Rick87

Congrats on reaching the next rung of the ladder. Onwards and upwards!

Great start to the season, be good if you can qualify for Europe!

June 2023 A three week break for internationals meant we only played two competitive games this month; I organised a couple of friendlies against local oppositions just to keep the players match sharp, which seems to have worked as we are still very much hot on Bolivar's heels; Injuries are starting to pile up a bit, thankfully we have quite a large squad, but it's still not useful as we get into the business end of our unlikely title challenge 38 year old Serginho is almost back to fitness after missing the last two months with a hip injury, he was in fine form before his fall so he will be a welcome return to the team., young Carlos Sejes's recent breakthrough into the first team squad has been delayed by a dislocated shoulder. Hopefully he won't suffer any long term repercussions from that as I have him earmarked as an important figure over the next couple of seasons. The high injury count could be something to do with me tweaking the training routines, if anyone has any advice please do comment! Without many games to worry about this month, I have spent most of my time deciding on my squad going forward. As I've said before, the average age of my team is 31, and whilst it's common for South American players to play well into their late 30's or even early 40's, I would like to build for the future and have begun to decide who to offer new deals to and who I will allow to expire at the end of the season. Ramiro Ballivian - My first choice right back, Mr Consistent. He will remain my first choice in that position with the aforementioned Carlos Sejes stepping up to provide competition Fernando Aguilar will be allowed to leave. Although he's 36, Jair Torrico is still as dependable as they come (I changed the three Torrico's in the squad to first name only nicknames as it was confusing on the pitch) and I don't want to lose his experience, especially with no younger player ready to step up and replace him. Brian Barao has featured in friendlies so far, but with club captain Luis Barbosa considering leaving at the end of the season I will need to break Brian into the team sooner rather than later, my coaches rate him very highly so hopefully he can handle the step up. Barbosa's usual partner in the heart of defense, Sebastian was a no brainier as far as deciding who's contracts to renew goes. He may look like Rishi Sunak's doppelganger, but Nelson certainly isn't afraid of the opposition, he regularly rotates with Zaracho and will probably be his partner next season if Barbosa does leave. That's the defense done for now, I may decide to keep others depending on what targets are available, next month I'll be deciding on my midfield. And talking of renewing contracts, I've just signed mine! Believe in project Cocachamba!

Thanks, I have managed in Bolivia before on an older FM, the format to the Primera is different now though, it was changed from having opening and closing stages and using an aggregate points system to a more straight forward league system. Which to be honest is much simpler to understand. May 2023 Half way through the campaign now, and we are still unbeaten in the league, I don't think there is any denying we now harbor unexpected title aspirations now, trailing league leaders Oriente Pertolero by five points with a game in hand. Dropping points against Nacional Potosi was frustrating, they had stubbornly resisted us for the entire 90 minutes before we finally scored through Dario T, obviously we thought the 92nd minute goal would be the winner, not to be however a long range shot squirmed past goalkeeper Luis Cardenes in the 96th minute. We also struggled with Royal Par, being held to a draw in the league before being dumped out of Copa Aerosur which was massively disappointing as I felt the cup was a winnable competition. With the historically successful clubs; Bolivar, The Strongest, Blooming and Jorge Wilstermann stuttering so far, can we take advantage? Not an encouraging intake by the looks of things, a shame as I really want to help shape the next generation of Bolivian stars. As I've said previously it is one of my career ambitions to take charge of the Bolivian national team in the future and help the reach the Wold cup for the first time in over 30 years.

Personally I like mid season, you have to work with the squad you have available and you get a better understanding of the players before deciding who to keep in the summer.

Wonderful articles, glad you continued with it

Great first season in the Premiership, good luck in. The play off!

Well done on reaching 25%, that's a fine achievement. I'm always interested in saves in countries you don't see very often, I always worry about crashes loading many data files at once though. Yours has been stable so far though by the look of it?

Your really flying through this, I guess the small leagues help with that. Well don another Champions League!

April 2023 An amazing month for Club Aurora and our supporters! We are STILL unbeaten and have thrashed our two biggest rivals, giving us a great platform for achieving our goals this season; Sixteen goals in April, we have been fantastic; beating our local rivals Jorge Wilstermann and smashing champions Bolivar, Bolivia's most successful club who make up almost half of the national team, 6-0 were huge results. My pre-season expectations were to qualify for one of the continental competitions, but if we can keep this form going, who knows, maybe we can win the club's second Primera division title. We will reach the half way stage after completing the May fixtures, after that we will have a real idea of what exactly our seasons objectives will be in the second half of the season.

Apologies to those of you who like the graphic heavy style of update, but I'm switching to a monthly update instead as it was taking me more time to do the graphics than I was spending actually playing and enjoying the game. March 2023 Our unbeaten start to the season continues into the third month; The form hasn't be spectacular by any means, but we keep plugging along, whilst of the bigger clubs struggle; The Strongest, Blooming and Jorge Wilstermann all in the bottom half, can we take advantage of their slow starts and close the gap that is already opening at this early stage between reigning champions Bolivar and the rest of the pack? Through to the third round of the Copa Aerosur (the Bolivan cup) This is a title Aurora have never claimed, so it would be nice to lift it this season where I can put out full strength sides as we have no continental competitions to worry about, which hopefully won't be the case next season! 4-4-2 continues to look my best formation, we look really good playing it, much better than we do when I set up with the perhaps more fashionable 4-2-3-1 or 4-1-2-2-1. I'm still learning about my team and Bolivia but here is my preferred line-up so-far; Admittedly it's been slightly confusing having three players all named Torrico in the squad, two of them even have the same initial so both appear as D. Torrico on the pitch. Didi and Jair are brothers, Dario is no relation as far as I know. Defense is quite solid, the only game we looked somewhat shaky in was the 5-3 epic with Guabira when they had very pacy forwards. we found ourselves behind twice due to them outstripping our defenders, I countered this by dropping the defensive line deeper and having Moruno switch to defensive duties which allowed the others to push forward and eventually take take control of the game. I'm trying to retain a solid core of Bolivian's in the line-up as I want to manage the national team someday and anything I can do to help my future prospects can only be a good thing. Next month I will get to experience my first Cocochamba derby as we take on arch-rivals Jorge Wilstermann, with whom we share the Estadio Felix Capriles. Can we keep our promising start to the campaign going?

The unbeaten start continues! Though only just; a stoppage time equalizer rescued a point for us, in fact we actually scored again moments later, unfortunately Rodrigo Ramillo's header was disallowed due to a push on the goalkeeper, much to my annoyance. Still, a point is a point and it keeps our good start to the season going.

This one means a lot to the supporters, The Strongest are twelve time champions of Bolivia, so to beat them convincingly seems a fantastic statement of intent on our part. I'm not insinuating that we are title challengers at this point, my aim this season is to qualify for the Copa Sudamericana or preferably Copa Libertadores. But if we keep playing like today there is no reason we can't be dark horses.

Cup action this time out, we came worryingly close to throwing away a lead again, against an inferior opposition. Still we did get the job done, switching from 4-2-3-1 to 4-4-2 made us look far more solid in the second half. Great to see my new signing Alain Nino de Guzman getting on the score sheet when he jinked through the Universitario defense.

Great going, I particuarly found the Micronesia section interesting as I've recently read 'Up Pohnpei' by Dan Ashworth who is a journalist who took a bet from a friend that he could become an international football manager, he ends up writing to every minor nation asking for a chance, the Pohnpei national/island team gives him one. He has to contend with things like the pitch being infested with bullfrogs. great read! Anyway, keep it up, I shall be following!

An entertaining debut as Aurora manager, even if I feel we should have come away with the win considering we were very much the better team, bossing the play throughout most of the game, but twice we surrendered a two goal lead. frustrating but there were plenty of positives on show to make me optimistic going forward, controlling possession and creating lots of chances.

My preparations are complete! At least I hope they are. It was a good pre-season, the only defeat coming against Peruvian visitors Cienciano which I can excuse as they have a strong squad and it was only a narrow loss. In all the other games we pretty much blew the oppositions away, although they were all inferior in terms of stature to us, playing in the Segunda division or below. I have four signings in; Joel de Marco - Central midfielder Signed on free transfer after being let go by Argentine Premier side Aldosivi, Joel is only 19 and could still have a good career. Ignacio Poplawski - Another midfielder signed from Argentina; who is adept at defending or getting forward, Joel was born in Florida but has spent the formulative years of his career with Estudientes, before loan spells in his home state with Orlando City and Inter Miami. Upon his return to Argentina he failed to make a single appearance for Estudientes and was transfer listed. I splashed £96k on Ignacio, not an inconsiderable amount here in Bolivia so I hope he can live up to the price tag. Alain Nino de Guzman - My biggest and probably most exciting signing; from divisional rival Orliente Petrolero for £150k. Alain can play centrally or out on the left and I'll be expecting big things from him. Juan Gil - Promising young keeper, snapped up on free following his release from Colombian side Deportivo Pasto as backup initially, as there were only two other goalkeepers in the squad and hopefully to develop into competition for the other two stoppers. Going out I have sold central defender Ezequiel Michelli to Blooming for an initial £30k, potentially rising to £46k depending on appearances. So now you've met the newbies, here is my squad as a whole. I've included the reserves in the screenshots as well to give you a better idea of what I have to work with going forward as I'll be looking to develop them to gradually replace my elderly squad, which as I said in the previous post has an average age of nearly 31. Goalkeepers No worries here, all three are solid enough based on what I've seen in pre-season, I'll not be looking to replace any of them this season. Defense Plenty of options to chose from, Luis Barbosa is my captain and rock at the back, usually he will be partnered with Paraguayan Sebastian Zaracho. Brother Didi and Jair Tarrico could be important as they can play in defense or midfield. I will be trying to break in young prospects Carlos Sejas and Brian Barao over the course of the season. Midfield Tons of options here too, there wasn't much strength in the center on day one, so my three midfield signings have added bulk to this area. Several old heads need moving on in the near future, 38 year old winger Serginho surely will be retiring soon, although he did look good in preseason to be fair. Forwards We can easily play 4-4-2 or even a narrow 4-3-3 with a number of good forwards on the books, all of whom scored at least once in pre-season that was encouraging. Tactics I'm a great believer in keeping things as un-complicated as possible, a simple 4-4-2 keeps us defensively solid and gives us fire power up front in games where we will have to work hard for the points. I've gone for 4-2-3-1 when we are the favorites and will likely have a lot of possession of the ball. In both systems I've kept my default instructions to a minimum. I will tweak them on a game by game basis depending on the oppositions strengths and weaknesses and could easily switch to a 5-3-2 if we are up against a particularly tough opposition as we have a number of players who can play wingback effectively. OK, Now onto the first competitive game of my career! at home to Oriente Petrolero.

Excellent graphics mate, makes the stories stand out and nice and easy to read

Day One Welcome one and all to what I hope will be the meteoric rise to the summit of the footballing world - of Bolivian tactician Juan Cardozo. Cochamaba born Juan is an avatar I've used for years on FM and FIFA. He had a modest playing career in his youth, captaining several local amateur sides, but was hampered by a recurrent ACL injury that forced him to hang up his boots at the tender age of 25. Thankfully for Juan, his on field leadership had been noticed by scouts of Club Aurora who saw potential in the stricken striker. Aurora offered Juan the chance to coach their U16's, where he showed an immediate aptitude for coaching, winning the U16 league in this first season, leading to a promotion to under-18 level, where he again demonstrated his tactical acumen by finishing second. Now the club have given their rising star the ultimate show of trust and given him the reigns of the first team squad following the departure of Roberto Perez who only lasted 72 days in the role. Can he repay the faith Aurora have put on his young shoulders? Squad A very solid base to work from; Though being a youth favoring manager, I am taking note that the average age of the squad is over 30, something I will be looking to address over the coming seasons, I will be cautious about making too many changes too quickly though. Tactically I would like to play some high pressure attacking football, again though this will be a gradual change rather than completely ripping up what the players already know and risking causing dressing room discord. To begin with I set up with a fairly standard 4-4-2 which I will tweak and develop over time along with other systems. The League In this league, the top team is of course champions; the top three qualify for South America's elite competition - the Copa Libertadores. The teams from 4th-8th earn a place in the Copa Sudamericana. There is no automatic relegation here, the bottom team plays-off against the winner of Segunda division below to try and save themselves.

________________________________ Career Aims My initial goals with Aurora is to simply prove myself as a manager and build my reputation. There are a few things I would like to achieve though. Qualify for Copa Libertadores with Aurora Win Primera Division with Aurora Be the first Bolivian club to win Copa Libertadores Manage Bolivia Qualify for World Cup with Bolivia for the first time since USA 94 Win Bolivia's first Copa America since 1963 Manage Boca Juniors (My favorite South American club) Move to a big European club Win UEFA Champions League Cement my place in football history by being inducted into Worldwide hall of fame The story so far

@forzaformia Excellent work on creating all these countries mate! I downloaded all the continents and chose about 50 countries from it that I'm inclined to want to manage in rather than all 200 odd. however I have noticed that when trying to start a game, it gets stuck for a full 15-20 minutes between selecting the files and the screen where you select what leagues you want playable. Is there anyway speed this up?

Hi, Is there a Welsh expansion for FM24 anywhere? Can't seem to find one but perhaps somebody knows of one floating about.

Thank you for your hard work. I'm looking forward to the African countries.

After a number of reloads, I finally got my local club Workington to come up, so here we go on our epic quest to bring Champions League glory to West Cumbria!

Is there any rules regarding manager profile/experience etc?