Reiver

I seem to be incapable of winning a single cup game throughout all my saves. Even on friendly cups.

Since any of the other game ideas I have for FM23 need access to the editor, I am back here with another try / in another league, starting at a slightly higher level, and with some additional challenges. Salzburger Athletiksport-Klub 1914, SAK for short, is the oldest football team in the state of Salzburg, and until WWII was the biggest team in the state, After the war they lost the spot to Austria Salzburg and later to Energy Drinks FC. Freddy Adu is here to change that. Our goal isn't just to win the Champions League. On our way there we want to go all out to be the best team in Salzburg - overtaking Sports Beverages FC will have a special taste in the save. (Or we'll die trying, getting sacked is a real hazard when playing this way).

I lasted 3 more games.

This could be it.

God, I'm actually fearing for my job this season - the amount of stupid goals from defensive errors I'm suffering together with games without xG the opponents but just cannot score is way too high.

When he first showed up: And now: It's possible his personality's behind it - I've brought him up to my first team as he would be my 4th best defender, but I'm considering shipping him back to the youth team and bringing someone else up that would be more likely to develop. The only issue is, the other option is Fickle...

One of my kids from the first intake, is actively get worse, to the point where it isn't funny. A DC that lost 1 point in crossing, balance, dribbling, finishing, free kicks, heading, long throws, vision, work rate, acceleration, passing, tackling, teamwork, and 3 points in long shots, 2 in off the ball, . Gained a point in anticipation, leadership, 2 in concentration, strength and jumping reach. We're talking a total loss of 10 ability points. Should I just give up on this now 17 year old?

This record will be hard to beat.

He's not very good but... why? This is another team at my level, with similar facilities, recruitment, etc...

FC Barreirense Third try's the charm? 2025/26 Campeonato de Portugal Série C The "luck" of promotions and relegations dictated that this season 18 years of top level experience were added to the league in the from of Leiria, one of the favourites to not just win our Series but to actually win the whole thing. Despite a second and fourth place finish in the previous years, we were still given 800-1 odds, and we're predicted to finish 11th! At least our new president still just wants us to avoid relegation, so there's also no pressure there for us to deliver the results of previous years. Same with our supporters, who just add to the list of requests that we get a better reputation than our rivals Fabril. We got the best of them last year, let's also hope for that this year. The overall quality of the team has decreased a bit, while the potential has increased, which means that I will be happy to just stay in the league this year working on improving the younger dudes.

If Porto are sniffing around, this guy's PA has to be at least decent enough to potentially make it as a pro player, I'd think. Good sign!

(click the infographic to read all the details) The 2024/25 season has now reached his conclusion. While we started strong at the start and then wavered at the end in the promotion stage, this season was different. We were never at the very top but we also never had a period where we lost steam, we were just a decent top half team throughout the whole season - other than at the very beginning, we mostly fluctuated between 7th and 3rd place which this season meant we were never at the very top running for promotion but we are also never in the relegation spots. We only ended up 5 points lower than last year, but the top teams were better this year and in this Series. The standout player was, once again Bruninho. The now 35 year old striker might be at the twilight of his career, but he still bagged over 20 goal, second best goalscorer of our Series and 4th of the whole division. Still, he is now 35, so the plan is for us to now slowly try to phase him out. He's not the only one either. While we still have Bruninho for at least one more year, we are not renewing contracts with any players that are roughly at the same level as some of our youngsters. So out goes our captain, Janita, a 28 year old central defender; Heta, 32, one of our left-backs; António Pereira, 27, third choice left winger; and Leonardo Pereira and Filipe Almeida, two more strikers. The idea is for all of these guys to be replaced by players from our youth intake, specially last years intake - there hasn't been as much improvement on the players as I've hoped for, but a few are actually getting decently better. Shout out for José Rodrigues, the first one to properly break into the first team. Another shout out to our youth team, as they actually won promotion from the under 19s second division to the top tier - meaning next year our kids will be playing against the likes for Benfica, Sporting, Casa Pia, Estoril, Académica, NAcional and Marítimo, among others! On a different note, while we're still financially poor, we finished the season slightly better than last year - still not good enough to get any improvements, and our training facilities got downgraded, but I'll keep trying. Because of the team's transformation, it is possible next season will not go as smoothly sa this one, but i'll be going through it, fingers crossed, and hoping to at least be there in the top half of the league.

FC Barreirense 2025 Youth Intake Another decent intake, when it comes to potential, even if the guys are not as ready to join the first team as last year. Let's take a closer look at the best kids: As long as he develops, João Sanches looks like our future midfield boss. As simple as that. Wellington Paulo is our second "nearly there" chance at a right back. Unambitious means it's likely he won't get there. John Swini has the chance to be our first international. Not cause he's great, but cause he's from Malawi - Low Self Belief might make it harder though. Pacheco is some strength training away of being a back up choice for central defender. Fickle though... this isn't the best intake personality wise. Ivanilson is probably our second best chance at getting a decent kid that will actually improve to his CA, All in all, a solid if not very impressive intake. 3/5.

A new striker is born? Nah, that's my central defender scoring from a corner.

FC Barreirense Once more, just like before? Goalkeepers are no in the picture, but also an A. I'm very into this right and will probably play the whole season and write a bigger report, but it seems like the next intake will be just like the previous one.

I was able to do that with no problem on my save - even did it to two fringe players who wanted to leave on a free, cause that would mean I'd ahave no cover at striker.

FC Barreirense 2024/25 Preview Campeonato de Portugal Série C The different Series (or Groups) of the Portuguese 4th tier split the teams geographically from north to south. With two teams relegated from the third tier being slam dunks teams to go to group D and with us at the border between the two series, we got moved to Serie C, which will make for a great story this year. The group has a few old dinosaurs from the Portuguese League: we have 24 seasons in the top league, Atletico CP have the same number, and if we count the seasons of the teams that merged to form the team they can add 6 more seasons to their tally, and Fabril do Barreiro have 23 seasons in the top tier, back when they were called CUF. To be fair, the last time any of these teams were in the top tier was in the 70s. To top it all off, this year we'll have a Barreiro derby! This season the board want us to finish midtable and looking at the group we're in, I think we can do it. Atlético, Benfica de Castelo Branco and Sintrense are likely to be the favourites to win this though. I'm not sure the bookies believe the same though. W have better odds this year... 500-1. Our board also told us that they favoured us to sign under 23 year old players for the first team, good luck with that! We let go a few of the dead wood players that could easily be replaced by our 16 year olds if need be. On one hand it prevents any damage to the team morale if they start moaning for playing time, and in the other hand it's a bit of money saving. I also managed to get some players to sign new contracts getting a pay cut, and some of the fringe players signed non contracts this season. We received a new sponsor payment that sees us out of the red. Penny pinching to see if we can get some facilities improvements at some point.

Before I start my write-up for the preview of next season, a quick shoutout to Pepe, about to retire at age 41, but still called for the national team and starting up in the 2024 Euros:

So I heard we're now playing Infographics Manager now. It's a wrap at my first season in charge of Barreirense, and we very nearly grabbed a sneaky promotion. While on one hand it's amazing we managed to nearly beat 4000-1 odds, and we did it with the team that got promoted last year, I'm almost glad we didn't, as that would have made next year a huge struggle. When the team was on a high we played great, but all it took was for one of our key pieces to be uninspired for everything to fall apart. At one point we managed only 4 points out of 7 consecutive games! We rely possibly too heavily on Bruninho to win us the games - he scored 23 goals and was the top goalscorer of the whole league, our second best goalscorer 4 - and we suffer on his off days. Furthermore, he's now 34, so I need to think of football beyond him. Moneywise, things are also not amazing, though not too worrisome yet. There is some interest from Vit. Setubal in my playmaker (the one 4.5* rated player in my team) though I doubt I'd be able to make some money off that, and I'd rather keep him. Let's see what next year brings us!

FC Barreirense Not too good to be true! 2024 Youth Intake I'll let the images speak for themselves! Plenty to be happy about. While there's not a player 100% ready to slot right into the first team, there's plenty of potential here, let's have a look at the one's I?m most excited about: José Rodrigues stands out. Farily Professional, 16 Tackling!. His physicals and mentals do need improving, but that's a solid start. Albino doesn't stand out as much because he's unambitious, it's the one thing that screws the whole player, or else I'd even consider fitting him into our DM position. Oliveira on the other hand has very good physicals to begin with (for this level), we need to work on getting his decent technicals up. Another unaambitious player. If we can somehow improve on that, he's a decent goalscoring threat. We somehow need to turn this guy into our backup right back. Quickly. And in case you're curious:

FC Barreirense Sounds too good to be true

Thanks. I actually chose them for the simple reason that they were the team closest to where I live that got promoted!

FC Barreirense Changes and First Impressions 2 December 2023, Campeonato de Portugal Série D First things first. I was able to sort out the contract issue I was having, I simply offered all players what they wanted, then changed their actual playing time commitment after they signed the deal. Only a couple of layers moaned about it and in those cases we were able to get through the moaning after talking to them, so that was a big relief. That left me with this squad: I believe the whole contract thing comes from the same place as our odds of 4000-1 of winning the league, with only two teams in our Series with worse odds. The issue is our reputation being quite low, because this is a team that can very easily achieve midtable and with some luck, a good moment of form and good momentum actually fight to qualify to the Promotion Stage. Our biggest con is one that can easily be seen: we only have one right back. So until we have our first youth intake, I actually have a couple of players (one of the DLs and one of the AMRs) training as a right back just in case. The biggest pro in the squad is our starman, João Bandeira, which we are using as our creative outlet from the midfield. We are currently playing in a 4-3-3 formation, looking for the right moment to use our creativity and speed to be deadly on the counter attack. So far, it's been (mostly) very effective: We started very well - a very positive pre-season against teams roughly at our level, including a 6-2 bulldozing of a third tier Spanish team (we are currently a fourth tier Portuguese team). We had a draw on our first game in the league, and then our worst game of the season result wise - the Portuguese cup gave us a non-league team in the second round (after we got a bye in the first round). They scored from a 0.01 xG free kick in the first chance they had, and they finished with 0.04 xG, but if you can't score you won't win... Then everything came into place and we just kept winning, with our striker Bruninho being our talisman. The only loss (against hilariously named Rabo de Peixe [Fish's Butt] was the only game where we weren't clearly the best team on the field. This leaves the league like this: We are surprisingly up there in the spots that take us to the promotion stage, and we already played against two of the top teams. Now, while there were no changes in the squad, for obvious reasons, I have kind of overhauled the training squad. First of all, a new assistant manager. At this level, there is the need to have an assistant manager that is actually good at training and a bit of a jack of all trades, and I found that in Tiago Barreiros. I also goa some better physios and a decent scout set to give me reports on the next opponent. Most importantly though, I have hired a brand new HoYD in Juvenal Brandão. With 16 Working with Youngsters, having 4-3-3 DM Wide as his preferred formation and being Professional, he's all I can ask for and more at this level. Let's see what the rest of the season gives us!

I ran all the leagues in Portugal plus the top leagues of all the top and mid-level European leagues

I would add Louletano, and Oriental to the list.