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The sole purpose of this fie is to expand the US/Canadian experience for Football Manager as close to real life as reasonably possible. And if I do say so myself, I believe this file is the most realistic USA expansion for any version of Football Manager. There are a lot of different ways to enjoy this DB file. Take over your local NPSL or USL2 club (like my Emerald Force SC). Start with at the youth level, including the MLS academy teams. Do a Caleb Porter and build a college powerhouse before taking on the professional game. You can even make like Marc Dos Santos and start in one of the Canadian leagues (including the new Canadian Premier League). Or, just start in MLS while the pyramid below helps develop players for your dynasty. USA: Major League Soccer: All default rules are still in place (salary cap, allocation money, contract types, All-Star Game, Drafts, etc). Beckham's Inter Miami and Nashville SC join the league in 2020, as they do by default. In 2021, Austin FC and Charlotte enter. The Charlotte MLS franchise has not announced their branding so I have just “promoted” Charlotte Independence from the USL Championship. In 2022 Saint Louis FC and Sacramento join to give MLS 30 teams. All of this expansion is consistent with real life. In my testing, the actual occurrence of the expansion drafts at the end of the 2020 and 2021 seasons are hit-and-miss. Sometimes they occur, sometimes they don’t. I can’t nail down why. Could be something to do with hard-coding. Also, I was able to get Austin FC to mimic the FM Parent Club-MLS Academy relationship using Chivas USA from the database, but Charlotte Independence, Saint Louis FC, and Sacramento Republic will not be able to sign Academy players like the rest of the league. United Soccer League Championship: The league plays in 2019 with the same 36 teams from real life. In 2020, Nashville SC leaves the league to join MLS. In 2020, Ottawa Fury and Fresno FC leave the league, as they have both folded. San Diego Loyal SC and Miami FC join in 2020. I have also rebranded Bethlehem Steel FC (Philadelphia Union II), Swope Park Rangers (Sporting Kansas City II), and Tulsa Roughnecks FC (FC Tulsa), as in real life. In 2021, Charlotte Independence moves to MLS, while Queensboro FC and Oakland Stompers join the league. 2022 sees Saint Louis FC and Sacramento Republic join MLS, while Rhode Island, FC Buffalo, Des Moines Menace, and Chicago join USLC. United Soccer League One: Lansing Ignite FC departs after 2019, and Inter Miami II, New England II, Union Omaha all join in 2020 and Rochester begins play in 2021. National Independent Soccer Association: This league forced me to make some tough calls. The league only plays in the fall of 2019 with the same 8 teams that began play in real life. However, Philadelphia Fury plays all of their matches (they forfeited the season after their first game). They will leave the league along with Atlanta SC (Folded) and Miami FC (USL Championship) starting in 2020. Chattanooga FC, Detroit City FC, and the Michigan Stars join for Spring 2020. NISA plays a Fall-Spring schedule, but this impossible to recreate properly when the other leagues play a Spring-Fall schedule. So I’ve formatted the league to have Spring and Fall seasons (each with a playoff), with an overall championship in the winter rather than the summer. NCAA: All 209 teams and 24 conferences are included. Set up to mimic real life as much as FM will allow. 21 of 24 conferences have tournaments, with all 24 conference champions gaining automatic bids to the NCAA Championship Tournament. Players selected for the MLS Superdraft will come from the NCAA. MLS Academy Division: The US Soccer Development Academy division has folded, however MLS has announced they will organize a competition for their league's academy teams. I have added a placeholder format until the actual setup is announced. Also now included is the Generation Adidas Cup, giving MLS Academy teams competition against each other and foreign youth squads. United Soccer League Two: Setup to reflect real life for all 2019-2020 changes. National Premier Soccer League: I am taking a hiatus on supporting the NPSL. This league, in my experience, takes away more from the game experience than it contributes. I can’t make the clubs function as they should do real life, and many of the clubs don’t even add staff or players anyway. So at least for now, there is no NPSL in the game. CANADA: SI has released an official version of the CPL. When I tried to add to the Canadian structure it threw the Concacaf competitions out of whack, so I decided not to mess with the Canadian league structure this year. I’d recommend SI’s DLC or yellowsweatygorilla’s file if you’re looking for added depth. Concacaf: Domestic Leagues: I have added the following central America and Caribbean leagues: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and Puerto Rico. I have also added the CFU Club Championship competitions, however, because I have left the Concacaf League and Concacaf Champions League as default, winning the CFU championships will not automatically qualify you for continental play as in real life. UNCAF Interclub Cup: Revival of this club competition for the 6 non-Mexico Central American nations. ADDITIONAL COMPETITIONS: These competitions are revivals of defunct competitions or modifications to enhance the FM20 MLS game experience. Copa Sudamericana: I have updated this file so that the finalists from the Concacaf Champions League qualify for the second round of the Copa Sudamericana. This used to be happen in real life and there has been some discussion to revive this so I set it up with this file. Pan-Pacific Championship: I revived this preseason tournament where the champions of MLS, the A-League (Australia), K-League (South Korea), and the J.League (Japan) compete in a one-off knockout tournament. International Champions Cup: Adjusted this competition so that MLS sends in an entry. INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS: USA January Camp: This adds the annual USA National Team January Camp, that culminates with one or two friendlies. It actually even seems to work as it does in real life with the focus being on domestic players. Pan-American Games: This is a U22 competition to help national teams from North and South America prepare for the Olympics. Copa Nuevo Mundo: Patterned after the Copa America Centennario (2016). It's a joint CONMEBOL-CONCACAF international tournament that takes place every four years in the USA. Not a real life competition. ADDITIONAL FILES: I've included a zip that includes some data files. There is a file which gives some of the Lower Level clubs in the USA their managers to start the game. There is also a file that adjusts the USA transfer preferences to make them more realistic. KNOWN ISSUES: As stated, it is unfortunately impossible replicate the MLS-Academy relationship with teams that are not hard-coded to have it. So Charlotte, Saint Louis FC, and Sacramento Republic will not be able to sign teams from their Academies as they should. Also, it is possible that the MLS Expansion Drafts following the 2020 and 2021 seasons may not occur. In my testing, they usually do happen but occasionally they do not. -Some USL2 clubs won't fill their squads. Some teams will always have only gray players. I've tried different things, but for now there seems to be no way around this. My guess as to why this is the case would be because in FM, clubs in the USA do not develop new players. All new domestic American players come through the Academy system whereas clubs in other countries' have a yearly youth intake. I can't say for sure why some semi-pro clubs don't just go sign free players, but I'd say it's related to the unique US youth system in FM. DISCLAIMER: I have NO idea how this file will mesh with other database files. If you have an issue, by all means report it and I will try to make it compatible but I can make no promises on that. DOWNLOAD LINKS: USA Expansion 3.8 DB File: http://www.mediafire.com/file/q8u32pxius94m6m/001_USA_Expansion_3.8.fmf/file Canada File (Adds Atletico Ottawa to the CPL in 2020): http://www.mediafire.com/file/m4x54jqtte6duk7/006_Canada_Expansion_1.2.fmf/file USA Graphics 3.8 File: http://www.mediafire.com/file/lh4l2dpidj0cibz/USA_Expansion_3.8_Graphics.rar/file Club Continental Competitions: http://www.mediafire.com/file/qerynz1n1lsaic1/USA_Club_Continental_Comps_2.13.rar/file (Includes: CFU Club Championships, Copa Sudamericana, UNCAF Interclub Cup, Pan-Pacific Championship, International Champions Cup). International Competitions: http://www.mediafire.com/file/sse5z72xnv8mus1/USA_International_Competitions.rar/file (Includes USA January Camp, Copa Nuevo Mundo, Pan-American Games) Extra Files: http://www.mediafire.com/file/isc0xhy3vovld56/USA_Extral_Files.rar/file (Includes Lower Level managers, Transfer Preferences, and some Canada Data) http://www.mediafire.com/file/pm91y8gichmhc0c/FM20_UncleSam_USA_DB_real_name_fix.rar/file Video Looking at the DB MLS in FM20 Video Guides Part One (League Format): Part Two (Squad Breakdown): Part Three (Player Acquisition):

USA Expansion File Have you ever played an MLS save and wished that you could see highlights of players that you loan to your USL affiliate? Have you ever wanted to observe your Academy prospects? Have you ever drafted a player from a PDL club like the Mississippi Brilla and wish that it was from an actual NCAA collegiate program like in real life? Have you ever wanted to take control of your local amateur side, like the Knoxville Force, and try to beat your archrivals and win the league? That’s what this file is for. As much as possible with the limitations of the editor, we have tried to recreate a real life FM experience for the unique structure of the sport in the United States. All-in-all, there are over 600 playable teams in 8 levels of competition. Major League Soccer - This file adds Los Angeles FC and David Beckham’s Miami franchise (Inter Miami) to the 2017 expansion. Also added are MLS Rivalry competitions for NYRB-NYFC, LA Galaxy v. LAFC, and Orlando City v. Inter Miami. MLS teams will also prepare for the season in one of seven preseason exhibition tournaments (ATX Pro Challenge, Carolina Challenge Cup, Desert Diamond Cup, IMG Suncoast Pro Classic, Las Vegas Pro Soccer Challenge Cup, Simple Invitational, Walt Disney Pro Soccer Classic). North American Soccer League - Adds the announced future expansion teams in Orange County, CA (California Athletic FC) and San Diego (San Diego Waves). The league format is at it is in real life, with a Spring and Fall season. The two winners advance to the Championship semifinals, joining the top two qualifiers from the overall table (three if the same team wins both spring and fall). United Soccer League - Includes expansion side Nashville SC and Austin Aztex off hiatus. The league is split into two conferences (as in real life), with each conference having an eight-team playoff whose winners compete in the USL Cup. All 24 MLS clubs have affiliates in USL, so this is a chance to keep a better eye on developing players. NCAA Division I - 206 NCAA teams have been added. The format is as close as possible to real life. There is a spring season where teams can get a look at their players heading into the fall. The regular season consists of 9-10 non-conference matches to go with their conference schedule. As in real life, 21 of the 24 conferences will have a tournament that is set up to reflect the real life format. Each conference will send its champion, along with 24 at-large qualifiers, to the NCAA Division I Championship tournament to compete the national title. The MLS SuperDraft will draw players from the NCAA, as in real life, so MLS clubs can scout for future talent. Premier Development League - The PDL is set up as in real life, with 10 divisions that feed a 22-team championship tournament. The teams play a 14-match schedule during the summer. National Premier Soccer League - Also set up as in real life with 4 Regions divided into “conferences”. The four region winners advance to compete for the NPSL Championship. The teams play a 12-match summer schedule. United States Soccer Development Academy - The USSDA is divided into 7 Divisions. In all, 32 teams qualify for the USSDA Championship tournament. This is as close to how it functions in real life as possible, with the only difference being the schedule. It is impossible to run the league on a Fall-Spring calendar, so it runs a 30-match schedule on a Spring-Fall calendar. All MLS clubs have academies in the league, so if you manage in MLS you can see potential prospects from you academy. USASA Amateur Leagues - Six of the more prominent amateur leagues in the US have been included. The American Soccer League, American Premier Soccer League, Southern Premier Soccer League, Premier League of America, and the United Premier Soccer League are all represented as close to their real life format as possible, competing to earn a spot in the US Open Cup. Additional Add-Ons I have also included downloads for Club and Competition Logos, as well as Club kits. This will give every team logos and kits, and logos for every competition as well. (Included in my file are MLS kits that were originally created by kifla6 and downloaded from here: https://sortitoutsi.net/downloads/view/32059/usa-mls-ss2017-new-070517-not-sskcc-yet. Those kits ARE included in the download below, with permission from the author) Download (for version 1.3) - http://www.mediafire.com/file/atrsao41ao54jdh/USA_Expansion_Graphics.rar Update - Latest version 1.2 CHANGE LIST -Bug causing teams in the NCAA and the USSDA to send their players on holiday before the Championship Tournament has been fixed. The USSDA Championship stages will not only be visible in the USSDA Divisions, but the history will be viewable in the USSDA Championship Competition. -The USSDA Championship is now set up even closer to real life. The Group Stage will take place entirely at the large Grand Park facility in Westfield, Indiana. The Quarterfinal will be played at the club sites, with the Semifinal, Third Place Playoff, and Final played at the StubHub Center practice fields. -The recently-announced USL Expansion team Fresno FC has been added. Fresno FC and the 2 NASL expansion teams will now enter the US Open Cup in 2018. -There have been some changes to update some club and competitions graphics. The graphics are now in one file. Update - Latest version 1.3 CHANGE LIST -Fixed an issue where the NCAA teams weren't able to register players for their competitions. Now there is no registration required and they have a maximum team size of 30 -Adjusted the MLS league and playoff schedule to reflect real life -Adjusted the US Open Cup so that the regional draw is more accurate (not perfect, but MUCH better and closer to real life). I was also annoyed that the draw was occurring the day that the round was played when it should have been the day after, so I fixed that. -Added the new Las Vegas team to USL. They haven't announced their name/logo but there is a movement to revive the old Quicksilvers so that's what I went with, inspired by a concept designed by Raysox at SportsLogos.net -Added several rivalries to try and spice up the lower leagues a bit Disclaimers I cannot guarantee that this file will function properly with any other third party DB editor file. I use it with some and it works fine, but I have not tested it with every other file available. If you use a file that includes created competitions and/or clubs, then it will affect the graphics download and they will not work properly. Furthermore, if you use a file that fixes the names of competitions, then you will probably need to manually adjust it so that it doesn’t alter the names of the competitions in this file. I have a file that I fixed, but I cannot post it here because even without looking I’m sure it’s against the rules. I will post the file at other sites where I upload this database. Warning It should also be noted that if you select an NCAA team, the game will crash if you click on the competitions tab. This is likely because the NCAA D1 Soccer competition has 206 teams in it. Unfortunately this is a limitation of the game itself and cannot be helped without damaging the overall experience of the game. USA Expansion 1.3_90EDD1D6-0000-4DFB-9314-9B31364516F7.fmf

INTRODUCTION Oh yes, baby. After having dabbled away for far too long in FM18 and skipping 19, I've gone and decided to install FM20 on my pc on life support. Stubbornness is a hell of a condition. One of the first mods I always install whenever I want to get acquainted with the new possibilities FM has to offer, it's the mindblowingly comprehensive and true-to-life accuracy of @Uncle_Sam's USA Real Life Expansion file. Words cannot express the pleasure I've had over the years playing in his files, so I thought it would be a great idea to return from lurking in the shadows by using his file. Seriously, though. Check it out over here. --- For those of you who do not know: yes, I'm European, but I love American sports. Not just the sports themselves, but also their wacky league structures of inbalanced schedules, drafts and salary caps. In every big league, they've managed to set up a selfsustaining system of colleges, who take up the responsibility of being the de facto academies for the professional teams. Now, if there's one league system that's wackier than wack, it's the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Oh yes, we're going to college. We're in Kentucky, the state renowned for producing around 95% of all Bourbon. And more specifically: we're in Louisville. Not the state capitol, but it is the biggest city of Kentucky. A city well known for it's ridiculously flamboyant horse race (the Kentucky Derby) and also the city where one of the tyres on my rental car decided to call it a day during my trip through the US last summer. While trying to find a solution at the nearby gas station, calling an inaudible callcenter employee alongside a noisy road, I was able to overlook the soccer (I know, but I'll just stick to this to avoid any confusing with the team that plays in the 60.000 seat stadium across the road) complex of the university. They stuck in the back of my mind and when I picked up playing FM with a college soccer save, I decided to pick them as the fortunate ones. THE STRUCTURE For those of you unfamiliar with college sports in the USA, there's no real clear structured league where all teams compete in. There is a postseason where the best universities attempt to crown the national title, but for the most part of the season, you're playing games within a conference that your university simply has an allegiance with. In our case, that's the Atlantic Coast Conference, or the ACC: a conference with twelve universities, mostly from the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. These are our most common foes. Every year, we'll play all the teams in our Group once and three of the six teams in the other group once as well for a total of eight conference games. Mind you, the groups are fixed, so we'll always face Boston College, Clemson, NC State, Syracuse and Wake Forest. The other three teams rotate every year. At the end of the season (which, by the way, runs during the fall only, ie August to December), all teams will actually qualify for the ACC Conference Tournament. Final standings determine the seedings however. The winner of the tournament qualifies for the NCAA Tournament. Which basically is the National Tournament. Confused yet? It gets better. The NCAA Tournament consists of 48 teams. However, there's only 24 conferences. This means that 24 other colleges who did not win their conference championship will receive "at-large picks". In American college sports, there are committees consisting of former coaches, players and journalists that rank all the teams on a weekly basis. They will always have a say in which teams qualify for the postseason. This sounds ridiculously unfair, but that's just how it works. Luckily for the college soccer universe, 48 of a total of 206 colleges get into the tournament. So if you're having a good season, chances are big you're getting in. A way for colleges to make sure that the selection committee chooses them for the NCAA Tournament, is by playing well in the season. However, with only 8 conference games and a tournament, that's pretty hard. That's why, in real life, colleges plan non-conference games: games against universities from other conferences which they can then beat and turn some heads. @Uncle_Sam has found a way to replicate this. Every season, all 206 teams get automatically distributed over 20 different invisible groups of 10/11 teams. This ensures that we will have an additional nine or ten regular season games. In real life, these games are designed to raise your status. As this could not be replicated one-on-one in FM, I believe that Uncle_Sam has edited the file that the best three teams (conference champions excluded) from all of these 20 different groups get to the NCAA Tournament. Yeah, it's wacky. I warned you. But we'll get back to this. In summary, this will be our first year's schedule: So basically it's August, September and October for our regular season schedule, November for our conference tournament and December for the NCAA Tournament. THE CHALLENGE As we'll be the head coach of a college team, we'll obviously have to work with age restrictions. Players can only be registered if they're between 19 and 23 years old. All players will be on an amateur contract too. However, something big has to come along for them to just go and leave our club, as the players in this file aren't very happy to move teams. The only way for us to get new players, is by recruiting them either from other colleges (yes, it occasionally happens that players transfer schools) or by getting them from the US Soccer Development Academy. This was a real-life, 83 team league for the last thirteen years, where the country's best u-17 players could gain experience before going to a college. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 crisis, this league has officially folded in real life in the last days. However, it's still in the save and luckily so, because it's the division where new players are generated and most probably the most vital pool to recruit from. I'm not sure, but I don't believe we'll get a youth intake ourselves, so all players that will graduate (that is, all players who will turn 24) will need to be replaced in some sort. The USSDA is our main way of doing that. So our main goal will be to win the ACC every year, do well in the non-conference games and qualify for the NCAA Tournament so we can try to win that. In real life, Louisville has been pretty much non-existent since their programme start in 1979, but have gone through a revolution in the last thirteen years. Every year since 2007, except for 2015, they have qualified for the NCAA Tournament. They have switched conferences (yes, this happens) in 2014 to join the ACC and since then, they have won the conference tournament once, in 2018 (which means we're actually reigning champions). However, Louisville has only reached the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament once, in 2010, where they lost the final to Akron. We're a college with a lot of potential, but there's still a prize to win. And that's what I'm trying to bring. Obviously, there's a glass ceiling in this save. Winning the College Cup might become boring after a while, so I'm not ruling out making a step to another American side. But for now I'd like to really build a college dynasty. Another interesting angle to this save is to see if we're able to recruit a player, have him play for us for four years and then get the player drafted into the MLS. And then see how this will player will eventually develop over time. It would be really cool to see if we could one day have a player in our school that might make it to Europe. Who knows. IN THE NEXT UPDATE I'll give a quick overview of our team and preseason.