[FM10] Continental Dominance - First New Zealand Then The World

The Aim

Is a simple one in to type but it may be a much harder one to achieve in the game, after seeing Elrithral take up a challenge from the story forums I thought it sounded great. It is a challenge to win every continental competition on the game. These are the European Champions League, Oceanic Champions League, African Champions League, Copa Libertadores, North American Champions League and the Asian Champions League. I have set up the following nations for this challenge.

Europe - England top two and Spain top two.

South America - Argentina top league and Brazil top two.

Asia - Japan top two and Australia A-League.

Oceania - New Zealand top league.

Africa - Egypt and South Africa top league.

North American - MLS and Mexican top league.

I know that Australia is not in Asia but their top teams go into the Asian Champions League. I downloaded extra files to put the J-League into the game and also the New Zealand league. I will start unemployed and with a semi-pro reputation and see where I land.

I was successful in getting a job after one day at first I was offered two jobs in Japan but then I saw that the Auckland City manager had steeped down. I applied and got the job as the team predicted to finish 2nd in the New Zealand League.

The club were spending 1.3k a week on wages I was given a budget of 2k and a transfer budget of 10k. The club did however have 250k in the bank so finances for this level were great really.

I scouted my squad out and realised that most of the team would need strengthening to push for the league title and on into the Oceania Champions League. The best player in the team was the CB Ivan Vicelich he is rated as a 5 star player but is closely followed according to the assman. Riki Van Steeden and Jacob Spoonley luckily for me there are plenty of old clubless Brazilian and Argentinian players looking for clubs that have the skill to help my team progress.

This is the strongest line up of my team the squad contains about 40 players with no reserve league, I am not sure if I will release a few of them at a cost to free up some wages for the old Brazilians that I hope to bring in. If the winger do not work out then I will be changing tactics to a Xmas Tree with flat back 4, 3 CM's, 2 AMC's and a lone striker.

The New Zealand domestic league is extremely short, 14 games home and away with the top four going into a play-off the crown the winner. The season should fly by depending on how long it takes me to win the Oceania Champions League.

I do admit it will be hard to stick to this all the way through, the computer performance is 3 and a half stars so I am hoping that is not too slow as the game goes on. I will need alot of luck and good fortune along the way and can I believe I can stay determined enough to give it a good go.

Good idea. Good luck

good luck with this mate

Good start Acid!

Nice start and title changes as requested.

Good start Acid!

Cheers, just hope the game doesn't run too slow it's a few more leagues than I normally have.

Nice start and title changes as requested.

Thanks man.

Cheers, just hope the game doesn't run too slow it's a few more leagues than I normally have.

This is a concern for me with my legends career also, so far it doesn't seem noticably slower but I fear how long I can go.

Anyway you've started off nicely. Keep it up

All you lot starting saves in New Zealand, looks quite fun. Its 3rd on my list of saves after Rubin and a Tajikistani team.

Keep up the good work, I'll continue to read.

Thanks for the comments people

I see Waitako beat you away.

No, really that's a good start to your career. My first season is coming to an end soon, should have an update in the next hour or two.

I see Waitako beat you away.

No, really that's a good start to your career. My first season is coming to an end soon, should have an update in the next hour or two.

lol, when I saw you had posted I thought you might have noticed that. I really don't know what went wrong we played terrible. Looking forward to your update.

The Arrival and The Aim

I left Auckland City on the March 10th 2011 and applied for the job at Wellington Phoenix a few weeks later. On the 18th of March 2011 I was announced as their new manager, guess this means the missus and the dog don't have to move house now and we can stay in New Zealand.

The Aim will be simple, I want to win the AFC Champions League due to my set up this is only possible by going to Japan and doing it from there or by doing it from, Australia. There were a few jobs that I could have gone for in Japan but most of the clubs were pretty poor and despite having a few million to spend it would not be enough unless I could get a job at one of the top 3 or 4 clubs.

The A-League

Last season the team had finished 8th out of 10 clubs and looked a bit down and out. The A-League is a very strange league there is a salary cap of 20.94k per week excluding the Marquee player which is automatically set as the player that earns the most. We are also only allowed 5 foreign players which is everyone apart from New Zealand and Australian nationalities.

The league set up is very strange. The top two teams in the league qualify for the finale series major semi-final with the top team qualifying for the AFC Champions League. The teams that finish 3rd and 6th play each other in the finale series minor semi-final as do the teams finishing 4th and 5th. The winners of the minor semi-finals play each other for the right to play a match against the winners of the major semi-final. The team that wins it all qualifies for the AFC Champions League, meaning it is possible for the team that finishes 6th in the regular season to qualify for continental competition. I can only imagine the outrage if this was the system used in Europe.

Also worth noting is only 4 subs can be named for each match until the Finale Series where you can have 5. Very annoying really, I am so used to 7 subs.

Our Season

Transfers

The first thing I had to do was to try and bring in some quality apart from Wisner upfront the team was very short on decent players and 350k in the red so bargains were needed.

Mike Jedinak - An Aussie international on a free transfer plays at MC and DMC, he has very good mental attributes and I would look to him to anchor my 3 man midfield.

Coutinho - Another DMC/MC a free transfer half way through the season, came in and played crap for his first couple of games but shone in the finale series.

Chris Tadrosse - Decent LB average at everything but will provide some quality as the only options I have are youth players.

Nathan Coe - Another Australian this time a GK, not that impressive but better than my other options he also arrived midway through the season and took over from the youth lad. His arrival also coincided with our best run of the season.

Michael Beauchamp - A Slow CB but has all key attributes for a CB at 12 or more. Should be a decent squad player.

Rafael Xavier - Skilful AMC/FC would be great cover for the brilliant Wisner and also in both AMC positions that I use.

The league appears a hell of a lot easier than it actually was, we finished second but if you look at the screenshot of the results we had a great start but after 4 games the season started to go down hill. We went through some terrible winless streaks including a 6 match one that included an 8-6 defeat only for us to bounce back with a 6-1 thrashing. Suddenly towards the end of the season the team clicked and we went for it ending with only 2 losses in 14 matches. This entered us into the major semi-final against Central Coast Mariners.

Series Finale

First Leg - Wellington Phoenix 3 - 1 Central Coast Mariners

Second Leg - Central Coast Mariners 0 - 1 Wellington Phoenix

The major semi-final of the series finale was easy, we had beaten them towards the end of the season 4-1 and that had put them on a huge losing streak which stretched to 6 or 7 matches once we had beaten them twice over both legs. This set us up in a match against Adelaide United FC.

The final was a crazy game with us getting the 6-3 win to enter ourselves into the AFC Champions League next season. The game featured the battle of the two best strikers in the A-League, Cristaldo for them had scored tonnes of goals but so had Wisner for us, in the end our guy came out on top with a perfect 10.0 and 4 goals to his name.

As you can see the team all played extremely well throughout the season but Wisner bagged an amazing 40 goals in 26 which is brilliant. I seems like too many but the guy scored at least 7 hat tricks during the season against the weaker defences in the league. The main reason we did so well was because in the second half of the season Wisner clicked with Greg Owens and Marco Rojas this front three were brilliant and a real handful the best thing was that two of them are nationalised leaving the foreign player slots for the central midfielders of the team.

The aim for next season will be the strengthen the team and try to qualify for the AFC again, if I can win it then I will resign and move on. Although when I see some of the other Asian teams in this competition winning it will take some doing. The most annoying thing is the Marquee player we can only offer 1.9k a week which is less than most other teams meaning we cannot really attract a top class player to lead our defence. We lost our main man at CB Jonathan McKain as he headed for Europe.

Great move AB and great first season with Phoenix. Hopefully you can keep Wisner!

Great move AB and great first season with Phoenix. Hopefully you can keep Wisner!

Cheers, I hope he can stay but his value has gone from 375k when I first took over to £1.7 million. I guess scoring 3 goals every 2 games will do that. I love the fact that I managed to get the job of the only New Zealand based team seems like a move that would happen in real life.

Where did you download your New Zealand league? I got the one from the Editors Hideaway, but when I load up the top division only, I get a crash dump, and I dont particularly want the 5 lower leagues running.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?p=4158897&highlight=zealand#post4158897

Post 239 is the one I downloaded, gives just the top league and I had no problems with it at all.

Acidburn, this is an awesome thread. I like the way you've presented the screenshots etc.

Really interested to see how you get on from here onwards.

Cheers Crouchy. I am really looking forward to the Asian Champions League the most, great to try new leagues and new players out.

I see you are playing the christmas tree formation

also please post a screen shot of the 6-8 game vs Adelade

Your wish is my command lol, there you go. I was 4-0 down after 16 minutes, their other goal is in the 81st minute.

The tactic isn't mine someone else sent it to me but it works wonders, some great attacking football at any level.

a bad keeper day then with only 10 on target.

Yeah on both sides really it seemed every shot on target went in. I got an injury to my first choice GK and at least 3 times the ball just went straight through my reserve/youth GK. My defenders might as well of played with their legs tied together. It's also worth noting that they had a similar game good going forward and terrible at the back.

that was an epic game, congrats on qualifying for the Asian Champions league, when i did it in a earlier game it was only really the Japanese sides who cause me any problems to be honest. so if you avoid them you should go far

I hope so my only worry is the middle eastern countries, they seem to have a few players that they have signed for a few million quid here and there, i doubt my defence can cope with them. Still my attack is good if I can score first I could do well with the right draw.

Wisner has now taken New Zealand citizenship in another 2 years he can play for New Zealand and he will still be 25. This has led me to really wanting the New Zealand national job, hopefully within a year or two the current manager will leave and I can get the job for myself.

Fingers crossed for you Acidburn. It would be awesome if you could take on New Zealand and develop them, club and country!

Transfers

Only one transfer in this season a man I discovered by accident as he always played well against my side for Gold Coast United. I was surprised when they accepted a bid of 350k for James Brown the guy oozes quality and as you can see from his stats he is well beyond most players at this level and could easily play in virtually any league on the game.

We spent most of the season lingering in midtable and at the start I was worried about not getting into the top six. As you can see from the results there are hardly any boring matches and the Wellington Phoenix fans must have heart problems. Two 5-1 loses a couple of 3-0 loses all topped up with 9-0 win, 7-0 win and a 6-1 win. In what was a crazy season we managed to put a good run together to finish the season strong. We played before Gold Coast and despite a only getting a draw this meant that they had to win 24-0 to take the title from our grasp and as you can see they failed to get the 24 goals needed.

Best 11 and Asian Champions League

As you can see Wisner was on fire again scoring left right and center. He dominated goals scoring charts and awards all over the continent this season and rightly so. James Brown also did extremely well in his first 11 games, when watching these two play I can tell that they are far better than most of the other players that we face in the A-League week in and week out.

Asian Champions League

I was well up for this competition as we started with a home draw against Shandong who after looking at their players were a pretty poor team. Disaster followed as we lost 1-0 and were dominated for long spells during the match although we did have our chances. Then an away match against Tokoyo FC the Japanese Champions, we went 1-0 down and Wisner pulled us level before half time. After the break they came at us and went 3-1 up, it looked as though we had no chance then Wisner decided to pull his finger out and completed his hat trick with 87th and 89th minute goals to grab a valuable point.

Next up was Pohang once again we were 2-0 down within 20 minutes, Wisner once again drew us level before half time. I reacted with anger but the players showed no improvement so I brought on Rafael Xavier who had an up and down season. Just as it appeared we were heading for a draw James Brown dribbled round 2 players and swung in a cross which Xavier got himself on the end of to thump a header past the despairing arms of the Pohang keeper. Three minutes into stoppage time and Wisner held up the ball and fed a great through ball to Xavier which he scored giving us the 3 points and the first win in the Champions League history for our side.

Shandong away and we extracted revenge for our embarrassing defeat with a great and easy 4-1 win as Wisner grabbed his 3rd hat trick of the competition. We were playing great now and followed it with an inspiring 5-1 spanking of Tokoyo FC, this was followed by a very easy 4-0 win against Pohang and for once Wisner was not the man of the match as James Brown popped up with 2 great long range efforts.

We were then drawn against Busan from South Korea who are not a bad side but our morale was high and our football fast, flowing and attacking. We hammered them 6-2 to book our place in the next round.

Now the bad news is we have to wait 4 months until the next round which means my many followers(yeah right lol) that you have to wait for the next seasonal update to find out how far I got in the Asian Champions League. Hopefully I will find out for myself tonight if I can find something for the missus to do.

Fingers crossed for you Acidburn. It would be awesome if you could take on New Zealand and develop them, club and country!

Cheers Crouchy, I really want the manager to just leave New Zealand their manager is stable and strangely enough is the guy who I replaced as manager of Wellington Phoenix. Hope I can replace him again.

Brilliance in the CL. Good luck with the challenge

That is quite the CL run Is Coutinho the Coutinho from Figueirense? Good luck and i'll be following.

Cheers for the comments people.

Coutinho was signed on a free from Figueirense.

Can you get goalscorers on the results screen in the view section?

Will make my session posting a lot easier if you can

Any chance of a screenshot of Wisner?

its the worst thing with some leagues in that that champions league is split, was same in Africa when in egypt, and i can imaging ireland being the same for the champions league but they never get too far so it doesnt really matter i suppose

Can you get goalscorers on the results screen in the view section?

Will make my session posting a lot easier if you can

Changed it now. If you are asking how to do it then you simply click on views on the fixtures screen.

Any chance of a screenshot of Wisner?

There you go Crouchy, he has low composure but that is more than made up for with his long shots. He seems be able to score from all sorts of angles and distances. He really has all the key attributes at 15 for being a quick striker apart from composure. Strange thing is despite scoring over 99 league goals in 100 league matches he still attracts no interest from bigger clubs in better leagues. This new season he only has 1 in 4 with 4 assists, what is going on?

its the worst thing with some leagues in that that champions league is split, was same in Africa when in egypt, and i can imaging ireland being the same for the champions league but they never get too far so it doesnt really matter i suppose

I know it's really weird as at first I thought I wasn't in it even though I qualified but it was the end of the previous seasons. It's annoying in a way as if I can win it I may have to start looking for another job mid-season. I wouldn't know if it would be better to leave half way through a continental competition of a league competition.

Okay I am not too far into my new season but Wisner is being outshone by new signings of last season James Brown. He is in fact quite a way in the lead with a couple of great goal scoring performances, question is who will come out on top at the end of the season. Anyone dare to say the mighty Wisner may be losing his goal scoring crown this year to an AMC?

Maybe Wisner is making the space for him to score the goals.

Out of interest, what skin is that Acidburn?

The skin is called Seven, I think it's inspired by the Flex skin from previous FM's.

Wisner and the other AMC seem to be creating the space that leaves Brown to use his pace to break through and score.

Great show in the Asian Champions League Acidburn, definately got a couple of talented players in Brown and Wisner there, good luck with the rest of the season.

Asian Champions League Continued

Al-Ittihad 1 - 3 Wellington Phoenix

An easy game that we dominated away from home Wisner bagged two goals and Beauchamp scored a great header the CB did well defending and deserved his goal to.

Wellington Phoenix 5 - 0 Al-Ittihad

Total domination of the Saudi team as Rojas and Daniel scored from AMC and it wouldn't be right if Wisner didn't grab two goals. Along with his two was an OG to send us through to the semi-final in style.

Match History - We were drawn in the quarter finals against Al-Ain, this is the team that always knocked me out of the World Club Championships when I was at Auckland City so this was a chance for revenge.

Al-Ain 3 - 3 Wellington Phoenix

This team has a few quality players like Jose Sand and Nery Castillo along with several multi million pound signings. They went 1-0 up thanks to former Man City man Castillo, despite them dominating we managed to somehow get into a 3-1 lead thanks to Wisner and the AMC duo of Greg Owens and James Brown. We could not hold on as Al-Ain forced their way back into the game to grab a 3-3 draw.

Wellington Phoenix 1 - 1 Al-Ain

We did just enough to book a final match Castillo scored to put them ahead in the first half and it took until the 65th minute for you guessed it Wisner to grab an equaliser and send us safely and somewhat luckily onto the next round.

80,000 people were in attendance to see us crush Beijing and grab the title of best team in Asia. Although we did not create a single clear cut chance it was an easy match with some great goals as you can see it was over after 30 minutes. The team wasn't in the best condition heading into the match so it was great to get such a good win.

A-League and World Club Championships

I had won the Asian Champions League and we were 7 points clear at the top of the league after some great results. The season started great for James Brown who bagged 13 goals in his first 6 match with Wisner trailing with only 1 in 4. I was thinking about leaving when the opportunity came along to play the World Club Championships.

First up was a team from my time in New Zealand who had obviously overtaken my old Auckland City side as the best team in Oceania. Trouble is Oceania is miles behind Asia in terms of footballing ability, we easily crushed them and should have had double what we scored. This put us into a semi-final clash with Juventus the European champions, somewhat surprisingly really I had expected a Barcelona, Real Madrid or an English team. We managed to hold our own against the mighty Juventus, pulling back from 1-0 down and 2-1 down. However in the last 10 minutes they scored twice to put us out of the competition. Next up was the 3rd place play-off against Palmeiras it was a pretty even game in the end our poor penalties saw us go out to the South American Champions.

Moving On

It's a pity that my last two matches were loses, before the World Club Championships started I turned down a job with Taluca in Mexico and Independiente in Argentina. I did however accept a contract offer from America MEX, I delayed the offer until the end of the season and their board agreed. I did not realise that the World Club Championships were coming up but when I did I had to ask for my arrival to be delayed. After the Championships had finished I resigned from my position as Wellington Phoenix manager, I didn't feel I could carry on knowing that I would be leaving in 4 months. I did it with a heavy heart and I fully intend to return to the club in a different save in the near future, I am glad that I have left the team far stronger than when I joined and with a big points lead at the top.

The question is now I have a decent budget at America enough to bid for Wisner and James Brown, so will they end up joining me or not. I have grown attached to the little dot that runs round and scores beautiful goals for me known as Wisner.

buy him but do what i do and try and limit yourself to only one or two players otherwise it ends up with you moving clubs and all your players coming with you. which isnt realistic.

To be honest only James Brown and Wisner are good enough to play for America MEX. Even if others were good enough I agree with you trying to only take a couple at most makes for a more realistic game.

Good work to date i have enjoyed reading it!

Thank you I aim to please.

Great career move AcidBurn! I've managed in the Mexican league before and found it to be very enjoyable. America (MEX) are a big team. What positions had they been in previously to you joining?