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Nicely done. Good luck in PNG.

Luverdense - Brazil - 2027 - Season 1 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie C (Tier 3) - 6th A good, solid start in Brazil, and I think this one will stick. We finished safely mid-table. In a league of 10 clubs, where the top 4 go into a playoff and the bottom 2 get relegated. it's quite difficult to have a season without any drama. But we got close. We were in and around the playoff for a while, but ultimately weren't really that close. And a solid mid-table is usually a good thing in the first season. We had all the state championships and cups to play, but I didn't place much importance on those. Squad-wise, we started with 12 players and I was a bit nervous about taking the job. However, when looking at their squad I saw that 11 out of the 12 players would almost perfectly fit into my formation, so I took a chance. We were lucky with injuries throughout, never having more than one player injured until halfway through the season when we were well clear of relegation. Once we had 2 or 3 players out, we were usually well beaten. It was a decent youth intake, and most of the players will come in to the first team to fill out the squad. The board has generously already agreed to two improvements each in Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment, so I feel we're already in a good position. If we can stay up for another 2 or 3 seasons, we have a chance here.

We're now off to Brazil. Vanilla database so shouldn't be any issues. There were 4 promoted teams, and using the rules above, only 2 teams qualified. Basically, I was looking for a team just promoted that started the game unplayable. Luversense in Brazil Serie C qualified. There was a team in China that I could have gone for, but I fancy managing in Brazil again. They only have 12 players so it's a risk, but just need to avoid finishing in the bottom two. They were technically playable in 2022, but started the save in 2020 unplayable.

That would make sense. But the league winner for the last few seasons, Alajuelense, hasn't played any continental football at all. Teams 2 - 4 were entered into the North American League. The North American League qualification (reaching quarter finals) to Champions League seems to be working fine.

So we left our club in Costa Rica after 4 months. I looked at the top league and I couldn't see the league champions qualifying for the North American League (feeder to the CONCACAF Champions League). Places 2nd, 3rd and 4th qualified but 1st didn't. Also there was no cup so I think there's something up with the database. No staff were interested in joining us and I couldn't see a way out of the debt we had. Currently holidaying to the end of the year. I added some extra databases a while ago, so see what comes up, and where we end up.

Off to Costa Rica we go After resigning from Muariki, we had three league that were just starting - Costa Rica, Argentina and Mexico. We looked around and there were 5 teams that suited the rules of the challenge. I thought about it, applied to all five, then realized I had no choices as 4 rejected me and only Santacrucena gave me an interview and subsequent job application. La Piedad - Mexico - Ascenso BBVA MX (Tier 2) - Rejected AD Santacrucena - Costa Rica - Lower Division (Tier 3) - Job offered and accepted Nueva Chicago - Argentina - Primera Division (Tier 2) - Rejected Guillermo Brown - Argentina - Primera Division (Tier 2) - Rejected Boca Unidos - Argentina - Primera Division (Tier 2) - Rejected As per the rules of the save. Costa Rica has 3 tiers, but no relegation from the bottom division. I've therefore taken over the team that finished bottom last season, as shown below. The team are in some pretty bad financial trouble, and it seems I can't afford the contracts the best players want. So I'm not sure this will stick. I'm going to add the Asian and African leagues I'm intending to play to give me more options in 6 months/a year if things don't go well.

@XaW So the new teams coming up newly promoted start off managerless? Okay makes sense. If there are 3 tiers with no relegation then do we take the team who came last the previous season?

Thanks all. The other continents are going to take much longer! @XaW@darren1983 any guidelines on how to join a new team? My plan would be to identify who I want to join, add another manager, resign then apply with the original manager. Is this okay? This is assuming there is a manager already in place.

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 6 - 2025/26 - Vanuatuan Port Vila Premier Division (Tier 1) - 1st (won the playoffs) Oceania Complete! Finally we managed to win the league playoff final. We finished first in the domestic season and then won the play off final. We almost lost in the semi-finals, but we squeezed through on penalities before beating Yatel in the final. We made it to the final of the OFC Champions League, where we lost to Team Wellington. Again. After we FMed them last year, I don't begrudge them beating us. We also won the domestic cup. With the league title won this season, following last year's win in the OFC Champions League, the Oceania part of the challenge is finished. The leagues are at a lower level here, so catching up took us a lot less time than in previous attempts in Africa and Asia. We now move on to another continent. I have Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Mexico loaded. Of these the reset date in game for Argentina, Costa Rica and Mexico is soon, so it's likely I will go for one of those. The Mexico relegation seems to be working but I'm not a big fan of the Apertura/Clausura system. Domestic League playoffs Excellent youth intake again. Saksak is a really nice prospect at this level. Transfer history On to the next...feel a bit guilty Challenge Progress

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 5 - 2024/25 - Vanuatuan Port Vila Premier Division (Tier 1) - 1st (lost in the playoff final) So we ended up winning the OFC Champions League, so half of the challenge is complete. In the League it was a similar story to the last two seasons. We dominated the main league, finishing top, but couldn't win the playoff. In one of the worst games I've seen in FM, we were FMed in the final. They equalized in the 92nd minute with one of the worst goals I've ever seen. Then they won on penalites. On the positive, I feel we're now good enough to go in as favourites next year, so the league should come in the next year or two. The OFC Champions League ended up being relatively straightforward. We sailed through the group, quarters and finals and then came up against our nemesis, Team Wellington. This time, however, the FM gods favoured us and we actually FMed the AI for once. 3 - 0 to us is beyond flattering, but who's complaining. Perhaps in another FM universe someone is playing the same game, but they are Team Wellington and they just got FMed by Mauriki FC. We did get a couple of our players poached away by other teams. Most notably our star goalkeeper was poached. Normally, when other teams offered our player contracts, we have offered a pay rise but this time it didn't work. Goalkeeper was perhaps the one position where we don't have any other players coming through, so we're currently playing a one star player. It has been a strange 5 years in Vanuatu. I read someone on the forum say that at this low level just one good youth intake can make a huge difference, and I can see that. In the cup this season, in the semi-finals there were teams from the top four tiers, us being the only one from Tier 1. A good youth intake again but nothing above 2 stars CA, so no one came into the first team. Nice to FM the AI for once. Cup And here's the AI's FM revenge in the division playoff final Forgot to take youth intake screenshots again. Nothing special there.

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 4 - 2023/24 - Vanuatuan Port Vila Premier Division (Tier 1) - 1st (lost in the playoff final) I could pretty much copy and paste the season 3 update here for season 4 and it would be mostly correct: Surprised to be in the OFC Champions League - CHECK* Won the league regular season but lost in the playoff (why have a league playoff?) - CHECK Knocked out by Team Wellington in the OFC Champions League knockouts and they go on to win it - CHECK First half of the season unbeatable then hit woeful form at the end when it really matter - CHECK AI constantly trying to sign my non-contract players, but holding them off by using end of season signing - CHECK Board giving me lots of junior coaching and youth recruitment improvements but still not coaching badges (not complaining) - CHECK Great youth intake - CHECK * - best I can work out so far is that the top 2 teams in the league at January 1st qualify OFC Champions League - progress to the quarter finals. Lost again to Team Wellington. Need to win our group to avoid the big teams in the quarters. The squad is now very young, with only a few of the original squad still remaining. The young players have come in and have, in some case, dramatically improved their star rating - showing how close all players at this level are. Youth Intake - our improvements in facilities are showing. Decent personalities as well.

Kelaa Sports - Maldives - Build a Nation Challenge Season 16 - 20 Review Good progress has been made by the club, division and international team over the past 5 seasons. Domestically, we continue to dominate and now have now won 19 consecutive league titles. In the AFC Champions League is where the most progress has been made. In the end of Season 15 update, we were regularly in the semi-final or final but yet to win it, but we have now won the competition for the last three seasons. The Saudi clubs we meet in the final are still very good teams, so I don't expect to dominate this competition. Our team now has the 3rd highest reputation in Asia, so a couple more wins there should see us go up to first and achieve that objective. League-wise there's been progress but it's quite slow going. The Maldivian Dhevehi League is now ranked the 6th best in Asia, but it's stopped increasing. Coefficient-wise we currently sit 3rd but got up to 2nd at one point. The Saudi coefficient is so far ahead but it'll take a lot to catch them. For both of these it will require contribution from other teams in the league to make improvements. We are seeing some progress in the AFC Champions League. Maziya have now made it to the group stages twice, and two of the other teams are making taking points in the group stage. We took over the international job in 2017, and have seen some moderate success. Firstly, we managed to qualify for the Asian Cup in 2039. We won our first group match game and I was getting a bit excited, but then lost our next two and were unlucky not to go through as one of the four best 3rd place teams. We then moved on to the World Cup qualifiers first group stage, where we drew an okay group, including Saudi Arabia. We beat the easier teams and picked up some draws against the bigger teams, and we managed to top the group - actually knocking Saudi out. We now move into the second group stage where 4 out of 6 qualify. We're not a great team, but have now moved up to an all time high ranking of 110th. Finally winning the AFC Asian Champions League, after losing in the final three times. We lost the first leg at home 3 - 2, so i thought it wasn't going to happen but we won the away leg 2 - 0, Kouakou scoring both goals. International We qualified for the 2039 Asian Cup. We won our first ever major tournament gane, but we couldn't make it out of the group stage. Qualification for the 2042 World Cup is possible. We made it out of the first group stage. The second group stage has tough teams but top 4 out of 6 go to the World Cup. The Squad The squad is pretty similar to the update from 5 seasons ago. The 5 foreign players are the same. Kouakou, Kane and Faye are wanted by the big European teams, but we've managed to get them on long contracts. The rest are Maldivian players the best we can find, almost all of them coming through our youth ranks. So far, only Hassan Mohamed is at a standard to go to one of the big 5 European leagues. He won Asian player of the year a couple of seasons back. Youth intakes are now getting disappointing and I haven't had a quality player come through for a while. We get okay players for the league come through. Other teams in the League As mentioned we're seeing some success in the AFC Champions League, with Maziya reaching the knockout stages twice. Checking facilities, there have been some improvements over the last 5 years. All teams have had upgrades in Training and Youth facilities, but very little increase in Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment. The reputation has increased, with Maziya now up to 2 stars, and there are two other teams at 1.5. This is good progress. However, there's been limited increases in facilities. This, despite the TV money coming in and the other teams having (I'm guessing) tens of millions in their accounts. On a positive side, the other teams have now shown an interest in being loaned players, though only those at 1.5 stars or below. I chose Maziya and loaned them my second team, and they've seeb some success. This puts me a bit at risk but it's been okay so far. Some of our players at 2 star have been getting bids from Australian League teams, so i think Maziya is a small step below them. This is encouraging. Hopefully I can continue to get players through my youth team who I can loan out to them. The most successful AFC Champions League was last season. Maziya won their group. Valencia (MDV) and New Radiant came 3rd, picking up some good points along the way. The Next Step I've really enjoyed this save so far, definitely one of my favourites. As with any build a nation, it starts to get frustrating when the other AI teams in the league don't cooperate quickly with our master plan. I am worried about the lack of good Maldivian players coming through, and how realistic the international side of the challenge with Maldives is. I've been doing some research on this and have some thoughts. I'll continue for now at least until Kouakou hits 1,000 goals, but will be simming a lot. I think to see progress elsewhere in the league will take a while, so I need to get through a lot of seasons.

Good luck with it. I'm putting Maldives on hold for a bit, so Kouakou will have to wait.

How many is he up to now? Or have you put that save on hold?

Kouakou update. He's now hit 624 goals at age 25, so pretty sure he's going to make it. He's now scoring 80 - 90 a season as he enters his prime, including a ridiculous 113 two seasons ago.

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 3 - 2022/23 - Vanuatuan Port Vila Premier Division (Tier 1) - 1st (lost in the playoff final) It was a season of what ifs. There was a small outside possibility that we could have finished the Oceania part of the journey this season but it wasn't to be. In the league our odds were 450 - 1 and we were predicted to finish second to last - which was fine as only one team goes down. However, the season prediction odds are notoriously unreliable, especially for promoted clubs, and we ended up being champion contenders. We started strongly and, with only 14 games in the whole season, we were guaranteed a playoff sport after 9 games. In the league of 8 teams, the top 4 go into knockout semis and a final to decide the league winners. We won the semi-finals but the final was a step too far and we ended up losing. Along the way I had a surprise. I was told the draw for the OFC Champions League group stage was today. Funny I thought - why am I being asked. It turned out I was in it. After being promoted to the top league, I was trying to work out who made it into the OFC Champions League. The rules screen said 2 teams qualify, but nothing else. Also, because the Champions League doesn't happen until January, mid way through the season, I hadn't had time to properly see who qualfied, and I assumed it was both from the league. But it seems our runners up spot in the Cup final the previous season got us in. So my conclusion is that the league play off winner gets in and also the cup winner. If the league play off winner also wins the cup, then the place goes to the losing cup finalists. I seem to remember one version of FM where, in England, the losing FA Cup finalist would get the European place if the winner had already qualified in the league, but the losing Carabao cup finalist wouldn't get it. Anyway, we managed to make it out of the group stage and into the semi-finals where we faced Team Wellington from New Zealand. Their pre-game odds were 1 - 10, so I was sure we'd met our match and I was right as they thumped us. The competition has an interesting format which I had to look up. It's group and knockout as per usual, but the group stage is held in one neutral venue. I feel we can win the league fairly soon. The level of the top flight doesn't seem much higher than the lower divisions - indeed a team from the 3rd tier made it to the cup final. But judging by how much better Team Wellington were it could take a few seasons to win the OFC Champions League. As we didn't win the league play off or cup we won't be in it next year (I don't think). I haven't been allowed to go on any coaching courses yet. But the board have been really generous with improvements (4 so far in each), so we are up to Good Junior Coaching and Adequate Youth Recruitment, and this is showing in our intake. Contracts (or rather non-contracts) continue to be an issue, but so far we haven't lost anyone significant. OFC Champions League. Nice group meant we made it through the knockouts where Wellington gave us the boot from the competition. As we have non-contracts we can have an enormous squad. This is what I want as I need back up in case other teams take our players. Once we have enough quality, I may start releasing players. Ron Fred from last year's intake is already our best player and has represented Vanuatu at 17. Nice intake. We needed a right back, and there's a few others who'll give us depth.

I think I have a striker who has a chance of this. This is from my Maldives Build a Nation challenge. Aboubacar Kouakou is 22 and has scored 239 goals so far. He's averaging about 65 a season so he'd need another 12 seasons at that rate. We've now got him on a 5 + 2 contract, and he's in a sweet spot - way too good for the league, but not world class so wanting a move away.

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 2 - 2021/22 - Vanuatuan Port Vila First Division (Tier 2) - 1st (promoted) After being promoted last season, our board wanted a top 2 finish. With only 1 going up, they weren't requiring promotion, merely hinting at it. The second tier contained 8 teams who play each other twice. This means only 14 games throughout the whole season, so this didn't take very long. We were clear favourites by the season preview. However, we drew two of our opening four games. Normally this would be fine, but with only 14 games, this meant we found ourselves 4 points behind the leaders with only 10 games to go. Things picked up from there and we ended up winning most of our remaining games, winning the league fairly comfortably. With back to back promotions, next season's board objective to avoid relegation and we are 450 - 1 to win the league. So it looks like we've found a ceiling. Luckily the board have been very generous with upgrades and we have already had 3 increases in Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment. We're getting a lot of 5 star talent through our youth intakes but most players have low CA. With out low level of training facilities and coaches, it's questionable whether they'll ever see the first team. It will be the youth intakes in the next few years that will hopefully take us to the trophies. League wise, Tafea from Port Vila are absolutely dominant. They have 9 of the dream XI, and have won back to back titles. They won the OFC Champions League last year, so whilst I think it'll take a while to catch up with them, by the time we are we should be competition in the OFC Champions League. They showed this when they thrashed us in the cup final this year as well. We still can't offer contracts. Other clubs have been circling around all our players. So far, we've been okay. At the beginning of each season, I've been able to offer contracts until the end of the season. Then after they sign the contract, the contract cool down is ending just before the transfer window opesn so I can repeat this.

Kelaa Sports - Maldives - Build a Nation Challenge Season 11 - 15 Review At the end of the last update (in Season 10) we really went professional, and in the last 5 seasons we've finally started to make real progress towards our goal. Domestically, things are relatively the same as before. We continue to dominate. We went on a 208 game winning run in the league and are scoring double digits in a few games. We even got the achievement for 20 games without conceding a goal. In Asia and financially are where the progress has been made. In the AFC Champions League, it was reaching the knock outs that finally allowed us to go professional. We've made the knock out every year since and the last three years have seen us in the final twice and the semi-final once. Al-Ahli (KSA) are proving to be a difficult opponent in the final, and they have won the competition 4 times in the last 5 years. All this has seen the Maldives' coefficient move up to a high of 3rd in Asia. The league ranking lags a but, but has improved up to 8th. The others teams in Maldives (more details below) have started to pick up results and Maziya made the knockout stages for the first time this year in Season 15. This is good progress for the league. However, Saudi Arabia are so far ahead in the coefficients that we'll need one or two other teams to help out. I think we should win the Champions League in the next year or so. At the end of this season, I finally managed to buy a good Asian player. In the AFC Champions League there are 3 foreign players allowed plus an additional foreign player from within Asia. I've so far not been able to find an Asian player good enough for our team, who wants to join and we can afford. Most who are good enough are in South Korea, Japan or Saudi Arabia or have already made the money move to Europe. I've just managed to bring in the Australian (which apparently counts as Asia) national team goalkeeper. This could be the difference next season as it effectively gives us an extra foreign player. The one issue might be the scheduling. We have a lot of national players and there's often international games clashing with the Champions League. I might have to take over the national team to make sure that not our whole squad is out. Financially, things couldn't have gone better, and everything has snowballed perfectly. Our scouts in Africa have been very busy, as players in South America didn't want to join us and Asia is also a no go as described above. We sold our first 40% clause 6 months after going pro for 2.45m (Kanga at Tianjin TEDA), then reinvested this into more players. We have sold more clauses, including one to PSG for over 12m (Gnolou). This will all go into facilities, stadiums and to other teams in the division. Our new stadium is now up to over 8,000 capacity and the money from that is making us financially stable. Overall, money is in a very good position. Out reputation is now at 2.5 star and we can finally see our reputation ranking - we currently sit at 71st. I think we'll need to win the Champions League to see it rise to 3 stars - or continue to make semis and finals. Internationally, nothing much has happened though the Maldives did qualify for the Asian Cup. I'm tempted to take over the national team in the next few years to get that moving. A good start to the season, including a 16 - 0 demolition in the league. Almost our whole first team out for the second league of the Champions League. Not ideal. A new stadium, currently at 8,000. The Board didn't name it after me - I still have never had that in the game. The new stadium. Finances Finances now look very healthy after selling a number of clauses and the Champions League money. We're making around 100k per home game in gate recepits which is keeping us financially secure. We're starting to offer larger contracts to important players so still need to be a bit careful. The Squad We've had a lot of turnover in the last few seasons. The model was to bring in a foreign player, play them for a year (or even 6 months) then sell them on with a clause. We're still doing this a bit, but the team is a lot more settled now. We have two very strong Maldivian players (both who I've rejected bids from Europe for) alongside a solid squad. We have 3 first choice foreign players (Kouakou, Kane and Obeng) and an Asian players (Osmond) for the Champions League. We can have one extra foreigner in the league. We've not had a strong youth intake for a few seasons. We're slowly improving facilities so this will help. Also as the other teams in the league grow stronger that should see some more players coming through. On a final squad note, I might have a contender for the 1,000 striker (the Danny Roberts challenge I think). Winning games 5 to 10 nil has meant our striker had scored a few. Aboubacar Kouakou has 37, 69 and 70 in his first 3 seasons which makes 176 - he's currently 21. Let's say he players until 35, he needs an average of around 60 per season. It's possible. He's at a level where he's really good, but never going to be world class, and therefore wanting to move. Our best Maldivian player so far. He could have gotten his move to Europe to Dortmund but not selling. Other Teams in Maldives There's been some solid progress within the league. Maziya made the knock outs of the Champions League this season and have been investing in their facilities. Valencia (MDV) already has Excellent Youth Recruitment. The other teams have all gone up in reputation to 1 star and have been making small upgrades. Maldives has been getting 2 or 3 teams automatically into the Champions League group stage and this has been helping. I'm going to focus on the teams in the table below to help. 5 teams is the maximum we'll ever get into Asia, and they already have a bit of a head start There's been a bit of progress elsewhere but not a great deal. I'm going to choose 4 or 5 teams below to help and focus on them. I've given 2.5m to Maziya, and 1m to the rest. Progress in Asia - Maziya starting to help out. The Next Step The next step is to continue doing what we're doing. We need to continue going deep into the knockout rounds of the Champions League, and ideally win it in order to push our reputation up. Once our reputation goes to 3 or 3.5 stars we should be able to attract better players, including some South American wonderkids. We also need to max our facilities. We have the money stashed away so this will be done in 3 or 4 seasons. Finally, we should start pushing money to other teams int the league. I'm going to choose the 4 or 5 teams and give them money (buy a player for how much I want to give them). I'm probably going to take a bit of a break from this save now. I'm absolutely loving it. After getting bored of managing in Europe all the life, it's a new lease of life. But I want to spend some more time of the Youth Academy save and RL. Challenge progress

Mauriki FC - Vanuatu - Season 1 - 2020 - Vanuatu Lower League (Tier 3 ) - 1 (promoted in playoff) The league was split into 4 groups of 8, with the 4 group winners playing one knock out game for two promotion spots. Despite being predicted 4th best out of 32 we had top prediction Black Diamonds in our league. At the beginning it was difficult to see how good our team was - we had a few 5 star players alongside some 1 star players. Our Board wanted us to finish in 1st place. By choosing a team predicted to finish high up we inherited a good squad, but it also meant we had to be successful from the begining. We won our first 5 games, and it became clear the predictions were correct. In a very short league season - 14 games - we won all but 2 games. We outplayed Lili in the playoff final, but it took us until the 80th to score from a freekick. We also made it to the semi-finals of the cup. Seems a very strange place to start. Our team and a couple of others are probably good enough for the Premier League - our board wants promotion again next season. It seems the difference between teams isn't that much and a good roll on players can lead to a good advanage. The youth intake was good and a couple of players come straight into the first team - forgot to take a screenshot. The one issue we have is the fact that everyone is non-contracts and we can't offer anything else. All our players are receving numerous bids, and all we can do is keeping offering more money to stay. So far no one has left. We're going to try making the contract offer for the end of the season and see if that helps. But if we lose a load of our players, I'm not sure we'll survive this save.

Do they need to come from our youth academy or is it okay if we bought them. I had a really good Angolan midfielder in one of my save.

So we begin the challenge in Vanuatu with Mauriki FC in the 3rd tier. The database we're using goes down to 3 leagues, and at the end of the season actually had promotion and relegation, so we didn't need to take the worst team. With 4 groups of 8 teams and 2 going down in each league, there were 8 teams to choose from. Originally I could only find three of them, then I realized that in the season preview, the "R" next to the favourites were actually "P". Yes, 7 of the top 12 favourites had been promoted the previous year. It gets stranger, but that's for the first update - we're most of the way through the first season to make sure everything is working. The plan for the save is to go in the following order. The country underlined is the country we plan to do, but things may change along the way. When we feel we might be close to finishing off one continent we're load 5 leagues from the next continent, including some vanilla leagues. I plan to get through the seasons as quickly as possible, especially at the beginning. Oceania - Vanuatu, Tahiti, New Zealand North America - Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras South America - Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia Europe - Germany, Croatia, Denmark Asia - Qatar, China, UAE Africa - Egypt, Ivory Coast, South Africa

@darren1983 Just checking. What about if there are 2 leagues with no prom/rel? Same thing? Choose the team bottom?

Thanks for the reply. That makes sense.

@darren1983 Could you let me know about the above? If it's not okay let me know, no worries. Just don't want to start a save and then find out it doesn't follow the rules. Looking at doing the challenge in all 6 continents in one save. The issue is Oceania where I can't get any of the databases using promotion/relegation into the bottom league. My workaround is outlined above. For example, the Vanuatu database I have loaded has 3 leagues in the database. I therefore load the top two leagues, meaning there'll be a promoted team into the second division (from the 3rd). Not technically unplayable as such, but not sure what else I'd do in Oceania. I was also plannign to do the same in Costa Rica and Egypt.