Jump to content

FM18 Youth Academy Challenge


Recommended Posts

Welcome back everyone!!

This is the 2018 incarnation of the Youth Academy Challenge started by ri916 and continued last year by Braumiller

The Aim
To win your chosen countries' top division and win the Champions League with a previously unplayable club using only your academy as a way of acquiring new players.

The Available Countries
Previously any Country in Europe is eligible as long as you can get a previously unplayable side promoted from Holidaying, however for this version we're happy to extended it to the rest of the world as well as long as the team meets the criteria of being previously unplayable. 

 

The Reset Dates
(Dates will appear when they have been confirmed for FM18)

  • Argentina - July 14th
  • Austria - June 14th
  • Belarus
  • Belgium 
  • Brazil - January 2nd
  • Croatia
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark - June 30th (but save a couple weeks before to reload teams as seems lower leagues end earlier)
  • England - June 25th
  • Finland
  • France  - June 20th
  • Germany - June 19th
  • Holland - July 7th 2019 (no relegation season 1)
  • Iceland
  • Italy - June 30th
  • Northern Ireland - June 24th
  • Norway - January 13th
  • Portugal
  • Russia
  • Scotland - June 25th (but save on April 28th as that is when where they decide who is in the play off games)
  • Serbia - June 16th
  • Spain - July 10th 
  • Sweden - December 16th
  • Switzerland
  • Turkey
  • Wales - June 25th

Database Settings

Mandatory

  • Only load the Nation you’re managing in
  • Database size can be small, medium or large
  • Advanced Options have to be as shown here --> Tmlt92S.thumb.jpg.2ba8efbc09447eeb416274435e748b22.jpg

 

Optional

 

  • Any additional settings in the ‘Advanced Database Setup’ – Due to us not being allowed to buy players, adding extra players just adds to the realism of your game and potentially slightly increases difficulty. NOTE – It is highly recommended you add the highest unplayable leagues for your country, as this will help make sure the promoted teams (you will be taking control of) have players. As an example, this is what I loaded for England - Capture.thumb.JPG.ecb588dccdb9736fc08b32988b305451.JPG
  • Players from Top Clubs in Europe is also recommended
  • Steps When Getting Started

  • Add yourself as an unemployed manager. Call him holiday man if you want.
  • Go on holiday until the reset date of your nation or the day before if you’re planning on reloading.
  • Retire the manager
  • Add a new manager with your chosen nationality and the lowest possible reputation and qualifications
  • Choose the newly promoted club of your choice
  • Rules for the Challenge

  • No loans or transfers in are allowed but you can sell and loan players out.
  • If you are sacked, sorry, you have to start again.
  • No save game editors are allowed. Only cosmetic database edits are allowed. (Team/competition names/logos)
  • No international management until completion of challenge.
  • Signing backroom staff is allowed. Signing players on trial or signing grey players isn't allowed.
  • Rules for this Thread

  • Player naming is allowed.
  • General discussion on tactics is allowed, although people should not refer to downloaded tactics. They are not banned, but I would expect the majority of people to avoid them.
  • Screenshots for anything are encouraged but please post links to your pictures, don't post them as images as it makes the pages slower to load.
  • When you join the challenge, could you post a screenshot of your manager's profile on the league reset date.
  • Progress of your club should be documented using this thread. The beauty of these challenge threads is to share your story and to read others. Please keep us updated, even if you are not performing as you may wish.
  • Season Update

  • Youth Candidates
  • All Tagged Players Attribute page
  • Transfers (to prove that you haven’t signed any players)
  • Squad
  • League Table
  • Anything else is optional.

    Also, some people like to nickname/tag their best players from each youth intake in chronological order. For example, you could nickname your best player in the intake in season 1 as *their name* YP01a, and so on. But this is not compulsory if you don't wish to.

     

    I have copied and pasted last years starting post to get the ball rolling, I will update with necessary information as we get going (let me know dates for leagues so I can add them)

     

    Good luck to all!

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.1k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

So yeah here it is, after I lost my Dulwich save last year (27 seasons) I was prepared to not even think about trying this again but the call of a new game leads me heading back to Champion Hill (a ground I have since visited because of this challenge) 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for setting this up again for another year. Gonna give this a go again after 3 fails and a completion last year, but probably gonna move to another pastures. Still playing on Touch though, so that might be a bit more difficult, but I will compesate by chosing a club with good starting facilities. Already have a couple in mind and now holidaying to see if they show up.

Link to post
Share on other sites

B8T3i.md.png

Well, I'm back also. My manager chose one of the easy paths for this challenge, as Dnipro is a big club, playing in the Europa League final some years a go. In the meantime they got administratively relegated to the 3rd league, but bounced back to the second league exactly in 2018, the year their celebrating the Centenary! The main challenge may come from the fact that I never played in Ukraine before, and looking at the first league the big boys of Shakhtar and Dynamo Kyiv might make it difficult for us to reach the top. However, our Facilities are a dream for this challenge, with  Excellent youth and Great training, a 31k stadium, as well as Good junior coaching and Above average youth recruitment. Our backroom staff needs serious improvements but at the moment we can't seem to attract better options. Let's the game begin!

Link to post
Share on other sites

@darren1983 Now that you're the boss, do you think the challenge should allow us / you to re-sign youth intake players who have left, like I believe you were able to with last year's Dulwich Hamlet save? What about expanding it to other countries.

I'm just floating ideas out there. I have no immediate plans to do this challenge. The memories from my previous attempts are still too raw, and it's not good to muck around with the rules for a challenge too much, but if there's anything people are unhappy about, this would be as good a time as any.

It's so frustrating to see good players you had to sell out of contract a year or so later.

Link to post
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, vikeologist said:

@darren1983 Now that you're the boss, do you think the challenge should allow us / you to re-sign youth intake players who have left, like I believe you were able to with last year's Dulwich Hamlet save? What about expanding it to other countries.

I'm just floating ideas out there. I have no immediate plans to do this challenge. The memories from my previous attempts are still too raw, and it's not good to muck around with the rules for a challenge too much, but if there's anything people are unhappy about, this would be as good a time as any.

It's so frustrating to see good players you had to sell out of contract a year or so later.

Didn't realise I had to come up with rules for this :D 

In terms of resigning former youth intakes I think it goes against the aim of the challenge slightly, however I could maybe see this softening to allow the resigning of former players if they're out of contract. For now though I'm leaning more to no and sticking with the current rules. It's frustrating to see good former players retire because no one will sign them while they'd be great for you but I feel it's part of the challenge (I say this after losing many good players last year)

As for other countries I'm open to it, I don't see an issue if people want to attempt it outside of Europe providing the team they take other match the criteria of being unplayable at the start of the game. Some countries (like USA) won't work but yeah, opening up to rest of the world could be an nice new addition for this year. The game adds little things each year so maybe the challenge could/should as well? 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Would definitely like to see rest of the world added. Would add a nice variety I think.

Might dive straight in with this as my first save as I can’t decide on a club yet in the dafuge challenge. I’m thinking Portugal, despite failing there a couple of times in past versions the players have cool names :D

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I can confirm that the French refresh date is also June 25th.

I'm quite enjoying the idea of one of these, it has been many years since I've done any challenge thread.

I am hoping that this save will also be able to double up for the inevitable Gundo challenge too.

 My manager: https://i.imgur.com/Hply03P.png

FC Villefranche: https://i.imgur.com/rWsv23c.png

 

Good Luck everyone.

Link to post
Share on other sites

@fabreth : yes, the league reputation is dynamic (or at least it was in previous versions). Unfortunately I don't think you can find the list in the menu (it certainly isn't in the world > list section), but I remember receiving at the beginning of seasons a message about how the league evolved over the past year. I am close to completing the first year and I will get back to you with additional information. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, darren1983 said:

So yeah here it is, after I lost my Dulwich save last year (27 seasons) I was prepared to not even think about trying this again but the call of a new game leads me heading back to Champion Hill (a ground I have since visited because of this challenge) 

What's the pricing like? Keep meaning to go to East Dulwich to grab a game there.

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, sc91 said:

What's the pricing like? Keep meaning to go to East Dulwich to grab a game there.

£10 a ticket, food was pricey (£8 for a burger I think) no idea of quality as didn't buy, drinks are reasonable for a football ground in London, the bonus is that, should you want to, you can stand on the terrace with a beer watching the game. 

It's an odd ground to get to, about 10 mins walk from the nearest station but you have to go through a Sainsbury's car park to get to the main entrance. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

@Muttley84 good luck in Ukraine, with the starting facilities they could become a popular choice this year. Was tempted to try Germany with 1860 Munich (or Munich Lions as they're now called) for similar reasons.

@keef0723 Good luck in France.

@Mushtaq I can't see any reason why opening it up to the rest of the world shouldn't work. I'll add it to the OP now actually.

Link to post
Share on other sites

@darren1983 and others: I did a bit of scouting myself to chose an "easy" club, so I can recommend to others going that path 1860 Munich (Lions only for copyright reasons but you can easily fix that) in Germany, CS Sedan and Le Mans in France, OFK Belgrad in Serbia and NK Zagreb in Croatia. They are all clubs with a strong starting base for the facilities and a bit of reputation in their countries also. Best of luck also to the bold which have started the "heavy" challenge like Dulwich. :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, darren1983 said:

£10 a ticket, food was pricey (£8 for a burger I think) no idea of quality as didn't buy, drinks are reasonable for a football ground in London, the bonus is that, should you want to, you can stand on the terrace with a beer watching the game. 

It's an odd ground to get to, about 10 mins walk from the nearest station but you have to go through a Sainsbury's car park to get to the main entrance. 

Yeah thinking of dropping down from Tottenham before Christmas as a mutual meeting point from a friend who lives far south. 

Anythinh above £5 is a blessing in London, my local is still at £3.50, heaven.

Link to post
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, darren1983 said:

It's an odd ground to get to, about 10 mins walk from the nearest station but you have to go through a Sainsbury's car park to get to the main entrance. 

Eh? East Dulwich station is more or less next to the ground.

(I lived locally for about 6 years, went to the Hamlet a few times a season)

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Crispypaul said:

Eh? East Dulwich station is more or less next to the ground.

(I lived locally for about 6 years, went to the Hamlet a few times a season)

Yes you're right, we wen't via Denmark Hill as that was easiest one for us to get to (we were all coming from different directions so we met at Victoria) completely forgot there was a station right next door. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Muttley84 said:

@darren1983 and others: I did a bit of scouting myself to chose an "easy" club, so I can recommend to others going that path 1860 Munich (Lions only for copyright reasons but you can easily fix that) in Germany, CS Sedan and Le Mans in France, OFK Belgrad in Serbia and NK Zagreb in Croatia. They are all clubs with a strong starting base for the facilities and a bit of reputation in their countries also. Best of luck also to the bold which have started the "heavy" challenge like Dulwich. :)

Idk if in fm18 but Litex in Bulgaria and mby AJ Auxerre in France or INF Clairefontaine and also RGUOR Minsk in Belarus can be playable in this challenge but not confirmed still dont bought FM18 :(

Link to post
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Muttley84 said:

@fabreth : yes, the league reputation is dynamic (or at least it was in previous versions). Unfortunately I don't think you can find the list in the menu (it certainly isn't in the world > list section), but I remember receiving at the beginning of seasons a message about how the league evolved over the past year. I am close to completing the first year and I will get back to you with additional information. 

Thanks. I'm thinking about grabbing only FMT for this edition.. so I'm trying the 17 edition, but i'm not entirely convinced.

To remain in topic, youth challenges with very few intakes and no control over tutoring seems utterly hard. :D

Link to post
Share on other sites

1860 Munich - Season 2018-2019 - 3th Division

Predicted: 7th

Actual finish: 3th

We started the season not to bad, but after 6 games (2-2-2) I received a message that the players weren't happy with the way I was managing the team, and my lack of experience. They wanted another manager. But after a good conversation the atmosphere got a bi better, and the team wanted to fight for each other, and more important also for me. We went on a 6 game unbeaten streak, and we were around 7th position. I was happy with this. We kept our good form and half-way the season we were battling with Duisburg and Karlsruhe for 4th postion, but the top 3 were at least 8 points in front. After the winter break we were incredible, with a 12 game unbeaten streak. With 4 games to go we were 7 points behind the teams in 2nd & 3th. The next 2 games were against those teams, but we would need a miracle to finish at least 3th (play-off position). We won against Aalen, and suddenly we were only 4 points behind them. Next games was against Fortuna Köln, again a must win game. Unfortunally Köln was way to good for us. The Lucky thing was that Aalen lost again, and we still had a very small chance to finish 3th. The only we had to do was winning our last 2 games, and Aalen had to lose them. We won both games, and the unthinkable happend, Aalen lost them. They had a terrible end of the season, losing their last 4 games.

We finshed the season in 3th postion, and still had a chance on promotion. In the play-off final we would face Osnabruck, who finished 15th in the 2nd division.

The first game was the away game, and we were incredible good. We won 1-3 and only need to finish it off in the home game. But the home game didn't go by plan. It seems that the players were incredible nervous. Osnabruck were the better team, but could only score once. We lost the game 0-1, but we still won PROMOTION. An incredible achievement in our first season.

Games 1

Games 2

Play-offs

 

Before the youthintake we could upgrade junior coaching and youth recruitement. Also our data analyse center was build.

Youth intake: Very good first intake with 5 players with 5* potential and 4 players with 4.5* potential

Dinko Jozinovic (YP1a): ST: should be the best player of the intake

Marco Novotny (YP1b): AML, but will be retrained as ML

Ferhat Yigit (YP1c): DM, very welcome as I don't have any natural DM's

Frank Niclas (YP1d): ML

Xavier Kiessling (YP1e): AMC, will be retrained as I don't play AMC's? Not sure how to re-train him.

Dogan Mutlu (YP1f): MR

Bernhard Augenthaler (YP1g): Another DM

Milos Kristic (YP1h): DC

Mario Nogueira (YP1i): DM, and allready selected for the U21 European Championship with Portugal.

The only pity in Germany is that you can't use player under 17. So we have to wait a couple of season, to find out how good they really are.

 

After the intake we could upgrade our junior coaching and youth recruitment again. Loking forward to next years intake allready.

Finances: Lost a lot of money this season and are deep red. Will improve a lot next season, because finishing last in the 2nd division will get us €8M

Transfers: Sold 1 player. Was our best DC bot was complaining a lot, and had to sell him. 

 

Goals next season:

Just staying up, because I'm afraid we are not ready to compete at a higher level.

Link to post
Share on other sites

B8T3i.md.png

Dnipr - Season 2018-2019

We were predicted to finish 14th, but things just went from good to better for us during the season as we finished in an unbelievable 1st top position, which means we are promoted to the first league. Our season review saw us the top 3 for pretty much all of the season, but we only had a short run in the cup to the second round. We had a rough winter, where an injury  episode saw us lose over 10 players to short or medium term injuries in a period without any matches.

Not much transfer activity in the last and current summer but we also lost another pretty important player to free agency and he doesn't show in the transfer history screen (could this be a bug?). Artem Dovbyk was our main scoring force last season, but we couldn't convince him to continue with us. This is a big blow for us as he pretty much got all of the Season Awards. On the positive side, this season we played an  extremely young team, which is mainly due to the situation  I found at the club, but be sure that will help us in the coming seasons. 

During our good run in the season the board promised to improve training facilities, but they canceled the plans in the summer due to lack of funds. Despite our youth facilities the Youth Intake was awful, with only three players received, and just the Right-back (which I am re-training as a left back as we only have one in the squad) good enough to jump in the first team. I have tagged them all though and giving them some time in the pre-season.

Not sure how our affiliation to Dnipr Football Academy works, as it seems that in game I can get any player I want from their team (and they do have some interesting ones) as a transfer with a fee of 0, but this would be against the rules of the challenge. Gonna monitor the situation the next season to see if there is another way for players to move between teams.

Next season in the top flight we are predicted to finish 11th (out of 12th) with would see us fight a relegation play-off to remain in the league. Considering there are some other weak teams also, like Gelios, Sumy or Mariupol maybe we could do better than this. No surprises last year, as Shaktar won the league and Dynamo the cup, but both of them were eliminated from the Champions League group stage and only Dynamo made it to the 2nd knockout round in Europa League.

Link to post
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Bartrcm said:

Great first season @muttley1982. Strange that you only got 3 players with your intake.

Not that very strange, Youth Intakes in Touch are rather scarce like that. Last year, with top facilities and well established recruitment and I only got around 7-8 players. :) One of the downsides of trying to play this on Touch.

Link to post
Share on other sites

1860 Munich - Season 2019-2020 - 2nd division

Predicted: 18th

Final finish: 12th

 

We actually had a much better season than I thought, and we survived relatively easy. I don't think it will be any easier the next seasons as I lost my best prospect from last years intake to our fearce rivals Bayern., as the board accepted the bid That was our only ST prospect.

 

Games 1

Games 2

German cup. We entered the cup for the first time, but we were unlucky with the draw. Our opponents were Bremen, a 1th division team. We actually played very good and only lost with 1-2.

 

Youth intake: Not so good as last year, as we only tagged 5 players. But I do got an incredible player

Juan Carlos Burgos (YP2a): DR, and probably 1 of the best players that I ever got through an intake. Problem is that he doesn't want to sign a professional contract without a very low minimum release.

Dario Sedlacek (YP2b): DM

Cheickna Tandia (YP2c): MC, will be retrained as a MR

Oliver Kurt (YP2d): ST, very welcome striker.

Faton Ferati (YP2e): GK, needs a lot of work.

 

Transfers: Lost my best prospect of last season. :(

Finances: End of season price moneyof 9.3M, selling my best prospect for 875k and money of the board 2M just put us in black. The main problem is that we lose around 900k every month.

 

Goals last season:

Staying up: SUCCES

Goals next season:

Staying up

Keep all my prospects

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Muttley84 said:

Not that very strange, Youth Intakes in Touch are rather scarce like that. Last year, with top facilities and well established recruitment and I only got around 7-8 players. :) One of the downsides of trying to play this on Touch.

Didn't realise that you played Touch version.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'll give this a try when the full game comes out - think it's got to be the English league though as with 6 tiers to navigate it's a huge challenge. No disrespect to the guys trying it above but 1860 and Dnipro are going to be in the top league with top facilities in 1 or 2 seasons in reality

Link to post
Share on other sites

@Muttley84 nice first season there

@Bartrcm firstly well don on promotion, and now well done on staying up, nothing more infuriating than losing your prospect to anther side because your board accepts a bid.

I've had no time to play all week (bloody real life) but should get a solid day in tomorrow (depending on my hangover) so looking to finally get stuck in this year.

Link to post
Share on other sites

B8T3i.md.png

Dnipr - Season 2019-2020

You know how we celebrated promotion to the first division? Well, things changed this season as we finished the league in 12th. Don't celebrate yet, that's the last place in the league and we are relegated to the second division! it's a wonder that I didn't got the sack following this. We deserved to go down, if only we could convert some of those draws into wins maybe we could have sneaked into the upper places. But we had the worst defense of the league (conceding 6 against Shaktar and Dynamo) and the second worst attack. We made the last place ours for the entire season and we also got eliminated from the second round of the cup. We were so poor that somehow the football academy has a higher profile than us.

The loss of our goalscorer from last season proved to be decisive, not much to take of the players from the Season Awards - maybe just that one of the youth prospects made it to the team of the season. We still have a pretty young team playing, but that's not much use when they don't have what it takes for the first league. No much transfer activity going on. Nothing to be excited from the youth intake also, with Shevchenko being the highest rated player, and he's gonna be retrained to play up-front the line (oh, a Seva in attack).

So back to the second league next season, predicted again to finish top-table there. Gonna change the formation from using an AMC to DMC as we simply don't have the quality to play that anymore. Things are not as easy as I hoped, but now I am even more immersed in the challenge.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Wanted to have a go at a youth challenge for ages. Think this will be the year when the full release comes out on Friday.

Don't mind saying I'll probably take an "easier" option to begin with. It's going to be hard enough anyway trying to win the Champions League with nothing but academy players. Plus I've struggled tactically with recent releases of FM. Sometimes I feel you have to be a bit of a football manager in order to be any good at Football Manager.

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MikaelS said:

I am a little bit confused about this one tbh.

Can I pick a team that was previously relegated and now promoted or does it have to be a team that has never been in the division before?

Just a team that have been promoted into the league

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...