Razer82's FM12 Small Club to Big Club Americas Challenge

[Swinburn]

O CANADA

Vancouver Whitecaps

Jordan Swinburn

Former FC United, Dromara Village and Castellón manager Jordan Swinburn, known for his ability and desire to take lowly teams to the top of world football, has become the new manager of struggling MLS club Vancouver Whitecaps. Swinburn usually takes on recently promoted sides, but due to the structure of the MLS, promotion and relegation does not occur. In his first press conference for the club, Swinburn explained that he has wanted to manage in the USA for a long time, and hopes to take the club to MLS, NACL and Club World Championship glory. Vancouver Whitecaps fans are both excited and sceptical of the appointment, as they hope Swinburn can continue his ability to improve sides and win trophies, but are wary of him leaving the club once he has achieved his goals.

Swinburn has a habit of completely redoing the teams he manages. Whether or not the Vancouver Whitecaps squad (1) (2) suffers these same changes remains to be seen.

[Swinburn]

I have a love/hate relationship for the MLS. It's a hell of a lot of fun, but I hate the club/league going over my head to waiver players. I don't even have a choice on who gets waivered, but for some reason they often choose the best ones, despite the wages being the same.

[midgetram]

I know that this thread is pretty much dead (it's currently below some FM10 challenges ), but after completing Dafuge's and (eventually) Gundo's Challenge; I thought I'd give this a bash since I haven't ever really managed in South America in any previous FM game.

My journey starts in the deepest, darkest Peru at a club called Academia Deportiva Cantolao, who's probably most famous player (for those in Europe) was Claudio Pizarro.

I'm already a season and a half in so I'll have the first update up very shortly.

[midgetram]

Time for the first update . Since Peru runs on a single calendar year, I started the game in Jan 2012, holidayed the 2012 season and so start my challenge in the year 2013.

Before i start, its probably best if I explained league structure here. Firstly there is a 30 game First Phase where everyone plays each other home and away. After that, the league is split into two sections; with all those who finish in odd positions (1st, 3rd, 5th etc.) in one and those who finished the first phase in even positions (2nd, 4th, 6th etc.) go into the other group. Teams then play each other twice more in their group to make up 14 games in the Second Phase. The winners of the two groups go into the Final, a 2 legged tie decided on away goals and penalties if required.

Academia Deportiva Cantolao - 2013 End of Season Update - Peruvian First League

"and in the beginning..."

League (Positions) : As expected, the start of the season was terrible with trying to bed in new players as well as a new tactic without much pre-season testing (I didn't manage to find an assistant manager until after the 3rd game of the season). But once we got everyone got acquainted with each other, things did seem to flow a bit more easily. By the end of the First Phase, EGB (the other promoted side) were miles behind the rest and so the next group of people - who in my mind was 9th downwards - were all trying to avoid being the other side to drop down. Finishing 10th in that stage meant I got the 'easier' of the two groups (as in the one with EGB and avoiding Alianza).

In the Second Phase, we did enough to keep our head above water, never once falling back below 12th in the overall table. The top 6 clubs get to play in continental championships next season (top 3 in the Libertadores and 4th-6th in the Sudamericana) so that is the aim for next season, which I think is manageable if we can tighten up our defence.

As an added point, there seems to be no cup competition here in the game - not sure if that's true to life or just not included in the game.

Squad (1)(2) and Transfers : These are the majority of players who played the games this season; there are 1 or 2 in the reserve squad who played a handful of minutes that aren't included here. Transfer windows here run start of January to the end of March, and then the whole month of September, just as a heads up for later seasons.

Player of the Season : José Franco - AMR

Surprisingly easy this one to give, since he was one of the few to play the majority of matches and still maintained an average rating of above 7. Being top scorer and 2nd highest in assists works a treat too

Finances : Annoyingly the reset date (when the end of the finances reset) is quite late in the off-season so there is some transfer revenue here that is from next season included in. Will probably need to watch what I'm paying players wage-wise until I get more people turning up for the games (the % capacity used this season was around the 5% mark).

History

2013: First Phase - 10th, Second Phase - 4th in Group B, Overall - 8th

[Razer82]

Wow! Didn't realise that this has slipped so far down the forum.

Nice to see someone having a crack at it though.

I had a bash with Peru on FM11 & struggled to make much progress in the Copa Libertadores. Hopefully the dynamic league reputation will be able to improve things over time.

[midgetram]

Well it's been too long since my last update (well too long for what I normally do any ways) so here is the difficult second year.

Academia Deportiva Cantolao - 2014 End of Season Update - Peruvian First League

A whole lot of luck...

League (Positions) : Well that was unexpected. I had hoped to get around the top 6 to sneak into the lesser continental competition and throughout the First Phase, that was whereabouts we were. With Alianza running away with it, the next 11 teams were so tightly packed it didn't really matter what group we ended up in for the second half of the season. As it was, we ended up with an even finishing position and so avoided the extra games against the league leaders, which is always helpful. In this stage, we managed to better our biggest ever victory too; with a 7-0 hammering against Sport Huancayo. This was also incidentally 4 days after losing to bottom side Sport Boys :o.

In the Second Phase, we were never out of the top 2 positions in the group (which equated to no lower than 5th overall) and with a few games to go had a real chance to sneak into the final. Winning 6 of our last 7, including a 3-2 win at Meglar (our nearest rivals) meant that we sneaked into top position of the group on goal difference, and so into the final to play Alianza.

The first leg was a bit of a nightmare, getting thoroughly outplayed. However, we managed to escape with only a 2-1 defeat with the home leg to come. In the 2nd leg, the game was much more even and somehow we managed to sneak away with a 1-0 win. Unknown to me beforehand, away goals are used as a tiebreaker after 90 mins and so we had miraculously won the title on away goals in only our 2nd season in the league.

It means that next season we'll be playing in the Copa Libertadores, entering the competition in the Group Stages.

Squad (1)(2) and Transfers (1)(2) : Again, this is the team that finished the season; not necessarily the ones that played every week. There also seems to be a very large pool of decent to good players in Peru, just very few good to great players, which is why so many people are getting shipped around at the moment until I find a squad I'm truly happy with.

Player of the Season : Augusto Elias - ST

Yes my top striker is under 5ft tall. And yes, his heading rating is somehow 17, answers on a postcard how that works.

Finances : Again late reset date, so some more transfer revenue that I've gained post season is added here. Graph basically shows I'm losing money throughout the year, then prize money and sponsorship puts me more in the black. Attendance is still under 10% of capacity, hopefully that'll change with the Libertadores next season.

History

2013: First Phase - 10th, Second Phase - 4th in Group B, Overall - 8th

2014: First Phase - 4th, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners

[Guest]

Wow! Didn't realise that this has slipped so far down the forum.

Nice to see someone having a crack at it though.

I had a bash with Peru on FM11 & struggled to make much progress in the Copa Libertadores. Hopefully the dynamic league reputation will be able to improve things over time.

I can't wait til FM13 to really give this challenge a run for its money..

My massive failures in FM12 shall be forgotten..

[DodgeeD]

I shall also be giving this a crack on FM13. Undecided as to whether to return to Mexico (as I did back on FM09) or try somewhere else like Chile or Colombia though...

[Guest]

I will be doing Brazil as always.. as its the only league I do :,)

[rancer890]

Razer, when is your FM13 thread going to be up? I'm going to be fancying a go at MLS in the beta, and while looking for some bugs, I would also like to have a little headstart on your challenge.

[Guest]

Good to see more people taking up the challenge

[Razer82]

Razer, when is your FM13 thread going to be up? I'm going to be fancying a go at MLS in the beta, and while looking for some bugs, I would also like to have a little headstart on your challenge.

Haven't really thought about it, probably get it up for the beta release. We've had release day patches before so even if the game it's a bit buggy it won't be for long. Plus, as you say it's a chance to get a bit of a headstart.

Good to see more people taking up the challenge

Hopefully they'll all be here in a few weeks when the beta is out to have a crack at the challenge.

[kabajingai]

I think I might have a crack at Uruguay for FM2013.

[rancer890]

Haven't really thought about it, probably get it up for the beta release. We've had release day patches before so even if the game it's a bit buggy it won't be for long. Plus, as you say it's a chance to get a bit of a headstart.

MLS is always buggy in FM...I don't really see the bugs automatically disappearing whether on beta release or the actual release.

[midgetram]

Nice to see some more chatter on this thread, it was getting quite lonely on my own...

Academia Deportiva Cantolao - 2015 End of Season Update - Peruvian First League

Second time is no fluke, surely?

League (Positions) : Interesting times this season, as despite winning the final last season we were still predicted to finish in the bottom half this season. We soon though disproved that prediction by going through the majority of the first phase unbeaten. Well, when I say unbeaten we were drawing a pretty large amount of games so that we were never more than 4 points ahead of the pack at any one time. This continued on for almost the full 30 games - our first defeat coming on match 27 against Universidad San Martin, but then had an abysmal run of 3 losses in our last 4 games. This relegated us in the end to 2nd position to finish the First Phase, which incidentally is always the easier of the second phase groups, so I wasn't all that disappointed in the grand scheme of things.

Our Second Phase performances took a bit of a hit by finishing the early part of the season so badly (drawing our first 3 games in the section), but once we got up to speed again we eased our way to the top of our group, winning 9 of the remaining 11 games, which meant that we had a second consecutive final appearance, once again against Alianza.

So in the final once again, and it seems that with the Group 1 winners always playing the home leg at home first, we had the dubious advantage of playing away from home first. Despite having the better of the chances away from home, we couldn't make any of them count and were punished for our lack of composure. So just like last year, we had to come from behind in the second leg if we wanted to become champions once again. Once again, we didn't shy away from the task and ended up grinding out a 1-0 win in 90 mins to take it straight to a penalty shoot-out. Going first at home was always going to be an advantage and it took just one missed Alianza penalty to give us the win, and with it our 2nd title in a row. Not bad for a team predicted to be bottom half again

Copa Libertadores : Our reward for winning the league title last year was to enter the premier South American club competition, and more importantly a reminder of how far we still have to go in order to become a force in the region. Our group contained Estudinates of Argentina, Chivas of Mexico and Universidad Católica of Chile. To be perfectly honest, we performed better than I thought we would in that group; managing to sneak a win in Chile and draws at home to the other two sides. However, getting hammered at home to Catolica and in Argentina showed how far we still have to improve before we can consider ourselves contenders.

Squad (1)(2) and Transfers : Significantly less activity this season compared to last, probably since I did such a good job of getting rid of deadwood last year. Annoying Mayuri was sold to Palmeiras for a lot less than other clubs had bid for other players, might have something to do with the reputation of the club perhaps Trying to fit 3 strikers in a system that only plays 1 and keeping them all handy is a lot harder here than it has been in other saves too for some reason, I'll leave the reasoning up to others though

Player of the Season : Roberto Tinoco - ML (plays AML)

A key reason why I'm wasn't apoplectic of losing Mayuri to those pesky Brazilians (for the record he walked into the Peru national side after changing clubs) was the consistency that Tinoco had been showing throughout the whole year. Even though he rarely got the MoM plaudits, I can't remember him having a bad game in the ones he started in. Also having a strike rate of 0.5 goals per game for a winger helps.

Finances : Losing money without the transfer income is a bit worrying. Capacity used is still around the 10% mark which needs to improve, though I'm not sure the best ways about it (I can't really set the ticket prices for the club). Salaries are creeping up, again a bit of a concern but hopefully won't be too costly in the immediate future.

EDIT: New sponsorship deal is worth £90k per year more than the previous one, that's one way to help I suppose

History

2013: First Phase - 10th, Second Phase - 4th in Group B, Overall - 8th

2014: First Phase - 4th, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners

2015: First Phase - 2nd, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Group Stages

[midgetram]

I know the new beta release of '13 came out today and so most people will be focusing on that but I'm still doing this (although quite slowly compared to how I did the other challenges)

Academia Deportiva Cantolao - 2016 End of Season Update - Peruvian First League

Onto continental matters...

League (Positions) : Last year we managed to get quite a lot of draws from games we lost the year previous, and this time around we ended up winning those games instead of drawing. Overall it meant that we cruised the First Phase, comfortably ending in the top position.

This also continued on in the Second Phase, however with a few more hiccups along the way. We qualified for the overall final with a few spare games to go, and so I decided to rest all of my regulars in order for them to be fully fit for the last 2 games. This overall meant that we sacrificed being the top side after the total 44 games, even though we had lead for the vast majority of the season.

In the final though, we didn't have to face Alianza (as they underachieved for large periods of both stages and ended up quite far adrift) but another surprise package in Cienciano. The 1st leg was a tight affair that we shaded, although truthfully I would've liked to score more than the 1 goal. The 2nd leg was, however, much more in our control yet we found ourself 1-0 down going into injury time due to a freak Vega own goal. However, up popped Torres in the 92nd minute to scramble home a winner from a corner to give us our 3rd consecutive title. In all honesty, we deserved this more than the last 2 titles put together so I'm glad we got it this year.

Copa Libertadores : This year I wanted to build upon last year's experience and try and get past the group stages if at all possible. The draw of Libertad, Nacional and Millonarios gave us a real chance, as this was on paper the weakest group by far, as it had 0 Brazilian, Argentine or Mexican teams in it. Despite this, it wasn't all plain sailing. Losing both ties against Nacional meant that we had to win away to Libertad to progress, or (very unlikely) draw and hope that Nacional lost away to the Colombians. Amazingly, they did exactly that and so an open 3-3 draw saw us progress into the last 16.

With the draw completely seeded, we were paired with Gremio of Brazil who had won the competition only 2 years prior. What happened next though was a complete surprise. In the home leg we flew out of the traps and raced into a 4-0 lead inside 35 mins, and controlled the game from there on in, although disappointingly we didn't add another couple of goals to the tally. The away leg was as expected, but we held our own for most of the game and were somewhat unfortunate to lose the game 2-1 in the end. However, this still meant that we progressed 5-3 overall.

In the Quarters, we got America (MEX), once again with the home leg first. Despite having the better of the chances, we almost came away with only a draw before Casella came off the bench to score the winner with only 6 minutes left, giving us a 2-1 lead to take north. In the 2nd leg, we stroke early twice to not only cancel out their away goal but to have that advantage ourselves. We managed to keep them level for the vast majority of the game, only going behind in the 78th minute, and held on to an overall win on away goals after tying 4-4 on aggregate.

In the Semis then, we faced the juggernaut that was Santos. Once again we were at home to hopefully create something to defend in Brazil, however this time it didn't materialise, as we never really got going and ended up losing 1-0 in the 90th minute. The away game wasn't any better, conceding twice inside 20 minutes set the tone and we fell to a (fully deserved) 4-0 defeat, losing 5-0 overall.

Squad (1)(2) and Transfers : Quite low fees apart from the Monar transfer to Metalist. They had originally bid just over £1m for him, which I asked to be quintupled (as a joke really since I knew the wouldn't go for it). So imagine my chairman when that bid came through for him... Probably was something along the lines. The rest of the squad was pretty standard from last season, there wasn't much need to change it after last year's success and will probably keep the vast majority for the next campaign too.

Player of the Season : Augusto Elias - ST

He's back again. Usually I try and give this to people who hadn't won it previously but his continental record was just so ridiculous I had to put him here yet again. A decent runner-up was Vega though - who nabbed "Signing of the Season" in the end of year summary.

Finances(yes I know this was taken later than it should have been) : That sale of ?? really disguised another average season financially speaking. Still need to somehow get the match-day revenue up as the attendance figures aren't going up by any significant margin. Also, next season will take a massive hit due to the excess amount of tax I'll have to pay this season on my profits.

History

2013: First Phase - 10th, Second Phase - 4th in Group B, Overall - 8th

2014: First Phase - 4th, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners

2015: First Phase - 2nd, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Group Stages

2016: First Phase - 1st, Second Phase - 1st in Group A, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Semi-Finals

[midgetram]

Academia Deportiva Cantolao - 2017 End of Season Update - Peruvian First League

Slow starting, high scoring finish

League (Positions) : We had a surprisingly poor start to the season this time around, with 4 defeats in our first 10 games. From then on in though, we only lost 3 of the next 20 and found ourselves just off the top spot by the end of the First Phase.

Being in Group B again made our life slightly easier in the second part of the season, with only failing to win 4 games, we ended up easing through to the final for the 4th successive year, and at the same time broke the league record for most goals scored in a league campaign.

The final this year was against Alianza once again, after they missed out last season. Going into it we were quite confident; after winning the games against them in the first phase 4-0 both home and away. The first leg was a bit tighter than those games but we still came out 2-0 winners, both scorers coming off the bench to make an immediate impact. The second leg was more comfortable, scoring twice in the first half to kill the tie off, and eventually winning 3-0 and 5-0 overall to secure our 4th title in a row.

Copa Libertadores : This time around our group was Danubio (URU), Fluminese (BRA) and Millonarios (COL); which I was expecting to qualify from without too much problem given our run to the Semis last season. Two away defeats in Uruguay and Brazil made our position a bit precarious but wins over Danubio and in Colombia, as well as a draw home to the Brazilian side put us through fairly easily in the end.

In the Second Round, we were paired with Corinthians. A poor performance by the attacking department cost us with a 2-0 defeat which pretty much took us of the tie. It meant that we had no pressure on us in the 2nd leg, and a bit annoyingly ended up winning the match 2-1, but still going out 3-2 on aggregate.

Squad (1)(2) and Transfers : Rather annoyed I couldn't keep hold of Flores for more than 6 months, but Cruz looks like he'll easily be the new #2 striker behind Elias. Slowly getting rid of the early youth products who won't get anywhere near the first team too.

Player of the Season : Augusto Elias - ST

3rd time in 4 years, he's easily the best player at the club. Finally capped by the national side this season, hopefully he'll be the first of many from the squad to be called up.

Finances : A lot of transfer activity in the winter has artificially improved the finances, although they aren't included on the graph just yet. The two sudden drops have been the improvements to the training and youth facilities which should increase the ability of players that come through in the future.

History

2013: First Phase - 10th, Second Phase - 4th in Group B, Overall - 8th

2014: First Phase - 4th, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners

2015: First Phase - 2nd, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Group Stages

2016: First Phase - 1st, Second Phase - 1st in Group A, Overall - 2nd, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Semi-Finals

2017: First Phase - 2nd, Second Phase - 1st in Group B, Overall - 1st, Final - Winners, Copa Libertadores - Last 16

[DodgeeD]

You're making quick progress here! :thup:Do you think the run to the semis was a one off or repeatable? I guess a tough draw cost you this time

[midgetram]

Thanks, I think getting out of the group stages should be a minimum requirement now and from there on in it all comes down to the luck of the draw. Last season America (MEX) was the only side not from Brazil or Argentina that made the Semis so I might need to build for a couple more seasons to make a real challenge at them.

[DodgeeD]

I've found the same in my saves in South and Central America - the Argentinian and Brazilian teams tend to dominate and only the Mexicans come close.