nd place by virtue of their regular season point total. There are still 6 Austrian clubs playing in Europe but Sturm lost against 7-th placed SV Ried who will play in C4. In the Cup, we get to face Austria's 3 best teams, but nevertheless we get to celebrate in the end after beating Salzburg on penalties. Finally, in Europe we advance against Young Boys in the 3rd qualifying round of the Champions League before narrowly losing against Köln in the barrage. We thus get to play in Europa League and, supposedly, against lesser-quality opponents (apart maybe from the Spurs). But in reality Olympiacos, Guimaraes and even Granada are surprinsingly good, which means that in the end some of the teams we faced ended up 1st, 2nd, 4th & 9th. We still manage to get direct qualification by finishing 7th. We then get to play the next two rounds against two French teams that are having similar disappointing seasons, deep in the Ligue 1 midfield and advance to the semis where there are 2 European giants and SK Rapid. I had hoped for a home match-up but instead we get Milan. We win 2-0 at home in convincing fashion, both goals coming from Walter on a Domke assist, but then during the first week of May we lose Lang & Hartmann to (minor) injuries that will still sideline them for the remainder of the season. We go to San Siro with youngsters on the left wing, lose 3-0 until stoppage time when Banecki, one of our 2037 regen, scores at the 91st minute. He adds one in extra-time but we concede once more and go to penalties. The first 5 go through for both teams, then Banecki (him again!) scores the 6th and Milan misses to get us to the final ! We win this final 3-0, the score is very flattering, all goals coming at the very end of the game. After we scored the first one they threw everything they had to try to equalize and we added 2 more on counter-attacks. Transfers : Mostly loans out, we say goodbye to Bogdanovic & Kiene now that we finally got some proper regens in Defense. Bah also signed to leave on a free transfer at the end of his contract to join Zenit due to a lack of playing time. Gül went on loan to LASK with a 2M€ option and they decided to keep him, on the one hand I am sad that his potential never materialized in Bundesliga but he had recurring periods of inefficiency in front of the goal and I could not justify keeping him on the field instead of Walter. Speaking of people leaving us at the end of their contract, I am beyond pissed to see Ciric walk and go to Austria Wien. I knew there was a 99% chance of him leaving, but he kept saying he wanted to go to a bigger club and he ends up with F***ING AUSTRIA WIEN ???? I should have sold him to Newcastle for 30+M when they inquired last offseason. Anyway, rant over, but this transfer really does not make sense to me. Finances : Finally keeping true to my word not to overload this with screenshots, finances are good. Going all the way in Europa League gives us less money than going past the pool phase of Champions League, so our prize money went from 42M€ to 29M€, but our balance remained steady around 50/55 M€. Absolutely no worries there. Squad : I believe all our success this year came from the fact that we no longer have a weak point in our first XI now that Bohmer is my second best-CB. He can still improve but I am now really confident in my Beuth - Böhmer - Bertram - Aksu back 4. In midfield,Mohr & Bauer is a very solid pair. As said above, losing Ciric beyond sucks, he clearly was our best player and we do not really have another true right winger, in all likeliness Domke will be our go-to-guy, with Walter a potential second option, in which case we would turn to our recent youth ranks for our starting striker. On the left wing Lang is progressing nicely and will probably become better than Hartmann next season. Up front Walter is still our main guy, Diegmann is a nice surprise, he can be our second striker when we play in 4-4-2 or our AMC-Enganche in 4-2-3-1. Now that we solved our weak links in defense, the hard task begins, we basically need improvements everywhere if we want to finish this challenge. Except Ciric and maybe Beuth, no other player is world-class in that team and one of the aforementioned is leaving us... Admin & Facilities : So, after spending 4 seasons with the youth facilities stuck at "superb", I finally got the possibility to ask fore improvements when my training facilities grade got degraded. The board refused the improvement for the youth facilities but were OK with making sure the training facilities came back to their recent standards. A couple of days later, the President is asking me to meet with him to discuss... the idea of improving the youth facilities... I gladly accept and I am just left wondering what changed in 7 days... Hopefully we will reach the max for both. Bonus (Accolades, Best Wonderkids, Weird & Funny Stuff): Youth Intake : Preview was promising, intake seems good as well. 4 elite talents & 2 top initially, but they all became elite after being signed, Dresing & Bosch gaining half a star of potential ! Engin Berk Hervenik : Another GK, like clockwork, every odd year. Schwab, our 31' GK, seems to almost be at Kovacic's level. Brandl (33) has not really progressed so he will probably go. Bruneck (35) is supposedly better than all, but now Hervenik is the new wonderkid. Progression is slower for goalies than for other players, but I wonder what is best in those situations, lending players or keeping them with us so they have access to the best facilities? The good thing is that we will be playing in the Youth League next season, so that could help. Hervenik is also considered injury-prone, seeing how FM24 is with GK injuries that is not promising. Justin Bosch : First of our top-turned-elite guy. Unambitious, so I do not have high hopes of him dislodging Aksu. Sascha Trummer : Seems to have the potential to be better than Böhmer. Good, we need to start becoming marginally better everywhere. Christopher Dresing : Weird beast. Natural as an attacking midfielder but possesses the technical quality to be a Ball Winning Midfielder. Will train him to play that position. Thomas Ortner: Another elite AM coming up, that will be 5 in a row with Diegmann (33), Decker (34), Rabl (35), Seferovic (36) and now Ortner. Diegmann is now part of our first XI and rated 5 star in terms of potential, Decker & Seferovic have only 4, Rabl has 4.5. But Ortner already has 2 stars in current ability, same as Decker and 0.5 more than Rabl & Seferovic. Nicklas Banecki: Another Striker that can play on the wings, his brace against Milan saved us from elimination. We have had a lot of promising strikers over the recent years but none really challenged Walter so far, maybe Banecki will. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2030 youth became. 2 elite & 4 top talents at the time when we were firmly established in Bundesliga. 7 years later, no one plays with us anymore, so we go straight to Those who left us : Svetozar Rakic, AM left for 9M€ to join Manchester City in July 2032 and since then has won a total of ... 0 appearances with the first team. His contract is expiring at the end of the season and I have no regret that he left us without a fee on a future transfer because we would not have gotten anything. Kind of a shame all those guys leave too early, I would have loved having him and Ciric. Haris Mujkic, RW did not play a single game with us, left on a free to join a Bosnian club at the end of his youth contract. Most likely a bad evaluation of our then-HoY. Mohammed Azzouzi, ST followed the same path and went home after his youth contract, so far only managing to play in Belgian amateur leagues. Pero Kirnbauer, CM was purchased for 43K€ by Grazer AK in 2032, not having played a single minute with our first team. He has played only twice for them in 2nd Liga, mostly sticking with their B team. Joachim Ehret, RW joined FAC Wien at the end of his youth contract but over 3 years only made one appearance with them. He is set to become a free agent at the end of this month. Joshua Wagner, RB was purchased by Wolfsberger AC B team for 105K€ and then flipped the next season to our rival Innsbruck for 275K€ without having played a single minute !! His career with Innsbruck has not been more succesful. All in all a very disappointing intake ! Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 12, 2035/2036 Season Recap : The season recap is a bit misleading because it takes the positions after the first phase. That first phase was the best we ever did, but Salzburg was only 1 loss away from the perfect season so we did not close the gap there. Austria Wien had a really good year also and they were not too far from us, on top of this they were the only team to beat Salzburg. This is how we began the second phase : Over the last 10 games, we only managed to win 4, draw 1 and lose 5, so we did not take advantage of Salzburg's slow end of the season (3 draws, 3 losses in the title pool). Wien leapfrogged us and Rapid were just 1 goal away from kicking us out of the podium so this was quite disappointing. Salzburg only got 15 points out of a possible 30, so getting 20 or 21 would have meant a possible challenge for the title. There are still 6 Austrian clubs playing in Europe but Hartberg lost against 7-th placed Altach who will play in C4. In the Cup, we lose in Semis against Wien at their place. For our first season in the Champions League, we could have had a worse draw. Molde was probably the worst team in that phase, Anderlecht & Metz were OK to deal with. We even managed to win in the Salzburg derby away from home ! We qualify for the elimination barrage and draw Liverpool which was far from the best possible match-up. After drawing at home we lose at Anfield but I am nonetheless quite happy with our performances for a first appearance on the big scene. Transfers : We did not renew Bandlow, who was now basically our 4th best right winger after Ciric and our 2 strikers, Walter & Domke, but still asked for top-5 wage. We also say goodbye to our last non-regen player, Fötschl & Engl, a young defender who had very slim hopes of cracking into the first team. Finances : Squad : My 3 favorite tactics are still 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 & 4-4-2, seems like this year we used 4-4-2 the most. Very happy with my front 4, Ciric is my best player and probably the best player to ever play for us, but he does not want to renew his contract and wants to play for a bigger team... In midfield, I managed to extend Mohr after last season, when we play in 4-2-3-1 Bauer plays AMC & Neumann plays next to Mohr. Mohr attracts interest from the best teams and has been seen twice "leaving a nightclub in the early hours of morning" but so far he has not asked to be transfered. Hermann Diegmann from our class of '33 is making good progress and he could become our next AMC. From that class, Nico Lang is also progressing well, that is why I let Fötschl walk at the beginning of the year. From the next class, our wonderkid Beuth is now our best full-back, I trained him to play on the left side since Aksu is a lot better than Bah. I believe our two worst positions now are second CB (but I think Böhmer from the '35 class is progressing quickly and I am optimistic he can dislodge Bah / Imamovic as the second-best CB next season) and... GK. Kovacic is seen by my coaches as an OK-starter for Bundesliga but some youth prospects seem to have the potential to become better than him. Admin & Facilities : Nothing to note here, I still cannot ask for improvements for my youth facilities despite them being stuck at "superb" for 4 seasons now. Our new stadium also helps with the finance side of things and it is only full in Europe and for derbies, we have room to spare for the lesser games. Bonus : Youth Intake : Not the best of preview, but we finally get a left-back !! Only 5 players worthy of a screenshot though, 2 elites & 3 top. Richard Kurz : Alleluia ! A real left-back ! Now that Beuth is natural at this position it's not a top priority but we still lack depth. And Kurz does not have to become better than Beuth to make the first team, only better than Aksu which would then mean that Beuth would go back to his initial position on the right. Tim Ameskamp: Good second striker who can bring depth on the wings as well, his versatility is really an asset considering the number of strikers we have, he may end up like Hartmann or Domke and find his playing time more on the wings. Samuel Adler : We have had numerous CM coming through our ranks in recent years with Mohr (33), Lopez (34) and Wurm (35), so that makes it 4 years in a row. With Adler getting "only" 4 stars in potential I would not bet all my money on him becoming better than the 3 elite talents that came before him but we never know. Mathias Bornemann : We now only have Hartmann (who plays out of position) and Lang as left wingers, so the path to the first team is easier for Bornemann. I will obviously train him to play a little higher on the field but I still like the fact that he is natural as a wide midfielder. Adi Seferovic: Like CM, we have had elite AM coming up in the past 3 years with Diegmann (33), Decker (34) & Rabl (35) being seen as elite talents, so like Adler, Seferovic has his work cut out for him, all the more considering we only ever play with (1) AM when we line up in 4-2-3-1, so it is a tough battle ahead. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2029 youth became. This was our first intake in Bundesliga, so supposedly the stars should have been harder to get than when we were in 2. Liga, but that did not stop Sabic from considering that a whopping 9 players were elite talents at the time... And well, it did not turn out this way at all. Let's get to the ones who are still with us. Kenan Todorovic, CD : He is still with us, but it is probably a question of months before he leaves us. Todorovic was supposed to become Bertram's partner in defense, but so far it seems like he is still behind Imamovic & Bah and barely better than Kiene. He spent the last 2 seasons on loan in the second division and has not been particularly exceptional. Böhmer from the class of '35 seems to be making good progress, and his 2 buddies from the same year are not far behing, so this could spell the end for Kenan. Harm Domke, ST turned RW : With Todorovic likely out in a few months, the only player that might stick around with us is Domke. He is kind of a late bloomer, becoming really relevant recently, but he is our best right winger behind Ciric, and likely one of our best False Nine or Second Striker, which allows him to play behind Walter or Gül in a 4-4-2. Those who left us : Peter Albl, GK was for a while supposed to become better than Kovacic, but then Kevin Schwab (31) came up and he became our bench GK. Albl left us for free at the end of his youth contract having played 5 games for us, all in his first two seasons. He is now playing in for Altach's reserve side, so no regrets. Bozenko Stokic, RB also left after his youth contract and signed in Croatia, where he plays in the 2nd division. Julian Frede, RB left us in July 2032 for 115K€ and joined Wolfsberger, one of the best 2. Liga teams, where he starts as a WB in a 5-2-3 DM formation. He was more suited to WB than RB so that makes sense. Henrik Berger, LB has retired and cannot be found in my save, so it is safe to assume he had very low potential considering he played in a position of need for us. Lucas Rosch, RW left us in July 2032 for 835€ (yes, that is the right amount) and joined Bregenz, a team that pops up every once in a while in 2. Liga only to get relegated a few years after. He did not make a single first team appearance and now plays in amateur Austrian leagues. Pasko Stipica, RW had very good potential and was almost first-team ready but his favorite role was playmaker which is not something really suited to the tactics I play, considering I already have one or 2 playmakes in midfield. He left for free and went to SV Ried, where he has barely played for the first team. Patrick Galm, LW left us in August 2032 for 150K€ and joined Sturm Graz, where he has made a single apparition for the first team in 4 years (but registered an assist, so his average grade in the Bundesliga is 7.4, not bad !) Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 11, 2034/2035 Season Recap : We move up two spots from what was our previous best-ever finish and end up second, right behind our rivals across town. In the first phase of the championship, we had managed to carve up a significant gap to the 3rd and 4th-placed Austria Wien & SK Rapid, who were themselves quite clear of the rest of the pack, which was much more concentrated than last year, 3 points separating 10th-placed Ried from 6th-placed LASK. This is how we begun the second phase : And this how we finished it ! You can see on the season recap that we lost the last two games of the year, this is mostly because everything was said and done after 30 games so I played youngsters for those games to get some much-needed rest. Which means that on that second phase we got 18 points over the first 8 games, with a home victory over Salzburg ! That was not enough to challenge for the title but we finished second comfortably. It is worth noting that since Austria progressed on the European League rankings, there are now 6 clubs that qualify for European competitions, with P6 figthing it out against the winner of P7 vs P8. In the Cup, despite getting past RB Salzburg in the semis with one of our two spring victories over them, we do not take advantage of it and lose to Austria Wien in the final. For our third season in Europa League, I have to confess some over-confidence. We won 3-1 on the first leg of the 3rd qualifying round against a team from Denmark and I decided to rotate the squad somewhat because it is always crazy in August & September with games every 3-4 days... This backfired and we got eliminated on penalties. This meant we went back to Europa Conference, and boy, what a run ! We easily get out of the first phase, drawing at home with the biggest name, Fiorentina. Then we get to play them again in the first round, winning twice by the slimmest of margins in high-scoring games. Next comes another Danish team that I do not underestimate this time around. I thought our run would end against Brentford, but to my surprise we won the first leg 5-1. I still sent the A team on the return leg that we lost 3-4. In the meantime, Turkish team Adana D.S. beat Twente on penalties so we were going to face them in the final. AND WE WON !!! Unlike the previous games, it was more of a defensive effort than anything else. Maurice Neumann, who is not a scoring machine, managed to get a brace on two shots from 15 meters away, the first one after a corner, the second one in open play. Adana were not dangerous for the vast majority of the game until the last minutes where they decided to throw all they could at us but Kovacic made some good saves on set pieces. Transfers : Nothing major this year, Schulz was buried in the depth chart even before Mohr's quick progression, so bye bye. Finances : Squad : Our favorite tactic was once again the classic 4-2-3-1, but 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 were also used during the year depending on sharpness and our analyst's recommendation. The best XI below does not really show how we played, Bauer was our Attacking Midfielder while Neumann & Mohr formed our midfield pair. Walter was our best striker. Our front trio was extraordinary, especially our wingers, Hartmann scoring 27 goals to go with 12 assists, while Ciric had 18 & 16 respectively. In the back, Beuth has trained to be a Left-Back and is not far from Bah's level now. Admin & Facilities : Bonus : Youth Intake : Three in a row for a preview that has full-backs as one of the best position but no left-back in the end. Somewhat disappointed to get "only" 3 elite talents, but all top talents have 4+ stars potential, some of them even being rated 4.5. Jürgen Rabl : We do not have much depth at Attacking Midfielder since Rakic left us, so Rabl might come in the first squad sooner than later, he will be in the mix with Decker from last year. Christian Wurm : After so many seasons with producing strikers, we are in a good midfield run with Mohr, Lopez & now Wurm. Mohr is being looked at by some of the best English teams so I believe his time with us is counted, which will make Wurm's progression a focus for me. Daniel Böhmer : My oh my ! 3 Central Defenders in one intake, with Böhmer seen as the best. A little strength training could go a long way ! Luis Bruneck : We now seem to be producing GKs every two years. Schwab (31) & Brandl (33) are battling it out to be Kovacic's replacement, both are seen to have more potential than Kovacic but are yet to reach his level. According to Reinaldo, Bruneck is supposed to be the best of the bunch. Florian Eder & Nikola Streiter: Two right-backs, Eder seemingly more defense-oriented and Streiter more of a wing-back. Both only have 4-star potential, hard to see them battle it out with Beuth. Björn Eichner & Noah Zeller: Nothing really to separate those two, Eichner gets the nod to be CD-2 thanks to his personality. I am in dire need of depth in the backfield so if all 3 central defenders end up being good it is a good problem to have. Marlon Austermann: In what seems like a very defensive batch, we get a potentially good second striker. Free-kick taking abilities run short in my team so if that 11 can become a 14 or a 15 it could help Marlon a lot. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2028 youth became. This was our last intake in 2. Liga, and I had been very optimistic at the time, giving nicknames and taking screenshots of 12 of them ! Let's get to the ones that are still with us. Markus Bertram, CD : Back when he arrived I lamented the fact that you cannot play youngsters straight away in Austria, you need to wait for the next season to be able to register them. Well I was right about this, Bertram has been the rock of our defense since that time. Emir Imamovic, CD : I have to confess I was not as sold on Imamovic as I was on his colleague above but he has been a very pleasant surprise. He has been a starter in defense for lack of better options, but has held his rank thanks to his good mental attributes. Armin Bauer, AM : He initially was an attacking midfielder, then turned more of a CM playing as an advanced playmaker with the eclosion of Rakic, only to go back to playing AMC when Rakic left us. I believe he is among our best players. Peter Walter, ST : When he graduated from the youth academy I said that he would have his work cut out for him with the emergence of Gül & Götz before him as well as the presence of Dorfmayr. Well, all 3 regens ended up way better than Dorfmayr, Götz left for Italy and Gül, despite his attributes being better than Walter cannot seem to produce anywhere near his level, so Walter has been our starting striker for the past few years. He is also able to move to the right wing if needed. Those who left us : Mathias Erdl, CM left us for free at the end of his youth contract after a couple of apperances from the bench. He remained in Austria where he signed for midfield team TSV Hartberg, where he is a squad player. Denis Brauer, CM had signed for SK Rapid in January 2030 for 1.4M€ and I had wondered what they saw in him. Well, apparently what they saw did not materialize because he never made a first-team appearance, was loaned twice in Australia and ended up signing with 2.Liga side KSV 1919 where he is a solid starter. That is probably his ceiling. Marcel Westphal, ST was signed by Austria Wien for 700K€ in January 2031, appeared in a grand total of 6 Bundesliga games over 4 seasons and was recently sold to Austria Klagenfurt (he might be trying to play for all Austria named teams) for 72K€ to play in 2. Liga. The other players have had less success, Erkenbrecher left for free and joined Bregenz in 2. Liga, but has mostly played for their B team. Färber plays for a non-league team, Hübner has retired, Sciotto has joined our affiliate team SV Teifs in 2. Liga but plays mostly for their B team and Mustafic went back to his native Bosnia. Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 10, 2033/2034 Season Recap : We finished in the same position as last year, 4th, but this time around it was a lot more convincing. In the championship, Austria Wien came back in the fight for the podium after their one-year absence from the title pool. We stayed with them, Sturm was somewhat in a no-man's land on their own, and SV Ried managed to get themselves ahead of the rest of the midfield to get the final spot. Rapid is no longer able to challenge Salzburg for the title (only 1 game lost over the first 22 games for them...) so the hierarchy now feels like RB Salzburg clearly on their own for the title, Rapid benefiting from C1 money and comfortable for 2nd place, and then the fight for 3rd place is between Austria Wien, us & Sturm Graz. Halving the points always make it look closer than it really is. Our fight was with Wien for the 3rd spot. Austria Wien had a tremendous title pool, getting 20 points in 10 games, so we "only" finished 4th, but quite clear of the 5th place, so I consider that progress ! In the Cup, the draw made us face SK Rapid as soon as the 3rd round (1st & 2nd round pro teams are protected and play lower league teams so the "real Cup" starts in the 3rd round) and we got out before the quarter finals for the first time since we play in Bundesliga. To the surprise of... no one, the two best teams get to the final, and the best of the 2 gets the title. For our second season in the Europa League, we miss on direct qualification on goal difference. But we get an easy draw with Maribor, so we advance to the latter phases. We manage to get past PAOK but fall to Real Sociedad. Transfers : Two major transfers that have already brought 15M€ and could bring 25M€ in the bank ! 3 of our 2031 youth guys leave us, Weiss during the summer break, Tatic & Saedi during the winter one. Tatic was nowhere near the level of the 2 others, Weiss did not want to hear anything once the big clubs came asking about him, and he was still far from first-team contention. Saedi was a different story, he was clearly one of our best midfielders, and he has already seen some playing time at Tottenham. Finances : Obviously considering our run in the Europa League, it is all green here. If we add the two transfers and the fact that our facilities are closed to the max, our balance went from "OK as long as we keep performing in Europe" to "more than OK, I could survive a very bad stretch". We are spending way less than 50% of our wage allocation and there is even more margin considering we will not ever touch a dime of that transfer budget. Squad : Our favorite tactic was once again the classic 4-2-3-1, but 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 were also used during the year depending on sharpness and our analyst's recommendation. They still have some way to go, but for the first time in what seems like ages I am able to rest my back 4 against lower-ranked league teams and play the likes of Kiene, Todorovic, Bogdanovic and Förster. Clearly, all 4 of them together is a Liga 2. level defense, but inserting one here and there is OK. In midfield the screenshot below has Tottenham's playing time for Saedi, not ours. Furthermore, Bauer is our AMC since Rakic left, in the second half of the season Neumann was paired with Mohr or Schulz. Speaking of Mohr, he & Ciric have been pleasant surprises from the recent youth classes, already fighting for first team minutes. Pantic could also be mentioned here, but in his case it has more to due with the fact that he is the only real DM in our club. Admin & Facilities : Bonus : Youth Intake : This preview had me excited at the possibility of getting a Left-Back, and it was a Right Back once more ! 6 elite talents, 3 top talents. I have given a nickname to the last 3 as well but anything short of elite will probably not get me to Champions League level. Michael Beuth : OK, he's a right back, but A) he is almost first-team ready, B) does not seem to be the type of guy that will leave me in two years and C) can play with both feet and will definitely be trained to play at left back ! Sascha Engl & Valentin Feichtinger : We are yet to find someone that can be on the level of Bertram, Imamovic (and Bah because he plays out of position) are our two-worst players in our starting XI, so getting two elite central defenders is a very welcome sight. Feichtinger's worse personality than Engl got him the "CD2" nickname. César Lopez : My favorite of the bunch with Beuth. Somewhat unsurprisingly after producing so many midfielders but selling 80% of them, I feel that I am lacking some depth there. Lopez could follow the path of Mohr and become a squad player in a couple of years. Timo Decker : We have not been able to replicate the success we once had with Rakic at Attacking Midfielder and we play Bauer there who is truly more of a Central Midfielder / Advanced Playmaker. Maybe Decker will be the guy ! Christoph Huber: Striker is probably where we have seen the most youth success stories, and it's a good thing because they tend to bring the most money ! Huber has decent technical & mental abilities for his age, if he can improve his physical stats he might be able to join the first team. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2027 youth became. Back in that day, a lot like this year, we got 6 elite talents & 3 top talents. Our 3 top talents no longer play football at any level, which is somewhat understandable considering we were still in 2. Liga when we had that intake, so let's see what the elite talents became. Milan Hasic, GK never managed to get anywhere close to Ivica Kovacic, our starter who came in a year earlier and he left at the end of his youth contract, played for a bit in 2. Liga and then went to non-professionnal austrian football. Lucas Baumjohann, CD has had somewhat of a similar career. Unlike Hasic, he has had some apparitions in Bundesliga, but defense has always been our Achille's heel and Baumjohann has not been able to develop enough to become a reliable option. He is barely getting some playing time at the second level. Patrick Sauer, LB is clearly the best Left Back to ever come up our youth ranks. After 3 seasons with us, he left for Manchester United and despite the fact that he has played more than 70 games in the Premier League (including his loan spell at Leicester), he has not been resigned by United and will come back to Austria to play for SK Rapid next season. Here goes my 50% bonus... Sebastian Kraft, LW followed Sauer's footsteps to England, but he did so before really establishing himself as a player in Bundesliga with us. He became fed up with me letting him know I was not satisfied with his training performances and left at the earliest opportunity. Well, he's never appeared even once under City's colors, and after two seasons on loan in India was signed by WSG Tirol, a team that is frequently moving up and down between Austria's two divisions. Another resale bonus gone ! Luca Götz, ST has also left us and the only one where I could not get a resale bonus is the only one that is still looking OK, even though I think Spezia would be hard-pressed to get a lot more for him than the 6M€ they paid us. Götz seems to be a honorable bench player for Spezia, a midfield team in Serie A. Tobias Hartmann, ST is the only one still with us and is a lock in our starting XI. I believe if I had been asked back in 2027 to bet who among the 6 elite talents would be the most likely to fit that description Hartmann would have been far from my first choice... He was kind of a late-bloomer, not helped by the fact that most of the time we only play with one striker, so competition is tough for minutes. He was willing to go on loans in 2. Liga and got some playing time there. But I believe what really made the difference for him is Kraft's departure, because once he was gone it was Fötschl and only Fötschl on the Left Wing so I started looking at options in case our only non-youth player was to become injured for a long time and Hartmann was already comfortable playing as a left winger. Some more trainings later, he is now our first choice and his experience as a striker helps him score a dozen goals or so per season. Game in a nutshell :

What a day for completions ! Congrats @thomas_e !

Congrats @XaW, you made it so quick that I still have not fully grasped the cup systems in South Africa

Fleury is known in France for having the biggest prison of the country and, if I am not mistaken, one of the biggest in Europe. As for the stadium, it is a strange miss by SI, they used to play there temporarily a couple of seasons ago but have since gotten their own stadium, back in ... 2019.

Apologies for the 2 posts but it was too heavy for one. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2026 youth became. Back in that day, we got 5 regens that I deemed worthy of a screenshot and to my surprise, all 5 are still with us ! This was a very good year. Ivica Kovacic, GK became our starter when we got promoted and has never let anyone steal playing time from him. We have a couple promising goalies in our youth ranks but his position should be safe for at least one or two years minimum. Fadil Aksu, RB has been a must-start for the past 6 years. He split the RB duties with Sandmayr initially when we were in 2. Liga and, like Kovacic, became our go-to-guy once we reached the Bundesliga. Förster (32) and Heinz above are seen as our most promising RFB but Aksu's position looks quite safe. Finn Kiene, CD has clearly benefited from the fact that we have not been able to produce a proper LB, save for Sauer. Kiene is our second-best LB and third or fourth-best CB, but since we have no depth he frequently comes off the bench and has thus seen meaningful minutes. Frank Lieberknecht, DM/CM is a weird beast. He is a natural Defensive Midfielder but has qualities that would make him more of a playmaker. He is been out on loan the past 3 seasons, I believe he is a fringe player but I keep him around in case we get multiple long injuries. Maurice Neumann, CM/AM has been one of our key players for 6 years now. His best position is CM with an advanced playmaker role and he always gets close to 10 assists a year. Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 9, 2032/2033 Season Recap : It does not show on this first screenshot, but we managed our best ever-finish in the League, 4th ! In the championship, Austria Wien had a very disappointing season and did not even qualify for the title pool. Points and goal difference clearly show once more that this league is a battle between RB Salzburg & SK Rapid for the title, 3 or 4 teams for Europe and the rest fighting relegation. This year there was a clear split between the top 6 and the rest. After halving the points, we were clearly in contention for a podium spot or at least direct qualification for European competitions. Like last year, Sturm collapsed in the final run. Admira, after exceeding expectations all season long, only managed to get 3 points over the final 10 games, so it was a battle between LASK and us for the final podium spot. We lost the away game and they managed to get a draw against us at home, which was probably the deciding game. Still, we will play in Europa League again next season ! In the Cup, we cannot replicate our success from last year and fall in Quarter Finals against Austria Wien. RB Salzburg out in the 3rd round, Rapid had a clear path to the title, and they did not let it slip from their fingers. In the Europa League, for our first season, we manage to advance for the playoffs, as an unseeded team. We do not get the best draw and face Aston Villa, who eliminated us last year in the semis of the Europa Conference. The gap is too big again this year, and we exit early, but I am still proud of the guys for getting this far, especially considering the clubs we faced in the Championship phase. Transfers : Just one transfer this year, but it is our wonderkid Rakic who decides to leave us for greener pastures in England. 9M€ and 50% of the next sale is all I managed to get, once the big names came in he was too eager to leave... I will miss him though, I enjoyed playing with an attacking midifielder. Finances : A little less money than last year which is understandable considering we did not go as far in the Cup or in Europe, and also played tougher opponents so less wins, less bonus money. Still, as long as we play in Europe, we are going to be more than OK. I am pushing our board for (costly) improvements but we seem to be close to the end of that journey. Squad : Even after Rakic left us we kept alternating between 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 throught out the year depending on sharpness and our analyst's recommendation. As always, our back 4 lacks depth, Finn Kiene being our 5th guy. Förster has been called up a few times to give some rest to Aksu but he is far from first team level at the moment. In midfield Bauer has been asked to play Attacking Midfielder after Rakic left, allowing Saedi to make a good pair with Neumann, Todorovic remaining the 4th guy. On the wings Bandlow has had a tremendous season on the right, but Ciric is getting above 9 in training grade every week and is quickly progressing. As for the left, Hartmann is now natural in his position and is a little better than Fötschl so for the first time all our top XI has come from the youth ranks. Up front, Walter has scored 30 goals for us and taken the spot away from Gül, who, on paper, seems to be better, but that is a different story on the pitch. They are our front 2 when we play 4-4-2 which prevens Gül from becoming (too) unhappy. Admin & Facilities : Bonus : Youth Intake : This preview had me excited at the possibility of getting a Left-Back. Well, not today... But our Head of Youth considers that we have 9 elite talents this year so I cannot complain. Tim Brandl : Seen by Reinaldo as having more potential than all our "existing" goalkeepers. I can work with "Balanced" personality. Mark Heinz : We got Tobias Förster last year, now Mark Heinz, we might finally have some proper competition for Aksu in the next few years. Serhat Polat : Unanmbitious Central Defender, but left-footed. Might train him to be a Left Back. Dragan Pantic : First natural DM in ages, really good mental qualities (except for the low determination). Will likely see first team minutes right away when we play in 4-3-3. Tim Mohr: My favorite of the whole bunch. He has good technicall skills, I may see how he develops and train him as an attacking midfielder. Hermann Diegmann : Did we find Rakic's replacement ? Needs to get some more muscle but looks promising. Nico Lang : One year after Nikola Ciric, we get another promising winger, this time on the left wing ! Oliver Albuschat : 14 in Finishing at age 15 ?? Good pace & acceleration ? Oliver will move to the first team and get some bench minutes. Samed Vidovic: Always tough to be the second best at your position, but could be a good 2nd striker or AMC.

Austria Salzburg, Season 8, 2031/2032 Season Recap : We equal our best-ever finish (5th) this year, but we add our first "real title", the Austrian Cup which gives us direct access to the Europa League !! In the championship, we are now firmly established in the the mid-pack, but we qualified to the title pool on goal difference only. SK Sturm was able to almost follow the rhythm of the two powerhouses, then only 9 points separated the teams ranked 4th to 9th. Sturm completely collasped in the final phase so Austria Wien came on to the podium. Rapid missed on the title by a point. The final goal differences clearly show that Salzburg & Rapid are on a league of their own, we are slowly catching up to Wien & Sturm and I am hopeful to be able to fight for a podium spot in the next few seasons. In the national cup, we take advantage of the draw that sees us play lesser teams at home up until the semis, where we host Sturm. In the meantime, Salzburg & Rapid get to play each other in 1/4 Final, with the winner then taking on Austria Wien. They manage to win in extra time against Salzburg, and then in the final we open the score super early. Wien equalizes in the first half, we score at the 86th minute despite being dominated, but they equalized at the very last minute. Nothing happen in extra-time and we get to the penalties shootout. Saedi misses the 1st shot, but then we go 4 in a row while their 4th shooter misses. Both 6th shots are off, but then our goalie scores and stops their 7th attempt to bring us the title ! In the Europa Conference we manage to get into the best 8 teams despite a loss against Udinese. We make it to the semi-finals by beating Lugano & Pogon before falling to eventual winner Aston Villa. Transfers : Our former best player Dorfmayr had agreed to leave us at the end of his contract, but the big news was the departure of Götz to Spezia. I tried to extend him during the summer time but he was asking for more than 50K€ a month. He had a release clause of 6M€ that a few Saudi clubs & Spezia met. No 50% bonus here... Finances : Sweet, sweet European money again. Our path to the semis gave us 50% more prize money than the prior year, which was already more than enough for our expenditure. As usual, when the money comes in, I ask for improvements, Junior Coaching & Youth Recruitments are already maxed out, I hope the facilities will soon follow. My only concern for the finances is if one season we fail to qualify for Europe, but the Austrian coefficient is slowly getting better and we might become the 6th best European League soon which would give us another spot. Squad : The Cup final screenshot gave it away but for the first time we tried something else than our 4-4-2. I have basically been rotating between 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 throught out the year depending on our analyst's recommendation but also on our sharpness, trying to rotate more in order to keep everyone somewhat fresh. You can still see that our back 4 played a ton of games but I am still lacking depth there even if Todorovic is slowly progressing and keeps coming off the bench to relieve the most tired guy. In midfield Neumann & Bauer have cemented their places in the starting XI, with Todorovic & Saedi as back-ups. Our wingers do not seem to have much competition, but Hartmann is able to play on the left & Peter Walter on the right, so sometimes I can have 3 strikers up front. Admin & Facilities : Bonus : Youth Intake : Disappointing preview considering all the recent improvements in youth recruitment. The intake is a bit better with 5 elite talents. Milos Bogdanovic : SeSame profile as Bah & Kiene, a Lefty No-Nonsense CB who can play FB as well. Will train him to play Left FB. Sadly, unambitious. Tobias Förster : Seen as a Winger by my HoY, I would like to see what he can do as a Right Back. Nikola Ciric : Will train him to play in an advanced winger position but he has the potential to be better than Bandlow according to my HOY. I like his personality ! Thomas Fenn : We might have found our next 2 wingers in the same year. A little less potential than Ciric for Fenn according to my HoY, we will keep an eye on his progression. Kevin Vanner: Yearly striker. I think this is the position where I have had the most success, so competition is tough, but you never know. 7 years after : A quick look at what our 2025 youth became. Back in that day, we got 5 regens that I deemed worthy of a screenshot and all 5 are still playing in Austria, only 2 with us ! Kristijan Varga, GK now plays in a semi-pro club in the Wien league. Kovacic came a year after him and became our starter when we got promoted and has never let anyone steal playing time from him. Dominik Abesser, CM has been the victim of a bad career move. He was a lock in the starting XI for us but wanted more money and left on a free transfer for LASK. How's that going for you Dominik ?? Maximilian Bandlow, RW has been in the first XI since Sorda left us and is still among our best player with excellent physical traits. He is also capable as a ST which in turn leads him to score around 10 goals a year. Fatih Gül, ST is probably our current best player. Some of those who have left us surely had a better potential, but Gül is a top striker. He is a little prone to bad slumps and injuries though. Justin Amborn, ST has never really been a part of our plans. He frequently came off the bench in our first Bundesliga seasons but his ceiling is probably the 2. Liga. Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 7, 2030/2031 Season Recap : Took a step backwards this year compared to the last one where we had finished in 5th in the championship, but there were just too many games to play for my team and we had to make some choices. Eliminated in the Cup 1/4 final by SK Rapid. When I saw our rhythm was not going to make us able to go back to the title pool, I decided to keep my team fit for European competitions in order to bring more money and hope to finish among the best 2 teams of the relegation pool to qualify for the European playoffs. Speaking of Europe, we advanced through the qualification rounds of the Europa Conference, and our draw looked OK to me for a first, save maybe for Copenhagen. We did pretty great and managed to advance to the next phase. We even managed to go past Antwerp before falling to Hertha in the final 8. Not too bad for a first ! We were done with Europe just in time to play the last 10 games of our relegation pool. Admira ran away with this, but I knew from experience the only thing we needed was to get 8th place to be in the fight for Europe once again. We faced Admira at home in the 7th-8th playoff, won 4-2, and then were drawn against LASK. To my surprise, we got a very convincing 3-1 victory at their place and held up on the return to give us the chance to play another year in Europe. Transfers : The screenshot shows the sale of Patrick Sauer that for me happened the season before. We had another promising young player leave us, Sebastian Kraft, who decided to go to City. He was pissed off because I kept criticizing his training performances. We will see if he can make it at City with this attitude ! Managed to get a 50% bonus just in case. We also had a couple of other players that left us during the winter breaks. As I get more familiar with the progression of players I will try to sell the ones that appear less and less likely to fight for first-team minutes. Finances : Sweet, sweet European money. The jump in prize money from less than 250K to 6.5M€ was really appreciable. We got 3M€ for reaching the championship phase and then some more here and there with each good result. If we add the money we got from both transfers (Sauer & Kraft), we went from -2.5 in the red to comfortably in the black, even after asking my board for all possible improvements. Squad : We kept our favorite 4-4-2. You can see with the squad screenshot at the end of the year that the boys clearly needed a rest at the end of such a long season. All my first XI played more than 40 games this year and the gap between them, the bench and the rest makes it hard for anybody to take a breather unless it is a Cup game at the beginning of the season or a game I am willing to throw away (typically an away game against RB Salzburg, losing 3-0 or 5-0 does not make much of a difference). In defense, as anticipated after Sauer's departure, Bah moved to LB and played as a No-Nonsense Full Back, with Kiene covering for him with the same role. Imamovic, quite by default, ended up being our second CB (as well as our second option for Right Full Back). Kiene went in the game 21 times from the bench to replace the most exhausted player of our back 4. In midfield, both Neumann & Bauer are more attack-minded, but Bauer is comfortable playing as a DLP, so I had DLP / AP, with sometimes Todorovic playing as a BWM when we needed more defense. On the wings, Fötschl & Bandlow are on their own at the moment, with some of the younger strikers able to play on the wings when needed. Up front, Götz made a big step this year and his pairing with Gül was very appreciable, except for our poor Dorfmayr who started all most all games on the bench. Quite soon our only "non regen" will be Yannic Fötschl. Admin & Facilities : Bonus : Youth Intake : Far from the best preview, OK intake I would say. 5 elite talents (and Lukas Herrmann that should have been up there, clear gap between his potential and the other "top" talents). Kevin Schwab : Seen as potentially better than Kovacic. Which is good. Personality : unambitious. Not good. Will be in a fight with Albl (29-GK1) to be on the bench and we will see which one develops best ! Rodoljub Tatic : Seen as a Winger by my HoY, I would like to see what he can do as a Right Back. But unambitious as well... Alireza Saedi : Could probably be on my bench right now. If his potential is as advertised, he could be one of my future central midfielders for a long time. Once more though, a disappointing personality. Maximilian Schulz : Saedi was more of an attacking playmaker, Schulz is a BWM. Apart from Todorovic, I do not have that kind of profile, so I am eager to see his development. Hendrik Weiss: To be frank, I believe he is one of the best strikers to ever come out of our youth ranks. If he has a lot of potential to go unlock, he could be a star for us. Lukas Herrmann : Maybe by HoY knows something that I do not, maybe Lukas has almost reached his full potential, but he looks like a good talent to me too. If only my training centre could give me Full Backs as often as Strikers... 7 years after : Why 7 do you ask ? Well, maybe because I forgot to do it at 5 and 6. Or maybe because 3 times 7 equals 21, which could therotically cover a whole regen career, from 15 to 36. Anyway, this will be the place where we reflect on our regens that popped up 7 years ago. Back in 2024, I was not yet in charge of Austria Salzburg, but arrived to find (7) promising regens. Where are they now ? Tsvetan Dimitrov, GK never managed to find his spot with us and is now playing with SV Kematen in the Austrian 2. Liga, where he has a grand total of 0 appearances. Idrissa Bah, CD turned LB has been a must-start for the past 5 years. My youth center does not seem to enjoy the idea of producing a LB, so he remains without competition at the moment. If by miracle someone would show up, he would be in competition with Imamovic for second-best CB. Kevin Futschik, RB has never played professional football. He is with a lower-league austrian team now. Harun Islamovic,CB has never left us ! I checked, he has been staying month after month in our youth ranks since his contract expired. 140€ per month for 7 years !! Luka Todorovic, CM hangs on with us, always as a 3rd or 4th best CM. Some more ambitious players leave and he is always there to pick up the scrubs. Stefan Allenstein, CM is nowhere to be found, and Frank Ammerman, ST decided to call it quit at age 20. Still 3/7 with us (granted, only 2 meaningful). Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 6, 2029/2030 Season Recap : Bit of a spoiler to begin with this screenshot, but WE ARE GOING TO PLAY IN EUROPE BOYS ! WOOHOOO. OK, let's rewind and see how we got there. You can see on the screenshot above that the calendar was very "binary" for us. We played the 4 best teams (Rapid Wien, Austria Wien, RB Salzburg & SK Sturm) one after the other, which gave us hell but also meant that the next 7 games were all somewhat winnable. And we did do pretty good over October & November, even sweeping Austria Wien in the regular season, to finish that first phase in 4th place, right in the mix with Austria Wien & Sturm Graz, the usual suspects for the 3rd spot on the podium. Last season recap I had told you about the "three levels" in the Austrian League, we can clearly see it here with RB Salzburg & SK Rapid taking advantage of that sweet C1 money to fight for the title, we managed to get in the fight for the podium and then the rest of the league is separated by 8 points, save for WSG Tirol. SV Ried is the promoted team and they missed on qualifying for the playoffs by a point. So, after all points were halved, this is how we began the pool phase. The draw gave us the opportunity to face the other "normal team" in the pool twice to begin, and we took advantage of this by getting the full 6 points. And boy am I glad we did, because the rest of the schedule was pretty dramatic... SK Sturm managed to leapfrog us and take the final C3 position. But the Cup saw very few surprises (maybe our QF victory ?) and the two best teams met in the final, which meant that we would have another European playoff battle to play after finishing 5th. SV Ried managed to hold on to their 7th spot and went on to win against LASK in the 7th / 8th playoff, so it was going to be a battle between the last two promoted teams to get into the Europa Conference. We won that battle, so Europe here we come ! Transfers : That screenshot is always quite useless in the season recap because it comes before any move takes place, but at least it shows we did not purchase anybody. But we got some movement ! Some of you may recall that some days ago I asked about the "loan back clause". Well, real-life manager sickness prevented me from posting this recap as early as I had liked, but our LB Patrick Sauer was wanted by Bayern & MU and had a 4.5M€ clause. Well friends, I think we did as well as we could. Total may reach 4.4M€, 50% on the next sale, and we kept the lad for the whole season. Still sad to see this beast of a FB leave us, especially considering what we will have to do with (more on this later) but he had clearly outgrown us. And what a progression ! This is his screenshot from when he joined us. I also had the weird idea to join the last day transfer frenzy, and two other players left. First, Denis Brauer, a recent regen who was constantly asking for more playing time even though he was like my 5th or 6th best midfielder. I might come to regret it, but the offer was too good to pass. Then, Dominik Abesser, who was very adamant he would not resign for us. I will try and learn from this and try to always resign my players 18 months in advance. But he wanted quite the amount of money and when you will see the state of our finances, it was just too much. Finances : Same as the transfer tab, this screenshot in the season recap just gives us a partial view. We did a little bit better almost everywhere but... the trend is not looking good. We got promoted to the Bundesliga in June 2028 and it's been downhill ever since. The end of the "Austrian player bonus" plus the full time wages of our staff and the cost of our youth setup has seen us lose about 200K€ a month. That Sauer transfer should put us in the black again but the European competition money cannot come soon enough. Squad : Boy will that Sauer departure leave a gaping hole at LB. He was our best LB and quite frankly probably our best CB as well... I guess Bah will move to LB and play as a No-Nonsense Full Back, with Kiene covering for him with the same role. Imamovic will end up being our second CB as well as our second option for Right Full Back. So yeah, 5 players to cover 4 spots... In midfield, I would have been happy to see Abesser stay with us but the situation is less catastrophic. Todorovic seems to have slown his progression, but Neumann is our clear number 1 CM. The second spot will be between Todorovic and Armin Bauer, our 2028 regen. In attack, Dorfmayr has been pushed to the bench by the explosion of Götz, who typically plays second striker and Gül Advanced Forward. Finally on the wings, Bandlow has almost no competition and Kraft does not seem to progress quickly enough to dislodge Fötschl, which makes him the last of the Mohicans, our last non-regen player in the first XI. Picture below is from the last Austria Salzburg - RB Salzburg derby that occured in September of this year ! Admin & Facilities : Club vision : Bonus : Youth Intake : Forgot to screen the preview because it was nothing to be amazed at, but this is what we got. 2 elite talents, 4 top talents, seems like our worst intake since the beginning of that save. Svetozar Rakic : This batch is disappointing in quantity but Rakic may well be one of the best prospects we ever got. He might make me think about changing my formation to include an attacking midfielder. Haris Mujkic : Might be able to bring some needed competition to Bandlow if his potential is as good as advertised. Joshua Wagner : I do not usually screenshot "top talents" because they rarely make it to the first team, but with only 2 elite I did not have a choice this year. Plus Wagner might actually be able to replace Aksu from time to time. Pero Kirnbauer : Honestly, midfield is one of our strengths and I already cannot give enough playing time to my most promising youngsters, I doubt Kirnbauer will see any meaningful minutes unless he progresses quickly in our youth team. Joachim Ehret: Tough to be the second best at your position in a youth batch and hope for playing time. Like Kirnbauer, we will see if he progresses quickly and can climb the ranks. Mohammed Azzouzi : Will be in the mix with the forwards we got in 2029. My first Belgian ! Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 5, 2028/2029 Season Recap : No mid-season post for us now that we are in Bundesliga, because Austria is among those countries who tries really hard to make the "regular season" pointless ! You play about 18 games before the winter break, then go into a 3-month winter break, only to play the remaining 4 games. Then, once you reach the 22-games mark, the division is split into 2 groups of 6, all your points are halved (and if you have an odd number of points, it is rounded down, not up!) and you play 10 more games against the 5 teams in your pool. We finished the regular season in 11th place, some 9 points clear of Austria Lustenau, but that advantage dwindled to only 4 points when we began the second phase. Luckily, as is often the case with this challenge, my team got better throughout the year thanks to the progression of our young guys, and we managed to finish 2nd in the relegation pool, or 8th overall. But then I was in for another calendar surprise ! Indeed, in Austria, there's about 3 levels of teams. RB Salzburg & SK Rapid fight for the title (you can see that SK Rapid got it despite finishing the regular season 9 points behind Salzburg). Those two teams are on their own planet. Then, Austria Wien & SK Sturm tend to fight for the lone remaining podium spot. The 8 other teams are more or less somewhat on the same level. What I mean by this is that a club can finish 11th one season, 5th the next one, and then 11th again. Relegation is an injury or a bad phase away for basically 8 teams in that division. So if you want to play European Competitions, your only chance is grabbing the 5th spot. Or at least that's what I thought... but Austria is full of surprises. Indeed, as RB Salzburg & SK Rapid are so dominant, they end up winning the Austrian Cup almost 100% of the time (SK Rapid beat us in the semis by the way). The Cup winner gets a Europa League berth, but if that team has already qualified through the League, then that spot is awarded to the best-ranked team in the League, not the finalist. But it is not that simple. Long story short, after I thought we were done for the season, following our defeat at WSG Tirol, I learned that we had qualified in the "Playoffs for Europe". The 8th best team (or 2nd in the relegation pool) plays a home-game against the 7th best team, and the winner of that match-up plays the 5th ranked team, with the first game away and the second at home. I have so many questions for the person who thought about this : - Why reward the 8th placed team with a home game ? What's the point of even trying to finish 7th ? - What about the poor club that finishes 6th ? They get 10 games to play in the title pool, 6 of them (RB Salzburg *2, SK Rapid *2, away games at Sturm & Austria Wien) are going to be pure demolition, and in the end they get nothing ? - Again, why does the lesser-ranked team (winner of the 7th-8th game) gets to play at home in the second leg ?? Anyway, rant over, that was a fun way to end the season even though playing every 4 days is not ideal when there is a clear gap between your best XI and your bench players. We managed to beat SCR Altach at home, and then we got Sturm who had fallen to 5th. Defeats in both games, nothing to regret. Transfers : Finances : Squad : Admin & Facilities : Club vision : Bonus : Youth Intake : The preview And this is what we got. 9 elite talents ! Peter Albl : Mandatory yearly goalie. I think we have hit gold with Kovacic in 2026 but the other ones have been disappointing. Good potential but bad personality meant very little progress. Hoping the fairly professional Albl can at least make a decent bench player. Kenan Todorovic : I need depth in defense so Kenan will likely be promoted to the first team very soon. Henrik Berger : Same thing with Berger. He is unlikely to dislodge Sauer at the moment, but he will probably play some cup games, at the very least. Bozenko Stokic : Again, depth, depth, depth. If he and Frede can be good enough to let Aksu take one or two games off here and there, Wiedl is just a quick fix right now but he was a good Liga 2 player, that's it. Julian Frede : Good physcial attributes. I will train him to play FB because I tend to never use the WB position. Unless I really do not have a choice I like to play a back four. Pasko Stipica: Seems to be the current best of our youth team. I like that he can play on both wings, I dislike the fact that his best role is Advanced Playmaker and his unambitious personality. Lucas Rösch : Another right winger, more comfortable as a wide midfielder, which we do not use a lot these days. We will see how much he progresses. Patrick Galm : Similar thoughts for Galm. We do not use wide midfielders much, and that position is filled for the foreseeable future with Fötschl & Kraft. Harm Domke : Luca Götz is good, maybe too good for us, he has already hinted that he might not stay long in Austria, so maybe Domke will be able to become our new 2nd striker. Fairly professional is OK I guess. Game in a nutshell :

Austria Salzburg, Season 4, 2027/2028 Season Recap : This time around we do not crumble in the second half of the season, despite a less than ideal start of that second phase with hard match-ups and 1 point in 2 games. But then we have a perfect March that puts us top of the league. We win against FC Liefering at their place (!!!) and then face-up with Admira, one point behind them, for what seems to be a title decider. They beat us fair and square to get 4 points ahead and it seemed like all hopes were gone as they were winning every game after this. But they bottled it in the last two games, losing at FAC Wien to allow us to come back 1 point behind. On the final day, they only managed to draw against St. Pölten whereas we were playing the derby in Innsbruck against Wacker with extra motivation : beat the rival and hope you can celebrate promotion in front of their supporters. We won 2-1 ! Stats for the year are pretty good! Transfers : Finances : Squad : Admin & Facilities : Club vision : Bonus : Youth Intake : To the good stuff ! As a reminder, this was our intake preview : And this is what we got. Quite a lot of elite talents, at least on paper ! I also took screenshots of the top talents, but seeing that we got promoted I am not sure they would have been rated the same had Sabic compared them to what's expected at that level. Markus Bertram : Such a shame that young prospects cannot play straight away in the league, otherwise I believe Bertram would have started a few games. Really excited for my all regen defense Sauer - Bah - Bertram - Aksu in a few years. Emir Imamovic : Apologies, either I or Steam (let's blame Steam) screwed up with the screenshots, and so for Emir and a couple of his buddies I only have him at my current save date. He has progressed a bit but is PA has gone down. His personality is not ideal, I can see him being on the bench to cove the CB & RB position but I do not think he can compete with our best guys. Matthias Erdl : Natural as a Winger but his best position seems to be Central Midfielder with a BWM role. We will train him on this. Denis Brauer : More technically gifted than Erdl, might become a good playmaker. Thomas Färber: Färber has a good personality and I find him quite similar to Brauer. Central Midfielders is far from our most pressing need right now, but maybe one of those 3 will make it to the first team. Armin Bauer : Adding another one to our potential midfield pool ! Natural as an Attacking Midfielder, I will train him to play as a CM. Has the best evaluation of all the potential "attack-minded" midfielders but not a good personality though... Karl-H. Erkenbrecher : Considered as the most ready of our youth guy, I will admit he has very good physical traits but he is competing for one of our strongest position, Left Winger, where we have Fötschl, who is arguably our best player, and Kraft, one of the best regens we got. Tough battle ahead. Peter Walter : First of the two elite strikers we got, has his "fairly professional" personality going for him. Like Karl-H above, he will have to fight excellent prospects (Gül and Götz, among others) for a position, + Dorfmayr who is still quite young. Marcel Westphal : Another one where I screwed up the screenshot... Training him to be a second striker, good physical attributes but bad personality. Thomas Hübner : On to our top talents ! Another year, another GK. Taking a screenshot but I think we have had better young GKs the prior years, and his personality does not reinsure me one bit. Suad Mustafic : Depth in defense? Sign me up ! Somewhat good physical attributes to run up and down the right line. Riccardo Sciotto : We have gone away from our flat 4-4-2 this season, and having someone with "3" in crossing play winger is a big no for me. Unless he vastly improves, I doubt he will ever see first team minutes. Game in a nutshell :

Congrats ! That was quick