Winning Europa League with Minion - Possible?

[phd_angel]

Any chance I can win Europa with Maribor?  Have you ever won UEFA or Europa with a minion? I'd love to heard your story. Thanks!

[Freakiie]

Everything is possible. Question is just how much time it's going to take. Trying to win an EL season 1 is highly unlikely (especially with some of the absurd names that drop in from the CL), a couple seasons in though? Pretty easy to build a squad good enough to compete without having to be an absolute tactical guru by that point. As long as you continue reaching the group stages the financial gain from that alone will generally skyrocket the budget of these smaller clubs and once you have some budget you just gotta go on a shopping trip to Brazil.

[FrazT]

It should be unlikely but it will be possible given a long enough time to build a squad.

[sdx15]

At some point you'll definitely be able win the UEL, but there's a problem with those smaller leagues. As you'll certainly become a local powerhouse, you'll start winning titles with ease and regularly qualify for the Champions League. And then, when your squad becomes good enough to win the UEL, you'll probably be good enough to pass your UCL group as well. You can always tank yourself into the UEL, but that would probably take some fun out of your save.

[Oliver Roland]

I managed Hajduk Split for 7 seasons and was able to get to the final twice. Both lost but the run was great.

First was in 2022/2023 when I got promoted from group with Spurs and Nice. Then got quite lucky with one match first and second knockout round (Away Ferencvaros, home Leipzig), And then se beat Hibernian, Legia and Lost to Arsenal in final.

Second time was more difficult with Monaco, Lyon or Freiburg on our way but we were much stronger (I was focusing on developing young players, connected to Split or Croatia but before this season I bought few great players like Rekik, Botheim or Satriano).

The save was fun, not so challenging in Croatia but in Europe. I was able to sell young players for great money and then buy them back because they usually didn't play there.. 

I think it is possible to win EL or EKL (played EKL once in first season and got to quarterfinal) if you try to sign the best players available. I was focusing to have se much homegrown as I could but still was able to compete well. Good luck with your save!

[phd_angel]

2 hours ago, Oliver Roland said:

I managed Hajduk Split for 7 seasons and was able to get to the final twice. Both lost but the run was great.

First was in 2022/2023 when I got promoted from group with Spurs and Nice. Then got quite lucky with one match first and second knockout round (Away Ferencvaros, home Leipzig), And then se beat Hibernian, Legia and Lost to Arsenal in final.

Second time was more difficult with Monaco, Lyon or Freiburg on our way but we were much stronger (I was focusing on developing young players, connected to Split or Croatia but before this season I bought few great players like Rekik, Botheim or Satriano).

The save was fun, not so challenging in Croatia but in Europe. I was able to sell young players for great money and then buy them back because they usually didn't play there.. 

I think it is possible to win EL or EKL (played EKL once in first season and got to quarterfinal) if you try to sign the best players available. I was focusing to have se much homegrown as I could but still was able to compete well. Good luck with your save!

Thanks. This is amazing. I guess your club became very rich, making huge amounts of money from Europa matches!

[Oliver Roland]

2 hours ago, phd_angel said:

Thanks. This is amazing. I guess your club became very rich, making huge amounts of money from Europa matches!

Yes, there was a lot of € in a bank but I made most of it by selling players. 

I tried to keep the best but when they really wanted to leave I sold them. As we were getting better, the offers became much bigger (record was 30M €).

The only issue with this was quality of other Croatian teams in europe. One season I could go straight to CL group but the coefficient dropped quickly after this. I think it will be much worse in Slovenia.

[zaur0n^]

I won EL and EC with Ranheim. 7-8-9 seasons in. Won with fc Andorra too. It's not hard. But you need more than 3 seasons. Won CL with Rosenborg too in other versions. Even won EC with obolon kiev

[mikcheck]

10 minutos atrás, zaur0n^ disse:

I won EL and EC with Ranheim. 7-8-9 seasons in. Won with fc Andorra too. It's not hard. But you need more than 3 seasons. Won CL with Rosenborg too in other versions. Even won EC with obolon kiev

What should be harder in your opinion or what's the reasons you think it made you win that more or less easely? The fact that AI have poor team building? The money you had in the bank?

[trevjim]

Definitely possible over time

Edited June 26, 2022 by trevjim

[zaur0n^]

1 hour ago, mikcheck said:

What should be harder in your opinion or what's the reasons you think it made you win that more or less easely? The fact that AI have poor team building? The money you had in the bank?

You become champions in your top league in about 3 season (depends on your starting league). Then you maybe get to the CL group stage every year so you get alot of cash. Then you sign up prospects that deliver from the get go if you are in a poor league and sell the for much profit. Then u upgrade facilities while you dominate your league. League gets better reputation so you can sign better players. You get better qualifications places in the coefficient table. Your prospects will always outgrow your club and get angry. Try to hang on to them 1-2 seasons after they are angry and sell them high. AI team building is baaaad. I need to force other teams in my league to buy/loan players to get the league better. Sell them low so we help them qualify for Europe. As long as you keep an eye on your squad long term you will dominate and win. Don't have 1 player as striker who scores alot then suddenly he wants to move and your stuck with a 2* striker.

[Freakiie]

2 hours ago, mikcheck said:

What should be harder in your opinion or what's the reasons you think it made you win that more or less easely? The fact that AI have poor team building? The money you had in the bank?

Since you generally don't have the lower ranked European leagues active a lot of the clubs you play in the qualification rounds are from inactive leagues, which are inherently much worse than their counterparts in active leagues (heck, I got my youth player only Icelandic team out of the CL group stages in a couple seasons when I did a save with only Iceland as active league, beating Real Madrid for first spot in the group), so you tend to massively over perform in the qualifying rounds, which means you very quickly get into the rounds that make proper money, with a team that shouldn't be there.

Then, with a bit of money there's just so much cheap talent lying around if you look at the right places, that will be more than happy to move to a country they probably never heard off before and making profit on young players in FM is an absolute breeze. With development slowed down in FM22 it might be a bit harder, although it should be fine as long as you play your youngsters. Once you have this first batch of youngsters you've got the snowball running and at that point it's just a matter of selling your current youngsters for big bucks, buying better ones for a fraction of the price and repeating the process.

[phd_angel]

2 hours ago, zaur0n^ said:

I won EL and EC with Ranheim. 7-8-9 seasons in. Won with fc Andorra too. It's not hard. But you need more than 3 seasons. Won CL with Rosenborg too in other versions. Even won EC with obolon kiev

This is really awesome. But weren't you approached by much larger clubs inviting you for interviews?... Also, if an obscure club can with the Champions league (I'm not talking about Europa, but Champions), then FM is a bit meaningless, no?... Congrats anyways.

[zaur0n^]

1 hour ago, phd_angel said:

This is really awesome. But weren't you approached by much larger clubs inviting you for interviews?... Also, if an obscure club can with the Champions league (I'm not talking about Europa, but Champions), then FM is a bit meaningless, no?... Congrats anyways.

Yeah but I always reject offers because that's not my aim.. I get championship, low pl, mid placed teams in European leagues but why should I? if I get bored 10-15 seasons in with the one club I might move. I tried building nation in India till I found out that India has two leagues and one they don't have license to, so the inactive clubs in the other league has much higher reputation and takes Asian CL places. I gave it up!

[zaur0n^]

3 hours ago, phd_angel said:

This is really awesome. But weren't you approached by much larger clubs inviting you for interviews?... Also, if an obscure club can with the Champions league (I'm not talking about Europa, but Champions), then FM is a bit meaningless, no?... Congrats anyways.

What about Crvena Zvezda (red star) in 1990/91? Nottingham Forest? Many "obscure"/small town clubs have won CL/EL etc

[Spurs08]

On 27/06/2022 at 02:34, zaur0n^ said:

What about Crvena Zvezda (red star) in 1990/91? Nottingham Forest? Many "obscure"/small town clubs have won CL/EL etc

That's back in the era when a) it was only one team per league, b) the league's were much more equal. These days it's a big achievment for the likes of Crvena Zvezda to even reach the Group Stage, it would be close to a Leicester-level shock for them to win the whole thing.