The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge - Silver Age Archive

[TheEarl]

The Earls Ultimate Quest (FM17)

Dalian Yifang 2019 season - The cinderella story

DR Congo 2019-2021 - The dark ages

So its time to write those updates, I might have overdramatized a bit, but in the end here there will be a warning for other managers doing this challenge. But first to the good part of the updates. I start a bit backwards for the 2019-season with Dalian Yifang.

Its early in the day of 21.December 2019. I find my self in the press-conference room of Cairo International Stadium. Cairo? you say, what the heck are you doing there, you should be wrapping gifts for Christmas.... Well it so happened that Dalian Yifang was destined to play the World Club Cup FINAL against Paris Saint Germain. 

The season started really badly though. I was so happy with the team that earned 2nd place in 2018 behind Guangzhou, I didn't do many changes to the team before the start of the season. I lost one foreign striker on Free Transfer, but signed another one Leke James. I also signed a foreign midfielder Mihail Radut. This took our foreign tally to 7 players, 1 asian and 6 other foreigners. Only 4 of those could play in each match, with 1 of them being the asian guy. (An Australian left-back.) But for the Chinese games, this was not a problem, as you could swap them from game to game, or even place them on the bench as long as you only put 4 on the pitch at one time. For Asian Champions League, you have to name the specific 4 in the squad registration though, and you can't change that until very late in the season. I went for the left-back, a central defender, a midfielder and one striker as my foreign players. Then obviously the striker got injured for 2 months at the start of the season. Then more things went wrong, my chairman decided to accept selling 4 of my best Chinese players, 3 of them defenders, and I had only bought 2 Chinese midfielders and 1 striker. The players that got sold, was against my will, and I had nothing to say about it, it was also after the CL registration had closed, so nothing I could do until that late transfer window.

The first game of the season was the Chinese Super Cup. Opponents of course last years winners Guangzhou. We lost 0-1, the third game in a row we lost against that team. We followed up by losing another 4 straight games, the 2 first CL games and the 2 first league games. We where in for a though season I guess. CL group stages saw us play Pohang Steelers (KOR), Hachioji Tigers (JAP) and Ha Noi T&T (VIE), luckily the Vietnamese team managed a draw against the Japanese team, so we where not totally out of the competition yet. After those games we started to get some of our players back from pre-season injuries and I knew we where better than bottom of the league at least. We beat Beikong and Henan in the league, and smashed the Vietnamese team 4-0 in CL. Then we played Guangzhou again in the league, but this time we surprised everyone including my self by managing a 4-4 draw, our first point against the superior team. We had 7 points from 5 league games. More surprisingly Guangzhou also  managed just 7 points at this time, with Quanjian topping the table with 13 points. 

After this we where crazy good and steady in the league, for the remaining 24 games we won 17, drew 6 and lost only 1 game. Of course we lost the game to Guangzhou. But this meant we took 65 points overall in the league, 2 points less than last season, but still enough to be crowned league champions.

In CL we lost also our 4th game against the Japanese side by 0-1. This meant just 3 points from 4 games, and surely we where out? Well we got a glimmer of a hope in the 5th match as we won amazingly away to Pohang Steelers by 2-1. At the same time Hachioji Tigers drew for the second time against Ha Noi T&T. This meant Pohang had 12 points, Hachioji 8 points, We had 6 points and Ha Noi 2 points with 1 game to play. We had to win the final game against the Vietnamese side, and Pohang had to win against the Japanese. If the Japanese managed a draw we would lose out on internal match rule. Our game was not a worry as we smashed the Vietnamese side 5-0. Pohang managed to win by a single goal, and we sneaked through to the second round via a back ally it felt.

We played Jeju from Korea in the second round, still not possible to register any more players for the competition, we had to constantly fill up the subs with 17-19 year old youth players, but we played the home game at the best possible time on a 5 game winning streak with our striker in top form scoring a lot of goals. We won 4-1 at home and could afford a 2-4 loss away. For the Quarter Final it became "easier" as we finally could register some more players, I took away the foreign midfielder as our best Chinese players where midfielders and added another foreign striker. This did the trick as we quite easily beat Pohang in the Quarter Finals 3-1 on aggregate. Then we got Jeonbuk in the Semi Finals, probably the best Korean team. We won 3-1 at home and could afford a 3-4 loss away from home. In the Final we got Lekhwiya from Qatar. We won another 4-1 victory at home and surfed to victory with a 2-2 draw away. Champions of Asia!!!

In the meantime we found ourselves in the Final of the Chinese FA-Cup as well. And guess who we where gonna play? Of course Guangzhou. So far we had played them 5 times over 2 seasons, stats where 0-1-4. In the away game we had a stormer of a first half, leading the game by 3-0 before the might started to take the upper hand. They came back to 3-3 and had lots of chances but we held on for a first away draw 3-3. At home we took an early lead 1-0, and it meant they had to score twice. But they left it very late and the equalizer didn't come until the 83rd minute. 7 minutes + stoppage time of nail biting intense football, well I could breathe out in the 86th minute as Gigliotti made it 2-1 for us and the cup victory was secured. 

The treble in one season, amazing story really. Thats when I understood that the winner of the Asian Champions League goes straight to the current season of Club World Cup just two weeks after the Champions League Final. We got Pumas from Mexico in the Quarter Final. And here comes a bit of a clue to those of you managing in China. I never thought of this when I signed 7 foreigners but in the Club World Cup, you can use as many of them as you like. Since Chinese teams can't sign foreign goalkeepers, you could in theory use 10 foreigners for this competition, you just have to keep the players happy throughout the rest of the season. I started the game with all 7 foreigners obviously as they are far better players than any of the Chinese players I got. We smashed Pumas 5-1 and got Cruzeiro in the Semi Final. Only sad part of The Quarter Final, was getting one foreign striker injured. I still had high hopes for the Semi Final, as one of the Chinese strikers had a really good season, and the 6 other foreigners was in good shape to play. We took an early 1-0 lead and extended it to 2-0 in the early parts of the second half. Then 2 more foreigners got injured and Cruzeiro scored once. We won 2-1 however and got into the Final.

We had to play the Final with "just" 4 foreigners and a "normal" line up for us. The might of PSG was far too good, and the cinderella story ended here. We lost 7-2 thanks to a lot of goals from Eden Hazard.

And this is where the story about my big mistake starts. During the 2019 season I had also become manager of DR Congo. Playing in the Qualifiers for African Cup of Nations and later on Qualifiers for World Cup. I resigned from Dalian Yifang, AND that is something I should never have done. I had at the time a reputation of 35% and a Continental A-Licensce. (For the first time the club had refused me to study for a license the Pro License) And I had been to interviews for clubs like Orlando Pirates in South Africa, and Young Boys in Switzerland but was turned down for the job. (Something I was happy for given that I won the treble). Now I though I would get those jobs with even better reputation, and no club job standing in my way. My first surprise came when I applied for Young Boys again. (Last time they appointed Andre Villas-Boas instead of me, but he left again to take over Sunderland). But this time I was not even given an interview. It soon became apparent to me, that I was not attractive at all. I even loaded several more divisions, and the closest I came for a club job for almost 18 months was with English National League side Southport who gave me an interview. But also here I was turned down... All other clubs in the World didn't even want to speak to me.

So what went wrong? It could be several reasons why I didn't get a job, but I will list a few:

- I applied for too many jobs (Clubs might look at me as a fortune hunter, but I stayed with Dalian Yifang for 3 years something I consider a lasting relationship)

- I resigned from my job (Clubs might not want manager who has a 100% record of resigning before the end of the contract)

- Decent local reputation, but low world reputation (This is not something I can confirm 100%, but I will explain more later, but you only see a "total" reputation for your manager, but for sure this is divided into local and world reputation, and as I left China and only managed a country who's league is not part of the game, I might have moved my reputation to only be strong in DR Congo. I can confirm that even First Division clubs in China didn't want me back as a manager for this period.)

So how did it go with DR Congo then?

Well we played a lot of games really. First up was Qualifiers for African Cup of Nations. We got a group with Malawi, Gambia and Comoros. We won 5 games and drew 1 and got easily qualified. For World Cup Qualifiers we played Niger home and away in the Second Round. 5-2 on aggregate and comfortably through to the Group Stage. 

In 2020 we contested in the CHAN and I am not sure if this competition counts for anything here, but I assume it don't. No matter its a tournament with only players from home based teams, and I didn't take this tournament too seriously. Anyway we got all the way to the Final before loosing heavily to Egypt by 3-6.

For the World Cup Qualifiers Group Stage we started with 1 win and 1 loss, and after 2 games all teams in the Group have 3 points. Thats when we got into the African Cup of Nations itself in 2021. And this was after all the tournament I was here to win. We got a Group with Gabon, Angola and Cameroon.

We started with the game against Gabon, Gianelli Imbula had been injured and was rested for this game, otherwise all my star players was there to choose from. I wanted a good start so I fielded the strongest possible team. A good 5-3 victory after Cedric Bakambu scored 4 goals. Chancel Mbemba scored the last one.

Second game up against Angola. I thought this would be the easiest game so I rotated the squad a bit. We only managed a 1-1 draw thanks to a late goal from Remi Mulumba. It proved to be vital as a draw in the final game against Cameroon would be enough to go through. A much stronger DR Congo side took an early lead 1-0 and 2-0 after goals from Aaron Iseka and Cedric Bakambu. Cameroon came back though, and the game ended 2-2. We went into the Quarter Finals as second from the group.

We got Cape Verde in the Quarter Finals, still the players where in pretty good shape and we where considered favorites for the game. It took extra time though to win 3-1 after goals from Dodi Lukebakio 2 and Marcel Tisserand. In the Semi Finals we got Algeria, but now some of the players where heavily fatigued, I changed a bit but also let some of the experienced players play despite their condition. We where 3-0 up at half time when I subbed 3 players to rest them for the final. Algeria came back to 3-2 but we could score a decisive goal for a 4-2 victory. Goals from: David Kinsombi, Aaron Iseka, Cedric Bakambu and an own goal.

In the Final we met Senegal. Both teams had really tired players and Senegal opted to rest Diafro Sakho. I on the other hand played my tired players as I wanted the best players on the pitch from the start. It payed off as we went into half time with a 2-0 advantage. In the end it became the easiest of matches for the entire tournament winning 4-1 after goals from Cedric Bakambu 3 and Britt Assombalonga. ACON Winners!!!

So to the final conclusion of this long update (sorry for those who couldnt bother to read all of it), I assumed that my third option earlier was the main reason for not getting a club job for almost 1,5 years. So even if my emotions wanted to keep on with DR Congo for the rest of World Cup Qualifiers and possibly Finals, I resigned from this job also. I should mention though that after winning ACON my reputation rose from 35% to 40%. After resigning from DR Congo it took me some 2 weeks to get a job interview with Derby County. They did turn me down though, but just getting the interview I knew I would soon be back in business. 

Its now April 2021 and I just landed a job in Denmark with Nordsjælland, its just 3 games left of the season and not much I can do as the club is in the relegation group, but it looks we are safe from actual relegation. But I feel it proves I had to leave the international job to ever get a club job again. I am now happy and motivated again, and excited to play in Denmark, last time I had a save game with a Danish team was in Championship Manager 2  lol

So the advise to new/existing players in this challenge: Early in the game, be careful to resign from your job, apply for other jobs BUT do it with care. And if you ever manage a club and a nation early on with your reputation quite low (The nation you will manage then is probably a low reputation nation), what ever you do, DO NOT resign from your club, leaving you as manager for only your country, as you might not get a club job again.

Phewww, that was a long update (been writing for about an hour now...)

Challenge progress

2016 - Unemployed

2017 - Dalian Yifang - 1st in Chinese First Division - 2nd round of Chinese FA Cup - Promoted and won the league

2018 - Dalian Yifang - 2nd in Chinese Super League - Quarter Final of Chinese FA Cup - Qualified for Champions League

2019 - Dalian Yifang - 1st in Chinese Super League - Winner of Chinese FA Cup - Winner of Asian Champions League - Finalist Club World Cup. The Treble Season.

2020 - Unemployed

2020/21 - Nordsjælland - Took over 3 games from the end, 2nd place out of 4 teams in Relegation Group A. (To be continued...)

 

Club landmarks

1/10 Domestic Top Leagues (China 2019 with Dalian Yifang)

1/10 Domestic Cups (Chinese FA Cup 2019 with Dalian Yifang)

1/5 Continental Championships (Asian CL 2019 with Dalian Yifang)

0/1 Club World Cup

International landmarks

1/5 Continental Tournaments (ACON 2021 with DR Congo)

0/2 World Tournaments

Best XI under my management

Formation 4-3-3

Goalkeeper:

Wang Dalei (China) - Dalian Yifang - Steady goalkeeper for 2 Super League seasons, winning the treble - 63 appearances.

Right Back:

Herve Ndonga (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star right back at DR Congo winning ACON - 16 caps.

Central Defenders:

Marcel Tisserand (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Strong centreback scoring goals from set pieces, winning ACON - 17 caps 3 goals.

Yu Yang (China) - Dalian Yifang - One of few players to play all 3 seasons with Yifang - 101 appearances 1 goal.

Left Back:

Arthur Masuaku (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star left back winning ACON - 18 caps 2 goals.

Central Midfielders:

Gianelli Imbula (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Premier League players who starred Congo to ACON title - 17 caps 1 goal.

Youssouf Mulumbu (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Former Premier League player also won ACON - 19 caps 3 goals.

Cui Ming'an (China) - Dalian Yifang - Another player who played all 3 season at Dalian - 81 appearances 5 goals.

Strikers:

Cedric Bakambu (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star striker who cost Liverpool over 50M pound ACON winner - 20 apps 23 goals.

Lu Wenjun (China) - Dalian Yifang - Top Chinese striker for 2 seasons, the treble winner - 74 appearances 46 goals.

Emmanuel Gigliotti (Argentina) - Dalian Yifang - Bought midway through season 2, amazing scoring average - 54 appearances 44 goals.

Edited November 1, 2016 by TheEarl

[vikeologist]

@TheEarl Firstly, obviously, congrats on your progress.

Thanks for the update. Yeah, that's the reason for 2 of the things I've done so far, (because I made the same mistake as you in FM16; my fairly short-lived Dalian save, albeit Dalian Chaoyue, the other team in the city).

This time;

1. I didn't resign from Lahti after winning the league. I think that resigning from a club has a negative effect on getting jobs.

2. I didn't take any international jobs. If you get into the situation you were in as just having an international job, it's almost impossible to get a job. Now I don't know, but I'm pretty certain that it's this element that is the key.  International jobs just kill off your chances of a new job. I hope I may be at Jeonbuk a while, although I don't think there's a club in FM with less job stability, so I will apply for international jobs now.

 

It's noticeable that when I left Lahti to go to Jeonbuk, my reputation went down from 25% to 20%. I'm not sure why this is. Is the overall reputation linked in some way to your reputation in the nation or even continent you're based in? I went from Europe to Asia, so although presumably my world reputation is unchanged, I can see why my domestic reputation, or whatever it's called, might change.

 

On the other hand, maybe just deciding to leave Lahti had an effect because it showed some kind of loss of loyalty. I don't think this can be the case. Apart from anything else, I think reputation is in some way linked to your salary. (I could be wrong. All of this is guesswork, and based on anecdotal evidence rather than information from SI), and I'm now on ten times the salary I was on at Lahti.

 

So I think that your point about reputation is accurate. Reputation is highly localised.

 

I apologise for not outlining all this before, but I think that a thread like this has to give some information, but not be a walkthrough telling challengers how to 'game' the challenge.

 

Also, and I can't repeat this enough, I am guessing.

 

On another topic, I don't understand what to say to get jobs from interviews. Actually my guess is that it actually doesn't matter what you say at interview, as it won't affect the outcome. Maybe promising the earth helps, but most of the time that would be pretty dumb.

 

 

 

[TheEarl]

22 minutes ago, vikeologist said:

I apologise for not outlining all this before, but I think that a thread like this has to give some information, but not be a walkthrough telling challengers how to 'game' the challenge.

Sorry if I was a bit "direct" there @vikeologist. 

Everyone is of course free to play as they like, but it was meant as an advise, but guess I have been a bit furious about my progress here.

Thanks by the way for the cheers, in the end it turned out well, just felt I "lost" 1,5 years of progress.

I have as well now updated my post with my best XI so far in the game.

[vikeologist]

@TheEarl I wasn't suggesting that you were giving a walkthrough. I think it's great to go into detail about our experiences, and people can draw conclusions. I felt a bit guilty that your career was temporarily stalled by a mistake that I've made in the past. But as you say, only by a few seasons. I suppose the thing is that if one wants to do the challenge the quickest, there's basically no wriggle room.

But I love discussion about theory and how to do the challenge most effectively. I'm a challenge geek.

What I mean is that I don't want to put hints in post 3 such as what divisions or star level it's possible to get as a first job. That post is deliberately a bit thin on advice. It's great if people put this kind of advice in the middle of the thread though. Let those of us who read everything be rewarded.

[TheEarl]

3 minutes ago, vikeologist said:

@TheEarl I wasn't suggesting that you were giving a walkthrough. I think it's great to go into detail about our experiences, and people can draw conclusions. I felt a bit guilty that your career was temporarily stalled by a mistake that I've made in the past. But as you say, only by a few seasons. I suppose the thing is that if one wants to do the challenge the quickest, there's basically no wriggle room.

But I love discussion about theory and how to do the challenge most effectively. I'm a challenge geek.

What I mean is that I don't want to put hints in post 3 such as what divisions or star level it's possible to get as a first job. That post is deliberately a bit thin on advice. It's great if people put this kind of advice in the middle of the thread though. Let those of us who read everything be rewarded.

Then I understand what you meant, and I totally agree. I could put in more advise also, but some of it I thought maybe would be better of under a "spoiler" button.

But another thing, just played 1 week with Nordsjælland now, and my reputation dropped 5% back to 35% again also. So I guess since they only change by 5% at a time, sometimes you are on the verge of making it to a certain point or not, and then moving clubs/nations can actually make you drop 5%. Don't think it will mean a lot in searching for new jobs though, as for certain there are more hidden numbers that go to a higher level than percentage. (Guess reputation can go up to 10000 or something)...

[JoeLapira]

17 hours ago, SavoNFFC said:

I think the career XI is a great idea and shouldn't necessarily be the best 11 players you've managed. Otherwise your team that wins the UEFA Champions League would just fill it. Mine will be complete with players that have had the greatest impact relatively-speaking to the club and situation you're in.

Your criteria for picking your XI sounds much better and im going to base mine on the same instead of just picking the best players ive managed. For example i did up my "Best XI" last night and I had a lad called Cury Neto in goals. I signed him for Real Madrid and he was by far the best goalkeeper, in terms of ability, that played under me. But i was forgetting about Fraser Forster and the match winning performances he put in for me on the way to winning the NACL and there was the keeper i had at Swallows, his name escapes me, but his heroics in 2 penalty shootouts helped me secure my first Challenge trophy. Definitely gonna look at my Challenge XI alot differently now.

Also, i know you hit a bit of a speed bump @TheEarl, but 4 trophies in 3 full seasons is an excellent start, well done. 

[AFH]

@vikeologist @Kaiserwatman ok thanks guys

[TheEarl]

1 hour ago, JoeLapira said:

Your criteria for picking your XI sounds much better and im going to base mine on the same instead of just picking the best players ive managed. For example i did up my "Best XI" last night and I had a lad called Cury Neto in goals. I signed him for Real Madrid and he was by far the best goalkeeper, in terms of ability, that played under me. But i was forgetting about Fraser Forster and the match winning performances he put in for me on the way to winning the NACL and there was the keeper i had at Swallows, his name escapes me, but his heroics in 2 penalty shootouts helped me secure my first Challenge trophy. Definitely gonna look at my Challenge XI alot differently now.

Also, i know you hit a bit of a speed bump @TheEarl, but 4 trophies in 3 full seasons is an excellent start, well done. 

As for me I use two criterias for choosing my best XI.

1. An "emotional" criteria of players who had the most impacts on my progress/winning trophies.

2. A point based system the rewards players for number of games played and goals scored multiplied with the importance of the team/nation they played for. I will keep updating my best XI season by season, or at least every time I change clubs/nation.

[TheEarl]

1 hour ago, JoeLapira said:

Your criteria for picking your XI sounds much better and im going to base mine on the same instead of just picking the best players ive managed. For example i did up my "Best XI" last night and I had a lad called Cury Neto in goals. I signed him for Real Madrid and he was by far the best goalkeeper, in terms of ability, that played under me. But i was forgetting about Fraser Forster and the match winning performances he put in for me on the way to winning the NACL and there was the keeper i had at Swallows, his name escapes me, but his heroics in 2 penalty shootouts helped me secure my first Challenge trophy. Definitely gonna look at my Challenge XI alot differently now.

Also, i know you hit a bit of a speed bump @TheEarl, but 4 trophies in 3 full seasons is an excellent start, well done. 

Thanks for encouragement @JoeLapira but I have played 5 seasons now, just for around 2 seasons I didn't have a club to manage.

[Shankly84]

@vikeologist just read that reply and it made me laugh haha. Yes Ni Hao is a regen. I have been having problems with team morale since the start. It only takes someone to be unhappy at being left out and the whole squad kicks off. Hopefully that will change as my reputation goes up.

[SavoNFFC]

Where do you find your reputation as a percentage?

I'll put a proper update up soon but I finally managed to land a job at Shandong Leneng in the Chinese Super League, who were languishing in 14th. Got them up to 4th now although I've been frustrated by the lack of players wanted to sign.

I have a transfer budget of £20m and can offer 50k a week yet nobody outside of China wants to come and even then it's the dregs of teams lower than me. I was hoping to offer some European has-been mega bucks to play fr a season but I even got a flat rejection from the teenagers at my old side Vasco CT.

[vikeologist]

8 hours ago, SavoNFFC said:

Where do you find your reputation as a percentage?

On 'My Profile', if you hover the mouse over the reputation bar chart you can see the percentage.

On another topic, maybe I'll put together a first draft of the challenge XI after my first season with Jeonbuk (and breaking news, Nigeria), but be warned that it's going to sound silly because I can't be having with Korean names, so I give them all nicknames; hopefully none of which will be offensive to any of you. Expect to see the likes of Grandad, Ming, lemon, Acne, Sonic, Spider-Man (a gaolie obviously) and Bic.

@shankly84  I'm calling to call my top regen in the next intake 'Hello' in honour of your strangely named kid.

[numero uno gunner]

            

Season Review 2034/35

FS Stars and USA

When I left you all last, I had sealed the Champions League, had reached the last four of the SA Knockout Cup, and was ticking along fairly nicely in the league. I'll start with the cup competitions. We had drawn Chippa Utd in the semi final of the SA Knockout Cup, and I was pretty confident this would be a routine win. However, it didn't quite turn out like that. In what was a pretty dull and dour game, it finished 0-0 after 90 minutes, meaning we were to go to extra time. Tulio, my Brazilian attacking midfielder, had run himself into the ground, so on came Sipho Zofuka, a bit part player, who did what all good bit part players do, and popped up with the winner to seal a place in the final against SuperSport Utd. We played really well, but went in at half time at 0-0. Not long after the break, Henry Bedoya came in off the left wing to smash home, and put us in front. As SuperSport threw men forward late on, we hit them with an injury time goal to seal a win and bring the trophy home, sealing a domestic cup win in a 10th country for me, and completing that part of the challenge for me.

It was a far cry from the week before, where we had been beaten 2-0 by Busan and lost on penalties to D.C. United in the Club World Championship. In the SA Cup, we coasted along to the quarter finals, where we met First Division side Swallows. I put out a weaker team, and suddenly found myself on the wrong end of a 3-1 scoreline. We were absolutely awful, and I can't have any complaints about it. It was frustrating, as I wanted to see if I could win both knockout cups this season. We did, however, manage to seal the African Super Cup with a 5-2 win over ES Sahel, which was an added bonus.

The league campaign was very odd. Because of our run in the Champions League, and subsequent participation in the Club World Championships, we found ourselves constantly playing catch up in the league. At one point, Sundowns, the team top of the league, had played 6 games more than us. Madness. As it turns out, the run in was difficult, partly because we were still 5 games back compared to Sundowns. Whilst they had one game to go, we had six. A 3-1 win over Orlando Pirates was followed up by a 3-0 victory over North West Shining Stars, leaving us in the position of knowing that 6 points from our last 4 games would seal the title. Due to the postponements, it turned out that 2 of those 4 games were against Kaizer Chiefs. A 1-1 draw at home brought our points required target down to 5, and then an edgy 1-0 win over relegation-threatened Royal Eagles, with Arend Kotzke grabbing all three points for us. This meant we could win the title away at Kaizer Chiefs. However, it turns out they didn't get the script, and they beat us 1-0 with an 83rd minute goal. So, the last game. We were two points clear, so a draw would have been enough to win the title. Sundowns choked, only drawing, meaning the title was ours. It was academic anyway, as we smashed Black Aces 3-0, making FS Stars champions of South Africa for the first time ever! Oddly, that seems to have been a bit of a theme of my career, winning trophies with teams that haven't won them before.

The stand out players this season were probably Oscar Hlazo, who scored 31 goals in 37 appearances, right-winger Arend Kotzke who got 10 goals and 10 assists in 25 appearances, and central midfielder Philani Shange, who had an average rating of 7.93 for the season. I've really enjoyed crafting this squad, and know that they're in a position now to go on and utterly dominate in Africa for years to come.

So, domestically, I've completed the challenge. I now have one trophy left to win.

One more trophy.

I'm preparing for the Gold Cup with the USA. My group is Jamaica, Canada and Guadeloupe. My squad is certainly good enough to beat all three of those teams, but is also inconsistent enough that I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we managed to concoct a way not to qualify from the group, and thus leaving me in limbo. Wish me luck, people.

Club
Season        Team             Position      Notes and Achievements
2015/16      Dungannon     10th          Won Northern Irish FA Cup and kept Dungannon up after taking over with 3 games to go
2016/17      Dungannon     8th            A solid but unspectacular season
2017/18      Yiteng            8th            A settling season in China
2019           Jiangsu          1st            Won Chinese Super League and FA Cup, as well as claiming MOTY.
2020           Jiangsu          1st            Won Chinese Super League and Asian Champions League
2020/21      Aberdeen       9th            Won Scottish League Cup
2021/22      Monterrey      5th/5th      Won Opening Stage, knocked out in semis of closing stage. Won NACL.
2021/22      Salzburg        1st             Won league and cup double
2022           Corinthians    1st             Won league
2023           Corinthians    8th             Won Copa Libertadores
2024/25      Juventus        1st             Won Serie A and Italian Cup
2025/26      Juventus        2nd            Won Italian Cup
2026/27      Real Madrid    1st             Won La Liga and Spanish Cup
2027/28      Real Madrid    1st             Won La Liga and Spanish Cup

2028/29     Everton             10th          Knocked out of both cups and Europa League. Left them in 10th with 10 games to go.

2028/29     Chelsea             4th            Took over with 10 games to go and club in 8th. Won FA Cup and Champions League!

2029/30     Chelsea             1st           Won the title on the last day of the season!

2030/31    Unemployed

2031/32    Marseille          1st          Won Ligue Un and Coupe de la Ligue

2032/33   Schalke             1st           Won Bundesliga and German Cup

2033/34   FS Stars            7th          A solid if unspectacular season after joining with 12 games to go and the team in 12th.

2034/35    FS Stars           1st         Champions League winners! League Winners! SA Knockout cup winners!

Season        Team              Notes and Achievements
2016/17      Congo              Resigned without playing a game
2016/17      Cameroon       One win away from WC qualification
2017/18      Cameroon       2nd round of 2018 World Cup
2019           Cameroon        African Cup of Nations winner!
2021           Poland              An abject failure!
2022           Ireland              4 wins, 2 draws and promotion to European International League Division B
2023           Ireland              2 wins, 2 defeats from 4 qualifiers before taking Colombia job
2024/25      Colombia        Currently top of WC qualifying and ranked 4th in the world
2026           Colombia         World Cup winners!
2027           Colombia         Copa America winners!
2028           Italy                  European Championship winners!

2029           Italy                  Confederations Cup winners!

2030          Italy                   Knocked out of World Cup in group stage!

2031         South Korea     Asian Cup winners! 

2032         Mexico              World Cup qualification is going well

2033         Mexico              World Cup qualification is still going well, and I'm gearing up for the Gold Cup. Incredibly, I was sacked midway through the Gold Cup!

2034        USA                   Knocked out of the World Cup in the group stages and we've been all over the place since.

2035        USA                   Watch this space!

 

Challenge Progress

Club

10/10 top domestic leagues - China (Jiangsu), Mexico (Monterrey), Austria (Salzburg), Brazil (Corinthians), Italy (Juventus), Spain (Real Madrid), England (Chelsea), France (Marseille), Germany (Schalke), South Africa (FS Stars)

10/10 domestic cups - Northern Ireland (Dungannon), China (Jiangsu), Scotland (Aberdeen), Austria (Salzburg), Italy (Juventus x 2), Spain (Real Madrid), England (Chelsea), France (Marseille), Germany (Schalke), South Africa (FS Stars)

5/5 club continental championships - ACL (Jiangsu), NACL (Monterrey), Copa Libertadores (Corinthians), Uefa Champions League (Chelsea), African Champions League (FS Stars)

1/1 club world championship - Chelsea 2029

International

4/5 continental tournaments - ACON (Cameroon 2019), Copa America (Colombia 2027), European Championships (Italy 2028), Asian Nations Cup (South Korea 2031)

2/2 world tournaments - World Cup (Colombia 2026), Confederations Cup (Italy 2029)

[JoeLapira]

Best of luck @numero uno gunner

[JoeLapira]

Season Review 2027/28

Borussia Dortmund and Italy

 

League

Armed with my hugely successful 4-4-2, I began the season optimistically. Bayern had won the previous 2 seasons but the 4 before that were all won by Dortmund and there was still a number of players from that '4 in a row' squad still available to me. We started the season well, and thankfully Bayern didn't and we quickly opened up 8 point gap over them. Gelsenkirchen were the only side keeping pace with us but they too hit a bad patch and come the winter break we were 7 points of them in second.  We were on a 17 wins in a row streak when we came up against Leverkusen knowing a win would secure us the Bundesliga. But we blew our streak and celebrations were put on hold for another week. Next up was Braunschweig at home, this time we only needed a point, but the team put on a show for their home fans and we secured the league title with a 4-0 win.

German Cup

The first round of the cup gave my biggest win in this Save as we demolished Bernburg 11-0. We then went on to beat Sandhuasen and RBL before we met Bayern in the Quarter Final. This was an absolute belter of a game, 4-4 after 90 mins, 5-5 after 120 mins before we went through on penalties. We beat Gelsenkirchen in the Semis before meeting Dusseldorf in the final. We were strong favourites but Dusseldorf were able to match us for 90 mins as it finished 2-2, we also had a man sent off right before the final whistle. Fortunately my players stepped up and went on to score 2 goals securing us the German Cup.

Champions League

The group stage saw us pitched against my former club Real Madrid in the group stage, along with RB Salzburg and CSKA Moscow. We breezed through the group stage only losing in the Bernabeu but winning the other 5 matches. We met Rangers in the 1st KO round but dispatched with them quite easily, winning 9-3 over 2 legs. Liverpool and PSG proved tough opposition but our quality shone through and it was Monaco in the final. Monaco were a good side but they couldn't handle Joao Afonso as his hat-trick helped us on our way to win the Champions League!

Italy

Not much to report on here as we won every game in our Qualifiers for Euro 2028 quite easily. We've Holland, Ukraine and Denmark in the Group Stage and I'm very confident that we can go on to win the tournament.

I intended to post up my Challenge XI but I'm still finalizing it at the minute. So having secured the treble with Dortmund i intend to once again change clubs. In terms of the Big 5 i have England and France left and I'm torn. Do I join one of the big clubs with the aim to win another League and/or Cup in a season or 2. Or do I pick a decent club and aim to build up to an all conquering side. Then of course there's the other 2 continents to think of.

CLUB CAREER

Season     Club			Pos	DC1	DC2	Cont	Notes & Achievements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015/16   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	1st    	R.4	R.1	n/a	Champions and promoted to League 1.
2016/17   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	2nd	R.4	R.2	n/a	Promoted to Championship via playoffs.
2017/18   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	3rd	R.5	R.3	n/a	Reached playoffs but lost out on chance to go the Premiership. Challenge Cup WINNERS!! Resigned from Berwick.
2018      Suwon FC(KOR)		3rd	n/a	n/a	n/a	Took over with 12 league games remaining. Promoted to K-League Classic via Playoffs.
2019	  Suwon FC(KOR)		9th	R.5	n/a	n/a	Favourites for relegation but survived.
2020	  Suwon FC(KOR)		11th	R.5	n/a	n/a 	Left Suwon for Swallows(RSA) with 9 games to go.
2020/21	  Swallows(RSA)		7th	R.2	WIN	n/a	Took over with one game played. KO Cup WINNERS!!
2021/22	  Swallows(RSA)		6th	n/a	R.2	n/a	Left after 10 games to join Vancouver Whitecaps.
2022	  Vancouver(USA)	1st	n/a	n/a	Q.F	MLS CHAMPIONS!!! Won Canadian Championship. 22/23 NACL still ongoing.
2023	  Vancouver(USA)	3rd	n/a	n/a	WIN 	NACL CHAMPIONS!!! Left for Busan.
2023	  Busan(KOR)		1st	n/a	n/a	n/a	Took over with 22 Games gone in 5th. League Champions!!!
2024	  Busan(KOR)		7th	WIN	n/a	WIN	Very poor league performance. Korean Cup Champions!!! ACL Champions!!! Resigned from Busan.
2024/25	  Roma(ITA)		3rd	WIN	n/a	R.1	Took over with Roma in 4th position, 22 games gone. Italian Cup Champions!!
2025/26	  Roma(ITA)		1st	WIN	n/a	S.F	League and Cup Double!!! Knocked of Champions League in the Semi Final.
2026/27	  Real Madrid(ESP)	1st	WIN	n/a	R.2	League and Cup Double!!! Knocked of Europa League in the Second Knockout Round.
2027/28	  Dortmund(GER)		1st	WIN	n/a	WIN	Fantastic season, completing the TREBLE!!!
	
INTERNATIONAL CAREER

Year	Nation        	WC     	Cont.  Conf.  	Notes & Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015	
2016	Scotland u19	n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for European U19 Championship.
2017	Scotland u19				Resigned as Scotland u19 Manager.
2018
2019	China u23	n/a	n/a	n/a	Resigned as China u23 Manager without playing a match to take over Tunisia
2019	Tunisia		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for 2020 CHAN.
2020	Tunisia		n/a	n/a	n/a	CHAN WINNERS!! Qualified for 2021 ACON.
2021	Tunisia		n/a	WON	n/a	ACON WINNERS!! Secured  2022 World Cup Qualification.
2022	Tunisia		3rd	n/a	n/a	CHAN WINNERS!! Finsihed 3rd in World Cup. Left Tunisia for Costa Rica after World Cup.
2022	Costa Rica	n/a	n/a	n/a	CAM WINNERS!! 
2023	Costa Rica	n/a	WON	n/a	GOLD CUP WINNERS!!! Left Costa Rica.
2024	Brazil u23	n/a	n/a	n/a	Olympics WINNERS!!! Resigned from Brazil u23s.
2025	Italy		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for World Cup.	
2026	Italy		WON	n/a	n/a	WORLD CUP WINNERS!!!	
2027	Italy		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for Euro 2028.			

Club
5/10 top domestic leagues (USA,KOR,ITA,ESP,GER)
5/10 domestic cups (RSA,KOR,ITA,ESP,GER)
3/5 club continental championships (N.America, Asia, Europe)
0/1 club world championship


International
2/5 continental tournaments (Africa, N.America)
1/2 world tournaments (World Cup)

16/33 Total

 

Edited November 4, 2016 by JoeLapira

[TheEarl]

Great progress @JoeLapira

@numero uno gunner amazing career, this could very well end up being the fastest finisher of all times!!!

[AFH]

Before I start my first season update, here is my starting profile and the leagues I loaded. In past FMs I've not tried to use that many different tactics or teams so I decided to give this challenge a go to try and change that. Who knows how long I'll go on for . I have two targets aside from the actual challenge which is to win the Champions' League and Prem with Spurs and to win the Euros and World Cup with England, although that's a long way down the line...

-----------------------

2016/17 Season Review

Knockbreda F.C.

League - Competitions

I started my career in Northern Ireland's second division, and, although the reputation is terrible, I felt that I had a good opportunity to get some silverware quite early. The 2nd division in N. Ireland splits into two groups of 6 after 22 games, then each team plays eachother once, to try and get into the playoff spots or to avoid the relegation spots. We finished 5th after 22 games then managed to win 4 out of our 5 last games to secure a playoff spot (3rd). We beat Dergview 3-2 on aggregate and then in the Premier Division playoff we beat Carrick 4-3 on aggregate to secure promotion. The board expected us to reach the playoffs but I was really pleased to get promotion because our defence was pretty dire throughout the campaign.

In terms of cups, as you can see in the Competitions screenshot above there are bloody loads of them in N. Ireland, but only 2 apply to the challenge: the Northern Irish Cup and League Cup. I failed to reach the board's expectations in both of the competitions but did manage to win the County Antrim Shield, beating 3 Premier Division teams a long the way (including the champions and runners-up!). This gives me hope that, with the right additions next year, I will be able to challenge in the league and perhaps even win one of the two cups that actually matter 

Next seasons' targets:

1. Get safety and perhaps challenge for title but that's a bit ambitious
2. Win either the FA Cup or League Cup

CLUB CAREER

Season   Club         NAT   League              Pos    DC1    DC2    CONT   Notes/Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16/17    Knockbreda   NIR   NIFL Championship   3rd    Rd5    Rd2    n/a    Promotion via playoffs, Winner County Antrim shield (not counted as domestic cup)

INTERNATIONAL CAREER

n/a

CLUB PROGRESS

0/10 top domestic leagues
0/10 domestic cups
0/5 club continental championships
0/1 club world championship

INTERNATIONAL PROGRESS

0/5 continental tournaments
0/2 world tournaments

 

[Shankly84]

HARBIN YITENG

2020 - SEASON 5

CHINESE SUPER LEAGUE

 

So this was the season I really wanted us to start kicking on. After finishing 9th last season I wanted to at least challenge to qualify for the Champions League. I put a lot more effort into the pre-season to make sure we hit the ground running. I changed formation and tactics as 7-6 scorelines would no longer be acceptable. The first 3 games resulted in wins and things were feeling a lot more secure. Despite this then being followed by 2 defeats in a row, by the half way mark we was looking like we had a shot at the top 3 and maybe even the title. As we went into July we was playing ok and with a little bit of luck I felt we could kick on and reach the summit. This is where things kind of fell away. 7 of the first 11 went away to the Olympics and missed 4 games. All 4 games resulted in draw's and the gap seemed too big. We kicked back on and found ourselves in the top 3 with a chance of still winning the league. Then we went to Guanghzou Evergrande (in 4th place at the time) and lost 4-0. The title dream seemed over. With 3 games left we were sat in 4th place just behind the top 3 places. Only 3 wins would do. We beat Beijing Guoan 5-0 but then could only manage a 1-1 draw with Shanggang. The title dream was over as although we was 3 points of the top (with 1 game to go) but our head to heads with all 3 above were inferior. We went into the last game knowing a win for us and a defeat for Guanghzou Evergrande would  have move us into 3rd place. We kept our side of the bargain with a 5-0 win at Guizhou Renhe, but Guanghzou Evergrande won and somehow stole into first place to win the title. According to the rules 4th place qualifies for the champions league play-off, but this is dependant on the FA Cup winner. A 2nd tier team won the cup so I am presuming we have missed out.

League Table

Results

So to sum up the season I am pretty gutted to be honest. It adds at least another year on to my time in China. I applied for a job at one of the teams who finished in the Champions League places but wasn't even interviewed. So I'm hoping that we can kick on and win the league next year. Then have a shot at the Champions League. On the plus side I won the Manager Of The Year award.

STAR PLAYERS

Xie Yifan - 18 year old goalkeeper who signed for £325k. Had a really good season and should be my number one for the rest of my time at the club.

Guo Yunlong - 17 year old centre back who signed for a massive £1.2m. Despite his young age he is the first choice centre back. Could prove very difficult to keep hold of though as the bigger Chinese clubs have already started making bids and he is beginning to get unsettled.

Tchang-Tchong - Needed a Chinese left back so spent quite big on him at £700k but he was rock solid. Again he is already attracting bids and is becoming unsettled.

Hak-Young - Another good season from the South Korean right back.

Zheng Hui - Had to fend of a lot of interest in the summer, including some decent European clubs. Got through it though and he signed a new contract. Hopefully he will keep progressing.

Ni Hao - Had a good season, although I was hoping for more goals as he was played in a more advanced role. Needs to score more goals. But despite my observations he won Chinese Young Player Of The Year.

Jae Won - South Korean striker signed on a free as back up for Martinez. Martinez left for Aston Villa for £11m (potentially rising to £17m) so he became a starter. Had an impressive season.

Jeong Ho - Another South Korean signed on a free transfer. First choice striker now. Scored 17 goals in 26 games.

And finally my current Profile. They allowed me to carry on with my badges and I am currently in the process of getting the Continental B license.

2016       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 9th	Took over after 24 games in 13th pos.
2017       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 5th
2018       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 2nd	Gained promotion to Super League.
2019       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Super League	 9th
2020       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Super League	 5th	Won manager of the year award.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Challenge Progress

Club

0/10 top domestic leagues -

0/10 Domestic Cups -

0/5 Club Continental Championships -

0/1 Club World Championship -

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments –

0/2 World Tournaments -

 

Edited November 4, 2016 by Shankly84

[TheEarl]

@Shankly84 What is your wage budget per week?

[Shankly84]

@TheEarl

 

We have a good budget mainly due to sales. But it's difficult to use. I need to sign Chinese players really but their values are so inflated. I wish there wasn't the limit on foreign players!!!

[TheEarl]

@Shankly84 you have decent budget. Compared to mine at Dalian Yifang you have mroe money to spend on transfers, but slightly less on salaries. I guess mine went up to around 350K, but for sure you can shift them around.

Its your game, but I would look for some good foreigners, and try to have 1 or 2 extra compared to whats allowed. The foreigners really drive the Chinese league. And look at your formation, what roles in your formation is most crucial to have a star player, go all in for 1-2 players from abroad that can really lift your team to new heights.

[Shankly84]

@TheEarl Thats what im gonna try and do this pre season. Add a couple more foreigners and rotate them but building around some good young Chinese players.

[JoeLapira]

Not much time to go into any much detail but i've just won Euro 2028 with Italy.

Euro 2028

CLUB CAREER

Season     Club			Pos	DC1	DC2	Cont	Notes & Achievements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015/16   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	1st    	R.4	R.1	n/a	Champions and promoted to League 1.
2016/17   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	2nd	R.4	R.2	n/a	Promoted to Championship via playoffs.
2017/18   Berwick Rangers(SCO)	3rd	R.5	R.3	n/a	Reached playoffs but lost out on chance to go the Premiership. Challenge Cup WINNERS!! Resigned from Berwick.
2018      Suwon FC(KOR)		3rd	n/a	n/a	n/a	Took over with 12 league games remaining. Promoted to K-League Classic via Playoffs.
2019	  Suwon FC(KOR)		9th	R.5	n/a	n/a	Favourites for relegation but survived.
2020	  Suwon FC(KOR)		11th	R.5	n/a	n/a 	Left Suwon for Swallows(RSA) with 9 games to go.
2020/21	  Swallows(RSA)		7th	R.2	WIN	n/a	Took over with one game played. KO Cup WINNERS!!
2021/22	  Swallows(RSA)		6th	n/a	R.2	n/a	Left after 10 games to join Vancouver Whitecaps.
2022	  Vancouver(USA)	1st	n/a	n/a	Q.F	MLS CHAMPIONS!!! Won Canadian Championship. 22/23 NACL still ongoing.
2023	  Vancouver(USA)	3rd	n/a	n/a	WIN 	NACL CHAMPIONS!!! Left for Busan.
2023	  Busan(KOR)		1st	n/a	n/a	n/a	Took over with 22 Games gone in 5th. League Champions!!!
2024	  Busan(KOR)		7th	WIN	n/a	WIN	Very poor league performance. Korean Cup Champions!!! ACL Champions!!! Resigned from Busan.
2024/25	  Roma(ITA)		3rd	WIN	n/a	R.1	Took over with Roma in 4th position, 22 games gone. Italian Cup Champions!!
2025/26	  Roma(ITA)		1st	WIN	n/a	S.F	League and Cup Double!!! Knocked of Champions League in the Semi Final.
2026/27	  Real Madrid(ESP)	1st	WIN	n/a	R.2	League and Cup Double!!! Knocked of Europa League in the Second Knockout Round.
2027/28	  Dortmund(GER)		1st	WIN	n/a	WIN	Fantastic season, completing the TREBLE!!!
	
INTERNATIONAL CAREER

Year	Nation        	WC     	Cont.  Conf.  	Notes & Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015	
2016	Scotland u19	n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for European U19 Championship.
2017	Scotland u19				Resigned as Scotland u19 Manager.
2018
2019	China u23	n/a	n/a	n/a	Resigned as China u23 Manager without playing a match to take over Tunisia
2019	Tunisia		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for 2020 CHAN.
2020	Tunisia		n/a	n/a	n/a	CHAN WINNERS!! Qualified for 2021 ACON.
2021	Tunisia		n/a	WON	n/a	ACON WINNERS!! Secured  2022 World Cup Qualification.
2022	Tunisia		3rd	n/a	n/a	CHAN WINNERS!! Finsihed 3rd in World Cup. Left Tunisia for Costa Rica after World Cup.
2022	Costa Rica	n/a	n/a	n/a	CAM WINNERS!! 
2023	Costa Rica	n/a	WON	n/a	GOLD CUP WINNERS!!! Left Costa Rica.
2024	Brazil u23	n/a	n/a	n/a	Olympics WINNERS!!! Resigned from Brazil u23s.
2025	Italy		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for World Cup.	
2026	Italy		WON	n/a	n/a	WORLD CUP WINNERS!!!	
2027	Italy		n/a	n/a	n/a	Qualified for Euro 2028.		
2028	Italy		n/a	WON	n/a	Euro 2028 Champions!!!	

Club
5/10 top domestic leagues (USA,KOR,ITA,ESP,GER)
5/10 domestic cups (RSA,KOR,ITA,ESP,GER)
3/5 club continental championships (N.America, Asia, Europe)
0/1 club world championship


International
3/5 continental tournaments (Africa, N.America, Europe)
1/2 world tournaments (World Cup)

17/33 Total

 

[TheEarl]

Congrats @JoeLapira

[JoeLapira]

Cheers @TheEarl, it's been a crazy successful couple of years for me in this Challenge. I've decided I'm going to stay at Dortmund with the aim of winning the Club World Cup. I'll also be staying on as Italy manager to see if i can secure the Confederations Cup in 2029.

[TheEarl]

@JoeLapira I thought those would be the logic steps for you to try and get closer to the finish. Given a fruitful 2029, you will have 5 leagues/cups left, together with Copa Libertadores and African Champions League as well as Copa America and Asia Cup. All of those should be well within the grasp over the coming year for such a good manager.

[SavoNFFC]

Season       Team             Position         Notes and Achievements     
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015         Goyang HI FC     5th
2015/16      Vasco CT         14th             South African Divison 1
2016/17      Vasco CT         1st              Promoted to South African Premier League
2017/18      Vasco CT         7th             
2018/19      Vasco CT         1st              South African FA Cup
2019/20      Vasco CT         1st              African Champions League/South Africa Super 8 winners
2021         Shandong         3rd              Chinese FA Cup

International Management
2017 - Mali
2018 - Mali
2019 - Mali                                    African Cup of Nations winners


Challenge Progress

Club
 1/10 top domestic leagues (South Africa 2019)
 2/10 top domestic cups (South Africa FA Cup 2019, Chinese FA Cup 2021)
 1/5 club continental championships (African Champions League 2020)
 0/1 club world championship

International
 1/5 continental tournaments (Mali AFCON 2019)
 0/2 world tournaments 

After resigning at Vasco CT I became unemployed looking for the next challenge. For realism purposes I felt Asia should be the next stop and started applying for jobs. I was hoping for top division South Korea or China so rejected advances from second tier sides. Eventually Shandong Luneng interviewed me and subsequently hired me and I was back in the game again. 

Shandong were 13th in the league (of 16) when I took over and after steadying the job we started to rise up the table, mainly due to the goalscoring prowess of 28 year old Australian forward Adam Taggart. One thing I was struggling to understand which I have mentioned in another post is that I have been given impressive resources to improve the squad (£20m transfer budget) but nobody of any note is remotely interested in a move to Eastern China. I tried to sign a few of my old lads from Vasco and could offer 10 times their previous money but wasnt even given the chance to talk business.

Anyway, I signed a few players. Chinese international midfielder Wu Wei joined on a free transfer and we signed Togolese midfield general Sapol Mani on a free too. In terms of fees we paid a million for Luo Senwen and Yue Xin came in from rivals Fuli for £1.8m. 

We rose up the league with great form (I'd taken over early in the season luckily) and started to build a cup run. I made it to the Chinese FA Cup final and comfortably beat Jiangsu 8-2. At this point I then realised that the Chinese cup winners received automatic qualification into the Asian Champions League so I will be able to have a go at this part of the challenge before actually winning the league. A few more signings have come in from abroad, several Bosnians and a Brazilian striker all on frees. An Argentine defender Federico De Zan arrived from Chinese giants Guangzhou for £3.5m which gives us a nice base to start the new campaign for. Whilst this is happening I'm still looking to get into international management and have been rejected by Uruguay, Croatia, Cameroon and Chile.

More updates to come...

[JoeLapira]

12 hours ago, TheEarl said:

@JoeLapira I thought those would be the logic steps for you to try and get closer to the finish. Given a fruitful 2029, you will have 5 leagues/cups left, together with Copa Libertadores and African Champions League as well as Copa America and Asia Cup. All of those should be well within the grasp over the coming year for such a good manager.

Your right it is the logical step, my worry about the CWC is that its not until December so I have to waste a few months getting to it, then if we fail to win it I'll have wasted pretty much a season. But its a risk i have to take as I'll have to win another Continental to get to the CWC and that's not an easy task.

[TheEarl]

4 hours ago, JoeLapira said:

Your right it is the logical step, my worry about the CWC is that its not until December so I have to waste a few months getting to it, then if we fail to win it I'll have wasted pretty much a season. But its a risk i have to take as I'll have to win another Continental to get to the CWC and that's not an easy task.

On a rare occasion a club who is qualified for CWC becomes available. But you should not count on it to happen. Most likely it will occur in a World Cup season, but I would go for Dortmund as with the team you build up with them for sure you can win it. 

[JoeLapira]

45 minutes ago, TheEarl said:

On a rare occasion a club who is qualified for CWC becomes available. But you should not count on it to happen. Most likely it will occur in a World Cup season, but I would go for Dortmund as with the team you build up with them for sure you can win it. 

Ya i've stuck with Dortmund and have started the season with them. We lost the German Super Cup to Bayern again but beat Man Utd to win the European Super Cup. We've won the rest of our games so far, 1 in the cup and 3 in the league. The 2 previous CWC's have been won by Gelsenkirchen and Bayern so hopefully we can continue the recent German dominance of the competition.

[Shankly84]

HARBIN YITENG

2021 - SEASON 6

CHINESE SUPER LEAGUE

 

So after the heartache of just missing out on the Champions League places (and the title for that matter), it was time to knuckle down and go again. I decided to throw the kitchen sink at it and invested a massive (for us) £11m in new transfers. A big fee of £4.7m was spent on a young Uruguayan attacking midfielder to hopefully step us up a level in that area. I also spent £2.8m on a Chinese striker and a further £1.2m on a Chinese centre back. The other main signing was a Peruvian wing back/central midfielder who was to play in centre mid.

 

Once again I chose to go for lesser teams in the friendlies to boost morale and get us rearing to go for the new season. The pre-season went perfectly but we still managed to lose the first game at home 2-0 to Champions League qualifiers Quinjian. Not the start we had planned. The good news is that we then went on a 9 game unbeaten run, winning 6 of them. Things were looking good but the other teams were also looking good and we weren't pulling away. We then had a little bit of a rough patch, managing to lose 3 games within 6 or 7 weeks and we once again went out of the cup at the first stage. This time on penalties. After the cup disappointment we started to get things back together and we found ourselves top. The top 4 or 5 places was very close though with Quinjian in 2nd place with a game in hand. If won they would go above us. We kept picking up points and they drew their game in hand. We was now clear (sort of). I hadn't noticed Guangzhou Evergrande sneaking up, just as they had done last year. They were 6 points behind with 2 games in hand. We had also lost 4-2 away to them earlier in the season which wasn't good for the head to head. Luckily for me they drew one of their games in hand which meant a point at home to them 3 games from the end and 2 wins would suffice. We fell behind in the game but managed to peg it back and take a point. 2 wins and we would be home and dry. We went away to Huaxia Xingfu and won comfortably 5-0. A win against Henen Jianye at home in the last game and we would be champions. We huffed and puffed all game and was struggling to break them down, but by half time 2nd placed Quinjian were 3-0 down and the title was virtually ours. We came out 1-0 winners in the end and we were crowned champions. 

What a season then. Crowned champions in another very close league. I'm very happy as I was struggling to get motivated following last seasons disappointment. Hopefully we can have a real go at the Champions League next year.

 

Results

League Table

My Profile

STAR PLAYERS

Xie Yifan - Another good season from the young Chinese goalkeeper.

Guo Yunlong - Impressive as ever. Recently signed a new contract that should fend of interest from Roma.

Danny Chacon - Signed to step things up in midfield and did just that.

Martin Lioret - Signed as a step up from Ni Hao for the bigger games. Brilliant season.

Shan Huanhuan - Best available young Chinese striker available. Signed so I could jig further foreign players into the team. Was far better than I expected and is probably now first choice striker.

 

And finally I was asked to managed the All Star team and although we were 15-1 to win the game we managed to come out on top in a 4-0 Win!! A nice way to end the season.

 

Season     Team             Country	League                   Pos	Achievements
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 9th	Took over after 24 games in 13th pos.
2017       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 5th
2018       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Jia League	 2nd	Gained promotion to Super League.
2019       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Super League	 9th
2020       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Super League	 5th	Won manager of the year award.
2021       Harbin Yiteng    China	Chinese Super League	 1st	League Winners. Won manager of the year award.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Challenge Progress

Club

1/10 top domestic leagues - Harbin Yiteng (China)

0/10 Domestic Cups -

0/5 Club Continental Championships -

0/1 Club World Championship -

International

0/5 Continental Tournaments –

0/2 World Tournaments -

 

Edited November 5, 2016 by Shankly84

[vikeologist]

@JoeLapira I'm sure you've made the right decision. It will only take up half a season. Mind you, it will be annoying if the PSG job came up after the Euros. You're unlikely to get a team that immediately challenges for a title in mid-season. But, there's guarantee that you'll ever be in another CWC, and you'd be in the same situation even if you did win the CL with another club of having to stay longer than you want.Just frustrating for you that it's come in an even (major competition) year.

 

As may have been pointed out, you still stand a chance of completing the challenge quickest. I have mixed feelings about my achieving the challenge as quick as possible. I'll be honest; I would like to 'set the record' (pigs might fly), but in a way it will be a relief once I know that I won't. Mind you, this is by far my best start to the challenge. It is a calculation at several points during the challenge whether to stay at a club in the hopes of one more trophy, and can be frustrating when you're in multiple competitions and only care about one (as was the case with me in Finland last season).

You do still face the 2 major obstacles which are the Asian Cup (because it only happens every 4 years) and the Confederations Cup. I hope you haven't quit Italy, because it's the Confed that can really trip up a challenge.

 

@SavoNFFC Congrats on your continued progress. You're another challenger who's hit the ground running, I'm surprised you didn't get any of those international jobs. I'd have thought the African CL carried a bit of heft.

 

@Shankly84 - Congrats on winning the league and GL in the CL.

 

@AFH Welcome to the challenge and congrats on promotion. Hope that you do get the teams you want later in the challenge. Not sure anybody's led Spurs to glory in this challenge. I did have teams that I'd like to manage in this challenge, but I have to accept that it's not going to happen. I wanted to manage one of the Viking / Vikingur type-named teams to start with, and I'm only going to brave the intricacies of MLS if the Minnesota job comes up. I loaded up the English Championship in the hope of getting newly promoted (in game) Bradford City only to find in the season report that they'd been even more newly relegated straight back down. I want PSG in France, because I want an easy life, and want to win the Libertadores with a team not in Brazil because I can't be having with the 600 match seasons and initialised names that last week's patch reintroduced into my game.

 

Posters on the thread have talked before about the teams that we won't manage in the game. I just can't stomach the idea of managing Colo Colo in Chile, even in a silly game. There's plenty of other 'rival' clubs that I probably wouldn't manage either, but Colo Colo are the only top club in a nation. All the others aren't title contenders anyway.

[jcricky]

Think i'm going to have another go at it this year, kinda gave up last year

[Fadedaf]

Royal Eagles Season 2018/19

Super 8 Cup- Knocked out in the first match against Maritzburg United 2-1. Didn't really care about this competition so whatever.

KO Cup- We very nearly retained our KO cup title, making it all the way to the final, beating Cape Town City, Jomo Cosmos and Orlando Pirates along the way. The final was against Ajax CT and it went into extra time at 0-0. I thought we had won it when young wide midfielder Thaphiso Ngubane scored a screamer of a free kick on debut to put us up 1-0 in the 110th minute. We couldn't hold out however and they equalised and won on penalties. Penalties seems to be a real weakness in this team...

South African FA Cup- Started very well as we beat Polokwane City and Platinum Stars to reach the quarter final. We then produced our worst and most frustrating performance of the season to lose to lower division side Stellenbosch FC on penalties. We had 33 shots to their 2 yet we only managed 5 on target. Our goal wasn't even from a shot on target, it was their own goal. Anyways it ended 1-1 after extra time and we ende dup losing. Disappointing performance in this competition!

League- We started very slowly with a few losses and lots of draws but gradually improved throughout the season. The last part of the season we started playing really good football and were in a position to challenge for the title again. We had Kaiser Chiefs away in the second last round where a win would have put us top, but we only got a draw and we reamined one point back, leaving our fate out of our hands. We needed a draw between Orlando Pirates and Kaiser Chiefs who were both one point in front and a win in our game against Jomo Cosmos to retain the title. We scraped our game 1-0 but kaiser Chiefs won comfortably 3-0 so the title went to them. Runners up in another competition! 

Champions League- The only competition left in Africa that i need to win for the challenge, so it was given top priority. We drew Postel 2000 in the first qualifying round who we destroyed 9-0 in the first leg and 3-1 in the return when we played a team of fringe and youth players, so a pretty solid 12-1 aggregate win. In the second round we drew 2 time champions of the competition ES Sahel but we were not fazed and beat them 3-0 at home and 3-2 away to put us through. The third qualifying round saw us draw Civics from Namibia who we dispatched pretty easily 5-0 and 3-0 to put us into the group stage. We drew a very tough group, containing 8 time CL winners Al-Ahly, 5 time winners Zamalek and 2 time winners ES Setif. We've so far played 2 games and won both 3-0, against Al-Ahly and ES Setif so I have high hopes for us in the competition this year.

Best Players- Right back Ayoub El-Khaliqi had another great season providing 11 assists and a 7.53 average rating. Striker Jeef Kayembe was our top goalscorer with 28 goals and 14 assists (including 6 goals in one game against Postel 2000). Signing of the season goes to central midfielder Eudes Dagoulou from the Central African Republic who provided 11 goals and 6 assists at an average rating of 7.24.

Results Results 2

Overall the season didn't really go as i'd hoped, if things went slightly differently we honestly could have won a treble but ended up with nothing. We are going strong in the Champions League however which is the number 1 priority. We were quite inconsistent this season, drawing easy matches one game then smashing top teams 5-0 the next game. I think our chances in the league were damaged by our two cup runs and CL ties, which weren't as much of an issue with the other top teams. It was a very close league this year and despite bettering last years points total by 6 we fell just short. Reputation is up to 30% and I have obtained my Continental B license, studying for Continental A.

International- Took charge of China under 23s at the start of the season for the Asian games football tournament. We ended up winning it, which proved to be my only trophy this season. Got plenty of knowledge of Chinese players out of it but no reputation boost. I resigned immediately after and later in the season applied for a few jobs in Africa. I got the job coaching Cameroon, who I took charge of in my last attempt at the challenge and enjoyed them a lot, so i'm very keen to see how we do. I know for a fact they are able to win the ACON in 2021 as i did it last time, so i'm hoping i can pull it off again. We've won our first two games, a friendly against Serbia and an ACON qualifying match against Mauritania pretty comfortably so a good start.

 

Season       Team             Position         Notes and Achievements     
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016/17      Royal Eagles     2nd              Promoted to South African Premier League
2017/18      Royal Eagles     1st              KO Cup winners, Manager of the Season, CL qualification
2018/19      Royal Eagles     2nd              FA Cup runners up, CL qualification, CL ongoing


Challenge Progress

Club
 1/10 top domestic leagues (South Africa- Royal Eagles)
 1/10 domestic cups (South Africa KO Cup- Royal Eagles)
 0/5 club continental championships 
 0/1 club world championship

International
 0/5 continental tournaments 
 0/2 world tournaments 

International:
Season       Team             Notes and Achievements     
----------------------------------------------------------
2018        China U23         Won Asian Games
2019        Cameroon          Started ACON qualification

 

 

[Fadedaf]

I'm also going to submit a provisional challenge XI following each end of season report, so here's the first one! I'll do it as my most used formation, a 4-4-2 and judge it based not just on talent but important performances and value to the team. You'll never guess the team they all play for...

Goalkeeper- Muhammad Nashnoush (Royal Eagles). Libyan international with 17 clean sheets in 40 appearances at an average rating of 7.11

Left back- Junior Sibande (Royal Eagles). 2 goals, 9 assists, 1 POM in 32 appearances at an average rating of 7.33

Centre Back- Gladwin Shitolo (Royal Eagles). 5 goals, 3 assists, 5 POM in 91 appearances at an average rating of 7.36. Key defender since my first season, was one of my first transfers.

Centre Back- Ayanda Gcaba (Royal Eagles). 2 goals, 2 assists, 2 POM in 35 appearances at an average rating of 7.22

Right Back- Ayoub El-Khaliqi (Royal Eagles). 3 goals, 27 assists, 7 POM in 69 appearances at an average rating of 7.61. Moroccan fullback who's been at the core of the defence for ages.

Right Midfield- Felix Obada (Royal Eagles). 29 goals, 24 assists, 8 POM in 92 appearances at an average rating of 7.45. Nigerian wide man who's been ever present wince my first season.

Central Midfield- Makuntima Kisombe (Royal Eagles). 1 cap for Congo. 15 goals, 7 assists, 6 POM in 50 appearances at an average rating of 7.33

 Central Midfield- Eudes Dagoulou (Royal Eagles). Central African Republic international with 11 goals, 6 assists, 3 POM in 38 appearances at an average rating of 7.24. Great goalscoring midfielder (goal of the season winner).

Left Midfield- Serge Kouakou (Royal Eagles). 15 goals, 18 assists, 5 POM in 53 appearances at an average rating of 7.54. Ivorian wide midfielder who has been superb the last few seasons.

Striker- Jeef Kayembe (Royal Eagles). 41 goals, 23 assists, 6 POM in 59 appearances at an average rating of 7.43. Once scored 6 goals in a match

Striker- Lucky Mathosi (Royal Eagles). 39 goals, 21 assists, 8 POM in 73 appearances at an average rating of 7.25

[JoeLapira]

@vikeologist; Ya it's definitely the right decision to stay at Dortmund, when I finished up playing last night i was in late October so not long till the CWC now anyway. The Man City job was available during the summer and i guess that turned my head a bit. I'm not bothered about being the quickest to finish the Challenge, i just wanna complete it to be honest and no i haven't quit Italy. When i took over my goal with them was to try and win the WC, Euros and Confed. Cup and I've got 2 out 3 so far. The Asian Cup is a concern though, the next one in my save is in 2031, hopefully one of the bigger nation's manager gets the chop after the 2030 World Cup. It will be interesting to see what jobs are available if I do win the CWC, with S.America and Africa left on the club continental list I'd say i'll probably head in one of those directions.

[Samme2351]

After reading this thread for a bit, I´ve gotten inspired to try this challenge myself. I usually lose interest in a save before even finishing the first season. Hopefully that won´t be the case this time.

Profile - Personal info - Nationalities - Leagues loaded

I applied for the four jobs available at the start and got the manager post at the Romanian 2nd tier club FC Caransebeș 1913. They were funnily enough actually founded in 2006. They were dissolved in the 15/16 season because of financial problems. Hopefully that doesn´t happen to me. The board thankfully only expects me to fight bravely against relegation. Avoiding relegation seems almost impossible. My squad consists of 18 players. The team spends 30k on salary with a budget of 27,6k and I´ve got no transfer budget. The team´s odds in the season preview is 1000/1. The league is divided into 2 groups, each group consisting of 14 teams. There are 2 automatic relegation spots in each group. Team 7-12 enter a play off where 3 teams get relegated and the 3rd placed team play a game against the 3rd placed team in the other group´s play off. The loser off that game also gets relegated. So there are technically 5-6 relegation spots. Well I can at least try.

Sidenote: I didn´t know you got 4 fluent languages for free as a swedish manager.

[JoeLapira]

@Fadedaf; best of luck with the African Champions League, it would be great to get that continent out of the way so early.

@Samme2351; welcome to the challenge. The 2nd tier of Romania looks an interesting place to start.

[threelions1goal]

Hi All

I've just scanned the last couple of pages to see what would be happening now that FM17 has been released - I've picked up that there are no new rule changes (as such) and this will be the continuing thread.

It'll be a few weeks before I get FM17, but as soon as I've got it, this will be the challenge I'll be partaking in!!

My FM16 save, I kind of lost my way after playing for 30 odd seasons - I was never going to complete the challenge, but thoroughly enjoyed attempting it until the last few seasons when I moved around in Germany a little too often and I couldn't find a club that I felt an affinity with - I mistakenly left Hamburg when I should have stayed and it went a bit pear shaped from there.

Scanning these last few pages, I've picked up on a point that @vikeologist made about resigning from a club and how it affected his reputation.
In my FM save, I managed to win a league (can't remember off the top of my head which club)  in May and my contract expired in June, so I thought I'd see that contract out and leave, ready to take on a new club.
Now I'm not sure if this affected my reputation, but i do know it appears in the game to be a "negative".
In the immediate press conferences after I made my decision, I was constantly asked "Why do I keep choosing to resign" - Now I understand if I'd left the club on the brink of relegation and I jumped before I was pushed, but I'd just won the league and left them in a really good position, so it's a different set of circumstances.
I almost contacted SI to suggest they could incorporate something like this into a new version but thought I'd left it too late - I may do it though so they could think about it ahead of FM18

Anyway, I'll be lurking this thread, maybe chipping in with a comment or two until I attempt the challenge - but one other thing, as has been discussed, I'm going to put a lot more thought into the early stages of my career.

Good luck you guys in the meantime!!

[AFH]

Thanks @vikeologist. I'd like to avoid Chelsea/Arsenal in England as a Spurs fan, but who knows what might come up eventually! I've not given much thought to the other main leagues, I think I'm open to managing anyone really. My partisanism only applies to Spurs

[vikeologist]

Vikeologist's Jeonbuk (& Nigeria) 2020 Season Report

So Jeonbuk, maybe the most pressurised job in football. Win the league or get sacked. Luckily I won the league, and that’s 3 titles in a row for me. Should be able to add to that next season, and as many seasons as it takes to win the Champions League. I’ve replaced the old-timers with fresh blood. We won by 15 points, but it wasn’t as comfortable as that sounds.

We went out (on penalties) at the first hurdle in the FA Cup, and weren’t in the Champions League, so they’ll be my priorities next season, but I’ll have to ensure that I retain the title as well.

I hadn’t managed Jeonbuk before, but I was offered the job in FM15 when they sacked their manager for finishing 3^rd (in a 3-way race that came down to the last match of the season). I decided that I didn’t want to work for such demanding nutjobs, but this time around I had a lot of fun spending the nutjobs’ money. In FM15 they won the title the season after I turned them down, and I was sacked for not retaining the title at Seoul.

My old team Lahti fell apart without me, and were nearly relegated. My replacement did a staggeringly bad job. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. I actually signed an ex-Lahti player near the start of the season who played quite a few matches because of injuries.

Next season I lose my left wingback for a couple of seasons to national service, which is the first time this has happened to me in the game, but his hot prospect backup did quite well this season when called upon.

Next up is the African Cup with Nigeria. I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic, but you never know. It’s a lottery. We lost in the CHAN final at the start of the year which was a minor disappointment.

Top Goalscorer – Carlos Ibargüen – 25. A free transfer striker at the start of the season. Didn’t score during the pre-season friendlies against minnows, or the first couple of matches of the season which had me a bit worried, but no problems from then on. Still only a goal every 134 minutes, which won’t earn him a place in the Challenge XI yet.

 

Best Average Rating – Kang Chul-Ho – 7.50 Only started 5 matches because he was a backup winger I brought in midway through the season for depth. My starter is pretty fantastic as well.

Man of Match – Carlos Ibargüen – 6

Most Valuable Player – Spiderman. When I inherited the Jeonbuk side my best goalkeeper was a 36 year-old I nicknamed Granddad. Spiderman was a 17-year old snapping at his heels, and I went with the future. He’s developing into a great keeper, and is still just 18. (I’m sure you could have done the maths for yourself).

 

Domestic
Season	Team					Position	Notes										Challenge Landmarks
2016	FC Lahti				10th		Just 9 points from the 10 matches remaining after I took over
2017	FC Lahti				3rd		Qualified for Europe
2018	FC Lahti				1st		First domestic title
2019	FC Lahti				1st		The double. First domestic cup
2020	Jeonbuk					1st


International
Year	Team					Achievements	
2019-	Nigeria


Challenge Progress

Club
 2/10 top domestic leagues 	(Finland, South Korea)
 1/10 domestic cups 		(Finland)
 0/5 club continental championships 
 0/1 club world championship

International
 0/5 continental tournaments 
 0/2 world tournaments 

 

 

[JoeLapira]

Congrats on the K-League title @vikeologist, getting Jeonbuk as your second job is a really good move. 

On my own side of things, I won the CWC with Dortmund. It was quite easy in the end and I'll include it in my end of season report. And so where to next now that i had won everything i needed with Dortmund. Seeing as i still needed continental trophies in S.America and Africa but still also needed the English and French leagues, along with 3 other leagues and 5 other cups it was going to be an interesting decision. Anyway the day before the CWC final, Massimo Allegri was sacked by Chelsea even though they had won the 2 previous league titles. I knew this meant they were having a poor season but i applied nonetheless. I got the job and by the time i did with 18 games gone Chelsea were a massive 17 points behind Man City in first. So that was any hope of a immeadiate league win out of the picture, but i didnt mind as it meant i had 20 games to assess my squad with the aim of winning the league next season. We were still in the FA Cup and Champions League, so thats where my focus was going to lie, particularly the FA Cup. The board's minimum expectation was Top 4, which would appear difficult given the terrible start but in fact Liverpool, who are currently in 4th are only a mere 4 points clear of us. The trickiest part would definitely be the squad, although it is really strong in most areas there isnt one natural wide player and given the fact i play 4-4-2 this will prove an interesting problem to solve.

[AFH]

that's a great move @vikeologist, good luck with the CL and AC 

and well done @JoeLapira, Chelsea should be very good for silverware

Edited November 7, 2016 by AFH

[streety]

Ok brand new fm..lets tackle this challange

[Fadedaf]

so i've been knocked out of the Champions league... pretty gutted. This means i've now wasted a season and a half and won absolutely zero. I kind of want to leave South Africa now and come back someday for the CL as I don't want to waste time with competitions I don't need to win, but i'm not even getting interviews for anywhere i've applied to, probably due to having an international team now. So not really sure what to do but hopefully I can get another job somewhere!

[vikeologist]

@Fadedaf Commiserations. I think this is quite a common thing in the game. Every time I was knocked out of or lost the African Champions League, it was like being shot in the stomach. Later on I thought I'd been eliminated from the competition about 4 or 5 times, but when I checked I think it was twice. It just seemed to go on forever.

 

This is what I'm facing now with Jeonbuk. Sure, I have the Korean FA Cup as well, but really I'm just hanging around for the Champions League. Hopefully I'll win it at the first go, but it's a cup, and throughout this challenge I've had really bad (and brief) runs in cups. The one I did win was via 2 penalty shootouts after extra time. I am still haunted by a penalty shoot out win I had as Mexico boss (in FM15)  against Jamaica. Yes, we got through, but we should have won that match by about 5 goals, and indeed did win every other match against Jamaica around that time by five or so goals. I honestly would have quit the challenge if I'd lost that penalty shoot out. Utterly ridiculous.

If you're not enjoying managing your present club, then maybe you should quit. The most important thing is to have fun, and if you need to come back at the end of the challenge, at least you'll have the imminent promise of completion to spur you on, (plus a kick-arse reputation), but it does seem likely that to get any kind of job, you'll need to quit the international one, or just be an international manager until you win a tournament or get sacked. I don't think this is the end of the world. There's always a pretty good chance that we'll achieve the club side of things before the international one.

 

@streety - Looking forward to hearing where you've started this time. Where did you start last time?

 

@JoeLapira Congrats of the CWC, and good luck at Chelsea. That sounds like there's a big divide between the top club(s) and the rest. I also play 442, and try to remember to have a look at the winger situation. Wingers are usually my top ranked players in my teams. But, Chelsea is Chelsea. Obviously a great job to get.

[Fadedaf]

@vikeologist thanks, the African CL is just so poorly timed it makes it very difficult to win. My Royal Eagles side just didn't have the quality in the end, which is probably understandable since we've only been in the top division for 2 seasons. But yeah I think i've had enough of South Africa so i'm going to most likely go for a fresh start somewhere else. We've made it to the final of the KO cup for a 3rd straight year so i'll stick around for that but then head off. On the international side I switched from Cameroon to Algeria when that job came up as they fit my formation better (4-4-2) and also had some genuinely talented players (Mahrez, Slimani, Bentaleb etc.) but have managed to lose the world cup playoff game in my first match as the manager. I may have to resign internationally to get a club job which is a shame but I think it will be for the best, and I will look for another international job once i've found a new club. 

also congrats @JoeLapira and good luck with Chelsea!

 

[JoeLapira]

@Fadedaf; Hard luck with the Champions League, but don't get too disheartened. You've had a good start to the Challenge and you'll have chances again to have a crack at it. As you say maybe it's time to move on, any idea where you'd like to head next?

@vikeologist; It was a big divide but having played 3 league games last night the gap is now down to 8 points. We won all 3 and City lost all 3 with the 3rd one being a 2-1 win for us over City themselves, so there's a glimmer of hope for a title challenge yet. Plus, we also safely navigated 2 rounds of the FA Cup so that's on track. Even though I only had a transfer budget of 8 million, I was able to secure 2 wide players, one for each side and both have slotted into the team seamlessly. Ya, Chelsea is a very good job to get, they already have a strong squad and I should get the funds in the summer to make it an even stronger squad.

Edited November 8, 2016 by JoeLapira

[Fadedaf]

@JoeLapira thanks, and yeah i'm thinking I might try and head somewhere else and leave the African CL for later. I've resigned from my international job but so far only gotten one interview for all the jobs i've applied for! Not much real preference as to where i'll go, possibly South America or Mexico? but I don't mind too much, i'll happily take a job somewhere else that looks promising.

[TheEarl]

The Earls Ultimate Quest (FM17)

Nordsjælland (Danish Superliga 2020/21 and 2021/22)

 

I took over Nordsjælland with just a few games to play in the 2020/21 season. So first I would like to describe the league format a bit to those not familiar with the league. Denmark has 14 teams in the Superliga, and for starters they play each other twice for 26 league games in the Preliminary Phase. Then the top 6 teams advance to the Championship Group. Here they play each other twice again for a total of 36 games. All points are brought forward so all 36 games counts. This makes a close league as the top teams will have played each other 4 times, and the top teams playing the bottom teams only twice. The bottom 8 teams are split in 2 groups of 4 teams each, playing another 6 games for a total of 32 league games. Then from those 2 groups the 2 bottom teams in each group play a relegation play-off, while the 2 top teams play a Euro-Places play-off, the winner over two rounds then faces the club in usually 4th or 5th in the Championship group for a deciding match of which team will grab the last spot for Europa League. That final match is played with only 1 game, not home or away with the team from the Championship group playing at home.

All transfers where out of the question with me taking over so late in the season, so I had to play with the team given to me from the former manager. The team had finished 7th and that was a disappointment to the board. They still wanted European qualification. After the first 3 games in the Relegation group, the club had slipped another place to second in the group. We drew at home to Lyngby who where ahead of us 2-2, then won 2-1 away to Sønderjyske and won 3-1 at home to Odense. Still only enough for second place in the group, but at least enough to play Euro playoff. We got Esbjerg winner of the other Relegation group in a home/away tie that we decided 5-4 on aggregate after winning 3-2 away. Then AC Horsens in the next round 5-2 on aggregate after an inspiring 4-1 win at home. This setup an away game deciding against Brøndby. If we could win we would enter Europa League qualification next season. Unfortunately we lost 2-3 a.e.t. by a goal in the 101st minute. I was quite happy with my start at the club, but the board was somewhat dissapointed.

At the start of the next season, I got 4 new players in. I needed a left-back as we had no cover for our first choice there. So Ole Martin Rindarøy was signed from Norwegian outfit Brann for 400K. Striker Mario Alvarez was signed from Danish side Vejle on a Free Transfer, and defender Bubacarr Sanneh and midfielder Sergio Aguza also signed on Free Transfers.

The season started pretty nicely with 5 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses from the eight first matches. This put us in 3rd position, and most other clubs lost points also. But AaB and Randers where ahead refusing to give away too many points. I was happy with most matches, except we got smashed by Midtjylland 1-6. When we came to the split of the season we had gathered 49 points from 26 matches. 15-4-7 is a record that would not win you many leagues, but actually we where top of the league with that record 1 point ahead of AaB. Randers FC and FC København both on 47 points just behind. Brøndby IF on 45 points and Midtjylland on 42 points looked out of contention. Brøndby however took the most points in the 10 final games with another 22 points and 67 totally. AaB slipped up and could only take 14 additional points for 62 in total. We took just enough points another 19 points for 68 in total and won the league 1 point ahead of Brøndby. Winning the league with 20-8-8 is something I guess I will never do in FM again.

In the Danish Cup we had some easy games in the beginning. Beating Jægersborg 5-0 away in the second round, and Middelfart 4-1 away in the third round. The game in the 4th round against FC Roskilde away was supposed to be easy also, but after a 3-3 draw it took us 9 penalties to win the shoot-out 7-6. In the Quarter Final we beat Esbjerg 3-1 at home setting up a difficult Semi Final tie at home to AaB. We won the game 3-2 thanks to a 89th minute goal from captain Lasse Petry. The Final at neutral venue was straight forward 4-0 victory against Odense for an amazing The Double in my first full season with Nordsjælland.

I didn't resign like with Dalian, as I wouldn't make the same mistake again. I did apply for other jobs though, and next I will be heading to Mexico. I tried to look for International jobs along the way, but those available where either African nations or nations with far too good reputation for my manager, as it still stands at only 40%.

CLUB CAREER

Season     Club			Pos	DC1	DC2	Cont	Notes & Achievements
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016   Unemployed			n/a   n/a	n/a	n/a	No job until after season finished.
2017   Dalian Yifang (CHI)	1st	R.2	n/a	n/a	Winner of First Division and promoted to Super League.
2018   Dalian Yifang (CHI)	2nd	QF	n/a	n/a	Qualified for Asian Champions League.
2019   Dalian Yifang (CHI)	1st	WIN	n/a	WIN	Amazing Treble season, but lost Super Cup.
2020	 Unemployed			n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	No club for around 1,5 years.
2020/21 Nordsjælland (DEN)	7th	n/a	n/a	n/a 	Took over 3 games from end, lost Euro places play-off.
2021/22 Nordsjælland (DEN)	1st	WIN	n/a	n/a	The Double!!
	
INTERNATIONAL CAREER

Year	Nation        	WC     	Cont.  Conf.  	Notes & Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2019	DR Congo		n/a		n/a	n/a		Took over at 22nd in the World Rankings.	
2020	DR Congo		n/a		2nd	n/a		Qualified for ACON, finalist in CHAN.
2021	DR Congo		n/a		WIN	n/a		Won ACON, and then resigned to get a club job.

Challenge Landmarks
Club
2/10 top domestic leagues (China 2019 with Dalian Yifang, Denmark 2021/22 with Nordsjælland)
2/10 domestic cups (China 2019 with Dalian Yifang, Denmark 2021/22 with Nordsjælland)
1/5 club continental championships (Asia 2019 with Dalian Yifang)
0/1 club world championship


International
1/5 continental tournaments (Africa 2021 with DR Congo)
0/2 world tournaments (World Cup)

6/33 Total

Best Eleven

Formation 4-3-3
Goalkeeper:
Wang Dalei (China) - Dalian Yifang - Steady goalkeeper for 2 Super League seasons, winning the treble - 63 appearances.
Right Back:
Herve Ndonga (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star right back at DR Congo winning ACON - 16 caps.
Central Defenders:
Marcel Tisserand (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Strong centreback scoring goals from set pieces, winning ACON - 17 caps 3 goals.
Yu Yang (China) - Dalian Yifang - One of few players to play all 3 seasons with Yifang - 101 appearances 1 goal.
Left Back:
Arthur Masuaku (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star left back winning ACON - 18 caps 2 goals.
Central Midfielders:
Gianelli Imbula (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Premier League players who starred Congo to ACON title - 17 caps 1 goal.
Youssouf Mulumbu (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Former Premier League player also won ACON - 19 caps 3 goals.
Cui Ming'an (China) - Dalian Yifang - Another player who played all 3 season at Dalian - 81 appearances 5 goals.
Strikers:
Cedric Bakambu (DR Congo) - DR Congo - Star striker who cost Liverpool over 50M pound ACON winner - 20 apps 23 goals.
Markus Ingvartsen (Denmark) – Nordsjælland – Star striker winning the double in Denmark - 50 appearances 42 goals.
Emmanuel Gigliotti (Argentina) - Dalian Yifang - Bought midway through season 2, amazing scoring average - 54 appearances 44 goals.