[FM24] Network Save | Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona | Trophy Count: 6 - 4| Seasons Complete: 3

[santy001]

From time to time myself and @oliscott like to partake in a head to head on the FM series. It may be a challenge to build up a nation, or get teams to rise up through the leagues. There is one we often pick up though every few years which is a Real vs Barca save where we got to teams where the shackles are off and in more recent years, levers have been pulled. These saves are aimed at creating the ultimate teams with no holds barred, trophies are the only measure of success. @oliscott has taken Real Madrid and I have taken FC Barcelona. 

So we go into it once more and the 23/24 season begins with the first match of the season being Real Madrid at home to Barcelona. 

[santy001]

The First Meeting - Real Madrid Dominance:

A comfortable win in the end for @oliscott. I have let Lewandowski go following a £40m bid from a Saudi side and my replacement Umar Sadiq really didn't trouble his side. Gavi scoring from a defensive mix-up and Ter Stegen putting in a heroic performance is the only reason the score remained respectable. Bellingham was predictably brilliant, but Valverde was a surprising driving force for the Real Madrid team. Practically unstoppable against my side. Not exactly the best of starts for my Barca side...

[santy001]

First Transfer Window Activity:

Real Madrid have begun the season unbeaten with 4 wins in 4, while after losing the first match my Barcelona side bounced back and won the next three. 

Transfer business has been limited with Real Madrid picking up Ouédrago from Schalke. I was a little busier at Barcelona after letting Lewandowski go for £40m bringing in a handful of players.

Barcelona's recent business:

Real Madrid's business:

The League Table as it stands:

[santy001]

Notable Signings - Barcelona:

Umar Sadiq has started with 5 goals in 4 games, hopefully one to lead the line for the next few years while I build up funds and identify some top tier talent to sign.

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Kofi Amoako at £200k is a player with potential I am hoping can kick on. Cheap and looks to have a positive attribute spread this was definitely a bargain signing I feel:

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Then the third one to review for Barcelona is Candelari, an entirely speculative cheap purchase. The player is good physically and so I felt like taking a risk and seeing what happens over the next 18-24 months with his development was low risk. 

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Notable Signing - Real Madrid:

Ouédrago is well known in FM I expect, and while I rivalled @oliscott for the signing he picked Madrid over Barcelona. 

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[santy001]

Season 1 - Midseason Break:

A phenomenal start from Real Madrid saw an unbeaten run until mid-November when an unexpected loss to Granada who were in the relegation zone at the time put an end to @oliscott plan for an unbeaten season. At Barcelona things have begun to settle in and while the players in the midfield positions all feel very similar, results have been strong. Entering the midseason break my Barcelona side lead Real Madrid by 2 points:

Both of us are wanting to make some considerable changes to teams to build them in our preferred style but there have been good performances across both teams as would be expected. The Real Madrid squad having two players leading the charge with strong goalscoring in Bellingham and Vinicius Jr:

Meanwhile over at Barcelona Umar Sadiq has been the single figurehead for goals. 18 Goals in 23 games means he is already looking to be an excellent acquisition on much lower wages than Lewandowski and for half the fee. Elsewhere in the team there are a lot of spread goals, some players like Ferran Torres, Joao Felix and Raphinha have performed better than I expected. Fermin has been surprisingly effective and even at 16 Lamine Yamal is proving dangerous:

[santy001]

First blood goes to Real Madrid and @oliscott with a win in the Super Cup held in Saudi Arabia. It was overall a very easy game, both squads somewhat depleted with injuries I felt I had it wrapped up when Joao Felix scored but a careless backpass from Ter Stegen gave Joselu a relatively straight forward finish. While there were a couple of strong chances late in extra time for my Barcelona side and Noah Darvich having a goal disallowed it wasn't meant to be as the game went to penalties and ended with a Real Madrid win.

[santy001]

January Business - Season 1:

While Real Madrid were blessed with a £120m budget coming into January over at Barcelona there were no extra funds. As a result I sold Raphina to Man City in a deal worth up to £70m to raise some funds. With players returning from loan in the summer there is going to be an abundance of players across the AM positions. That being said, the board only freed up £8m out of the sale so it limited my options.

Real Madrid:

Luciano Rodriguez

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Michael Kayode - £22m:

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Viktor Gyokeres - £35m:

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Barcelona:

Yannick Eduardo - £2.5m:

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Scott McTominay - £5.75m:

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[santy001]

End of Season 1:

An incredibly tight title race, a slip up by @oliscott in the second to last game and drawing 2-2 meant everything was to play for on the final day of the season. Both sides were level on 98 points but Real Madrid were top on the head to head record. While my Barcelona side overcame an early set-back going 1-0 down to bottom of the table Almeira to win 4-1 it was redundant as Real Madrid ran out 6-0 winners. A high bar set for both sides as we finished level on 101 points with Real Madrid having a +108 goal difference while Barcelona had a +107. Real Madrid went on to win the Champions League against AC Milan with a comfortable 3-0 win, my own Barcelona side crashing out to Inter Milan in the quarter finals just not converting dominance to a result. My consolation trophy this year being the Spanish cup. 

Real Madrid Trophies: 3

Barcelona Trophies: 1

Best XI's from this season:

[santy001]

Summer Window - Season 2:

At Barcelona I had a rather paltry £25m budget to play with, the ongoing financial struggles really imposing restraints whereas Real Madrid had a more generous £80m available. As a result I spent the summer looking to free up more wages and get players out with low-budget or academy replacements. Brandon Williams, Toni Kroos and Gaius Makouta on frees at the end of their contract. The money on youngsters I hope will come good in Joao Veloso and Nelson Weiper. I had tried to sign Weiper the season before only for a lack of budget to ruin those chances. Letting Ilkay Gundogan, Oriol Romeu, Sergi Roberto and Frenkie de Jong go (de Jong went in June so is just missing from the first screenshot). With around £140m raised from those sales. I had tried to structure a deal to bring Joao Cancelo back with a very low upfront fee but overall package skewed a bit too high and I couldn't afford it in the end. 

Real Madrid had a much busier summer, an early signing of Joao Neves followed by Scalvini, Silva, Barco, Restes and Rego with the pre-arranged transfer of Endrick. Some high value sales to Saudi Arabia freeing up additional funds for this spending spree. @oliscott did pull out of a deadline day deal to sign Musiala - perhaps something he will regret in the future but looking at the rest of his squad it's likely not to be the case.

[santy001]

January Window - Season 2:

Having missed grabbing a screenshot at the midseason break as we end January here is the table:

Tighter than last year, with my Barcelona side having gotten the win in the league in our first meeting so I've currently got top spot held by virtue of the head to head results. It's looking like this season could be an even higher points total from both clubs than last year. In terms of transfers let last years signing Umar Sadiq leave the club for £37m (rising to £44m) as he had begun making unreasonable contract demands and then took an approach of signing some youngsters and cheap players to bolster the squad:

Over at Real Madrid meanwhile there was no business in January. @oliscott was trying hard to make something happen with either Haaland or Mbappe but couldn't get the clubs to part with the players, a lack of sales also meant he didn't have any further gaps arise in his squad to target some other replacements.

Here are the signings since they're obscure/regens.

Ramon Mierez:

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Joao Silva:

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Soren Birk:

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[santy001]

End of Season 2 - Another Real Madrid dominant year:

Up until the international break in March the league was tied neck and neck with my Barcelona side still sitting at the top with the head to head record this year. From January onwards though I'd been in an unfortunate cycle of recurring injuries and it came to a head at this point where so many players were missing the squad just ran out of steam. From 29th March I went 7 league games until I won again. That comfortably handed the title to @oliscott and Real Madrid. Despite this downturn in form I still managed to get to the Spanish Cup final, however, despite a dominant display in terms of stats the game finished 1-1 and I went on to lose on penalties. 

The Spanish Super Cup was a resounding 4-0 defeat against Real Madrid in January, with ter Stegen injured after 3 minutes and not putting a goalkeeper on the bench Eric Garcia had to deputise and while 4-0 is a terrible score it feels somewhat respectable given an outfield player was in goal for 87 minutes. 

I had the misfortune of meeting @oliscott in the semi-finals of the Champions League, however, despite thinking my squad was not read for this a 1-1 draw in the first leg and a narrow 2-1 win in the second saw my side face PSG in the final. A resounding 4-2 win saw my Barcelona side wrap up the Champions League as our only trophy this season. So Real Madrid finished with another 2 for the league & Spanish Super Cup, I finished with one in the Champions League.

The gap at 10 points seems quite large, but I'm not as concerned given I was down 7-8 first team regulars during March/April when my side fell away. Additionally after 2 years of heavy cost cutting and operating on bargains the board have freed up a £196m budget which is getting put to use. 

[santy001]

Best XI's

Barcelona:

Real Madrid:

[santy001]

Season 3 - Early Summer Business

A very busy start to the Summer for Real Madrid with some big money signings coming in and a few departures albeit most just loans:

Over at my Barcelona side I've also begun spending some of the funds made available, with considerably more departures:

[santy001]

Screenshots of the likely lesser known signings for Real Madrid:

Chris Rigg

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Jesus Diez

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Jorrel Hato

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Bertrand Matip

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For Barcelona:

Nico Gonzalez:

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Luca Lipani:

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[santy001]

End of Season 3 - Another strong Real Madrid Year

A fall off in the middle of the season from my Barcelona side combined with an even stronger performance from @oliscott and his Real Madrid team saw them comfortably win another league title. Meanwhile in the Champions League we met in the final and I won my second successive CL with a careful countering performance that saw me run out 3-0 winners really against the run of play. A lot of the youngsters signed by Real Madrid mean I'm staring an uphill battle to close the gap in terms of squad depth but the board at Barcelona are finding more money to try and compete. While I've been able to get the better in head to head matches a couple of times with Real Madrid recently season-long consistency has been a problem.

Messi got to return for a swansong year with a CL win, department with 10 goals and 5 assists from 8 starts and 21 sub appearances. 

Barca Best XI

RM Best XI

[santy001]

Unfortunately, following on from that immediately bad news strikes me hard...

We both went in big with our summer budgets and Haaland picked Real Madrid over Barcelona. This makes that uphill task even steeper.

[santy001]

Bit of missing transfer history from last season as we blazed through it without updates tonight:

Barca Transfers In/Out:

RM Transfers In/Out:

[santy001]

As we're in the territory now where regens are coming through and beginning to look like they could feature soon here are a few of my top prospects. 

First of all is Soren Birk, signed for £17.5m during the second season scouts uncovered him early and rated him highly across 3-4 scouting missions. I moved quickly as I worried Real Madrid interest wouldn't be far behind. 42 goals and 20 assists with the under 19's and I'm retraining him to operate as an inside forward on the right hand side. I probably need to get him working on his weaker foot but during the next 18 months he will start to be integrated into the team.

Alfred Delmas is a product of the club academy, came through almost looking ready to play for the senior squad but I've decided to take it easy and let him develop with the U19's once he turns 17 I might give him some limited first team exposure but I feel there's time to let him grow organically and no pressure to come in too soon.

Antoni, another club prospect who may be likely to feature sooner rather than later as I consider letting Jules Kounde go. Very raw technically but has some good physical and mental attributes already, if he can develop the technical side this could be the kind of player who has a spot cemented 15 years from now.

Josep Lluis Brugue is a little less impressive at first glance, but I like the mental attributes and both footed nature of the player. A couple of strong technicals to start him off and he could be a good player in the future, certainly one I'm keeping an eye on over the next 2-3 years.

 

[santy001]

Season 4 - The Summer Business

A pretty busy summer in terms of outgoings for my Barcelona side as a number of players were entering the final 12 months of their contract already on big deals. The choice between renew on higher wages for probably their last or main big contract or move them on made for a difficult choice. As Real Madrid procured Haaland there has been a couple of high value sales on their side and a whole batch of youngsters too it seems.

Barca Transfers:

RM Transfers:

[oliscott]

Its been some start to the season and Haaland is already repaying his transfer fee.