[FM 21] Aussie Football!

[Sonic Youth]

Lots going on, with some big decisions to make. Transfers look huge for this ACL run.

Congrats on getting through the Quarters, and got my fingers crossed that your plans for the Semi’s go as planned.

[Butlee]

28 September 2022

Melbourne Victory - Asian Champions League Semi-Finals

We embark on a bit of pre-season maintenance in preparation for the biggest matches in the club's history!

Transfer Signings

I'm just going to put a little preface on this - the signings we've made are actually unable to play in the ACL KO stages. I didn't realise we wouldn't get another registration phase.

See, ACL needs you to register before 21 June, since the KO rounds start early July. The Australian transfer window runs from the 26th of June - which is the earliest we could have possibly signed someone as we can't register them before then; and since the game auto-sacks anyone who doesn't get registered on arrival there's just no way we could have somehow picked up a player, registered him and kept him going into the new A-League season.

I'll list off our signings and some notes here, but it'll be annoying continuing the ACL without the new players.

 

#1 - Daniel Arzani

In real life Daniel is probably the Australian with the highest naturally gifted skill, bar none. 
And I don't say that lightly. I was as sceptical as anybody when I first saw him pulling on a Melbourne City jersey at 17yrs. The local pundits get a bit too exited about every single kid, and they all air their bias loudly - so you can never tell if 'the next big thing' from Melbourne is a real worldie, or if he's just done something good once that some sports reporter liked and now hails him as the best thing since sliced dingo meat!

But on this occasion they were right. Arzani has some of the most beautiful touches on the ball and he's exciting and dynamics and he loves to run at players. If you ever saw Harry Kewell play - that's the style of this guy. Unfortunately he's suffered a lot of injury troubles - missing almost his entire 2 seasons on-loan to Celtic (from Manchester City - that's right, those ones). He's been trying to repair his career in Scandinavia. At the recent Olympics he was only half-fit and was still by far the best young talent on the park.

Which means in FM he's not half as promising as I think he is in real life. "But", that's comparing him to a world-class-star level. To see him as a Free Agent and desperate for First XI footy - he's a shoe-in for best player at the club, even at age 23. We signed him up for 3 years and I'll be amazed if he wasn't sold within 1.

He likes playing out on the left and cutting in on his right boot, but we've got another plan for him - the MCR Mezzala role. He should be able to immitate Castro's performances, but with a touch more pace.

 

#2 - Cristian Ganea

I had my eye on Cristian before we decided to let Butterfield go. We've seen in both seasons how impactful the wingback roles are for our team. Traore has been immense on the left and Cisse came in and showed us how a bit of pace and flair can be just as exciting. Traore is 32 now, and I feel he was losing his pace and athleticism. Ganea is a distinct step up so it was a no-brainer to invest here.

Obviously Ganea is on the left. He's got a bit more pace, he can shoot and take some freekicks and he's just generally come from better leagues and will kill it down here.

Our other two signings were Jack Clisby and Kearyn Baccus. I may have mentioned Kearyn's brother, Keanu, as a prospective signing. Both were at Western Sydney for a while as young prospects, but Kearyn randomly took a job in South African (they're both Durban-born). At the time I felt he was the better player, though upon returning to Australia I'm not really sure that's the case. Either way Kearyn is a hard-worker and I wanted to make sure we had some B2B coverage in midfield. 
Clisby's been around a lot of A-League clubs. We've spoken in the past about recycling A-League players - that's all we've done here. I don't think he's anywhere near as good as Susnjar, but he should give some cover at left back or centre back as needed.

As mentioned, it's bittersweet signing Arzani who I'm a fan of, and really feeling like we've got all parts of this team firing (there's even a case for Paulsen to be ahead of Acton in goal now!), only to realise we can't put them together for the biggest match of our career!
 

vs Suwon Bluewings

Suwon have been up and down as a big Korean club for a while now. I think the added Samsung sponsorship likely brings added pressure to turn this into one of the more consistent top teams.

They have been playing 1 up front and that really suits us. With 3 in central midfield and a DM, my biggest concern is sides putting 2 up top behind all our middies and playing direct. But if it's 1 striker and a midfield battle - that we're up for!

And we'll cut to the chase - we won that first leg. We thumped them 4-1 and built up a near-insurmountable away lead!

But the game was still fairly interesting for the spectator. One thing I love about football is that each country has somewhat of it's own style. I know in modern football that identity can be less significant, but a lot of us would still expect the Brazilians to play expressive football and the Italians to play a more pragmatic style. At a club level in Asia, Aussie clubs are far more combative against the more technical & structured sides from Korea or Japan, and the high flair & unpredictability from some of the Middle-Eastern sides. 

 

In this first semi-final Suwon moved the ball around well early, but as the game evolved they struggled to play at that intensity and keep the ball away from our press. In midfield especially we weren't giving them the kind of room they were clearly used to. It cost us a few cards to keep that under wraps, but it was worth it for pushing them back to their defense line over and over again. 

Offensively the stylistic different also showed. We played football in different areas. In Australia we find a lot of space just outside the central channel - think of the area's our MCR Mezzala moves into - and we play a lot of ball into the box in those dangerous wider areas. Suwon were good at keeping those spaces shut, and our passing game adapted. We moved the ball at angles across the centre of the park, and had to resort to some chips and flicks to mix up the attacking passes we were trying to make.

And overall it's just really interesting to step back and reflect how that impacted your side. Guys like Rojas and Mueanta & our wingbacks are just a touch technically better than most people around them and their greatest contributions aren't from being superstars - it's just from doing the same things as everyone else, only a bit better. But against the structured Suwon and their 4-5-1 those players really struggled. Instead it paved the way for Brimmer and Kirdar - maybe not the most complete players, but they are great ball players. They like spotting the killer pass and breaking the game open that way. Another player who made an impact was Patrick Wood. He's really coming into his own in this False Nine role because his pace and movement combines well and he gives us that little bit of X-factor by making runs into the right places.

Overall it came together really nicely for us - we scored a header just after half time and that was the wind out of their sails.

With the second leg, we were faced with a different challenge - no less than 8 players were sitting on 1-card-away-from-suspension. But we also had this 4-away-goal win... so how many players can we rest and get away with?

Turns out the answer is 'a lot'. We didn't dominate like we did in the first fixture, but we were far too clinical and creative and took a couple of good goals.

This is the sort of thing that's happening now. Kirdar's curling that one home from 22 yards - and if he wasn't looking to do that, he's easily poking that ball through for Toure in front of him (looks to be still onside from this angle... maybe?). 
Birkan Kirdar is absolutely in love with that MC Central role, just on "Central Midfielder - Attack". I thought Brimmer was doing well, but Kirdar's making it his own. 

And we're pushing Brimmer into Butterfield's old Box-to-Box role and he's enjoying that too. So it's all coming together. 

Best thing about the 2nd leg is that only Laws got a yellow card so we're all good for.....

 

It's actually a two-legged Grand Final, but this is the first one. At least we've got a break in the A-League in between the two Finals.

As for Al-Sadd Sports Club, they are one of the Qatari clubs coming along. They're managed by Xavi - you may have heard of him? 130+ Spanish caps and all!
They don't have a single player paid less than our highest paid player, haha!

But that doesn't make them impossible - we have some very good players of our own.

 

Of course if they'd let me register a couple of new players, that'd be nice.......

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Butlee