The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge

[Daddy]

Back to Switzerland, first time for 23 but had a few goes in 22, and with a club I tried and enjoyed but unfortunately stalled out. (Sorry for that poor sentence quality. It's late.)

I didn't get the club vision capture, but it doesn't matter. Have to stay up or save is dead. I'm not too worried about it season one.

Sticking with my sponsor, but if things go poorly I'll get a new one.

[libbyshuss]

 

Season Summary

Promotion as champions!!! We started with 10 straight wins, i couldn't believe it. We were so far ahead! After christmas though our form became much more erratic and we were almost caught by Foggia and Palermo. In the end we got our lowest points total in the league so far but it didn't matter. We were champions! Serie B here we come!

Players

This is what worries me. Our first season in Serie B and we'll be predominantly youth based. Part of our erratic form was due to this happening just after Christmas:-

Still easily our best player at 35. I didn't think I'd ever see him again, and I was right as he retired only a few weeks later. It did mena i had to move de Luca (now 34!) to left wing and promote Marco Corrente 24A to the first team a season or two early. He went up front and scored 14 in 20. Not bad!

 

Youth

An excellent golden generation intake, but only two elite talents! I need more!

Lost another two players poached as well. Ferrucci looks particularly annoying!

 

All-Time Youth Records

Romagnoli 24F just shows how poor my legacy keepers were! Normally he'd be nowhere near the first team but he was our best keeper at 15!

Career

The biggest worry is that Serie B has come too soon and I'll be sacked by christmas. The boards definitely seem more trigger happy than they have before. I have a feeling we'll be starting favourites to go down. Avellino ran away with Serie C last season and finished bottom by a long way!

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by libbyshuss

[Nottingham Forest]

These are probably my two best youngsters to have progressed from nothing to something in the game. Although most of our squad now is academy players.

Idrissa Dembélé YP1c Intake

Idrissa Dembélé YP1c Now

Mostafa Yossry YP2d Intake

Mostafa Yossry YP2d Now

[jepze]

 

Jepze - Knattspyrnufélagið Þróttur - Season 2025

Squad | Transfers | Finances

We're donw with our first season in both Europe and in the best league in Iceland. It was and season with up and downs, but a good moneyflow into the club. We got another trophy this season, but it doesn't mean a lot, because it was the Super Cup in Iceland. In the league, we fought for both the championship and the relegation battle. With 5 games to go, we were in 6th position and 9 teams could win the league and 10 team could still go down. We were in a dine places and finished at 8th this year. In the cup, one of them was bad, where the other round was a good run. Again in the primary cup, we got to the final, but unfortunally, we lost it this time, so no Europe for us next season. When we talk about Europe, we won the first stage, but lost in the second one. At the end of the season, we was on 3M DKK on the good side, but the training facilities got a downgrade, where we used all our money to upkeep it again.

Spoiler

Mjólkurbikarinn is the primary cup in Iceland, we got all the way to the final again this time, but we lost to Leiknit Keykjavik from the second tier 0-1, so no Conference League for us next year.

Deildabikar is the other cup we played in, and this year, we got a midplace finish again with 2 wins out of 5.

Meistarakeppni karla is the Super Cup, which we won after the cup win last year. It was a 2-1 victory over Valur Reykjavik.

Europa Conference League was our first European Competition ever in the club. In the first round, we got through with 4-3 on aggregate against FC Sfîntul Gheorghe from Moldova, befor we lost in the next round to FK DAC 1904 Dunajská Streda from Slovakia, 1-2 on aggregate.

Now to the interesting thing. Our youth intake. We got an excellent preview, but the players is not good enough for the first team right now.

Youth preview.

Spoiler

Youth intake:

Spoiler

Trophy cabinet

Inkasso-deild karla - (2024)

Mjólkurbikarinn - (2024)

Meistarakeppni karla - (2025)

[JAwtunes]

9 hours ago, Barnsley said:

has anyone got a link or template for these fancy spreadsheets people are using

I can share mine. You would also need a filter I use to take player data out of the game. It's written in Excel2007, I'm cheap!, and has one small macro but this can be worked around if you want.

It's reasonably complex but should be manageable if you're ok with spreadsheets.

It includes an automated .Inc name generator which is handy for this challenge.

[sc91]

@XaW @darren1983

Gents, can this thread be used for FM 22 as well? 

[thomas_e]

18 hours ago, syemo said:

So what advice would you give to someone to try this youth challenge out. What league's are the best etc

I would advice you to try the challenge in a fairly "easy" country if you are new to the challenge. Easy doesn't mean easy to complete the challenge, but in a league that is pretty straight forward when it comes to club status, youth rules etc. Starting with amateur clubs brings an extra challenge, but maybe not suitable when it's your first attempt at the challenge. Italy, Holland and Germany are good candidates as the teams in the lowest division are professional and the clubs have pretty decent room for staff. 

Other random tips from me (many might disagree with some of these, it's just how I play this challenge). 

 

Club

- Focus on getting improvements from the board. Focus especially on "Junior Coaching" and "Junior Recruitment" as well as getting more staff. Upgrading facilities are important, but they cost a lot of money, so make sure improvements dont put you in the red. Bad finances often leads to the board accepting bids for your players without you being able to intervene.

- Get as many affiliated clubs as you can, from as many different countries that you can, but make sure that the co-operation between you and Club X includes the benefit that youngsters from their club can come through your academy. If that is not an option you can always make another agreement and easily re-negotiate the deal some months later. 

- It's a good idea to pick a club that is fairly close to a big city. Remote areas get worse youth intakes. 

- Try to ask for improvements when your team is in good form and winning games. The board is more generous with you at those times. 

 

Staff & Contracts

- When getting staff you of course have to focus on the attributes regarding coaching, but always do your best to sign personell that has high "Determination" attribute. This is absolutely crucial when it comes to your Head of Youth Development. Determination is far more important than any other skill for your HOYD and high determination usually means good personality (professional, driven, determined etc.). 

- Fitness and Goalkeeper coaches signed for the first team also train players in the U19 side. In many ways that means a fitness/goalkeeper coach is a "double" signing, so prioritize them in the beginning of a save. 

- Push for coaching badges. This will improve your stats, but also your status and reputation, reducing the chances of the players turning on you.

- Get a technical director as they are great in organising coaching badges for all your staff. You dont have to care about getting a good one in the beginning as they are quite expensive. 

- Always try to include a clause in a players contract that the club has the option to extent the contract for X number of years. 

- When you move up the leagues you get more money and since you're not using anything on transfers you get a very healty economy. This makes contract negotiations a lot smoother as you can provide good wages. Re-sign players on good contracts almost as early as possible. Once a player gets set on leaving there is no going back, so try to renew contracts as often as you can when your economy lets you! 

 

Training & Youth Development

- Do not let your assistant handle training! I know many people do, and many have probably completed the challenge without touching training, but the AI doesn't do a good job with it. They suck at handling fatigue and they keep trying to improve player traits that have absolutely no meaning behind it. This doesn't mean that you have to make your own schedules, there are some great ones out there that you can easily download. I use a separate traning schedule for my U19 side that only focuses on development. 

- Assign individual training to youngsters to improve their weaknesses rather than trying to improve already good stats. 

- You should as early as possible start to work on individual player traits. The most important ones relates to passing. Have your coaches teach players with bad passing attributes to take less risk and the skillful passers to take more risk. It's also a good idea to teach fast players to try to run into open space and play the ball past the defender. 

- Do not loan out players before they are 18 years old unless they are so good that they can play for a side in the same division as your own team or the division below. If you loan out to a team in the division below your own team, that should only be done after you have gotten promoted at least once, so the division is a playable league. The reason you should be careful with loaning out players when they are young is that training is more important than matches for a 16-17 year old. 

- Promote players to the first team when they are ready start or to be part of a rotational system. Being on the bench and getting 15 minutes every game for a 19 year old provides basically zero attribute improvement. 

- On youth intakes you should sign all the best players coming through (of course!), but always sign anyone with good determination skill, they always have the ability to develop great.

- Fine players when they are performing bad, this is especially important with academy players, it's a great way to improve their determination and work rate skill. A warning for performing at 6,5 rating, 1 days wage for performing between 6,4 and 6,3 and 1 weeks wage for performing at 6,2 or less. If they complain about it, ignore. Keep fining for bad performances. 

- Don't be afraid to retrain a player to a new position! Full backs often make for great central midfielders, especially ball winning midfielders. 

- Try to retrain center backs to full backs or central midfielders if they are very short. FM has a tendency to produce quite a lot of re-gens that doesn't have the height to be a centre back. Not everyone can be Roberto Ayala. 

- If you dont have 2nd team or U23 team, remember to arrange weekly friendlies so players that match training. If your U19 side competed in a U19 league they dont need more match training than that. Training is what matters for them. 

 

Tactics

- It's a good idea to sign a HOYD that has a fairly similar preffered tactical approach as yourself. If you prefer a very direct counter attacking football it might be a bad idea to sign a HOYD that prefers a slow tempo tiki-taka. The HOYD will reflect the skills of players coming through. This is more for the later stages in the save, beggers cant be choosers!! 

- Implement a tactic that suits your players, but if you are planning to build a tactic that you stick with, as I often do, don't make it too complicated. An assymetric 3-5-2 or a crazy tiki taka might look good in the moment, but remember that you have to rely on academy players coming in every year and replacing players. You can't rely on getting wing backs or false 9's through the academy! 

- Fining players (as mentioned before) improves their determination, team work and work rate stats. Late game you usually have a team with superior attributes for those three in the league, your tactic should reflect that as you will never have a good enough team in technical and physical aspects to compete with the best of the best. A tactic that focuses on pressing (doesn't mean high press) and high tempo is usually the smarter choice. 

- FM produce more strikers with pace than aerial strength. Late game tactics should take that into account. 

 

 

This turned into a lot longer post than I thought, hopefully there are one or two things in here that helps! 

Edited November 11, 2022 by thomas_e

[the_hdk]

Kaf Sin Kaf

Season 31/32 (9th) - Süper Lig

Transfers / Players

Not our best seaosn but still good. 70 goals scored and second spot behind Gala is good. They ware unreachable this season so no shame here. I really like that supports seems to come to the stadium much more often. We improved training to its max and finally got one improvement for youth. Maybe new President is more inclined to youth?

Arsenal winning the Champions League is quite special, especially as they won it against Barca in the final. PEDRI winning the Ballon d'Or is also nice change from the usual suspects. Cup was bad we lost against Lig 1 team.

 

Well have we ever received a bad intake? Amazing intakes in Turkiye!

GÜLERYÜZ seems like the best of the intake. Finally teh spot is taken by a striker!. Amazing determination, great work rate. Really decent speed, just bad finishing. He needs work on that.

 

[The7Striker]

25 minutos atrás, sc91 disse:

@XaW @darren1983

Gents, can this thread be used for FM 22 as well? 

Yes. Just say its in FM22 and its all good. 

@thomas_e long but an awesome post to help others. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by The7Striker

[Winski]

FK Viktoria Žižkov

 

So, after my recent sack in Sweden, I decided to go to Czech Republic. I already played (shortly) with this club during the Beta version of the game, and really liked it. I saw that @Koetzer chose the same club recently, so I hope he don't mind that I'll try my luck as well at Viktoria Zizkov.
It's quite a big club, very decent facilities to start with, and some nice money. And it's fantastic to see former wonderkid Václav Kadlec at the club!
Some other nice detail is the "develop players using the club's youth system" expectation. Perfect!

 

[sc91]

35 minutes ago, The7Striker said:

Yes. Just say its in FM22 and its all good. 

@thomas_e long but an awesome post to help others. 

Lovely. I refunded FM23 but have the bug for FM still.

[darren1983]

8 hours ago, SkiIIs said:

Season 1 2023/24 - Tampico Madero - Mexico Expansion League

I chose this team as they had a large following and cash in the bank, started with 3.5m balance which we were able to use to improve facilities and upgrade coaching badges.

The team was pretty solid with a couple of stars but we are very light in central midfield meaning i started with a 4-2-2-2 formation as we had no DM's. I think this really shocked the team as even though we would be the better team for most games, we just couldnt notch the wins and concede quite regularly. In the opening stage we ended up finishing mid table after a really slow start, we were then knocked out in the first game of the prelim round.  In the closing stage we were better as the team were getting used to how I want them to play and we finished 5th, We won the first game of prelim which put us in the quarters, we unfortunately drew the team that came first in the closing stage Venados.  First leg at home we won 2 - 0 in a dominate performance.  We then went 1 - 0 ahead away but then bottled it and copped 3 early in the second half.  To my despair the league standings are the differentiator if the legs are tied!

 

Upgrades:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Intake was ok, nothing really exciting me to be honest. I signed them all as we literally had no players in the u20 squad, Luna could become decent at left back

Come end of the year we got a huge cash boost from sponsorships, 1.3m for this leve is nuts!  We also got 870k of 'other income' at the same time to put the balance back to 2.8m which ill look to spend next year.

We were also given the option of starting our own B team which i instinctively approved.  @darren1983and @XaWi assume this is ok to move players in and out of the B team?  I havent done so thus far in season 2 but want the ok before I do, cheers

Yeah moving between B team is fine, if it does show as a transfer just remind us it's your B team

1 hour ago, sc91 said:

@XaW @darren1983

Gents, can this thread be used for FM 22 as well? 

Yeah it's fine to use older versions, a couple years back I did try and make it just one big thread for the challenge but people wanted a yearly one, but as long as you remind me it's FM 22 then no issue posting progress in here. 

[Sn00gle]

      
Kotwica Kołobrzeg - 2023/24

Squad - League - Finances - Transfers 

Quick update of first run with defensive counter tactic didn't work well from start. 20 matches with 20 points, 35 is safe place and survival. As started thinking that Im bad with tactic and tried something from internet to check. Defenitely new one 4-4-2 suits my team better so got to safe place and ended league on 11th. In Polish Cup we straight away got Legia which is not possible to beat at this level and of course they got champ. Small improvment in Recruitment. Due to fail talks at start with unhappy players we relase 3 decent main players at the end of the season. Was unable to turn it out so..... Lets see what we got next season.

Intake of poor personalities, however we getting some sort of GK, ML and potencial nice DL and DM.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

[Redknapp_13]

Finally can start this challenge again. Decided to go to a smaller country (Isreal) and luckily a club with great conditions got promoted (reset date for Isreal is the 20th of June)

I will be managing Hapoel Ra'Aanana

Already pretty good facilities and a great club vision with "develop player using the clubs youth system"

The starting Squad is big and also looking decent and the media prediction is finishing 10th. Most of the contracts run only one year, so I hope it will be possible to prolonge some of them

 

 

For this great challenge, of course our manager has absolutely no experience

Let the fun (and the pain) begin!

Edited November 11, 2022 by Redknapp_13

[schnauzer]

12 hours ago, Daddy said:

A surprise promotion and then I don't get to finish the season. Seems a quick trigger fringer.

yeah I knew it was coming when the team had a draw in a friendly to a team playing in whatever the "Combined Counties D1" division is.

 

Taking a break from England. I'd like to try somewhere in Africa since I've never played there. I don't know enough about databases and what qualifies for the challenge. Depending on how the night goes I'll either look into that or go somewhere already in game. For now, off to RimWorld for some war crimes.

That's really unlucky man! I had a very similar situation where we (Dorchester) got promoted too soon but my board were clearly more forgiving as I got to carry on after being relegated. Once you're on a losing run in a division with players well above the level of your own it's so hard to turn it around  

[MadCatPT]

@thomas_e A very good post.

Some other tips would be to check the set pieces, some of them have too few people staying back, other have the wrong people, like your bricks for feet DM outside the area, and instead of picking a pass, recycling possession or shoot at goal he fails he first touch and the other team gets a free counter-attack, it's crossing to where your worst headers are or having the wrong crosser taking the set pieces.

We are intentionally handicapping ourselves to make for a more difficult and more appealing way to enjoy the game, so we should be sure that we don't have extra handicaps.

[fries]

3 hours ago, thomas_e said:

I would advice you to try the challenge in a fairly "easy" country if you are new to the challenge. Easy doesn't mean easy to complete the challenge, but in a league that is pretty straight forward when it comes to club status, youth rules etc. Starting with amateur clubs brings an extra challenge, but maybe not suitable when it's your first attempt at the challenge. Italy, Holland and Germany are good candidates as the teams in the lowest division are professional and the clubs have pretty decent room for staff. 

Other random tips from me (many might disagree with some of these, it's just how I play this challenge). 

 

Club

- Focus on getting improvements from the board. Focus especially on "Junior Coaching" and "Junior Recruitment" as well as getting more staff. Upgrading facilities are important, but they cost a lot of money, so make sure improvements dont put you in the red. Bad finances often leads to the board accepting bids for your players without you being able to intervene.

- Get as many affiliated clubs as you can, from as many different countries that you can, but make sure that the co-operation between you and Club X includes the benefit that youngsters from their club can come through your academy. If that is not an option you can always make another agreement and easily re-negotiate the deal some months later. 

- It's a good idea to pick a club that is fairly close to a big city. Remote areas get worse youth intakes. 

- Try to ask for improvements when your team is in good form and winning games. The board is more generous with you at those times. 

 

Staff & Contracts

- When getting staff you of course have to focus on the attributes regarding coaching, but always do your best to sign personell that has high "Determination" attribute. This is absolutely crucial when it comes to your Head of Youth Development. Determination is far more important than any other skill for your HOYD and high determination usually means good personality (professional, driven, determined etc.). 

- Fitness and Goalkeeper coaches signed for the first team also train players in the U19 side. In many ways that means a fitness/goalkeeper coach is a "double" signing, so prioritize them in the beginning of a save. 

- Push for coaching badges. This will improve your stats, but also your status and reputation, reducing the chances of the players turning on you.

- Get a technical director as they are great in organising coaching badges for all your staff. You dont have to care about getting a good one in the beginning as they are quite expensive. 

- Always try to include a clause in a players contract that the club has the option to extent the contract for X number of years. 

- When you move up the leagues you get more money and since you're not using anything on transfers you get a very healty economy. This makes contract negotiations a lot smoother as you can provide good wages. Re-sign players on good contracts almost as early as possible. Once a player gets set on leaving there is no going back, so try to renew contracts as often as you can when your economy lets you! 

 

Training & Youth Development

- Do not let your assistant handle training! I know many people do, and many have probably completed the challenge without touching training, but the AI doesn't do a good job with it. They suck at handling fatigue and they keep trying to improve player traits that have absolutely no meaning behind it. This doesn't mean that you have to make your own schedules, there are some great ones out there that you can easily download. I use a separate traning schedule for my U19 side that only focuses on development. 

- Assign individual training to youngsters to improve their weaknesses rather than trying to improve already good stats. 

- You should as early as possible start to work on individual player traits. The most important ones relates to passing. Have your coaches teach players with bad passing attributes to take less risk and the skillful passers to take more risk. It's also a good idea to teach fast players to try to run into open space and play the ball past the defender. 

- Do not loan out players before they are 18 years old unless they are so good that they can play for a side in the same division as your own team or the division below. If you loan out to a team in the division below your own team, that should only be done after you have gotten promoted at least once, so the division is a playable league. The reason you should be careful with loaning out players when they are young is that training is more important than matches for a 16-17 year old. 

- Promote players to the first team when they are ready start or to be part of a rotational system. Being on the bench and getting 15 minutes every game for a 19 year old provides basically zero attribute improvement. 

- On youth intakes you should sign all the best players coming through (of course!), but always sign anyone with good determination skill, they always have the ability to develop great.

- Fine players when they are performing bad, this is especially important with academy players, it's a great way to improve their determination and work rate skill. A warning for performing at 6,5 rating, 1 days wage for performing between 6,4 and 6,3 and 1 weeks wage for performing at 6,2 or less. If they complain about it, ignore. Keep fining for bad performances. 

- Don't be afraid to retrain a player to a new position! Full backs often make for great central midfielders, especially ball winning midfielders. 

- Try to retrain center backs to full backs or central midfielders if they are very short. FM has a tendency to produce quite a lot of re-gens that doesn't have the height to be a centre back. Not everyone can be Roberto Ayala. 

- If you dont have 2nd team or U23 team, remember to arrange weekly friendlies so players that match training. If your U19 side competed in a U19 league they dont need more match training than that. Training is what matters for them. 

 

Tactics

- It's a good idea to sign a HOYD that has a fairly similar preffered tactical approach as yourself. If you prefer a very direct counter attacking football it might be a bad idea to sign a HOYD that prefers a slow tempo tiki-taka. The HOYD will reflect the skills of players coming through. This is more for the later stages in the save, beggers cant be choosers!! 

- Implement a tactic that suits your players, but if you are planning to build a tactic that you stick with, as I often do, don't make it too complicated. An assymetric 3-5-2 or a crazy tiki taka might look good in the moment, but remember that you have to rely on academy players coming in every year and replacing players. You can't rely on getting wing backs or false 9's through the academy! 

- Fining players (as mentioned before) improves their determination, team work and work rate stats. Late game you usually have a team with superior attributes for those three in the league, your tactic should reflect that as you will never have a good enough team in technical and physical aspects to compete with the best of the best. A tactic that focuses on pressing (doesn't mean high press) and high tempo is usually the smarter choice. 

- FM produce more strikers with pace than aerial strength. Late game tactics should take that into account. 

 

 

This turned into a lot longer post than I thought, hopefully there are one or two things in here that helps! 

Great advices from @thomas_e. 

I would like to add a few points.

-          First, renew contracts. When you take over your club, you typically have a few days to renew expiring contracts. That is the number 1 priority when you start a new save. This is the only grown players you have until the youth intake players grow older, so you have to keep and work with them a few years.

-          Develop your staff. The Youth Academy Challenge is not only about developing players. You also have to develop your staff. Focus on hiring staff that are young, have a good personality and who have low level training license. Sending your staff on trainer courses will significantly increase their skills. In a few seasons, you will have more talented staff compared to jobless staff that are willing to sign with you.

-          Fit your tactic to your star players. You only have a limited pool of players, why you have to play to their strengths. If you have a great attacking left wing back and a great defensive right full back, you have to utilize that and play with some asymmetry. If you have 3 very talented strikers, you have to play with 3 at the front. You cannot adapt your squad to your tactic, so you must adapt your tactic to your squad.

-          Believe in the youth. If you have two equally good players on one position, play the younger. He will develop to a better player. It will maybe cost you something in the short run, but in the long run it will pay off.

-          Retrain positions. When you are established as a club you have to plan a few years ahead. If you don’t have e.g. a great right full back coming through and you know you will need that in the future, you have to be proactive. Maybe a young central defender, winger, or central midfielder can fill that position. Then retrain their position. A great tip is that you can change the youth or reserve teams starting 11 on the last day before each game. In that way you can make sure that the player gets game time in the new position.

-          Let your star player be angry. If a player is locked down on a long contract you don’t have to sell him even if he gets angry. If he is important for the team and you don’t have a replacement just decline too low bids and keep playing him. Eventually he will maybe forget about it. Just don’t promise to sell unless you actually are planning to do that.

-          Sell with clauses. Early on, it is a great idea to include sell-on-clauses and maybe try to delay the transfer date to after the season, if you have to sell an important young player. The sell-on-clause can gain you lot of money later on if he gets another transfer, or maybe you get the opportunity to sell the clause early for a great amount.

-          Rest players in times of congested program. If your team depth is very narrow, you can probably secure that the players are fit in times of a congested match program by resting the most important players for a half or a whole day between matches.

Edited November 11, 2022 by fries

[WhiteCat33]

12 hours ago, Daddy said:

Taking a break from England. I'd like to try somewhere in Africa since I've never played there. I don't know enough about databases and what qualifies for the challenge. Depending on how the night goes I'll either look into that or go somewhere already in game. For now, off to RimWorld for some war crimes.

Bummer on the sack, that brutal of a season is what has me scared about pushing Guiseley up too quickly into the football league.

I'm using one of "@Timo@" 73 created leagues for Luxembourg. I'm pretty sure any of theirs would qualify for the challenge as there is a real effort to replicate faithfully the real league structures as well as monetarily accurate payments. There are a good number of African nations in the list for you to explore. Most often you'll have a bottom league w/o relegation, so you'll have to take the last placed team after the sim season.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885983553

Edited November 11, 2022 by WhiteCat33

[Daddy]

1 hour ago, WhiteCat33 said:

I'm using one of "@Timo@" 73 created leagues for Luxembourg. I'm pretty sure any of theirs would be eledgible for the challenge as there is a real effort to replicate faithfully the real league structures as well as monetarily accurate payments. There are a good number of African nations in the list for you to explore. Most often you'll have a bottom league w/o relegation, so you'll have to take the last placed team after the sim season.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885983553

Ah cool thanks. I downloaded an Egypt one (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885974303). I may give that a try next assuming it's valid. 

[dominik4805]

 

Chavdar Etropole - 2023/2024 (Season 1) - Vtora Liga (2nd Division)

 

League Table

We did survive! After the first half of the season, we reached the 9th place and had a very solid second half. All of the other promoted teams will be relegated immediately again. All in all a good start to the adventure.

Youth Intake

A pretty solid intake with a nice amount of potential. Two of the prospects (Arsov and Kolev) went straight into the starting eleven, Granchov got a few appearances from the bench. I'm a little bit disappointed with the personalities, but I think with a professional HoYD this will improve within the next years.

Spoiler

Key players

Gushterov was the most important player of the squad. He scored 21 in 34 matches and was amazing. However, I'm a little bit worried because of his age, I hope he can perform well the next season and after that, we definitivly need a new striker.

Botev got the most assists of my players. He played very good as a winger, but I did expect him to get more scorer points.

Transfers

No transfers in, of course. We lost two rotation players with potential because of the amateur-contracts after promotion. Not much of a loss in quality, but squad depth is never a bad thing.

Next season

After a good first season I expect the next one to be a calm one. I hope we can avoid a relegation battle and implement a good amount of our youngsters.

 

[WhiteCat33]

2 minutes ago, Daddy said:

Ah cool thanks. I downloaded an Egypt one (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2885974303). I may give that a try next assuming it's valid. 

Tenshi is who made the tier 3 Luxembourg one I tried. Before you get too far I'd recommend checking the yellow card rules. In their Luxembourg database they had it set so after 2 yellow cards you got a game suspension for each yellow card. Timo has a more regular suspension structure

[Daddy]

12 minutes ago, WhiteCat33 said:

Tenshi is who made the tier 3 Luxembourg one I tried. Before you get too far I'd recommend checking the yellow card rules. In their Luxembourg database they had it set so after 2 yellow cards you got a game suspension for each yellow card. Timo has a more regular suspension structure

Is that the real rule of the league though?

[JLAB]

Motor Lublin - End of Season 1

Our first youth intake has arrived and we've been given a mixed bag by the head of youth development who had only just been hired earlier in the season.

Marcin Andryszak was the best of the bunch, and will be the right-back of the future if I can ensure he gets game time.

Tomasz Karczewski was the next player that I wanted to keep an eye on, he's the kind of player who will never give up if he has a say on the matter. It's just a shame he's unambitious.

Nobert Szostek was another right-back who arrived, but given he is also really good with both feet, he can also play as a left-back as well.

So how did we do after the winter break? Much better than I was expecting. We only lost 2 times in the league and drew just 3 times. We won 9 times in the last 14 games, which surely gave us a great chance to finish our first season on a high.

And finish on a high we did, we not only got promoted, but we got promoted as champions, winning the Fortuna I Liga on the first time of asking with a newly promoted side that at the beginning of the season was only expected to finish in 15th place. It tells me that my 4-3-3 works really well and that we might have massively overachieved in the league this season.

Unsurprisingly, the board and one of the club's icon were delighted and in disbelief following the league title win. The fans were planning to rename their supporters' club after Piotr Sławiński.

So who were the best three players of the season? Well, Jakub Szuta was named the best player of the season after he scored 26 goals in 36 matches in all competition, with 24 of those goals being scored in the league.

Mariusz Rybicki was considered the 2nd best player this season, scoring 9 goals and claiming 4 assists in 29 matches this season with the 2nd highest average rating.

While the 3rd best player was Marcel Gąsior, who was playing as a Deep Lying Playmaker this season managed to score 3 goals and claim 3 assists in 32 matches this season, but had the 3rd highest average rating and scored the goal of the season. A true honour indeed.

So for next season the board are expecting the team to just attempt to avoid relegation from the Ekstraklasa, which shows just how bad the squad is and just how well we did to even win the I Liga in the first place.

While the club claimed an extra 4K more followers and were expecting the same playing style as the board were. It's just a shame we gained more fair weather fans that we had before.

The journey from the first season shows that we can do the impossible if we put our mind to it, but we are far from the perfect package. I like to think that if we do get relegated from the Ekstraklasa next season that we'll be given a chance to take the team before up to the top flight once again, but with the supporters' influence on the board being as high as it is, I don't know what to expect. Still, either way, onto the next season, where we're probably going to struggle to avoid finishing in the bottom three of the league table in our first season back in the top flight since 1992.

JLAB's YAC with Motor Lublin Part 2

[WhiteCat33]

A.S. Rupensia Lusitanos Fiels

Season 3: Luxembourg Division 1 Serie 2 (Tier 3)

Matches | Squad | Transfers | Finances | Supporters

Competitions:

Cup: Rinse and repeat, again out in the Second Round

Spoiler

League: Very comfortable midtable finish which is perfectly fine with me.

Spoiler

Youth Academy:

Youth Intake Preview:

Spoiler

Youth Intake

Spoiler

Best Prospects

Spoiler

No surprise its poor, Teixeira could actually do a job at LB everyone we get is super slow but my last year players are doing okay for us but he may be the exception to not spend at least half a year in U21 and just test him at LB.

Best XI

Spoiler

Youth Products Highlights

Spoiler

Club Infrastructure

No change

Coaching Badges

No change. This also includes the fact we still haven't found a HOYD so I'm stuck with my GM finding my players. Adds a whole additional layer to the challenge. Gives a real meaning to boosting reputation up from Obscure

Spoiler

Thoughts

I'm actually surprised to see some development with my first team players. I have them all signing new non-contracts at the end of the season so we will see if I can do the next leap-frog before they're poached. I had one 00 player poached, but weirdly he decided to go down to a T5 team instead of play with us and he was in our first team rotation. 

How did Luxembourg do this year?

Edited November 11, 2022 by WhiteCat33

[WhiteCat33]

14 minutes ago, Daddy said:

Is that the real rule of the league though?

I took a bit looking and the rule is in one of these pdfs in German or French. I got through the first few and couldn't find the suspension rules. 

Fédération Luxembourgeoise de Football - Lois du Jeu (flf.lu)

[jepze]

  

Jepze - Knattspyrnufélagið Þróttur - Season 2025

Squad | Transfers | Finances

Another season done, and we are getting better and better. If we start with the cups, we're did win the first one, Delidabikar, in this season, but it doesn't get us more than some money and a new trophy for the carbinet. In Mjólkurbikarinn we got another good run, but this time, it was only to the semifinal this time. If we take a look on the league, we got a 3rd place, and will go to the Conference League again next season. I don't have any expection for the run, other than get some money to our finances. Yhen we can get some more upgrades, hopefully get professional in the near future, so we can develop our players more to go further in Europe. We're beginning to play some of our youth players regulary, but the starting players in the club are mostly from the start.

Spoiler

Mjólkurbikarinn is the primary cup in Iceland, we didn't do as good as the 2 last years, but we got to a semifinal, where we lost to Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur from the second tier.

Deildabikar is the other cup we played in, and this year, we did a lot better. We didn't lost a single game and won the whole cup.

Meistarakeppni karla is the Super Cup, and we didn't participate this season.

Now to the interesting thing. Our youth intake. We got an excellent preview, but the players is not good enough for the first team right now.

Youth preview.

Spoiler

Youth intake:

Spoiler

Trophy cabinet

Inkasso-deild karla - (2024)

Mjólkurbikarinn - (2024)

Meistarakeppni karla - (2025)

Deildabikar - (2026)

[Shankly84]

 

Time to try again. This time Finland.

[The7Striker]

Mid season and I get a crash dump. And I need to start all over 

 

@WhiteCat33 you look like Lusitans team from Andorra. Its going to be fun if someone manage to get a call for Portugal. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by The7Striker

[15charactersmax]

7 hours ago, Redknapp_13 said:

Finally can start this challenge again. Decided to go to a smaller country (Isreal) and luckily a club with great conditions got promoted (reset date for Isreal is the 20th of June)

I will be managing Hapoel Ra'Aanana

 

What's your finances like out of interest?

[XaW]

Ok, I haven't posted much since the game released and there is a reason for it. I have been busy creating my Norway lower league again! And now that I'm done, I'm going to play it here! So with that in mind;

I've taken over Try, the team that finished bottom of the 11th tier in Norway!

So I have loads of tiers to push through to get anywhere near the top, but it will hopefully be a fun journey!

[The7Striker]

@XaW sounds like a funny journey 

Edited November 11, 2022 by The7Striker

[WhiteCat33]

A.S. Rupensia Lusitanos Fiels

Season 4: Luxembourg Division 1 Serie 2 (Tier 3)

Matches | Squad | Transfers | Finances |Supporters

Competitions:

Cup: 2nd Round - We really aren't a cup team.

Spoiler

League: 2nd of 16 - PROMOTION!

Things really clicked this season as our starters improved just enough to keep us in the top 4 all season. I simed less matches to make sure any loss didn't become a run due to morale issues. We missed out on the title by just 1 point in the end, but US Esch deserved it as they beat us both times this year. Still trophy-less, but 3 promotions in 4 seasons is what we need.

Spoiler

Youth Academy:

Youth Intake Preview

Spoiler

Youth Intake

Spoiler

Best Prospects

TBH none worth showing for now.

Best XI & Team Report

Spoiler

Youth Products Highlights

Spoiler

We really saw the development of our striker partnership. Additionally, getting a 14 Penalty taking striker with finishing is golden at such low levels where PKs are really common. 

We also saw strength out of 3 wingers, the second Left player who was our "fast" Striker sub if things were going well. 14 for all the speed stats is lightning in lower league Luxembourg

Defensively we are anchored by our top quality GK and a great CB both of whom I expect to lose in short order as they get interest during transfer windows

 

Head of Youth Development

OMG FINALLY it only took 3 Years! Very much a 'beggars can't be choosers' situation here. Now we will see if given a few years he can give me players who aren't just completely trash.

Spoiler

Club Infrastructure

None

Coaching Badges

None

Thoughts

We are headed to the Division of Honour (T2), where we will start seeing clubs with Part-Time contracts instead of just non-contract / amateur. If we hold onto our players (big if) we might have a decent chance of surviving. I have a hunch though that we will lose a few of these starting players who are the only talents in the club.

Luxembourg came back a little and our finances are not good

Edited November 11, 2022 by WhiteCat33

[grff]

First FM23 youth intake incoming. It will clearly be ****

[benrollo]

So here we are in Belarus! This was a pretty mad opening season really, and with 4 or 5 games to go it was actually looking like we might get promoted automatically. Sadly, injuries and suspensions mounted up, and our already thin squad ended up requiring greyed-out players at the most inopportune time. But it's a really solid start, and we build from here. Our defence all season was pretty rubbish, but we made up for it with a really strong midfield and attack. This is what a typical line up looked like! We ended up scoring the most goals in the league, but conceded more than any other team in the top 6.

Registration rules in Belarus mean I'm not able to register my graduates until the following season, but thankfully some of our existing players worked out well. Dmitriy Malaschitskiy (7.09 average rating) led the way from central midfield, with Semen Belyakov (7.09 average rating) tying him for the highest average. Belyakov ruined many a clean sheet on his way to bagging 22 goals in 30 matches. Left winger Nikolay Kolyada (7.02 average rating) rounded out the top 3 as he provided 13 goals and 4 assists from the inside forward role.

So on to the graduates. With very little depth and holes all over the place, I was just hoping for a decent class - and we ended up getting promised one of the 5 star variety. That was followed up with 9 elite talents, and a couple of much needed defensive players in the class! Page 1 -- Page 2 -- Page 3

Dmitriy Sakuta

Really hasn't got loads going for him, but I think the coach summary shows just how much depth we're lacking! That speed should come in handy at the very least.

Artem Udodov

Now this was much needed. I had a player rated 2 grey stars who had to play 22 games at centre back, so I was just hoping there would be a central defender in this class who was at least semi competent. Artem seems like he's ready to step right in.

Sergey Krivtsov

Another much needed defender, and again someone who I'm sure will be in the starting line up before long.

I won't share all the other elite talents, because honestly they aren't up to much. But it's sweet, sweet depth.

Off the field, there isn't too much to report. Finances were poor, so I couldn't get anything upgraded. I did manage to get my National C license, so there is that. Here's my overview.

Next season I'm not really sure what to expect. If we can't keep up our goalscoring, I'm not sure our defense is strong enough to keep us in tight games.

[The_Gato_In_Goal]

Brønshøj BK - Youth Intake Season 3

Here we go, the third consecutive season with the best talent being a GK. We got attacking reinforcements in this intake, but no outstanding personalities.

Andersen 03a has a neutral personality and as good as our current GKs so he might start going forward, not sure yet since Pedersen 01b.

Sørensen 03b looks like a solid ST(C) option with another neutral personality, which is not something we have currently. Unfortunately, it puts a damper in the plans to retrain Winther 02b from last intake who, despite the poor-ish stats, has 6 goals in 6(5) games.

Nielsen 03c has high determination and is very quick, something we're lacking overall. We're weaker on the left and we play IW(S) on both sides, so I will be retraining him at AML.

[hubwub]

Why am I getting this during press conferences?

I think person#2 and person#1 are two regen players I have.

[Ice029]

Another season gone, we making progress boiiiissss

Progress in the playoffs (next season we go for championship group):

Spoiler

Intake which I should rather not talk about but here it is:

Spoiler

Best intake player goes straight into my team and straight on the pitch 3 days later because injuries and/or suspensions and...

Spoiler

Spoiler

Edited November 12, 2022 by Ice029

[DrJones]

Grosseto 2023/24

The first season went a little bit better than I expected. We were never in real danger of the relegation zone which these first few seasons will be our target to avoid.

Squad

There is no player that really stands out but at least I,ve got the numbers to fill the bench which isn't always the case in this challenge.

Youth Intake

The best player by far in this intake. He will start as our left back immediately.

History

 

[Nottingham Forest]

Season 6

2028-29 Season

Vanarama National League

Season Summary

This season was about trying to survive again and have a cup run. We survived but once again no cup run. In the league we finished 16th. We lost the last three league games but it's still a good season. In the cups we reached the FA Trophy third round and FA Cup first round. We started the league campaign well and were 6-6-2 or something but then the usual inconsistency appeared and aside from a brief concern at Christmas when we were just three points above the drop we stayed up with ease.

Youth Intake

There was a slight downgrade to our facilities at the beginning of the season as the facilities and youth level were both lowered. However, we were still predicted a reasonably good intake. I'm going to say I'm slightly disappointed with what we got although the personalities looks a little better.

Other Bits

We're about £323k in the red and that's been improved by selling ten Dillon Giacomini clauses who was poached by Nottingham Forest a few seasons ago before coming in through our intake. We made £198k instead of £250k. Brian Barry YP5a and Dylan Murphy YP5c were called up to the England/Wales u18s & u19s over the course of the season. There's another 500 seat stadium expansion coming to comply with league rules.

[Habituz]

So been playing slow as tried different saves in beta, finally got to Youth Preview so here it is

So all As, or i don't have them. CD is pretty good since 3 of the 4 I have are 30+

[shaunvamos]

 

 

 

2024 Youth Intake

 

 

 

Christopher Petersen 1A  -  Anders Blynov 1B  -  Rasmus Sørensen 1C

 

 

 

A pretty strong intake to start things off here, buoyed by the average junior coaching we already possess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[shaunvamos]

 

 

 

 

 

 

We survive easily, but both the board and supporters aren't happy because they expected a top half finish. But who cares, I'm happy to survive and we'll do better next season.

 

 

 

Best XI

 

 

 

Benjamin Warlo  -  Mikkel Jensen  -  Nikolaj Frandsen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Record Breakers

 

 

 

 

 

Award Winners

 

 

 

 

 

Manager Timeline

 

 

 

 

I should add that the transfer mentioned in the timeline was made before I joined the team, he just joined at that time. For what it's worth he didn't play a single game, and he probably never will.

 

 

 

Progress

 

 

[Barnsley]

amazing to see so many taking this one one. credit due guys, this is my favourite game challenge for a number of years. Really enjoying the stresses of working hard within the club on training/facilities/morale than the transfer market!

 

 

[Koetzer]

FK Viktoria Žižkov – season 2023/24

Well, that was quite easy, we had a couple of winless runs in October and April but gave no chances to our opponents elsewhere. Now the toughest part starts – surviving in the top tier with this aging squad. 

Cup

Defeated two lower league teams before a late goal from a top tier side Bohemians knocked us out in an overall even game.

Squad stats

Michal Petráň – was clinical in front of goal, setting the new Czech second tier record and winning the MVP award.

Augusto Batioja – I don't remember if I ever played with regista, but Ecuadorian veteran fits perfectly to this role.

Radek Voltr – mostly played on the left wing and became our second goalscorer.

Milan Jirásek – did a good job in midfield, as expected.

Josef Bazal – unfortunately his good season ended with a cruciate ligaments injury, which is a blow for our next season as well  

Ondřej Žežulka – clearly lacks strength for a center-back, but played well and eventually was selected into the team of the year. And he’s only 25, almost a youth player here  

P.Ellison *23b – I said that young defenders could get some playing time, but certainly didn’t expect that kind of progress!  No surprise that he became a regular starter even before the winter break.

 

Transfers – two backup players left in winter. 

Youth intake (preview)

Spoiler

Matejka *24a | Bílek *24b | Pulec *24c | Plechatý *24d

I hoped that our best prospect would be a goalkeeper as the current first choice is close to retirement, however almost every position in our squad needs some refreshment (maybe except a left-back, we already had three high potential players in two years).

In other news, we got first academy improvements and two coaching courses for myself.

[HenTheChicken]

Tight fight for 1st this season, and an undeserved win for us.

League Performance

Spoiler

1st Half

Lost twice to TNS, and drew against them once in this first half, still you can clearly see how much of a two horse race it is, and we beat everyone else, so thats positive.

1 loss. TNS, but we did do better this half so I can't complain

Won the league by 4 GOALS, I mean, look at that form, it was close as hell.

Europe

Spoiler

Europe went well. Got into the europa league league stage, 

Came 21st, and got into something that I think is technically a knockout round, go us!

Didn't go too well for us, 6-2 loss on aggregate to A. Bilbao, some work to do still.

 

The Squad

Spoiler

Pretty fresh, our concerns have basically all been addressed, and Koroma is scoring like a madman, love him.

Hope to keep the title by a bit more this season, go us!

[grff]

Sesvete: 2023/24 Season Review

Not a bad first season with the challenge. We managed to comfortably stay clear of the drop zone eventually finishing in 4th place.

Easily our best player was striker Frano Vlasic who averaged a goal a game. He's only 18yo so hoping we can keep ahold of him.

The youth intake wasn't too bad. A few coming through in key positions to bolster the numbers. One issue I might find is that Croatia have a rule where no under 17's can play in senior football.

Sold just the one player who was being disruptive due to not getting any game time.

Season history

Edited November 12, 2022 by grff

[grff]

Also, I'm never getting a better newgen name than this fella...

[WhiteCat33]

HAHA what in the world?! I checked and Porto has a full U19 squad as well as the other Portugal clubs in continental competitions. Are you really telling me these two are in the top 40 of U19 Portuguese players in the game? If my Cape Verde players got callups before Luxembourg I wouldn't have been shocked, but this?

My DLP

A rotation RM

[The7Striker]

2 minutos atrás, WhiteCat33 disse:

HAHA what in the world?! I checked and Porto has a full U19 squad as well as the other Portugal clubs in continental competitions. Are you really telling me these two are in the top 40 of U19 Portuguese players in the game? If my Cape Verde players got callups before Luxembourg I wouldn't have been shocked, but this?

My DLP

A rotation RM

History is being made 

[WhiteCat33]

2 hours ago, The7Striker said:

History is being made 

This save is something else! Cristina 03b actually played the whole game against Hungary, so its not even like they are just depth on the team. So much for that 'improved AI Managers', selecting 2nd Tier Luxembourg amateur players for national team inclusion 

Edit: The U18 isn't as spectacular as he's literally the only real player on the team. But still begs the question why just him? My LB is also Portuguese & U18 and plays just as much but wasn't taken. However the U19 my player is 1 of 4 based in Luxembourg. Progres and the other two are top flight sides that get the Conference league positions.

Edited November 12, 2022 by WhiteCat33