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Evening all. After the death of my Inverness/Sunderland thread, I'm heading back to a part of the world I love playing FM in. Scandinavia was the destination for my favourite ever save so it seems a good place to revisit, only this time I'm heading to Sweden. (I did have an attempt at this club a couple of years ago, but I got distracted by the bright lights of the Eredivisie after five years - that isn't going to happen this time.) I ideally wanted to move on from FM13, but I'm still struggling for the amount of time it would take to get started on a new version thanks to family and work life. I can play 13 in the 30-60 minute chunks that I find during the week, so I'll stick with the retro life. Sorry, gang. As I've said before, Just for the record I'm no Liverpool fan (Notts County are my team) but of all the "great" managers of the past Shankly is perhaps the one I most admire and so he's the one I'd like to emulate. For those who don't know, when Shankly arrived at Anfield in 1959, Liverpool had been floating around in the Second Division for five years, yet in his time there he transformed them from top to bottom. Although he only won three league titles in his time, it was his work building the foundations of the club that enabled them to go on and dominate English and European football. I'd like to do the same in Sweden, and ultimately become the biggest club in the world. That's ambitious. Why Scandinavia in general, and Sweden in particular? The reason I enjoy playing in Sweden and Norway is the leagues are restrictive in terms of player registration. Both contain strict rules forcing me to use and develop homegrown players. In Norway, 16 of your 25 man squad must be homegrown, while in Sweden you must select 9 homegrown players in every 18 man match day squad. Now I have no self control in the transfer market (ohh, shiny!) so I can never commit to using just homegrown players in a save, or to just develop my own in a youth challenge as many of you like to do, but when the league forces me into developing players, I really enjoy that side of the game. It often means later on in the save that my signings are no older than 18 years of age, simply because they can become homegrown. Another reason for playing in this part of the word is there is a relatively low amount of TV and prize money, so even when or if the club is a European regular, we still have to sell players to ensure the club doesn't get into financial difficulties. I'll be playing in Sweden this time as I've already achieved my goal with a Norwegian club, so it seems right to cross the border. So what happens if you get sacked? Hopefully I can avoid that fate, but if it does happen, I'll find another job in Sweden and keep going. Game details: Belarus, Denmark, Finland ((2nd tier and above in all) France, Germany, Norway (3rd tier and above) & Sweden (4th tier and above) FM13.3 with no edits Large database, 31,000 players Start date: January 2013 Meet the manager: 32 year old Johann Andersson is the man in the hotseat. The Swede spent most of his playing career in the lower leagues of Norway and Sweden before a career-ending knee injury around his 30th birthday, but he hopes to make more of a splash at a higher level from the dug-out.

Football Club Roskilde FC Roskilde is a Danish football club playing in the Danish 1st Division. They play at Roskilde Idraetspark (also known as "The Eagles Nest") in Roskilde on Zealand, which has a capacity of 6000 (512 sitting). The club was founded in 2004 as a merger between Roskilde Boldklub 1906, Svogerslev Boldklub and Himmelev-Veddelev Boldklub. They never played in Superligaen and never finished higher than 8th in First Division. The Eagles' status is semi-professional and the club has below average training facilities and poor youth facilities. Finances do not look that great either. Tough task ahead! This is the squad I got. In my B-Team there is one decent DC but that's about it. No players in u19 Team yet. The team is almost full danish with 2 exceptions - Frederik Schram from Iceland and right back Jochem Jansen from Netherlands. We will definitely look to strenghten the squad during the transfer window. Our current three best players are Patrick da Silva, Emil Nielsen and our captain Mikkel Thygesen who even played 3 games for Danish National Team. PATRICK DA SILVA EMIL NIELSEN MIKKEL THYGESEN TRANSFER WINDOW Due to the club's poor financial situation we only have got few thousands pounds to use during the transfer window and we quickly moved them all to our wage budget. Because the club is only semi-professional and the finances are not the greatest, we can only send our scouts within Denmark. We got rid of few redundant players and managed to sign 11 players - 7 straight to the A-team and 4 youngsters with (hopefully) bright future in our club. All of them joined us for free. CHRISTIAN BECH AGON MUCOLLI OLIVER LÖNFELDT JOHANNES RITTER MORTEN ROKKEDAL MICHAEL ZACHO LARS STORM THOMAS OLSEN MATHIAS REFSGAARD NIKOLAI FABRICIUS Rokkedal, Zacho and Mucolli are expected to immediately become starters in our best possible line-up. Rest of the players need some progress first though. Lets see. We aim to promote as soon as possible but will not mind staying in First Division for a while as the team clearly needs a lot of changes before we can become truly competitive. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ I am playing on FM17 with latest update I downloaded from Sortitoutsi. I guess it's not the most accurate one (as Esbjerg is still in FD lol) but it will not bother me that much because I aim for a long game anyway. I was thinking about holidaying for a few years first but then got hyped too much and decided to start right away. I am alreasy one and half season in so first updates will be a bit longer. We will see how I will continue as soon as I catch up. I do not use DoF or any downloaded tactics/trainings. I use IR sometimes.

Here we go with Stabæk! Great facilities as well as excellent Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment. They've only won the Norwegian top flight once, back in 2008. This is something I want to rectify along with getting the club into either the Champions League group stages or the Europa League group stages. The furthest they have gotten previously has been the EL Playoff round and the CL Third Qualifying round. As you can see the average age is extremely young, at only 20 while we only have one 30+ year old in the squad. The next oldest is 26.... THE SQUAD A good amount of positive personalities as well as a strong core of Norwegians to call on. Africans also populate the squad and there is even an American joined by a Georgian. (sounds like the first line of a bad joke....) We even have an Indian! Sayouba and Skjonsberg are the only two with international caps. The board left me with the following expectations which I find fair enough. Financially, we are healthy with over a million in the bank. LET US BEGIN!

JOURNEYMAN CAREER - SCANDINAVIAN ADVENTURES Hello there and welcome to my journeyman career thread,which i have decided to do based in Scandinavia,as you may have guessed that given the title.As some of you may or may not know i was very briefly doing one which was pretty much the same but was based in Asia for that one,but not long after the issues with the 17.3 update i had decided to hang off,wait till those were fixed and start again,so ive chosen to do this in Scandinavia,the reason behind that is i feel its quite a decent area of Europe to compete in as well as discovering some good teams&players and ive had a couple of decent saves in previous editions of FM so yeah why not have a crack at this then. NATIONS LOADED Well as i am playing in this area i have obviously got all countries from Scandinavia loaded up that being Iceland,Faroe Islands,(which i obtained from Claasens DB),Norway,Sweden,Finland,Denmark and ive also added players from Scotland and England just to add some players to the DB as well as them being nearest countries too to Scandinavia,thus giving me a database size of 24,000 that will do for me.If i need any more added i guess i can do that later,but for the time being lets concentrate here. MANAGER STATS As with my manager i have decided to keep a bit of realism here i catch a first flight out of Glasgow and start trawling across Scandinavia armed only with a 12pack of tennents lager and a mobile phone full of contacts in the hope that someone somewhere will take a chance on the scottish rookie.I dont really have any main aims for this career to be honest just spend some time in this lovely region of the world and see here i end up,so lets go time to get some job applications out there....... JOB VACANCIES As you can see there's not a lot to choose from but ive applied for the eight currently available,only ones i remotely recognise are the bottom two from Iceland and the Faroe Islands respectively.

Welcome to my Scandinavian Challenge! My Aim is to win every domestic title in Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark! This is me, an Unemployed Former Semi-Pro who had to cut his career short due to injury, he decided to go into coaching a quickly got his UEFA 'B' Badge and is ready to take the challenge of the Scandinavian Countries. Hope you stick around for the adventure!

The Royal League was an annual Scandinavian football tournament held three times between teams from the three Scandinavian monarchies (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) starting after the end of the regular domestic seasons of Norway and Sweden. The four best-placed teams in the football leagues of Denmark, Sweden and Norway participated in the tournament. This version incorporates the top team from Iceland, Finland and Faroe with the top three from Denmark, Sweden and Norway seeded to split the nations across groups. Finances are boosted to moderate levels. I've run 10 yrs of tests, there are a couple of tweaks I'd still like to make, but it ran flawlessly for 50+ seasons across multiple save games in FM16 and thanks to the new editor in 17, runs and tests well there also. Projects: Version with 3 Icelandic Teams Version with 3 FinnishTeams Getting the final to choose Brøndby Stadium or Telia Parken instead of the Friends Arena where AIK, for example, make the final. Getting the final to rotate between Brøndby Stadium, Telia Parken, Friends Arena and Laugardalsvöllur. Feedback welcome. Royal League (Expanded)

The story of Hammarby's long-awaited return to Sweden's Allsvenskan Hammarby fans pack the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm as their club returned to Sweden's first division for the first time since 2009. "I have waited so long for this day, and it's great that it has finally come." How fitting those words were in Stockholm on Saturday, as Hammarby fans celebrated their return to Allsvenskan, Sweden's top division, after five long seasons away. Those words come from a song titled "Just Idag Ar Jag Stark" ("Today I am strong"), performed by Kenta Gustafsson, which has long been established as the club's anthem. Hammarby fans identify with it completely. It's not uncommon to see the song's lyrics tattooed on supporters. Kenta, a huge Hammarby fan himself, died in 2003 at the age of 54, but his legacy lives on. The anthem is performed before each and every Hammarby game, sung with passion by the whole crowd in a performance that can easily be compared to "You'll Never Walk Alone" at Anfield. Just listen to the atmosphere at the brand new Tele2 Arena ahead of last season's final fixture against Jonkoping in the video below. The stadium was full that day, and a stranger would never have guessed that the game took place in Superettan, Sweden's second division. Incredibly, Hammarby attracted higher average attendances than any Swedish top-flight club in 2014. Their average crowd stood at 20,451, compared to 16,446 for city rivals AIK and just 14,090 for champions Malmo. That sums up Hammarby -- the club is all about supporters, the perfect team for football romantics to fall in love with. Founded 100 years ago, they were only crowned champions once in their history, taking the title against all odds in 2001 under coach Soren Cratz, who became a living legend. "To this day, that triumph feels strange," Peter Stempel, a fervent Hammarby supporter, told ESPN FC. They are not used to winning, and have adapted to just having fun and enjoying the moment. As their saying goes: "We don't care about the table, Bajen are the best anyway." Nobody knows exactly why they call themselves "Bajen," by the way, but that is the nickname. Hammarby are the club where Nacka Skoglund, the flair player for whom entertaining was always the most important thing and whose performances caught the imagination of Inter fans in the 1950s, grew up. Hammarby's fans were the first in Sweden to start singing in the stadium in the '70s, inspired by English football. A few years later, they even brought some Brazilian touches to Scandinavia, with a samba orchestra playing in the stands of the old Soderstadion during matches. The club's fans were also the first to march through the streets of Stockholm on the first day of the season. That tradition carried on for many years and has become something of an attraction. On Saturday, at least 10,000 fans in green and white took part in the walk, as some of the main routes had to be closed to traffic. Hammarby have never been a winning team but are one of the biggest clubs in the country and an integral part of Allsvenskan. That is why their relegation in 2009, mostly due to poor management, was a shock. Unsurprisingly, the fans stayed loyal to the players even when they massively underperformed. It is rare to see a standing ovation to the team that has just gone down, but that is exactly what Bajen fans gave their team after they lost in their last home fixture and finished the season rock bottom. They were not the first major club to get relegated, but while others like AIK and Malmo returned to the top flight immediately, Hammarby's crisis only deepened after the drop. Lacking a winning mentality was crucial in Superettan as well, and in 2011 disaster loomed as the team went agonisingly close to being relegated yet again. Hammarby needed to win at promotion-hopefuls Angelholm on the last day of the 2011 season to avoid dropping into the third division, and that proved to be a very tough task. Five minutes into injury time, when all hope was lost, Sebastian Bojassen scored with the last kick of the game. Bajen were saved, Bojassen -- who was forced to retire shortly afterwards with a back injury -- will be fondly remembered forever. "That Angelholm game provided the worst and the best moments of my entire life," says Gustav Gelin, a Hammarby blogger who used to serve as vice president of the Bajen fans' association. Then, just when they seemingly reached the lowest point imaginable, their greatest idol returned. Kennedy Bakircioglu, one of the most important players when Hammarby won their title in 2001, had an eventful career that took him to FC Twente and Ajax in the Netherlands and Racing Santander in Spain. In the summer of 2012, the prodigal son came back, and fans climbed on the roof just to have a glimpse of him signing the contract. Fittingly, it was Kennedy who scored the very last goal at the beloved Soderstadion, which was abandoned in the summer of 2013 in favour of the new stadium that Hammarby now share with Stockholm rivals Djurgarden. That day was extremely emotional for all concerned, but there was also hope in the air. Amusingly, Bajen fans call Tele2 Arena the new Soderstadion, refusing to let the past go, while starting the fresh adventure. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Kennedy Bakircioglu, right, pose ahead of PSG's friendly visit to Sweden in 2013. The new home, which enabled more fans to visit home games and significantly increased the club's revenues, highlighted the fact that Hammarby were a sleeping giant. Their potential is massive, and that convinced Nanne Bergstrand, one of the most respected and knowledgeable coaches in Sweden, to take on the challenge of managing the club in the beginning of 2014. Begstrand likes long-term projects, having spent 12 years at Kalmar, where he won a sensational title with the trio of Elm brothers in 2008. Next, the 58-year-old wanted to emulate that success at a much more popular club. Nanne's arrival brought a lot of optimism to Bajen. The squad was completely overhauled and, driven forward by phenomenal attendances, Hammarby overcame a shaky start to finish top of Superettan in a tight battle. They needed to beat Jonkoping on the last day, and thrashed them 5-0 after a stunning rendition of "Just Idag Ar Jag Stark." And so, after five painful and eventful years, Bajen are back where they belong. "Hammarby are a club where love is the most important thing," Kristopher Karlsson, who works for the Aftonbladet newspaper, says. "They like a back-heel pass, a beer and a cheeky chant." But aren't those the most fabulous aspects of the game? Football is not only about Cristiano Ronaldo breaking scoring records -- it is mostly about fans who support their team through good times and bad. It is about thousands of Bajen supporters going on their annual march, humming the song written by Aapo Saask, a Hammarby supporter, and performed by his friend Kenta, who is dead but immortal. "I look forward to the glorious times," the lyrics go. Let them be glorious. (Article by Michael Yokhin, ESPN)