The First Annual FMCU Championships Discussion Thread

I've been debating putting up this thread for a while, and I've literally had this idea since FM13 was released.

So, every FM, there's always that debate, is your team better than my team? Before FM13, we would never know, because the only options we had were the single player option and the unreliable online game option. Now, I will be the first to admit that I haven't tried the FM13 online option, but what I do know is that we have an option to export our FM teams for a versus competition.

Now, I have 3 proposals, listed in terms of how much I like them to my 'least' favourite one:

Option 1:

My preference involves an initial qualifying tournament a month before the actual tournament. This is because of the sheer number of FMCU threads and thus teams that can participate. IMO, without a qualifying tournament, you might not be able to get as many teams as you normally can.

This qualifying tournament will determine seeding. Seeding will be based on team record with various tiebreakers like Goal Differential, Goals Scored, down to Head to Head and Best of five Rock, Paper, Scissors livestream if necessary.

The actual tournament will have an unknown amount of groups and probably top 2 advancing. Although for the single elimination playoffs, I would want the number of teams to be 16. And then single elimination till the Championship. There will be a third place game (if the online setup allows that I'm not sure).

I want play-in games, but I don't think FM Online has that option.

Option 2:

Cut out the qualifying tournament and instead rank the teams statistically through league titles, Champions League wins, finances. And then go straight to the groups and single elimination after that. It's a shorter version of Option 1 essentially.

Option 3:

Divide the teams into their geographical locations. So England, Germany, France, etc, and maybe a 'Rest of Europe'/'Rest of World' division to make up the numbers. If one country has too many teams then split those teams Top 8 (or 16) advance to single elimination.

Option 4, 5, 6...

You decide!

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I prefer Option 1 obviously, although many options can be changed. I know the online FM setup doesn't have the specific setup of any of these options above, but I was planning to split it up into different groups anyways, since the more people in an online game there are, the harder it is for everyone to keep tabs on, since 4-5 players is a lot easier than 32 online at once.

The ideal date for this tournament would be May for qualifiers and June for the Finals. So the cutoff roster date would be April. I don't want July/August because some might be on vacation, etc.

Not a lot of rules, but what I think should be the rules:

1 - One team per player (although that's not hard to fulfill)

2 - Any teams allowed except fantasy league teams. All teams must be from realistic leagues. XML realistic leagues allowed.

That's really it for now.

So, give me your ideas. It's a Championship for the community, so the community definitely should have some input to determine who's the best FM team and best Football Manager!

Participants List:

CONFIRMED

1 - SRL88 - Napoli (Italy)

2 - Flamers - Boldklubben Marienlyst (Denmark)

3 - Nottingham Forest - Persibom Bolaang Mongondow (Indonesia)

4 - acidmonkey - Durham (England)

5 - Dexter_Morgan - Red Star Belgrade (Serbia)

6 - deltablue - Ipswich (England)

7 - JackJCFC - Carmarthen (Wales)

8 - Ant - Zavrc (Slovenia)

9 - rancer890 - Dardanelspor (Turkey)

10 - Raware - Long Eaton United (England)

11 - hrbfcrule - Mo IL (Norway)

12 - B.W.G - Sunderland (England)

13 - DodgeeD - TBD

14 - dafuge - Wingate & Finchley Town (England)

15 - Tush - Hacettepe Spor (Turkey)

16 - ri916 - TBD

17 - HotChocolate - TBD

18 - arkiteckt - TBD

19 - Lower Leagues Rule - TBD

20 - b101 - TBD

PROBABLE

Well, lots to discuss for sure. Here are my thoughts on the above.

I've been hoping we'd get into a competitive spirit. An annual tournament seems to be rather infrequent, unless we had others and this was a showpiece 'FMCU world cup'. As for format, I think we can easily accomodate everyone if we went for knockout (which would also suit having teams of varying quality). However as you say, groups to start with would help with not needing to have so many people on at the same time.

If we did have too many for that sort of tournament we wanted then I think qualifying should be between everyone, as it can be hard finding a cutoff point. I don't think 'trophies' should be used as a deciding factor for example I'm currently trophiless in an absurdly tough a competitive Premier League, which shouldn't rank me lower than a moderately successful SPL or Eredivisie team for instance. Also grouping teams geographically does partly mean having the strong western europe teams together, and the other groups being weaker. I prefer open draws, though we could have limited seeding if it was clear who the strongest teams are, which they probably won't be, given what I said above about there being a hard define cutoff point. The matter of 'qualifying' as a whole is something that'll have to wait until we see how many potential entries there are.

June is not great as some people will have a bunch of exams (I know I'll have at least a couple) then. Also given how quickly save games progress, we shouldn't have a cut-off date that long before the competition, maybe up to the start of it at worst.

Cheers for your input deltablue! I understand there's June exams, since I myself might have one too . But having been around here for a while, I proposed June to begin with because July/August some of us will be on holidays and that's when the forum starts being less active as well. And the other reason is because the Gold Cup/World Cup/Euros is around that time so it just felt a bit convenient.

I think qualifiers should be open to all different teams. Because I don't want to exclude the smaller clubs too. Similar to the Champions League/Europa League, I want a competition for clubs that not as talented as the bigger ones. There's a lot of people who like to manage lower leagues and I don't want to exclude them.

We don't have to have a cutoff point, that's just a suggestion. I suggested that because I wasn't sure if for example, I enter with a League Two team for qualifiers, and then they're in the Premiership by the time the main tournament comes and then they enter that. It doesn't really fit into the lower league spirit of things...

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Of course, since this is the first time, I think we probably should keep it simple and have just one final tournament.

What ever you decide, I'm game . Do you want this stickied?

Yes SRL, I would want this to be stickied please.

Well my team sucks so some kind of ranking would be nice but I am fine with an open tournament

I am in. My Persibom Bolaang side will be wiping the floor.

i'm in hopefully my Durham side will be agood side by then!

Might just stay at Napoli just so I can win thus .

You don't have to, you can 'export it' to use in versus games at any point in the future. It's one of the options somewhere on the club screen. It puts it into a folder for you to pick out when setting the tournament up.

Might just stay at Napoli just so I can win thus .

You won't win it anyway

You won't win it anyway

Can I have Dexter as my first opponent? .

Can I have Dexter as my first opponent? .

Bring it on

Looking good already.

Confirmed Participants so far:

SRL88 (Napoli? - Italy)

Flamers (Boldklubben Marienlyst - Denmark)

Nottingham Forest (Perisibom Bolaang - Indonesia)

acidmonkey (Durham - England)

Dexter_Morgan (??? - Somewhere in the Iron Curtain)

Maybes:

deltablue (Ipswich I guess? - England)

rancer890 (Dardanelspor - Turkey)

I won't be making a decision on formats, etc anytime soon, mainly because it all depends on the numbers to begin with. I hope this list gets a lot lot longer.

Well at the rate I am going I will have a team of Messi's

I'd be in with my Carmarthen team.

I'm always up for a competition. As for the side, it's months too early to tell what teams people may choose, but for me it'll probably be Ipswich, especially if I can get a successful side.

Can I go against delta? I dislike Ipswich as a place and I would like to beat them >: D

I'll be up for it, by the time this happens my Zavrc team will be (hopefully) indestructible!

Daz for me

This is actually quite good motivation to go play the game to get the best possible team i can for when this does happen.

Daz for me

:lol:

A lot of you are choosing your opponents!

That's fine by me, but for qualifiers we're going to have groups (well I prefer to have groups!) so you might be grouped with the people you want to play against anyways. It actually might be helpful to determine the groups for qualifiers. I haven't figured out a method to sort out groups for qualifiers but I recommend you lot to keep choosing!

JackJCFC: I really want this to happen, having so much support already gives me motivation to make this a great first championship!

Going to update the OP to include all the confirmed and maybe teams.

I don't think we're being entirely serious rancer

I don't think we're being entirely serious rancer

I can't think of anything better right now.

All this friendly banter has given a bit of ideas how to sort everyone out (IMO, it's #2 on my To Do list once we get a clear idea about the numbers). I think I'm just too stoked about this atm. Can't wait to finally beat NF.

I just want to beat Dexter's arse, in a non-pervy way of course.

Sounds like fun,I definitely like to give it a shot

I just want to beat Dexter's arse, in a non-pervy way of course.

I was going to put forward my Dinamo Bucharest side forward but since you've spent about £6 billion at Napoli i'd rather wait for what I think is the perfect team Just hope you're ready for the 3-2-5 that you'll be up against

I was going to put forward my Dinamo Bucharest side forward but since you've spent about £6 billion at Napoli i'd rather wait for what I think is the perfect team Just hope you're ready for the 3-2-5 that you'll be up against

My defenders will have your attacking line for breakfast, and my attackers up against a defence like that, orrrrrrrrrrrrr yes .

My defenders will have your attacking line for breakfast, and my attackers up against a defence like that, orrrrrrrrrrrrr yes .

I think you're getting confused here mate, that's what every team that plays Liverpool think at the minute

Yeah well look what I can do .

You wouldn't be abusing your powers doing that by chance would you?

As if I would do such a thing .

I'd be interested too rancer . Saw NF at the game today and he mentioned that you had this idea. I'd have no idea how to go about though...my current team is Long Eaton United, who are carp by the way, so I'd obviously get battered by the likes of SRL88's Napoli. Count me in though

I'd be up for this. I haven't been able to play my Mo save as much as I would have liked but I'll participate anyway.

To make it fair,SRL88 should only be allowed to field under 18's to make it a even playing field

To make it fair,SRL88 should only be allowed to field under 18's to make it a even playing field

No need to worry i'll be buying a load of thugs and kick his pansies off the park in the first round

Good luck with this guys. Unfortunately, I won't be taking part this year on FM13 at least

Is this just for top teams then? Or is there some scope for different stages;

Stage 1: Champions League Teams

Stage 2: Top 2 division teams. (Excluding CL teams)

Stage 3: Non-European Teams

Stage 4: My first club (Starting club of journeyman)

Stage 5: Lower League Teams

This would provide a lengthy tournament but then again it would be hard for some people to get previous teams because you have to import teams at the time.

My idea was just qualifiers and then they go into 2 groups: the ones that qualify go to one tournament, and the ones that don't go into another tournament. Kind of like Champions League and Europa League...except qualifiers are in groups.

I'm open to all kinds of ideas though!

I've added some people to the list in the OP. If I missed someone please post to remind me...

Sounds great - I would love to participate (although I don't have a team built up enough yet... Would my CHilean side from razer82's challenge be eligible?)

I would favour some sort of group stage early on - straight up knockout and some teams (most likely mine ) would be 'going home' very early.

And how about some pre-tournament friendlies just to test everything out?

Well Champions League is a big scope, I could be in the CL this year but still only league 1 standard

I'm definitely interested in this.

I probably should have exported my team when it was at its strongest, but I'll be using my youth-only Wingate & Finchley team.

I personally think we should be looking to get some of the CSE lot who post in the challenge threads to come and join. I think we should be aiming for about 64 teams. Then we can have 2 tournaments. My idea would be as follows and it's not that different from rancers.

64 people would be drawn randomly to play one user in a straight knockout. It could be played over two legs possibly as well. The winners over the two legs would go into the bigger cup whilst the losers would go into the other cup. We'd then have 32 teams in each cup split into 8 groups of 4 with everyone playing three games in that group. The top 2 would progress into the next round which would be a straight knockout ala the World Cup. The winner of 2 grand finals of each cup would then play each other in a game similar to the Super Cup.

So you'd be looking at no more than 10 games. Or 5 if you got knocked out in the group stages. Obviously we have a lot of people who don't have a lot of time or they live in different timezones which would make playing games a lot harder. However, it should be easy enough to work round if we set a timeframe of when each game/games had to be played by. Should they not be completed and neither user showed an interest in completing the game, then it's considered a default draw of 0-0. Should one user show more interest than another and the game still hasn't been completed, then the user who shows more interest would win by a default of 3-0.

Should that be a success, I think we should be looking at a league system of some sort. 64 teams is a great number and can be split into 4 divisions of 16. With a 2 up/2 down or a 3 up/3 down with play-offs maybe. You'd only play 15 league games.

Obviously I'm not sure whether you can just play random matches. If you can then it should be easy enough to run with set rules on suspensions and screenshots proven.

I posted in the Big Euro challenge in CSE. No one has posted here yet so I assume no interest in the tournament (yet).

I've very interested in setting up pre-tournament friendlies tests to test the system. I just haven't figured out a date yet. We would probably test a 4-6 team sub group setting and a separate 8 club knockout tournament setting to sort things out. And possibly an 8 team mock tournament, with top 2 from each advancing to the Semi-Finals and then a Final.

Going to add DodgeeD (yes you can use your Chilean side, or Vasco if you want. Any real life team based on a real life league structure is eligible) and dafuge to the list. Up to 14 now.

I wouldn't mind being in these trial runs.

I'll want to be in the trial runs since I may be away Monday - Friday for 3 weeks in July & August

I will enter the trials too, just for confidence reasons .

Oh, well, if you allow CSE teams, I'd like to join with my Hacettepe Spor from ri916's youth challenge

I'm in- Although I don't know what my team will be . Need some time to move up in the footballing world and make a squad if you know what I mean