[FM14] Project Holland: The Dutch football- pyramid

Just like in earlier years, I've tried to make a database which contains the Dutch league structure. Not entirely as in real life (because unfortunately that's not possible in Football Manager and believe me I've tried), but sort of a fantasy structure that is almost similar to the real stuff. I've dropped the separation between Saturday- and Sunday-leagues, all teams now have one senior team in the structure.

The structure of the league is as follows:

Because it's in Dutch I will explain a little. From Tier 2 downwards, the competition is divided into periods. In the Eerste Divisie there are 4 periods, the other competitions have 3 periods. The winners of each period qualifies for the promotion play-off at the end of the season. That play-off is played in a competition format where every team plays the other teams twice. Winners earn promotion to the next level. Except for the Hoofdklasse. In the first round of play-off, it's a round robin structure where the winner qualifies for the next round, which is also a round robin playoff. The two winners of the second playoff get promotion.

I've also remodelled the national cup. I wanted to create a cup in which all 2480 teams could take part, but for some reason the game crashes at the initial setup of the game with that number of teams. So for now, I've downsized the cup to 656 teams, that tiers 1 to 6.

Also, there is a national cup for amateurs. For this cup, all teams from tier 3 plus the 6 winners of last years regional cups qualify. Thos regional cups contain the teams form tier 4 to 9 from each regional competition.

At the end of the season, the two champions of tier 3 play a home and away match to decide which team is overall amateur champion. The champion plays at the beginning of next season against the winner of the national amateur cup for the amateur super cup.

And finally, there is the Super Cup for the professional teams: winner of last years Eredivisie against the winner of last years KKNVB-beker.

As I said, 2480 teams are filling the competitions. 2121 teams are new and added by myself. Every city now has coördinates, every regional competition has the boundaries set and for each team the preferred competition for tiers 3 to 9 are set. All teams have kit-colours which as far as I know match the real situation, at least for the home kits. The away kits are purely fictional.

In FM12 and FM13 I also had a similar database, but in those database I had the annouing problem that when you didn't select all tiers to play with, the game would occasionally throw gost-teams into the competitions at the beginning of a new season. I cannot say if that's the case with this database because I haven't been able to test it exetensively.

I'm aware that there are still some (small) errors in this database. I will try to correct them in a next version. If you run into something that needs improvement, please let me know. Every form of feedback is appreciated.

FAQ:

* Why does my team play in a different competitions as it's supposed to play?

Well, that's one of the annoying thing of FM every year. Even though we try at our best to set the regional boundaries as correct as possible, the game always manages to get some teams in the weong competitions. It's annoying, but it's something we have to live with.

* Is this release sdave-game compatible?

No, it's not. If you want to play with this database, you have to start a new game.

* Can I use thes database with all databases form SI?

This particular satabase is made with the standard database of SI. If SI releases a database-patch, chances are my database produces errors with the new release.

* Can I use this database witrh other databases from other users?

I strongly recommend not to. I don't know whether using another database causes errors of some kind.

* Are there players added in this database?

No. It's a club-database only.

* Help!! It takes forever to load this database and to play the game

All I can say is: be patient. It's a very big database and it takes a while to load it. But it will load, eventuelly.

* Something's wrong / I see an error / I have a tip

As I said, every feedback is appreciated. So please, do tell.

The link to the files:

https://www.mediafire.com/?mx0uplg45f4ag6e

You've downloaded a .rar-file. This file contains the following:

1. An Excel-file called "FM14 all clubs and starting competitions". This contains all the clubs, their cities and initial leagues. Conveniant if you want to find a club quickly.

2. In the "editor data" map you will find the actual database.

3. In the "graphics" map you will find all logos of the clubs involved, as well as competition logos. Both are in normal, small and background left/right format. The filenames match the UID's in the game.

Just unzip the file in the Sports Interactive map in My Documents. That will cause no problems, because it's highly unlikely you already have a file with the same name. Maps with similar names will be merged to one.

When starting the game, make sure you tick the boxes for adding staff and players to playable teams. If you don't do this and you select a lower league team, chances are you have to start from scratch to build the team.

Note: When you download this database and all the other contents, you agree not to distribute this content onto the net without the permission of the author (that'll be me). If you wish to do so, you can ask for permission.

Note2: If you have any questions about this database, please state them in this topic. My time is limited and maybe there are other users that can answer your questions before I can.

Looks an excellent setup

great to see another DB from you Tobcoach

downloading it immediately

little remark

Hatert is not a city but a part of Nijmegen

so they should be situated in nijmegen not in hatert

seems like a great database!

could you upload the graphics and the xml file separated?

Great job mate, now just waiting the download finishes to try it.

hello that's a realistic database ? competitons are real ?

hello that's a realistic database ? competitons are real ?

No. It's a semi-realistic database. I've dropped the separation between Saturday and Sunday. But apart from that, the structure is pretty much the same.

For more info, please read the opening post of this topic.

yes i've read but that's just for precision.

Good job

great to see another DB from you Tobcoach

downloading it immediately

little remark

Hatert is not a city but a part of Nijmegen

so they should be situated in nijmegen not in hatert

Noted. Will change that in a next update. Thanks for the remark.

seems like a great database!

could you upload the graphics and the xml file separated?

If you download the rar-file you have both at the same time. If you unpack it in a

map that's different from the football manager 14 map you can choose what to do with the files yourself.

Great job! finally a proper dutch league system

Noted. Will change that in a next update. Thanks for the remark.

If you download the rar-file you have both at the same time. If you unpack it in a

map that's different from the football manager 14 map you can choose what to do with the files yourself.

I got that, but I asked it just to get a smaller file to download

Looks intresting. I like my game in England at the moment, so perhaps I will try it next year.

Which division is the lowest with original players ?

I think that will be the Topklasse (tier 3), although not every player will be there.

I've updated the downloadlink because something went wrong in adding stadiums to existing teams which didn't have a stadium in the standard database. So I've fixed that. I also fixed the reputation of the cups and took some minor errors out of the database.

Looks interesting will test this out!

When i download the update i've only eredivisie and eerste divisie...

What is the path of the folder where you've unpacked the database?

I suspect that something went wrong there, or maybe you've missed the part at the beginning of the game where you have to select the database and de-select all other databases.

You haven't included the Jong teams in the Jupiler Leagues??

This is one masterly datafile if it contains all you say it does, even the logo's! Respect!

I think I played your file in FM12 aswell, got Gronitas into the topklasse if I remember correctly. It indeed got a bit wacky region wise after some seasons of promotion/relegation, with Groene Ster Heerlerheide having to travel 400 km's to compete in my northern regional 1e klasse for example. That's the setback of playing in a domestic league system, you know too much. If it was some level 8 club from Cumbria ending up in a Cornwall regional league it wouldn't bother me as much. ;-)

EDIT: I tried out your file last night and it's huge. My oh my, the amount of time you must have put into this.. Unbelievable. And most seems pretty accurate. Respect man.

Sadly (dat zal je altijd zien ;-)) the two teams I wanted to take control of, the club of my youth and my last club as an active player (pretty much the only ones I can judge) had some minor flaws:

1) Terrasvogels' ground is located in Santpoort(-Zuid to be exact), not Haarlem, although your error may be forgiven. Theres only a couple of 100 meters of grassland between the ground and the borders of Haarlem. The logo you used is not the right one either, it should be a big T and V with a football, softball and baseball in front of them. When you google images you'll find it (it's not on the club website surprisingly).

2) I was surprised to find DIO Groningen in 5e klasse. To my knowledge they play 1e klasse or hoofdklasse even. But I guess that's how you managed to cope with the sunday/saturday-issue. You probably picked the saturday team in stead of sunday. Fair enough, a nice challenge to get them where they belong, haha.

As I said, only minor flaws. But you might want to know as you put in so much work to get the file this detailed. For the next update ;-)

Still, the file is brilliant, and I hope it keeps on working after a couple of seasons as it does now. Applying for a job takes quite a bit of processing time already, I wonder how it will hold once a couple of seasons have been played. The amount of data is impressive, I hope not too impressive ;-)

Hi!

I'd really like to try this db but I can't seem to get it going. I downloaded it and the opened it in the Editor to make some minor kit-adjustments to "my" team. I saved it and the opened the game but I couldn't even select leagues in Holland. No error or anything. I opened it in the Editor again and tested the rules. Only 4 out of 9 levels were verified and would be able to play. How come? What did I do wrong? The Editor also say that Topklasse A is scheduled outside the allowed competition period.

I've played one and a half seasons now and it plays great! Got my local team promoted straight away, but was sadly sacked half a season later after a string of close fought defeats and draws, after being top of the league for some time. A 1-1 draw against a bottom club made the board angry and the following draw in a friendly sealed my fate. Strange, I was still in the top half of the league and I expected some more credit following my league win the previous season. Maybe the financial troubles played a role, but in a fully amateur club I have no influence in that part. Sadly I can't get my local club to dizzy heights now, but that doesn't take anything from this great data-file. It's pretty awsome to be honest. Well done!

The only thing I've noticed is that some teams when promoted get in the wrong regional league. For example Loppersum (in Groningen Province, way op north) got into a Southern regional division. But that is only one of a few I've noticed up untill now (might be because my restricted knowledge of the locality of the majority of clubs). I guess that is really hard to avoid in a file as huge as this.

The only thing I've noticed is that some teams when promoted get in the wrong regional league. For example Loppersum (in Groningen Province, way op north) got into a Southern regional division. But that is only one of a few I've noticed up untill now (might be because my restricted knowledge of the locality of the majority of clubs). I guess that is really hard to avoid in a file as huge as this.

I think that happens with all regional custom files - so it could be an issue with FM itself and not necessary an issue with this particular database.

The regional boundary settings in the editor don't always work as they should so there's little that can be done about it until the boundary features in FM and its editor get more precise and stable.

Is this still working on 14.3.1 patch?

Hi,

I don't know if you are still active (Tobcoach), but I have managed to convert the FM 14 Project Holland database to FM 16. It works fine, technically.

The only things I have done was import the file, deleted the duplicate clubs so that everything is right as it is supposed to be, and added/fixed a few nicknames of most clubs that did not have any in the Eredivisie, Jupiler League and Topklasse. Obviously, the situation of the leagues is not 100% accurate, only the Eredivisie is accurate as of 2015/2016 season. The Jupiler League is semi-accurate, 18 teams without the Jong-teams and one new team from the Topklasse (I picked FC Lienden, considering they were the champions in the season 2014/2015). Everything below those leagues is exactly as it was left as in FM 14, meaning there are also a few clubs that don't exist anymore or have been combined with others. I did not change this.

I tried to check if it was possible to have all the clubs participate in the KNVB beker, somehow I have a feeling this seems to be plausible now. But I struggled getting the schedules right, I wasn't able to have it as I would like it, so I left it as-is. Maybe someone else is better in that area. I wanted the rounds to match the moment each "klasse" is drafted in the Cup, however it is tricky getting it right because at some point you have to be at the 128 mark, so you get 64,32,16,8,4,2 rounds etc.

The big problem is the kits, none of the kits have been imported correctly. I have already started the god awful job of checking around 2400+ clubs their kits, and making them identical with how they were set in FM 14. So far I have done the Topklasse, Hoofdklasse and almost done with the 1e Klasse. I have no clue if I'll manage to finish it, because it's tedious and time intensive. I don't particularly enjoy doing it, but I don't see any quicker way.

Long story short, when the kits are changed correctly, everything works correctly as it did in FM 14. With the sidenote that things are slightly more fictional (a few clubs not active etc.) than the already partly fictional file of Project Holland in FM. But to be fair, I think that is a minor issue. It's already a plus to be able to play with such an extensive database of Holland in FM 16. I'd imagine it is easier to import the new file from FM 16 to FM 17, than it was from FM 14 to FM 16. Also because I know why the kits don't import correctly, I think as of FM 15 they changed the way kits worked / layout a bit.