The City Football Group Challenge

[Siepe1990]

The City Football Group Challenge

This is what a completed challenge could look like

Challenge Background

Founded in 2013, City Football Group is the realization of a business vision by former Barcelona Economy Vice President Ferran Soriano. The first core philosophy of City Football Group since its inception has been the mutual supporting of clubs through combined scouting and player sharing. Possessing such a network then allows the local clubs to sign players early in their development, safe in the knowledge that the range of clubs CFG owns means that they can be placed at any of a number of sides as their development continues and the need for other challenges arises.

The second of CFG's core philosophies regarding club collaboration is on- and off-pitch technical information sharing. Based around the tactics of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola all of City Football Group's clubs are given access to extensive databases of Manchester City's tactics and coaching methods, enabling them all to follow the group directive to use the same style of football, a style occasionally referred to as the City Way.

Challenge Introduction

Your challenge is to lead all current CFG-clubs (12 in total as of EC Bahia's introduction in May 2023) to the league title and the domestic cup win. Along the way, you need to at least obtain the 4 Continental Champions League trophies.

Challenge Rules

• You have to start with on of the clubs currently playing on the 2nd tier of their country. This means you can start as:
  • Sichuan Jiuniu (2nd tier China)
  • Lommel SK (2nd tier Belgium)
  • Palermo (2nd tier Italy)
  • EC Bahia (2nd tier Brazil, but only if you start in 2022 as they have been already promoted in 2023)

 

• Your manager can have any licenses and experience you choose (if you want make it a little harder, opt for no licenses or experience)

 

• During the entire game, you are only allowed these transfers / loans (all aiming to emulate the first core philosophy of the Group explained in the introduction):
  • All transfers and loans from any of the CFG-clubs are allowed
  • From outside the Group, only free transfers are allowed, and only players of 23 or younger
    • This also means the no loans from outside the Group are allowed (you don't have to terminate any existing loans upon starting the game)

 

• Aiming to emulate the second philosophy, you have to decide upon one tactic whilst at your first club, which you have to use throughout the entire game
  • This means not only playing style, but also formation
  • The only thing you can tweak are the player roles

Challenge Requirements

As you will be playing in Japan and India, you will need to add those leagues to the game (both can be found on this forum or any other FM-dedicated fan base website online. If you need help, just send me a message.

Challenge Threads

I've created a Excel-file (downloadable at the bottom of this post) with three sheets. On the first, you see all clubs and some information about where they play (FM23). The second sheet (Career Summary) allows you to track you career ; almost all cells use drop-down boxes so you can't go wrong when creating the third and most awesome sheet: the Trophy Cabinet. Right now, this look empty, but once you start ticking of competitions and cups on the Career Summary, this cabinet will fill with all the trophies you have won, creating a nice Trophy Cabinet for you to post here. A short example of how the Career Summary can be filled out (which results in the image shown at the top of this challenge):

 

Hall of Fame

I will track all progress made on this challenge and keep a regularly updated Hall of Fame in the second post of this sheet.

 

City Football Group Challenge.xlsx

Edited July 24, 2023 by Siepe1990

[Siepe1990]

Hall of Fame Placeholder