leyrtj

Chernomorets Balchik - Bulgaria - Build a Nation Challenge Seasons 1 - 5 Update It's been an excellent start to the save. Our goal was to get promoted and get into Europe and that's exactly where we are. Getting promoted out of the Tier 2 Vtora League was more challenging than expected. With a total lack of money and player quality, we scrambled around for a half decent team to start the season with. Then we gradually populated the team with loan players, which gave us enough quality. We couldn't make the play offs in the first season, but went up automatically in the second season. I was expecting the first season in the top flight to be more difficult than it was but, again, loans were the key alongside some decent signings and we finished 3rd. Seasons 4 and 5 saw 2nd place finishes, which put us into the qualifying for the Champions League group stages, but didn't get through qualifying. Levski Sofia are by far the best team still, so the next 5 years will be to topple them. They have been signing lots of wonderkids with their champions league money so this will be tough. We had two good seasons in the Europa League, making it out of the group stage both times. Levski has also been doing well in Europe meaning the coefficients and rankings have been boosted. Transfers Quite possibly my favourite part of FM is wonderkid hunting on the cheap. The focus has been to generate as much money as possible through buying and selling. This has hurt us a bit in the short term in the league, but this is obviously a long term save. The process has gone really well, much better than expected. Yordanov going for 10m in Season 3 was a big help and sped up the process. Take the money, reinvest, sell etc. I started offering him out, hoping to get a 40% clause on him, then saw the media message that teams were going to bid 9m for him. I actually almost didn't sign him initially, but he was on a free and cheap wages so thought why not. There are two clauses ready to sell but they're not worth much. International Not much to talk off. Bulgaria are still in much the same ranking position, and only have one elite player. I'll look to take the international job in 5 to 10 years. Challenge Progress Goals for the next 5 years: - Win the league and cup - Reach the group stage of the Champions League - Continue to make money through transfers. Aim to have a settled squad by Season 10 - 3 upgrades to Training and Youth Facilities - New stadium - 5 foreign affiliates

Chernomorets Balchik - Bulgaria For my second go at this challenge, I'm heading to Bulgaria. Bulgaria's youth rating is mostly okay at 72 and their game importance is Very Important which is what attracted me to them. Bulgaria are sitting at 75th in the world so we need to take them up to 35th. I holidayed 5 years into the future this time, as I mostly like to play with regens. Bulgaria's top flight only allows 3 non-EU players which is definitely going to be one of the challenges here. But players can get Bulgarian nationality after 5 years. The league is already at 22nd in the ranking, and Bulgaria sit 21st in the UEFA coefficients. We chose Chernomorets Balchik as they're on the coast of the Black Sea and have some okay facilities. The Plan - the 5 year plan is to get promoted and get into Europe.

So I've rethought the rules for completion. The initial criteria I set out, whilst possible, would have taken too long. And I'd like this challenge to be able to be completed in 20 - 40 seasons. It makes the challenge easier but it's still hard enough anyway. Ultimately, Build a Nation to me means makes the nation better, but not necessarily the best. With this I've also changed the country criteria to be any country outside the top 50 of the current FIFA rankings. Changes are detailed below (changes in red) and will be updated in the first thread. Not sure this will tempt anyone to try the challenge (I see many are doing it anyway in the Careers thread). But I'm going to have another go. I won't count the Maldives attempt for the challenge. New Country criteria - Any team outside the top 50 of the FIFA rankings (so 51st and upwards) New Challenge completion criteria Club Honours - Win the top domestic league - Win the domestic main cup competition - Win the champions league of the continent your club is based in - Have the club's reputation be in the top 5 of all clubs in the continent Division Honours - Have your domestic league's reputation be in the top 5 of all leagues in the continent - Have your country's coefficient be in the top 5 of all nations in the continent Country Honours - Have your country reach the knock out stages of the World Cup - Have your country reach the Quarter Finals of the continental championships - Have your country move up 40 places in the World Rankings - Have a regen national team player score 75 international goal Thinking behind the changes - For the club honours I canged it from 1st ot top 5. In the Maldives save I won the Champions League 5 times in a row but was still 2nd. - For the division honours I changed it to top 5. This means the challenge can be completed in the 20 - 40 year timeframe as it takes ages for the AI to catch up. - For the International side I made it easier. The requirements are now much more achieveable for the competitions. Also you have a trade off. If you take a team just outside the top 50 of the FIFA rankings (e.g. Slovenia), reaching the kcock out stages of the World Cup is achieveable. However, you then have to get Slovenia up to 17th in the rankings which is much tougher. Or if you take a team low down in the rankings, it's easier to move up 40 places but harder to get the competition objecives.

@vikeologist Congrats on Maitland. Very impressive to complete before 30. And we have another one to add to the list. I went back to my Maldives save to see whether Kouakou could get there and he did. It helped, like Maitland, Kouakou wasn't injury prone. As we were by far the best team in the league and there are 38 games in the league season he was ideally placed. It also helped that his international career kicked off as well. Also, we started playing him at 18. I wasn't thinking about this challenge when I did that.

Kelaa Sports - Maldives - Build a Nation Challenge Season 21 - 25 Review I took a break from this save after 22 seasons, but I always wanted to come back and finish 25 seasons for completion. Also I wanted to give Kouakou a chance to get to a 1,000 goals. On the club side, we won another 2 AFC Champions Leagues in Seasons 21 and 22, making it 5 in a row. When we came back to finish the save, we weren't as focused so didn't manage another one in Seasons 23, 24, or 25. We continued winning league and cup doubles. However, we didn't quite manage to become the highest reputation team in the continent, despite the 5 Champions Leagues in a row, with Al-Ahli somehow managing to hold on to that. Kouakou hit a career 1,000 goals in the final season On the league side, the highest the Maldivian Dhivehi league went to in the rankings was 4th, and 2nd in the coefficients. The Saudi league is number 1 and doesn't look like being surpassed any time soon. The other teams in the league havne't made much progress in the last 5 years, though they are slowly upgrading their facilities as the TV money continues to come in. None of them has gone beyond the group stage of the Champions League. Internationally, it's been a very good 5 years. In the previous update we'd managed to get out of the World Cup first qualifying group, knocking out Saudi Arabia in the process. In the Final Grouo stage won only managed a 5th place finish but qualified for the playoffs. We beat Vietnam across 2 legs and I thought we were through the the world cup. But, no, we had another game. We beat Vanuatu in the next game, but there was another game. This time we face Uruguay and I thought the World Cup dream was over. However, we beat them 4 - 0 and the Maldives reached their first World Cup. We drew Croatia and Chile in the World Cup group stage, which didn't seem too bad a group for our seeding, but couldn't manage a point. The qualification for the World Cup apparantly meant we didn't need to qualify for the Asian Cup in 2043. 3 key players had retired after the World Cup, so the team was weakened. However, out good seeding meant we had a relatively easy group with Myanmar, Oman and Lebanon. We finished second in the group and qualified for our first ever Asian Cup knockout game. Unfortunately, it was against Saudi Arabia and our dreams were over quickly. So, great progress on the international side. However, with some key retirements the future doesn't look so good. In the past 5 seasons, there's only been one quality player coming through the youth intake. Overall Challenge Progress - Domestically, it's been good and the only downside is not hitting number one in reputation - not sure why with those 5 Champions Leagues in a row - Division wise, we did well, but it would need another 25 years for the other clubs in our league to catch up - Internationally, again it's been good progress, but I can't see us hitting those goals in the near future with the retirement of key players - With more focus, I think two of the other objectives could be achieved in the next 5 years - Highest reputation and 75 international goals Final Thoughts It's been a really fun save, possibly my favourite ever. I'm definitely going to start another one of these in the near future - I'm going to look at tweaking some of the rules of this challenge. No one else has started it yet so that shouldn't be an issue. I'd like to make it more achieveable. In theory I could complete this challenge with the Maldives but you could be looking at 50 - 75 years before the domestic teams catch up. So I'd like to make the challenge achievable in 25 years or so.

This is painful. In the last four season, I've lost in the Copa Libertadores on penalties twice, on away goals and in the final. We lost in the final this year, but had our three best players out injured. Time for a break.

Luversense - Brazil - 2038 - Season 12 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 1st (Champions) Urghhh. Not happy. Dominated Corinthians in the second leg of the Quarter FInals of the Copa Libertadores. Just couldn't score, and lost in penalties. Somewhat my fault as well. I thought it would go to extra time, but it didn't so I could have pushed for a winner in normal time. Not sure I can bear another year of this. After the loss I just simmed through the rest of the season and won the league and cup for what it's worth. I won't update again until I win it. Barbosa won U21 footballer of the year is the only other relevant news.

Luversense - Brazil - 2036 - Season 11 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 1st (Champions) Knocked out in the QF of the Cope Libertadores. It was a tight game against Internacional. We lost the first leg 4 - 2 as they hit us on the break no less than 4 times. We managed to win the second leg 2 - 0 away, even hitting the bar in injury time, but we lost on away goals. On to next year. We won the league agin on the last day for what it's worth. Barbosa top score in the league again with 26. We have a 5 star potential striker coming through so Barbosa might move to right wing next season. Nothing in the youth intake. Nothing else important to mention.

Luversense - Brazil - 2036 - Season 10 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 1st (Champions) And that's the league won! We took a slightly different strategy in pre-season this year. In Brazil, the "pre-season" lasts from January to April as you play in the state championships. In previous seasons I'd played my first team here, but this hurt later in the seasons with fixture congestion and injuries. This year, we played the second Xi from January until March, and then put the first team in from the beginning of April to get them ready for the league season. We also played the second XI in the cup and Copa Sudamericana hoping to get knocked out as theose competitions don't matter. It all went to plan. We won our first 7 matches in the league, had a bit of a blip but then went on a run of 12 victories in a row (including five 1 - 0 wins), which put us 13 points clear. We had a few bad performances but made it over the line. Ironically, as we were playing the last few games, we were reading about Botofogo losing a 13 point lead in the league in 2023. We were in the same position with five games to go and then took 1 point from 3 games. In the penultimate game we went 1 - 0 down, and I was thinking about the irony of losing the league whilst reading that article. But we came back to win 2 - 1 and that was the title. Squad wise, it's mostly a finished squad. We have good quality in every position, and some okay quality as back up. I've never produced such quality from my youth team in all my years in FM. It's wonderkid after wonderkid and explosive green arrows in training - it's the joy of managing in Brazil. Jader Barbosa progressed well and was the top scorer in the league with 23 goals from 38 games. He still not natural as a striker and he's a better winger, but you can't argue with the stats. I feel confident going into the next season winning the Copa Libertadores, but you just never know with cup comeptitions Current Squad Past wonderkids - Jean Carlo (DC), Jean Carlo (DL), Current wonderkids - Eduardo Henrique( AMC), Jader Barbosa (AMR/SC), Eloilson (DR) Jader Barbosa was labelled as the player of his generation in the youth intake. He's made excellent progress in one year (he came through at 18), though not sure he'll become world class. A pretty good intake. We finaly got our striker, but we most likely won't ever see him in the first team. Some decent players coming through as back up as well.

Luversense - Brazil - 2035 - Season 9 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 10th Almost the Copa Libertadores. We had a really poor start to the season. At one point we were playing 4 games a week - Brazilian Serie A, State Championship, Cope Libatadores Group Stage and Briazilian Cup. Despite rotation and resting, the players were tired and we were near relegation after 10 games. After the group stage ended, our form came back and we slowly moved up the table. We finished mid table but that doesn't qualify us for the Copa Libertadores next season. In the Copa Libatadores we made unspectacular progress. We were losing our away leg but then managed to win the tie at home in the quarters and semis against good Brazilian teams. We then faced Vasco de Gama in the final who were only one place above us in the league. It was an opportunity we couldn't take and they shaded a close game. So we have two more seasons at least. At least 4 of our players are refusing to sign contracts but they are on long contracts at least. I think 2 more seasons and we can challenge. I will need to rotate more at the beginning of the season. A very poor youth intake. Barbosa is making slow progress but still score 17 in the top flight this season. More to come I'm sure. The whole of Europe is after this guy. I rejected a bid from Real Madrid and he wasn't happy.

Luversense - Brazil - 2034 - Season 8 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 6th A good season. Gosh, Brazil is fun. Intersting names, explosive growth and wonderkids galore. Not so fun is having all teams in the world circling around your players. We finished 6th and qualified for the Copa Libertadores on the final day of the season. We were flirting with the top 4 around the mid way point of the season but fixture congestion meant we slipped down. This team is still very young and we just need to hang on to our players. I feel we're around 3 seasons away from completing Brazil if we can. Crazy TV money came in this year so finances are very good. Our youth intake brought us one superb talent. We wanted a striker and a right winger and we got both in one player. Barbosa is better as a winger but we really need a striker so I'm going to retrain him as a striker. That leaves us weaker on the right wing but I feel it's worth it. Wonderkid 1 Wonderkid 2 Dubbed the next Ronaldinho, he'll be a wonderkid soon Only one talent through the intake but Barbosa is a beauty. I can only recall seeing "player of his generation" once before from an intake. Shame he's 18, but hoping for more explosive growth next season. Also, we now have 3 left backs called Jean Carlo (and a centre back).

Luverdense - Brazil - 2033 - Season 7 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 11th A very satisfactory first season in the top flight, finishing mid table. We had a slow start but then pulled clear of relegation and stayed lower mid table the whole season. This qualifies us for the Copa Sudamericana. Nothing much else happened. The youth take was disappointing. A good right back came through but we have plenty of talent in defence. We still need a striker and a right winger and a bit of patience and we'd have a good team. Another mid table season next season will be most welcome. Best player A disappointing intake. One elite talent but we have plenty of talent in defence.

Luverdense - Brazil - 2032 - Season 6 - Campeonato Brasileiro Seri B (Tier 2) - 1st (promoted) So I picked up the save after a few months mid season and we were sitting top of the league after a good start to the season. I'd looked back at my previous post and said I needed patience. We ended up winning the league by quite a gap. I started remebering the players. In particular Eduardo Henrique came through our youth intake last season and is already a starter at 16. The growth in his stats in one year (see below) is unlike anything I've seen before. Some of his stats have increased by 3 in one season. Unfortunately he won't sign a new contract as he wants to move to Santos. Hopefully the promotion will tempt him to stay. He looks like a really good player. We haven't had a good striker come through an intake yet. However, Lourenco scored 45 this season, but surely he isn't good enough for the top flight. The board want us to fight bravely against relegation in the top flight next year. We're predicted to finished 19th out of 20. As usual, staying up is the goal. I didn't get a screenshot of the youth intake, but it was decent. This guy came through.

So after a break from FM for a number of months, I'm to progress this challenge. I'd completed Vanuatu and then moved to Brazil where we'd done 5 seasons. I'm going to pick up from this save. I'm a long way behind XaW so we've got some catching up to do. @XaW 4 down, 2 to go. Very impressive. Am I right and you left Germany after a few seasons despite being in the Bundesliga?

Luverdense - Brazil - 2031 - Season 5 - Campeonato Brasileiro Seri B (Tier 2) - 9th Another season of mid-table. We're slowly improving as the old squad get replaced by the youth intake. We had improvements approved in Youth and Training Facilities and Junior Coaching so we should see the effects there. We managed to sell a player for 5m. We were trying to sell off one of our prospects to FC Porto with a sell-on but they wouldn't bite. Then there was a news article where apparantly one of the Serie A teams were going to buy our right back for 5m. I didn't believe it but I offered him out and Flamengo bid 5m. Lovely. His loss did weaken the team, but it's not too bad. One area which I like about Brazil is how quickly the players improve. We don't have amazing facilities but there's green arrows everywhere. We managed to get a lot of the prospects on long contracts so I think we just need to be patient. Green arrows everywhere. Another disappointing youth intake. Henrique comes straight into midfield, but not much else. We need a striker and a right winger and the first XI looks good.