Ceching You Out

Using all that bonus money we just found in the couch (ahem, the "Austrian pot" I suppose it's actually called), we hit the trifecta of youth upgrades in our first year. Now if we can stay up, we've got a great foundation going... W

Ahh, sorry to hear that. I'm aiming for something very similar to the Vaduz experience here. Hopefully Traber helps keep us up! He's got surprisingly good personality attributes which might put him in the conversation for our next captain, although part of that is our early struggles with finding good role models.

Woof, I'd forgotten how bad these early intakes can be. The personalities look nice though!

Ugh, Board insisted on selling Moosbrugger so in accordance with my own rules I negotiated the fee but didn't prevent him from leaving. Totally unnecessary given his potential (83 CA / 110 PA @ 18) and even my negotiated fee ($80K). In response we sign Traber as a free agent, although I'm not given the option to buy him immediately I guess. EDIT: Nevermind - for $12K he's ours now!

Mid-season 2023/2024 I'd mentally composed the update here, then was so rudely interrupted by a 2 month old getting in her midnight crying. Now that I've slept I've forgotten half of what I was going to say. C'est la vie. We're performing fairly well for a 15th-predicted side that only made one addition. Fetahu is scoring boatloads upfront (nearly half our goals) but we haven't quite turned it into results. Lots of competitive draws give me the impression we could turn the corner at some point; most of our players have 20-30 points of PA to grow into. Based sheerly on GF and GA, you could argue we should be a little higher in the table too. All that said, we're still not safe. Plenty of work to do. I don't expect much activity in the winter transfer window, but we'll look to be opportunistic if we can add a Liechtensteiner or two for cheap. There is a GK I've been keeping an eye on at Vaduz. EDIT: Vaduz let me offer Foser a contract without countering, and charged us $28K to take him immediately. Deal! He's 78 CA / 114 PA @ 21. I'm expecting he'll have room to grow as a GK without any competitive matches. His upside is 18 points higher than our current starter and that was hard to pass up.

This... this is a thing? I'm clueless. In the 9 seasons of my previous save I never triggered it. Was that just dumb luck because of the volume of Liechtenstein-only players? Can I trigger it again? Wild. EDIT: Find a nickel, spend a dime.

I'm forced to sheepishly admit that any vague name familiarity was chalked up to FM. Some quick googling and now I recognize him -- part of the shock Turkey side in WC 2002 in Korea. Also holder of their record appearances. Now I'm even more impressed by my signing. Many thanks for calling that out!

Our squad and staff have now been significantly overhauled -- best players extended for at least another season after this one, players deep on the depth chart sold. Feeling pretty good about this start. And we've landed this beauty as our Assistant to take control of our youth intake. Model Citizen with the right formation is a great get!

Pre-season 2023/2024 Here's our original crew. I'm reminded how low on the hill we started - media prediction of 15 fits with this group. Knowing that I won't be challenging for a few seasons, I'm going to be pretty aggressive in trying to maximize high potential players and cull anyone unlikely to contribute much. Depth is for good teams! We need cash to fund improvements. For those that followed my earlier attempt, our tactic may look familiar. This is where we left off after quite a few seasons of tinkering. I wouldn't classify it as perfected but it's a reasonable foundation. Compared to my last attempt (cut short by a "bug" with continental qualification), I plan on being more active in the transfer market for Liechtenstein players. Obviously I won't sign anyone else given my self-imposed limitations, but I think there's an opportunity to buy-then-sell players to raise needed cash. In that vein, we've made our first signing already! Salanovic plays for the NT and was available on a free. He's unlikely to grow as a 97 CA / 110 PA player at 27 years old, but I'm likely to sell next summer unless we can affordably extend his contract.

Thanks, y'all! Let's see if we can improve on the slow start last time. Excellent question! I was going to put this all behind a spoiler in a future post for the sake of brevity, but all the more relevant since you asked. Also, I can bore a captive audience with a story so it's win-win for me. I've long had a fascination with clubs which produce youth from other nations -- think more FC Andorra (all Andorran) rather than Schalke (a few Turks). I stumbled upon this thread a couple years ago and was (1) excited to see others had compiled a list of clubs with youth quirks like that and (2) disappointed that none really tickled my fancy for a save. I found a few ideas here or there similar to @bold013hades comments in that thread that suggested you could create the kind of situation I was looking for without a ton of changes (which risks DB disasters if you're as unfamiliar with editing as I am). I tried to test a few but my laptop at the time took hours just to run a season. When it wasn't immediately clear I knew what I was doing, I shelved the idea. Long story, short(er) I now have a fancy laptop and am seeing what I can make happen. Reiterating again that I am not an editing expert, here's what I've found. In the pre-game editor you have these fields that primarily control a club's location/nationality: "Nation" is always set to the nation of your league competition (e.g., Switzerland for Vaduz, England for Swansea); FM generates errors if this doesn't match the league "Based Nation" is set to the location of your club (e.g., Liechtenstein for Vaduz, Wales for Swansea, same as "Nation" for most other clubs) and controls the country your players accumulate "Days for Nationality" "Continental Cup Nation" sets the nation where your club qualifies for continental competitions (e.g., Liechtenstein for Vaduz, England for Swansea, same as "Nation" for most other clubs) "City" sets your "Local Region" -- more on that in a moment My understanding, with some exceptions especially where there's hardcoding in the background, City and Local Region determine the base nationalities of your youth intake. City will set your primary nationality with dual nationality from your Local Region. Names and Languages are mainly influenced by Local Region. In the previous save the only change I made was copying Dornbirn and moving the duplicate city to Liechtenstein. This made (nearly) every youth in our intake over 9 years have Liechtenstein nationality; maybe 80% also had Austria as a second nationality. I was quite happy with that! Until I realized I'd locked myself out of all continental competitions. That made me less happy. I suspect there is a hardcoded rule that Liechtenstein clubs can't qualify for Europe via the domestic leagues (not just Vaduz and not just in Switzerland); other Liechtensteiner clubs play lower in the Swiss pyramid but I'm not sure why it'd apply to other leagues. Maybe just inelegant coding, which wouldn't be the first time that's been discovered within the base FM DB. This time I'm likely going to reverse the City/Local Region relationship. I've again copied Dornbirn, but this time the duplicate city stays in Austria and is assigned to a Local Region in Liechtenstein. This took an extra few steps but from some early testing seems to fix the biggest problem of continental qualification. It does seem to reduce the number of Liechtenstein players coming through the intakes, shifting the balance more towards Austrian. Not ideal but I can work with that. When testing with much higher rep clubs I'm also seeing the youth intake trend towards 100% Austrian. Maybe they're pulling from outside the local region, hence that shift? That does concern me a bit, so I'm poking around to see if I can address that before I start. Worst comes to worst I can use the in-game editor to manually assign Liechtenstein nationality, although I'd really rather continuing to use it to monitor and report only. The game world starts to feel inauthentic when I have to manually maintain it. All that to say, bear with me -- I'm close to relaunching this. I'm trying to be more thorough in testing this time around (for obvious reasons) but it's slow going with baby-addled tiredness. Soon though, I think!

An Introduction Elevator pitch me. What are you trying to do here? Imagine a sovereign Liechtenstein financial fund, looking for a place to deploy capital, staring longingly into Austria. Just on the other side of the Alps there are football clubs aplenty in a league showing returns of Red Bull's investment. What if you bought a club, bootstrapped its infrastructure, and challenged the big boys of Austrian football while building a talent pipeline for your own beleaguered national team? What glory and dividends await. Oh, so you're roleplaying. No... I just panicked there. I didn't have a good pitch. This is a (mostly) youth only save in Austria, using a self-tweaked DB that turned FC Dornbirn 1913, from northwest Austria in eponymous Dornbirn, into FC Liechtenstein 2023. We'll focus entirely on our own youth intake with two transfer exceptions: We can sign previous players from our youth intake, regardless of nationality We can sign players who qualify for Liechtenstein Using the pre-game editor, I've copied the city Dornbirn and moved the copy to a Liechtenstein region rather than the existing Austrian one. That will primarily give us youth with Austria-Liechtenstein dual-nationality. The only other edits have been to the Chairman of the club, making him more amenable to a focus on youth development. We'll focus on the Liechtensteiner club initially, but keep an eye on how the national team develops. At some point I'd like to take over there and use our wealth of talent to be competitive internationally. That sounds awfully familiar. Didn't you just try this? Ahem. Yes. After running into some logistical challenges with the last save (read: I set up the original DB incorrectly in the pre-game editor), I've sorted out the issues. I think. And now I'm ready to restart with a few lessons learned. What makes you think you'll be successful this time? Well, I've got a rich and storied history of failure at this kind of thing. There was Avenir Beggen in Luxembourg, a second shot at the same, and Encamp in Andorra. The previous attempt at this just about a month ago. And those are just the public ones. That's not... very reassuring? I suppose not. But dream big, right? Right? Right? Echo, echo, echo. Feels like it's just my voice coming and going. That's the whole gimmick, isn't it though. I prefer "narrative convention". Even the best career threads are mostly talking to yourself. Might as well keep it interesting.

I've spent some time pondering my options. There are a few similar-type saves (Hong Kong in England, Seychelles in France) I do want to try, but it does feel like I've got unfinished business in Austria. I could restart with a non-Liechtenstein based (maybe Gibraltar?) but none of the other poorly rated UEFA countries quite do it for me. There aren't any clear cultural or geographic links with Austria and that's part of the Liechtenstein appeal. So instead I did some testing to see if the original set up is salvageable, even if the particular save is not. It does indeed look like basing your club in any city in Liechtenstein makes you ineligible for European competitions through the league; however, swapping the city back to Austria and the region to Liechtenstein results in roughly the same youth intake (just tilted more towards Austria) while preserving continental qualification. I'll be running one final test to confirm, but I think I'll be restarting this challenge with a new thread. Thanks to those who followed along! I'll link to the new post once it's up and running. EDIT: New topic is here. We go again.

Oh no. No no no. I can guess now why I didn't qualify for Europa League. And why I don't have any Europa Conference fixtures. There's most likely something hardcoded that prevents clubs from Liechtenstein qualifying for European competitions via the league. I'd assumed the limitations for Vaduz were set at the club level, not the country level. Woof. I'll spend a bit of time thinking if there's anyway to save this save, but I'm stumped at the moment. Without Champions League, I'd likely prefer a different (but similar) challenge.

Thanks, Ben! The money can't hurt at this point. We're chipping away until we make a few major sales, which hopefully we can stall long enough to get full value from. Also hoping for a small reputation bump if we can notch a few wins; that could help with future youth coming through.

Yearly accolades: Yearly beast darkening our doorways:

In positive news (and something I actually understand) Poelten beat Altach in the semifinal on PKs. Definitely our preferred opponent of the two. Altach might try to go toe-to-toe but not Poelten. We win the first leg 3-1, in a less dominant fashion than I imagined but still securely. (27g) Emmerling picks up an injury in training afterwards that feels academic. The next leg is a drab affair until we squeak a goal in the 59'. Another in stoppage time turns out the lights. We're playing in the Europa Conference next season -- a season that starts in only a few weeks. This feels like a bug, unless you've got a talented lawyer to twist in knots the definition of "win" or "Premier Division":

A shock 2-1 win against RB (thanks Instant Result button!) means we sit pretty going into the final match. LASK plays Rapid (who still have something to play for, needing a draw to clinch CL), while we play Sturm Graz. A draw might be enough to secure Europa League, but a win definitely does. EDIT: Rapid crushed LASK 3-0. The ball only went in the net once in our match -- Sturm Graz in the 21'. Ruled out for offsides. Job done. No, wait -- it shows LASK as EL qualified in 5th while we have a play-off versus the winner of 1v2 in the Relegation Stage. LASK lost the FA Cup versus RB. Apparently runners up qualify for the spot if the champion is already qualified? Ugh. Dream ending is downgraded a bit. EDIT x2: Hmm that's not how it worked when Klagenfurt was 6th in 2024/2025 and runners up to Rapid in the cup (Rapid qualified for the EL via a 4th place finish). I'm utterly confused.

Four draws on the bounce after the break made this a bit nervier than it should have been. Against some of the weakest teams in the division, too. I'm blaming it on the transfer noise, although there was only one player upset we didn't accept a bid and no further strops thrown. Nonetheless, a win on the last day against Lustenau, relegation favorites, off a gift of a backpass confirmed we're in the top 6 for the Championship Stage. Not feeling nearly as confident as I did before the break, but it's all to play for -- only three points separate us from an EL spot. If we can find form again.

We fought off interest the entire window for our four talented, high-potential youngsters. I'm not sure I'd have accepted any price for (30a) Schmadtke or (30c) Eckmeyer because I'm fairly certain we won't be adequately compensated for players with 150+ potential until they're much closer to it. Bids for (30b) Wagner were countered with $10M upfront, installments + realistic clauses for $10M, and a 50% profit clause; surprisingly it did not immediately shut down negotiations. I think that means it was within the realm of reason for the AI. (30f) Ainoeder would be my pick of the four to sell first but interest was lighter and less lucrative. So we'll keep them until the summer where I expect a similar pattern, just dragged out for several months instead of timeboxed neatly in January. In the meantime, we see a new batch of youth join us. Not the highs of the 2030 class drawing all the transfer attention, but better. Feels like last year just +10 PA to everyone. DC is a position of need so that's nice, GK not so much. I'll continue our policy of signing every player with 100+ PA for now, since they seem to be reasonably profitable even if they don't make senior appearances.

(30b) Wagner is a wanted man. Like the worst kind of international war criminal wanted. I'd love to hold on to him for a bit longer, or if that fails get to auction him off without the Board interfering.

Always. Five. Out of. Five. Stars. But I like the letters this time!

At the halfway point of the initial stage (still haven't landed on what to call it), we're in the mix. Essentially as close to 2nd as 7th despite our position. Frankly, if the season continues to play out this tightly then just squeaking into the top 6 opens up the possibilities of any of the European qualifications. Halving points for the Championship Stage is a great reducer. A little bit of love for our striker, (27g) Emmerling. He's got 9 goals in 11 games. I believe that's pretty, pretty good.

So despite our recent sales and my bitching about the latest intake, the roster is actually shaping up pretty well for the future. Lots of PA in our starting lineup and more in our next 15. Obviously not everyone will develop but we're looking pretty good. (30b) Wagner had Chelsea + Inter interest early in the summer and (30a) Schmadtke other top league clubs, until I extended their contracts a year with a handsome pay bump. They may not sign another one with us if they develop as expected. (30f) Ainoeder was extended as well, much as I don't see a long-term future for a 5'3" defender. (30c) Eckmeyer wasn't, but only because he demanded a ~$7M release clause for the rest of the window; that figure is too reasonable and could be triggered. I'm expecting twice that when we eventually sell. (28c) Vanni is an indirect beneficiary of the (26b) Michaud sale. I've never been quite convinced by him, in a large part because he's 5'10" with Jumping Reach 5 when floated crosses to the backpost are a definite weakness for us. So assuming he's near the midpoint of his $2.1-8.6M value, cashing would be another way to fund Youth Facilities upgrades. I'd have to push him out the door though, which hurts his value.

Left off this (doesn't go through until August - Norwegian transfer window, I guess?): ...and in the meantime the cashing in continued... ...but then this happened, and it's probably worth spending a moment with this decision. I was a little surprised by RB's interest at the start of the summer window. I know his CA/PA since I'm watching values with the editor, so I know he's 117 CA / 124 PA @ 21. That stacks up well for us, but it's not great for their standard. Maybe they misjudged the room to grow there. But that's neither here nor there; my only input is on what we'd accept. My first instinct was to make an offer work, which honestly I was a little surprised by. But after working my way back through the roster, there were a few points that jumped out at me: AMC is quite possibly our 2nd deepest position. On paper we've got replacements for (26b) Michaud, but his performances have been top notch Two years left on his contract and e'd already signaled that it would take an offer of ~$400K per year to extend his contract, when our top earner just made it to $130K this summer Now that he's a Team Leader (aka as influential as you can get) his lack of professionalism is concerning. No worries with determination or ambition I asked his agent to check the market after we received the initial bid. His agent refused because (26b) Michaud doesn't like to be shopped around The final offer feels above market value - $2M upfront, $3M next year plus $1.5M in pretty easy bonuses and a profit clause that we may be able to cash in at some point if RB boost his value So despite being my second favorite player on the team, I popped my Boyz II Men CD into my Walkman and shed a tear to "End of the Road". He'll be missed. (Also, I really had my eye on this after our sales figures blossomed this summer. I'm hoping this will kick us into the next gear with our intakes.)

And finally the coup de grace that makes me think I may be able to create a self-funding Academy with 2nd tier players... (I'm only now realizing PAOK bought both (29a) Feidel and (29b) Doepke)