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Inspired by some of the stories around here of Champions League glory with teams from the less-fancied European leagues, I have become tempted to join the brigade. However, which league and which club to play with was a big question. I was enjoying my last save in Belgium so I toyed with the idea of Anderlecht, but the finances were shocking beyond belief. It was so bad that I thought the club will either go under or get taken over fairly soon, which put me off them. Partizan in Serbia was tempting but I felt the domestic challenge would be too easy as they are already one of the favorites for the league title. I then looked at Ujpest in Hungary, as I love Budapest as a city, but again finally decided against it on the basis of the Hungarian league being a bigger challenge than I want to take up at this point. Similar thought process applied to Cracovia and Hajduk Split, although these are all clubs I would like to revisit further down the line. When I came to the Austrian league though, I knew I had found what I was looking for. Everybody knows how RB Salzburg have absolutely dominated Austrian football for the past decade or so. With their massive resources, a great playing squad and transfer strategy, coupled by their academy and affiliations, they have become very difficult for any of the other clubs to lay a hand on. As a result, they have convincingly won every Bundesliga since the 2013 season and indeed have only not won it twice since 2009. So taking on the might of Red Bull Salzburg seemed like a very intriguing challenge. There are 3 historic Austrian clubs that appealed to me - SK Rapid Wien, FK Austria Wien and SK Sturm Graz. I could not choose between them so I decided to holiday until Christmas and take over whichever of these clubs was faring the worst at the point. Which will bring us to the next post.

As the dust settled with non-FM obligations last week, my old save beckoned. But, so did FM 17. In a moment of weakness I gave in to that annual, foul temptress. But memories of Sweden are still calling me. So, let’s try this again, shall we… It’s The Hope That Kills You As football fans, we can all relate to that sentiment. The "what could have been" moments. The heartbreak. The days when your overpaid, selfie-obsessed striker couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. Barbosa at the Maracana, 1950. Messi in the final of the Copa America, 2016. Baggio in the World Cup final, 1994. Ghana at the 2010 World Cup. Bayern Munich in Barcelona, 1999. John Terry in Moscow, 2008. (Ok, if I'm being honest the last two were pretty frickin' beautiful and count among my favorite football memories. But, I digress...) For many, redemption comes in one form or another, some more glamorous than others. Titles won. Individual glories and accolades. The heartbreak simply another chapter in the broader narrative. For others, the heartbreak defines them. Haunts them. Overshadows prior accomplishments, triumphs and accolades. The moniker of the "nearly men" is applied, and supporters grow old thinking, "what if...?" This is the story of those teams. Since its inception in 1955, 22 different teams have won the Champions League (and its predecessor). 17 teams have reached the Final, only to fall short: Atlético Madrid (1974, 2014, 2016) Stade de Reims (1956, 1959) Valencia (2000, 2001) Fiorentina (1957) Eintracht Frankfurt (1960) Partizan (1966) Panathinaikos (1971) Leeds United (1975) Saint-Étienne (1976) Borussia Mönchengladbach (1977) Club Brugge (1978) Malmö FF (1979) Roma (1984) Sampdoria (1992) Bayer Leverkusen (2002) Monaco (2004) Arsenal (2006) Similarly, 8 different nations have brought home the World Cup. Yet, 4 have reached the Final and returned home with empty hands: Netherlands (1974, 1978, 2010) Czechoslovakia (1934, 1962) Hungary (1938, 1954) Sweden (1958) This save will chronicle my (second) full-blown attempt to bring glory to as many of these sides as possible. As with before, there are no hard-and-fast rules beyond the concept of the save. While I enjoy developing youth, I will not take a youth academy only approach at these clubs. Rather, I will work within club-specific plans without any self-imposed transfer restrictions (e.g., a 2-4 year-plan makes sense with the like of Arsenal, versus a 6-8 year plan with Malmö ). I will leave on high -- thus, once I've won the Champions League, I must move on. Surely I won't be fired...will I? After my first club, I will only accept a position with one of the sides listed above, or a club that manages to join this elite (!?) group of "nearly men." Likewise, if a club manages to win the CL under another manager, they are removed from the challenge. On the international scene, the same basic rules will apply -- I will only accept an international management position with an eligible nation. If I win the World Cup, I must move on. Nations can be added to and removed from the eligible list, based on results at the World Cup. With respect to Czechoslovakia, I consider both the Czech Republic and Slovakia eligible. While some of these sides are "easier" than others, I will begin with one of the "smaller" clubs and proceed from there, wherever the winds take me. I am also holidaying 2 years into the future, to allow for a unique playing environment. I've loaded the top leagues in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Spain and Sweden, with a large database/pool of potential players. Up Next: The stage is set. June 2018.

Creates a 96 team Champions League tournament from 43 North American countries. Updates the existing 16 team NACL. FMDigi-NACLExpanded.fmf

I made a sensational season winning the Bundesliga and the DFP pokal and finally i reached the Champions League final. Today it's the day of the final and my best player and captain is on international duty plus my best winger and two of my other players... I took a look at my opponent Liverpool and their whole team is on international duty... WTF is this? I have spent hours and hours on this save to get to this day and when I'm here this is what i get?

EDIT: I posted in the wrong place *facepalm* Hi all, I'll try to be brief... I'm trying to improve the standard of the Welsh League & I have spent a fair bit of time improving teams, stadiums, reputations etc.. across three divisions. However, I'm stuck with European coefficients & more specifically "Nation Club Coefficients". I have improved the historical coefficients of all the teams in the league, but Wales is still listed in 50th position in the table. I have wildly exaggerated these ratings too, having 8 or 9 teams sitting in the top 40 European teams just to prove it is having no effect. Wales are still 50th. What am I missing? I've spent hours (days) trawling through the forum & searching through the menus in the Editor for an answer and I'm getting nowhere! Please help, GrunDMC

Hello guys. I have been managing Barnsley for 3 years now. In my first year, I won the English FA Cup and got promoted from Sky Bet Championship to Premier League. I the next season, we somehow managed to stay up and not get relegated but were able to win the UEFA Euro Cup. This season we are in the mid table in Premier League and have reached the quarter finals of UEFA Champions Cup. Now, since my team has been playing above expectations in the Champions cup, I am supposing of my chances to win it. On the other hand, I have got a job offer from Schalke 04 for which I have been declared as the leading candidate with odds as small as 1-2. Schalke 04 is at 14th place in the Bundesliga. To be honest, I want a new challenge so I want this job, but then again, on the other hand, I don't want to leave my club until we are eliminated from Champions Cup. But as far as I know, Schalke 04's offer will force me into joining them immediately. I wanted some suggestions on what would be better for my career in the long term as I believe that Schalke 04 must have finances and players better than Barnsley, so I would have a better chance to prove my abilities.

Hi guys, I am currently modifying worldwide champions league. I am now stuck in some issue regarding the setting group stage. I just attached the screenshot to show where I am having problem and highlighted it. The editor is primarily limiting the maximum number of groups in group stage in 26 groups. However, I found out that someone invalidated this limitation as he created 32 groups as shown in the screenshot.(I don't know how he did it) So I myself tried to create 32 or more groups but every time i try, it is always limited in 26 groups total. Could someone explain the way to create groups more than 26? Thank you

I've just finished a champions league group stage with Monaco in a group of Bayern, Sevilla and FC Midjtylland. Me, Bayern and Sevilla all finished the group with 11 points, all beating Midjtylland twice, Bayern beating my Monaco side at home 5-3, Sevilla beating Bayern 1-0 at away and us beating Sevilla 5-4 away. As far as I'm aware the groups are sorted on head to head record when the points are tied, but we've all beaten/lost to each other. So I expected it to go down to goal difference, however Bayern qualified top, Sevilla second with my team placing third. Is anyone able to explain the qualification rules clearly to me in this situation as I was convinced I was going through until I checked the tables!! I've attached some screenshots. https://gyazo.com/e59dc9e9bdba2eaae4335f5fc494579b https://gyazo.com/439464e4117a5500acf75f8aa1331c01 https://gyazo.com/3fa8a86b1aff4ee7b38614805381be89 Thanks in advance

Hi All, I want to create a cup with 32 international teams. The format will be the same as the champions league with 8 groups of 4 and each team playing each other twice. The top two qualify for the last 16. This part can be done easily using basic editor. Where is get's is i what i want the bottom two teams in each group qualify for a different competition similar to how the third team in the champions league group moved to the Europa League. These teams will follow a different path and play out there own final. I don't think the basic rules will be able to manage this. Has anyone done this or can it be done?? Help is needed. Tom

This week in my saved game a notification came that the India U23s manager has resigned for unwanted performance in the Asian qualification cup. A week passed but no one was a favourite for the job and my manager is pretty popular in Indian National League managing Bharat FC. So my question is that shall I apply for the job or not because my team Bharat FC has once won the Asian Champions League and maybe we could soon get an entry in the UEFA Champions league. Thanks in advance !

Hi all, I've got a game and am managing BMG. Just before the group stage draw for CL, I saved the game. When the draw came out, I got LFC (who I support) so like a little cheater, I reloaded the game to before the draw and the same draw came out over and over again. To the point where I thought I'd record it and see what the community thinks? Dropbox link here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9uz0akj5qtixf8x/Video 17-03-2017%2C 01 15 19.mov?dl=0 Cheers peeps!

*** Disclaimer*** First and foremost as always, I unfortunately feel the need to inform anybody that reads this that this isn't a rant or a flaming post. All of my posts are meant to foster discussion. Sometimes, sadly the community turns against one another. Secondly, since I discovered FM, I've had nothing but success at it... The first few versions I lucked into it and everything past that has been about applying real world tactics within the confines of the definitions of Football Manager. I would presume that it's wide spread knowledge that club and manager reputation is considered to be broken by most users. A user can win league, cup, and Champions League title year after year only to see their reputation barely increase and in some cases even drop. This has been observed by users playing in leagues with low reputations as well as users playing in leagues such as the EPL. The reason that this is an issue for most players is that reputation has been programmed such a far-reaching impact on the game. It affects sponsorship money, the level of player you're able to attract, transfer and contract fees (incoming and outgoing), etc. This is effectively shown here Football Manager Reputation Experiment . In this three part experiment, the user gives non-league side Halifax the maximum reputation in the game while dropping Arsenal's reputation to the lowest possible. An overview of the impact is that Arsenal were forced to sell a large majority of their starting players during the first three transfer windows while being unable to bring any player in. Over the course of four seasons they became a Euro Cup tier side. Meanwhile, Halifax stormed up the leagues and made a fair amount of money while doing it. But what's particularly of note for my point is that in four years, Arsenal went from a reputation of 1 (the lowest you can possibly have) to about 5500 (about three stars). That's a massive jump in a relatively short amount of time for a side that lost most of it's well-known players, staff, and only qualified for the Euro Cup here and there. I say massive relative to how a user-controlled team's reputation seems to work. Again, despite user's signing or developing some of the world's most renowned players, winning the biggest competitions in successive years, taking on big names in pre-season setups, the reputation never jumps that quickly in that amount of time. So the question becomes about if there are mechanics in play to artificially influence a user-controlled team's reputation. It would seem that there's a strong possibility that this is true and it would make sense. Many users become bored after they feel that they can buy any regen and basically plug and play. So it would make sense that if users can achieve unrealistic success with minnow clubs, perhaps the developers felt that having a more "realistic" reputation system would lead to a degraded challenge and experience. Basically, by having the AI team's reputation be more dynamic, it allows for a continued and varied challenge for the user over the course of a save. What are your thoughts on this?

Is there anyway to get the actual correct grouping of the Champions League in FM 18? PS. I don't even have the correct premier league fixtures and I unticked "Use fake fixtures". I bought the game of off Steam. THANK YOU<>.

Hey , i wanted to change the UCL and UEL prizes and TV fees on the FM 18 editor , how can i do it?

December 27, 2016 Chapter 1: The dream Looking through the thread of football manager forums, I always think about these wonderful stories that are created until I see a thread by the user of ManUtd1. Looking through his thread it may me, wonder what should I be doing with my life and even though the idea of this thread was only just for Champions League, I wanted to take this one step further and include all European runner up teams, not just the Champions League. Going to my roommate who was sitting at the kitchen table, I said to him “I want to be a real football manager”. He looks at me, confused and wondering what got that into my mind before quietly saying “Have you had too much to drink again because that is the third time this week you have had a stupid idea.” After explaining what my idea came from and how I was going to do it, he only thought of one thing to think of. “There is no way you would do such a thing, for god sake you don’t even have any coaching qualifications so what makes you think that this is a great idea. Especially when there are forty-three clubs that have been close but not winning.” He had a point, but that wouldn’t deter me from doing it and knowing the risks that I had set myself, I replied: “Think of all the money that I could get if I was to become successful in managing clubs plus how hard can it be to manage a football team.” My roommate just shook his head as he is probably thinking that this couldn’t go ahead. Welcome to my new story where with the inspiration of @ManUtd1, I have decided to do the challenge of getting a European title with all of the teams that are on the list which is forty-three of them and it will be one of those saves were it a long journeyman series. Here are the two lists with the clubs and where they do start in this save. So the leagues that I have loaded in are Austria – Top 2 leagues Belgium – Top 2 leagues England – Top 3 leagues France – Top 3 leagues Germany – Top 5 leagues [With the added German pack] Greece – Top League Hungary – Top 2 leagues Italy – Top League Netherlands – Top 2 leagues Poland – Top 2 leagues Portugal – Top 2 leagues Russia – Top 3 leagues Scotland – Top 2 leagues Spain – Top 2 leagues Sweden – Top 2 leagues Ukraine – Top 2 leagues

Hi all, Apologies for being back so soon to ask for more help! Special thanks to @lemeuresnew , @WhyMe, @OrientTillIDie, who helped me solve my last issue with my tactics. For a little context, I’m 10 years into my most successful club experience yet, having taken the helm of Cambridge in League 2 and guided them into the Premier league. I’ve been in the Prem for 6 years or so, and have been a Europa-league quality squad for the last 3 or 4. Last season I actually managed to make the final of the Europa league, but lost on penalty kicks to Sevilla. I’m still bitter, but anyhow – I really want to make the jump to the Champions League this year. I used to play a narrow but low tempo, high press, 3-5-2 (3 defenders, 2 wingbacks, defensive midfield Triangle, and two strikers), which brought me quite good results (especially in the lower leagues). My team DNA is based on Teamwork and High Work rate (lead the league in those attributes). However, in the last two few years I stumbled across two phenomenal wingers that I just HAD to buy (Fabio Marcucci and Raul Vergara). They didn’t fit the formation, but their talent was undeniable and I figured I would work the formation to them. They seem to be world-class wingers, and I am absolutely salivating at their identical 20 ratings for crossing (screenshots of attributes attached). So I figured I would change my tactics to a 3-4-3 (see attached), a 3 defender, 2 wingbacks, 2 CMs, 2 wingers, and 1 striker). I kept the high press as it’s a critical part of how I want to play, but switched from a Narrow to a Fairly wide playing style to spread the game further, especially given that I’m a more dominant force than I used to be. First game of the season is against Leicester, and they play a narrow 4-3-3 so was hoping I could take advantage on the wings. Instead it was a disappointing 2-0 loss. My wingers were useless, seemingly just chucking up crosses to no avail. Does anyone have tactical suggestions? I really think I could achieve something special with these wingers but can’t figure out how to get the most out of them. A few ideas I’ve thought of include (1) Change one of the CMs roles to be a Box to Box midfielder or CM/attack so that he can get ahead to join my striker while the ball is on the wings, (2) My striker (attaching image of him as well) isn’t exceptional at heading, so maybe change crosses to be low or whipped? (3) Changing to a control mentality might help my players get up more, (4) maybe keep the narrow formation? To allow my wingers more space What do you think? I'm open to any and all suggestions! Thank you

So, little background story: I am currently managing Southampton in my second season, finishing 5th in my first one. We were playing so well i decided to promise van dijk, ibra, romeu, cedric, ward prowse and ze gomes that we'd qualify for champions league so they could stay. Was fourth place almost at the end, not bad. I had very difficult features ahead. As mentioned before though, I finished 5th, sooo Europa League was a plan B. The opponents in EL were so easy and EPL opponents so hard, i prioritized EL. At the 34th round i was sixth, and at 35th i was already 8th place. One of these late rounds I drew, and CL qualification via EPL was impossible. Game ended, I was chill. Until I see the mailbox. ALL the players I promised wanted to leave. I was livid. I won EL. they still wanted to leave. All my superstars. And I am in CL. Career mode basically ruined because i was forced to sell them. Please, launch an update where you fix this. They wanted CL, I gave them. Just not the standard way.

In my TNS save I've got too the 3rd cha,pions league qualifying round and do not have enough players trained at my club to submit my squad...anyone know what to do?

Afternoon all. I have decided to bring over my FM17 career save that I have been live tweeting about. If you don't know what the idea of the save is then here is a description of the challenge! The Challenge The plan for my FM17 save is to travel the world taking over interesting clubs, e.g Fallen Giants, Clubs I follow, Clubs with interesting histories, etc. For this I have a list of teams that fit into this category. My manager will be starting Unemployed with Sunday League Reputation and No Coaching badges. I will start by loading a few nations in Asia and Africa then (possibly) sim around 6 months to make sure that there are different jobs available to what pops up at the beginning of the game. It will then be a job hunt until a club comes in and takes a chance on me. From there who knows what will happen but I have a few aims and objectives that I want to achieve in the game. Alongside having my list of teams I want to manage the main aim will be to complete my self-titled challenge called "Club and Country Hexagon Challenge" Club You have to win the 5 Continental Champions Leagues, these are: European Champions League Copa Libertadores North American Champions League Asian Champions League African Champions League Alongside this you have to win the Club World Championships Country You have to win the 5 international tournaments, these are: Copa America European Championships African Nations Cup Asian Cup North America Gold Cup Alongside this you have to win the World Cup If I manage this is will be some kind of minor miracle but hopefully this will keep me occupied for the whole of FM17! I want to try and complete this without taking over the usual bigger clubs but we will see how it goes, obviously the first club will be pretty rubbish but as I progress, gain badges and reputation the clubs will get larger but I don't want to take over the usual Man United, Real Madrid, etc. Aas you may notice from the title is called FMREGEN: FULLCIRCLE 2, why the 2 I hear you ask? Well this is my 2nd attempt after my 1st one had a bug where when I added new nations to the game no staff or players loaded! It was an unrepairable bug which meant I had to start again. It was gutting but it made me make a few changes. The main change I made was to add all Nations I wanted to play in at the very start of the game to stop the issue that I had before So here are the nations I am going to use: Quite a few but a nice mix of bigger and smaller Nations over the five continents available. The aim is the same as previous, win all five continental champions leagues + the club world championship and also the five international tournaments + the world cup. Let's hope this save doesn't screw up or I think I'll be jumping off a very tall building!! The First Job As before I have started my manager off with no badges, Sunday League Reputation and unemployed so now it's job hunt time! And it did take quite a while to get a job interview that interested me, I wanted to leave continents like Europe and the Americas until later on in the save so was specifically waiting for a job in Asia or Africa. Interviews came and went and then eventually someone took a punt on me! Amazulu of the South African First Division had taken me on and to be honest this was exactly the job I wanted, not only for the size of club but also the continent I felt is best to start in. We are currently mid-season and in 14th place out of 16 teams which is poor for a team predicted to end 3rd. They did get relegated from the Premiership in 2015 and I'm pretty confident with the squad I have we can get on a good run and be challenging for at least a playoff spot, which is top 3. So my journey starts again! Let's see how well I can do this time. As I mentioned before I have been live tweeting this save without doing a blog on it but that is going to change, I will still be doing tweets but only every month(ish) and will be concentrating on the blogging side of it. I am already 4 seasons into the save so the next post which will be up in the next few days will be a broad overview of my first 4 seasons in charge. After that I will do updates either once or twice a season depending on if there is enough to say and/or I get enough time. That's all from me for now, I hope you enjoyed the intro and will follow along. This is the first time I've posted on the SI Forum Career Section so if you have any tips or feedback for me then please leave a comment

Hello, everyone. This is my first post and I am fairly new to FM and it's community. I have restructured the MLS and the leagues in the U.S.A in FM Editor so they act more like European leagues. The league works well although I would love it if I could play in CL and EL instead of the North American Champions League. I do not want to mess with country's coefficients and I am okay with my custom league entering UEFA with a coefficient of 0. Also, I simulated 20 years into the future and no lower league team established themselves in the top division. I know 20 years is not a long time, but if there is an obvious thing I am missing as an first time user of the FM Editor let me know. Please let me know how to fix these problems. Thanks!!

Hi, Ive noticed that that no games that are played in the group stages of the champions league appear on the player history. The problem only appears to affect the group stage because if you do play in the European Super Cup, Club World Championship or the knockout stages of the champions league they do appear as normal. As you can see from the pictures below Paul Pogba has scored 6 goals yet in his Player history he's scored none. I've also noticed that the game doesn't count consecutive wins or losses.

Can something be done about the configuration of domestic league fixtures and European fixtures? I am playing a game where I have started off my management career in Denmark and then moved to Russia. The leagues fixtures from both Denmark and Russia do not take into account European fixtures. For example, I have qualified for the Euro Cup with Zenit. I have an away fixture to AEK on Thursday 4/10 and then a league fixture on Saturday 6/10. Why isn't the league fixture moved to the Sunday? I've had this problem in nearly every league outside of the UK. Thanks.

Hello, I want to change rule restriction of Champions League in FM 2016 EDITOR, rule of home grown players, but I can not find that option, please help me? Thank you.

Hello, I want to change rule restriction of Champions League in FM 2016 EDITOR, rule of home grown players, but I can not find that option, please help me? Thank you.