thomas_e

Haha, almost too much!!!

Yes, I understand that. And I am sure it builds hype for a lot of people. Watching videoes of other people playing FM, there are actually people in this world that does that, crazy as it sounds. It is also quite funny to think about what this says about the gaming industry, and FM in particular. Every other advertisment in history has usually been some Kylie Jenner/Brad Pitt-like character that shows off a product. With FM it is some guy in a basement, playing a save with Bolton, talking about defending throw-ins.

No, but in steam there were notifications that some players were playing FM24

Very good point

im sure it happens for most games, just surprised to see FM doing the same. I have seen a few of those videos as they pop up on my youtube (unfortunately). God, how awful clickbait crap those videoes are. Surprisingly bad at playing FM as well, which is strange tbf Hopefully a good sign for us!

Why is there youtubers that get the opportunity to play the game early. How stupid is that

Maybe I didnt play the latest patch to get a good enough impression of the game. When I stopped playing in february the match engine got so bad i had to stop. It was basically a few tactics/strategies you could use, nothing else. Those tactics/strategies were so overpowered the game wasnt enjoyable at all. But the clips/post I have seen from 24 seems very promising!

The best ME? I respect your opinion (really, I do), but in my opinion it was so bad that it made the game unenjoyable. Lets hope for a great 24 that we will both enjoy!

I bought it last year, but stopped playing around February. The match engine was simply too bad

I have gamepass, bought the game to get the beta. Time for my first FM refund! Who cares about licensing, no one plays the game without add-ons anyway!

Has the beta ever been released on a saturday?

The FM23 beta was released on October 20th and the game released on November 7th. Has there been any hints of an earlier release this year?

Congrats @fries!!!

Catania SSD Season Summary 2023 - 2024 Great first season, but trouble on the horizon After my save with Energie Cottbus I loaded up quite a few nations and saves, both in Europe and South America. After some consideration I ended up starting in Italy with Catania. This is certainly one of the biggest teams you can manage on this challenge this year, but I don't think it's an easy one! As with many Italian sides we have a very old squad and in great need of producing talents as quickly as possible. Luckily the club facilities are there already! Our first season was a really good one! We played really good from start to finish, winning Serie C with a solid 88 points from 38 games. Crotone and Benevento were my biggest competitors, but we managed to perform more consistent than them! I am playing a strange assymetric 3-5-2/5-3-2 formation, just trying to make a tactic that suits my players, but I think I have to work in the summer to change it quite a bit. We are scoring plenty of goals, but we are really vulnerable in defense, only keeping it together by having the best goalkeeper in the league! Promotion in the first season is great, but I am not sure how long this save will last. We are entering our 2nd year with such an old squad. Hopefully we can use the experience in the team to stay in Serie B. The youth intake was a solid average.. Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

Thanks mate!

Not sure yet! Considering England or maybe Italy. Africa and South America also good options!

Thanks @Winski!

Cheers @darren1983!

Thanks @fries! All 7 of them great fun. The youth academy challenge community is basically my FM motivation, so it's always fun when a challenge is completed!

Thanks! I was considering doing the England grind, but don't know if I have the stamina! Maybe return to South America!

FC Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2032 - 2033 A great season that ended with European glory! CHALLENGE COMPLETE What a great season for us! We didn't manage to defend the Bundesliga title from last year, but our goal was the Champions League and we really delivered! We beat Arsenal 3-1 in the Champions League final and that means the challenge is complete! We finished 2nd in the Bundesliga behind Bayern Munchen. They finished 10 points ahead of us, but we only got 6 points less than we did last year (when we won), so it wasn't really a bad domestic year, Bayern were just really good! We did beat them at the end of the season, proving that we are very much competitive against them. We rotated quite a bit this year, but our goal was always to finish top 3 and that was never in danger! Anyway, the focus was on the Champions League, and if we slipped up a few times in the league we looked phenomenal in Europe. We finished in 8th place in the group stage, meaning that we went straight to the last 16 knockout phase. In the first game we faced Borussia Dortmund. A really strange two-leg tie as we lost 1-2 away, but won 6-2 at home in the return leg! Next up was Man City, a team that looked amazing on paper. We managed to beat them 3-2 at home in a game we probably should have lost! In Manchester for the return leg we got through after a crazy 3-3 game. I have to count my blessings in that game as well, as Man City managed to get 6 players from the first game injured in the days leading up to the return leg, including Erling Haaland. How they managed that I don't know, but we basically ended up playing a very weakened City team. In the semi final we faced Inter, a team that had a very easy route to the semi final. We were simply a much better side than them and we won 2-1 in Italy in the first leg before crushing them 4-1 at home in the return fixture. The final against Arsenal was a very even affair, with Arsenal taking the lead in the first half. We managed to fight back and in the end I think we deserved to win. The last goal in the final was scored by Josua Pagot, and that was well deserved, as he has been by far my best player this season, a campaign I wont forget. He won player of the year in the Bundesliga and the Champions League. 13 goals, 26 assists and a 7,49 avg. rating from left wing says it all, a majestic campaign! I was surprised that we won the Champions League so fast, but looking at the team we are a really good side. We dont really have many weaknesses, except maybe missing that top quality striker. This is my second time completing the challenge with Energie Cottbus, which is cool. Even cooler is the fact that we had players on the bench in the CL final that played in my first season with the team! After a couple of bad years we got a great youth intake, not that it matters now! I really love doing this challenge in Germany, but now its on to the next one! @darren1983, challenge complete! Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

Congrats @Neo_Geo! Very impressive!

This guy came through the academy last year (screenshot from intake) and he can certainly become a star. He is even called up for Wales at the World Cup this summer. I also have a decent GK out on loan, Mark Hebler, a 20 year old with 2nd Bundesliga attributes atm. He will not be a disaster, but no way im winning CL with him! Hopefully Baldock is ready in two years!

FC Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2031 - 2032 Bundesliga Champions (!!), another great CL run and time for a new HOYD After two consecutive 4th place finishes my goal was to replicate that for another year and maybe fight for a medal. Instead we lifted our game to a whole new level and ended up champions of Germany! I'll start with Europe. For some strange reason Bayern Munchen and Borussia Dortmund both had shocking CL runs this year and none of them even made the last 16. Not only were they tough competitors to begin with, but when I had to play midweek games and they could rest I didn't give myself the best odds! Luckily, this season our squad was better than ever, especially when it came to squad depth. I had the ability to rotate quite heavily without the team being dramatically weakened. We finished in a very impressive 5th place in the CL league stage. We played some weak teams along the way and this gave us an easy way through, even though we lost 6-3 at home to PSG and 1-4 away to Barcelona. In the last 16 draw we got really lucky and faced Vitesse. We easily won 4-0 on aggregate and it was quite surprising that it was Vitesse who knocked out Bayern. Next up was Arsenal and even though we won 1-0 at home that wasnt enough and we lost 2-1 on aggregate. We should have done better, but a CL quarter final is great progress! Back to the league! When I faced Arsenal twice in the span of 7 days we also had a big game away to Bayern Munchen. This was the 28th league round and we were sitting one point ahead of Bayern. We got absolutely crushed 3-0, even though Bayern got a man sent off in the first half!! In the second half they honestly looked like they were playing with one man more than me. This made us fall to 3rd place in the table, two points behind Bayern and one point behind Dortmund. A setback, but wow did we finish the season strong! We had a very easy schedule at the end of the year, but I cant ask for more than this: We played absolutely fantastic and with Bayern drawing and losing on game in the same time span we ended up as champions! We dominated every game except for the game against Frankfurt, but in our defense we played with 10 men for 30 minutes. The 4-0 win against Dortmund included a hat-trick from now backup midfielder Dimitris Mitropoulos. He was at the club as a regen when I took over and has been a key player for many, many years. He has even been wanted by top clubs, but in the last couple of years he has taken a more rotational/backup role. Because of an injury he got the chance against Dortmund and scored a hat-trick from CM position. Such a great feeling, a true one-club man that has been along for the whole journey tears Dortmund apart when he finally gets a start in a decisive game! This season I promoted Josua Pagot to the starting eleven. The last two years he had been on loan to Zurich, Rapid Wien and FC Nurnberg and I thought he was ready to make an impact in the first team. His progress has been extreme this year and he was unstoppable at times. In the last 6 league games he had 5 goals and 8 assis from AML position that included a 10.0 rating. A fantastic feeling to complete the first stage of this challenge, but we have work to do if we are going to win the Champions League. We struggle a lot against the big teams away from home and that surprises me a little bit as we are very good at sitting deep against most teams, but once we face the elite sides we crumble at times. My biggest worry is still that my best player, goalkeeper Noah Dittloff, doesnt want to renew his contract. He only has two years left now and wants to leave. I even promised him a couple of weeks ago that we would win the league so he would stay, so I was a bit surprised when he didn't want to negotiate after this. I think he is lost for us and even though we have good talents in the U19 he will be impossible to fully replace. We have had the same HOYD for years and he has really delivered overall!! Unfortunately for him we have had two weak intakes in a row, so it was time for a change. Believe it or not I have signed Luis Suarez as my new HOYD. Yes, that Suarez. A perfectionist personality and 20 in determination means we can live with youngsters that has biting as a player trait I guess.. Goals for next season: Top 4 finish and winning the CL. Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

When I start I usually only load the nation that I'm playing in since it's so easy to load new leagues as you go along. When I get to the point that I can compete in the CL I usually load a few more leagues. Say if I'm playing in Germany I would load up Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1 and La Liga. This season I have done it a bit different and focused a bit more on the nations that I have affiliate clubs in. I'm not good enough to win the CL yet, far from it, and FM23 is so bad when it comes to loans I had to focus my league selection around that. Getting affiliate clubs have been a lot of work, with many re-negotiations of the deals so I can use the clubs for for loaning out players and getting youngsters through to our academy. I believe that loaning out players to visible/playable leagues is a lot more efficient and provides better player development. These are my affiliate clubs as of 2031. All the leagues are playable except for the Australian A-league and I have added the leagues as soon as I've gotten the agreement with the club. Unfortunately Heidenheim got relegated last year so I no longer have a 2nd Bundesliga affiliate club. When this happened I terminated an agreement with a very bad Polish club, hoping that the board will allow me to add another affiliate club as soon as possible. With all these clubs I have either gotten the cooperation based on a loan-agreement or an academy recruitment deal. I then re-negotiate the deal after a few months, adding a loan agreement or an academy agreement to our existing deal. These agreements have obvious advantages, especially as it helps with the core of this challenge, better players through the academy, but it also helps a great deal with loan deals, a part of the game that I honestly feel is broken. You can sometimes have a fantastic 19 year old in your team, he wants a loan deal and no club at all wants to loan him. This helps with that and in my save I am now on July 8th and I have all my loan deals settled. A couple of players went to random 2nd Bundesliga clubs, some went to 3.liga and my best 19 year olds went to OH Leuven in the top Belgium division. When choosing affiliate clubs it's important to look at training facilities as well as youth recruitment and junior coaches!