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[FMT19] União da Bola - Bringing champagne football to Cristiano Ronaldo Island


noikeee
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March 2022


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Uhhhh... what?

So I just moaned about our poor form, about Europe being a difficult goal with time running out etc, and now we're suddenly right there in 6th after a crazy good month. Beating Porto with 2 late goals was brilliant, but going to Guimarães and smashing them 5-1 with 4 Xadas goals (!!) even better - Guimarães are having a wonder season and comfortably holding a Champions League slot.

2 months to go. Can we hold on to this and qualify for Europe again, now through the league?


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April 2022


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A bizarre season continues as we maintain our recent excellent form to start looking like candidates for even a Champions League slot! 7 wins in our last 8 matches - and the only match we didn't win was against Benfica - have suddenly completely switched our season around.

We should be safe for Europa League now with a 5 points gap over Paços, whilst the big fight for 3rd place is on between us, Guimarães and Sporting, all level - but Guimarães in on absolute freefall, an opposite trajectory to ours with 6 defeats from the last 7 matches. The remaining matches are fairly tricky as we need to face Belenenses, Paços and Boavista, but it's not a terrible calendar neither. Can we hold on to this form for a little longer and pull off something historical?


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8 minutes ago, kidthekid said:

Great victory over Porto. Looking at the scorers, it looks like Ennis has fizzled out

A little yeah, also I've been playing Adam Hubert sometimes instead of him. I'm kinda glad I'm getting more scorers now, for a while it seemed like our only path to goal was: Cody Gakpo early cross from the right, Ennis runs quicker than everyone else and strikes it in. Now we seem much more varied.

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May 2022


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The beginning of the dream was a... 2-2 draw away to Belenenses. You'd think this would cost us ground, but no, with Guimarães losing we were suddenly up to 3rd and a point ahead of the chasing pack. Champions League football was now in our hands. And it couldn't have felt even more in our hands after we smashed Paços 5-0 with a Bruno Costa hat-trick. Into the last day, we had 1 point over Porto and 3 over Guimarães. In the final day, we travelled to... Porto to face Boavista, and Porto travelled to... Madeira to face Marítimo.

This last day was marked by a hectic 3 minutes in the first half of our match. Ennis scores on the 13th. Boavista ties on the 15th. The ball goes to the central circle, quick ball to the left, cross, boom, another Ennis goal. And it went on and on. We spent all match long winning 2-1 whilst Porto were tied 0-0 in Funchal - everything going our way, we only needed to match Porto's result anyway.

On the 88th minute there's news that Porto have gotten their goal. No big deal, we're still winning, and there's little time. Then minute 93. Boavista hoofs it to their slow-ish striker Jeka. He somehow breaks past our defence. Hits it to the near post. It's in. And millions of euros have gone down the drain. :(

Oh well 4th is still a great final result - but we came just so close to bringing CL football to Madeira for the first time ever...


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Season review 2021/2022


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Keeper

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Quite unbelievably, our highest valued player in our squad is a 26 year old keeper who's been at the club for 3 years and is only rated at 3 stars - valued 5M€. He's been on great form though, I believe, even despite all our countless conceded goals as we play so attacking - a positive average rating of 7.02 seems unusual for a keeper.


Centerbacks

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This squad's major weakness at the moment. Diney managed to get surprisingly high ratings (7.22) but the other new signing Sandro Costa proved underwhelming and eventually lost the place to Rafael Dumas. We need 2 better centerbacks.


IWBs

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Although we had quality in spades for RB this season with both Tomás Tavares and Thierry Correia - Tavares standing out - the story here was André Sousa eventually overcoming an injury to finally take over Matheus Leal on the left. The short fullback we hired from Portimonense had a tendency to disappear in the big matches but ended the season with the squad's highest ratings (7.39).


Midfielders - HB and BBM

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On paper Bruno Paz and Paulo Estrela were big signings for these 2 positions, but I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with their contribution. Paz eventually just delved into the positive ratings (7.00) which is pretty good for a DM, but Estrela had a long period of disappointing form. He did score 9 goals but many of them were penalties. Others to shine in these 2 positions were Ronaldo, shipped off to China midseason; and January signing Gian Martins. Both got better ratings but the first got sold just as he had won the position, and Martins got injured then when he came back, Estrela had just entered a period of fleeting good form.


Wingers

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Gakpo strangely forgot his scoring boots that he left back last season, however he redeemed himself with a wonderful 15 assists, for a while it looked like our only scoring pattern was early crosses from Gakpo to Ennis. On the left we had a festival of injured wingers (we squandered a lot of money on Ojeda who is now useless after losing his pace to a big injury) and eventually Bruno Costa emerged, which was not on the plan as he's right-footed, but he was wonderful! He has also just signed permanently for us next season which is brilliant news.


Trequartista

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Few things satisfy me more in FM than watching a player get double digits goals and assists in the same season - proof that my concepts of having versatile universal attackers that can both create and score, are working. Xadas was a bit of a all-or-nothing player, capable of dominating a match and getting 9.9 ratings or going completely missing and getting a 5.0 rating, but he was devastating in the Europa League and later in the season developed an incredible partnership with Ennis. The 4 goals against Guimarães were particularly memorable.


Striker

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A misfit on paper for this system as he is little more than someone who runs very quickly, Ennis defied the theory having a magnificent breakthrough season with 25 goals, despite the more talented (on paper) Adam Hubert joining in January. I am delighted to announce that, just like Bruno Costa, he will be a permanent União player from next season onwards.


Prospects

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He is not our player and quite frankly was very disappointing on the pitch, but I feel Hubert deserves a screenshot, he is a monster in the making. I am debating whether to retain my faith in him and try to renew the loan for another year, or search the market to sign another forward instead.


Career progress table

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Great progress to be only 1 point off qualifying for the Champions League in your 2nd season in the top flight. With a few quality additions to the squad I can see a title challenge on the horizon. Shame about Medeiros who looks class. I really dislike training injuries as there is nothing you can do to try and prevent them. Hopefully, he makes a full recovery and can help in the 2nd half of next season. 

All the best

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12 hours ago, noikeee said:

And one thing I just realised FM Touch doesn't have... competition reputation changes. Which means I can't get the Portuguese league to become bigger than it is... damn. :( 

Oh no. That's a biggy for me. That's rubbish. Glad to have you found it and reported. :thup:

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Pre-season 2021/2022


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Yet another major squad revolution. After our highly profittable season last year, we now had a warchest of 6M€ and it was inevitable we would attack the transfer market.

To make way for the endless new faces, we sold a few players, many below their real price, but it's telling that we can still make okay sums of money with the unwanted faces now, when this would've been impossible in previous seasons. Some were just temporarily loaned out because either I was unable to sell them, or there's a chance I might want them back in the future.

On new faces, there's 13 of them, plus Bruno Costa and Niall Ennis now join permanently after being here the past 2 seasons on loan:

 

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This former Benfica English winger is one of the standouts on paper, with a transfer market value of 8.5M€, now the highest in the squad. We got him on a free, he appears to be extraordinarily good running past people  (amazing dribbling+flair+agility+acceleration+pace+technique) but I'm not entirely sure the rest of his game is quite as complete. A very exciting talent.

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This versatile left-footed man who can play on either wing or as AMC, was another of the big signings, however having broken his ankle as soon as he joined the club, I am afraid he will lose valuable pace and that was already a relative weakness. If the injury doesn't ruin him we have a pretty good creative player, but if it does he might get relegated to a secondary role.

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It's not every day you poach one of Barcelona's prospects on a free! The teenage Spaniard seems a huge talent in the making for the left wing, however there does seem to be a few weakness, pace is okay but not outstanding, not a great finisher, a bit selfish, too one-footed. Nevertheless I am surprised Barça let him go, he's got still a lot of untapped potential and a great personality to develop it.

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One of 3 midfielders we signed(!), he was the first to join, I expected him to be a minor upgrade on Paulo Estrela for BBM - but then I found two even better players...

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I decided not to renew Hubert's loan and try to sign one of several South American promising strikers. But then after negotiations with a few players, who were all just a little too expensive and with too many downsides, I found out about this Portuguese 18yo and went for him instead. He is not quite the elite superstriker we search but is an exciting talent nonetheless, scouts/staff don't see many hidden weaknesses (consistency, injury proneness etc). I think he can rival Ennis for the place upfront.

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Another guy bought from Guimarães' B team and another who turned out to be a 2nd option, after I passed up on a South African keeper with lots of talent but very high eccentricity. Cândido Castro seems a bit average but at the age of 19 he will improve and can be a good enough backup keeper for now.

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One of my favourite signings, this Peruvian CB is aged just 19, probably good enough to hold a place in the starting 11 straight away, and has the potential to improve loads.

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The other young CB I hired, he comes from South Africa but has less potential, is a little slower and has awful passing which is alarming for our playing style. He was worth the gamble at a cheap price, though.

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With Sporting unwilling to renew Thierry Correia's loan without an extortionate monthly fee, I poached another of Benfica's RBs instead. Alex seems perhaps a touch less reliable than the starter Tomás Tavares (also from Benfica, but still on loan), but is probably a little better going forward. Either way we have superb cover for the position.

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Our 2nd MC signing comes on loan from Porto. Has pretty much all the upsides of Miguel Luis, can tackle a little better and is much better in the air. I loaned out Paulo Estrela to make way for him, however something came outside of the plan later - an even better MC showed up on the transfer market... Therefore Baró might just end up having to cover for DM instead.

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We've reached such a high level we're loaning PSG players now. Produced in Ajax's youth ranks, that makes him a perfect fit for our IWB role on the left as he is such a complete player, can also play quite well as a technically gifted CB.

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The 2nd player we get on loan from Porto this season is another hugely exciting winger. Though Chris Willock might just about be the better player for the RW slot, João Mário is almost as good with a very identical set of skills. We could even end up fielding both of them, one in each wing...

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And our final unscheduled signing is a Colombian wonderkid! We were stacked with players on the midfield but with such a talent available for just 600K€, there was no way I could pass him up. "Mercenary" personality is slightly concerning but I think we have a star in the making here.


Currently planned starting 11:

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For all the signings, the best 11 on paper is still very similar to last year's, with Bakker, Flores, Willock and Martínez being the new faces. The difference here is the huge upgrade in depth, and above all the upgrade in potential. We're relying on less and less loanees now, and starting to hire promising youngsters that can develop a lot and bag a big profit for the club in transfer fees in the future.


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The usual 6-0 and 9-1 wins in the pre-season friendlies. We have a busy August coming up with a surprising 5 league fixtures, home to Tondela is the first match.

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14 hours ago, pheelf said:

Great progress to be only 1 point off qualifying for the Champions League in your 2nd season in the top flight. With a few quality additions to the squad I can see a title challenge on the horizon. Shame about Medeiros who looks class. I really dislike training injuries as there is nothing you can do to try and prevent them. Hopefully, he makes a full recovery and can help in the 2nd half of next season. 

All the best

Eh I don't know about the title. Benfica ran away with it quite comfortably last year and they're hiring some scary players. I would like to reach the CL this year, it seems possible given that we would've qualified without that final day 93rd minute goal (!) but I'm not aiming for anything more than any kind of noticeable progress, it can even be on other competitions, I'd love to break past the semi-finals and win the League Cup for example. The extra depth we have now, leads me to think we can start challenging better on several fronts at once.

12 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Oh no. That's a biggy for me. That's rubbish. Glad to have you found it and reported. :thup:

Yeah that really sucks. On the other hand FMT has felt **** easy for me, largely thanks to the fog of war being off which means I could easily search for Latin American wonderkids... so a little handicap in a fixed Portuguese league reputation is okay for a short-ish career, I guess.

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August 2022


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We loaned out Gian Martins. Not the deal we wanted for a player we put some decent cash in as recently as January, but okay, we are stacked in midfield right now.


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I think we've recovered well this month, from what was a poor opening day - losing at home to recently promoted Tondela really was dire. We've slowly gotted ourselves up to a rhythm since, with progressively better and better results. Beating Braga on injury time was very rewarding and then we looked comfortable vs Chaves.

I've figured out now what the hell is up with the funky scheduling: it's the Qatar World Cup year. Sigh. We have 3 Europa League matches in a week next month... speaking of which, we got drawn with Roma, Olympiacos and Qarabag.


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7 hours ago, noikeee said:

Yeah that really sucks. On the other hand FMT has felt **** easy for me, largely thanks to the fog of war being off which means I could easily search for Latin American wonderkids... so a little handicap in a fixed Portuguese league reputation is okay for a short-ish career, I guess.

Did you turn off the FoF or is it automatically turned off? 

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16 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

Did you turn off the FoF or is it automatically turned off? 

I think it isn't an available option by default, but then you can get it after winning your first match or signing your first player or something daft like that. But then you'd need to start a new career.

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September 2022

 

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A month where we just slightly overdosed on Europa League fixtures went... pretty well? Winning in Rome with a late goal was awesome, destroying Olympiacos even more awesome. We're already through from the group and haven't even played Qarabag yet. The bad news was a dismal League Cup performance in which we lost to Varzim from the league below us.

October has an even more crammed calendar with 8 matches... sigh. And we face Benfica (for the cup), Sporting and Porto (for the league).

 

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Phenomenal progress, here, you all but smashed through the 3rd division barrier, and proceeded to give União an historic Portuguese Cup win (which would be a classic for the ages, if it was actual football), good first Europa campaign too. I can only say, keep up the good work... and an eye on the other Ronaldo xD

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