[FM17] Amsterdamsche Football Club: We Aim To Play Well Enough

[The Silence Of The Allams]

How unfortunate to lose a final in those circumstances. To lose to Germany must be all the more galling.

[MarcxD]

 

15 hours ago, The Silence Of The Allams said:

How unfortunate to lose a final in those circumstances. To lose to Germany must be all the more galling.

It was definitely rough.

20 hours ago, noikeee said:

Some extraordinarily consistent progress in here! It's looking real close to a Dutch title now, and there must be quite the rivalry brewing in Amsterdam!

But the highlight is definitely the run to the Euros final, and the shockingly harsh defeat in the final minutes. I think you can be very happy with the overall performance as I don't think this Dutch generation is particularly talented. Might be hard to overcome this achievement for a while, unless you and Ajax start producing some cracking regens.

Cheers, the consistent growth has been very pleasing to see. The title has to come soon! 

Overall the Dutch squad isn't all that talented no, although there are a few big talents (mostly ajax regens). With a bit of luck we can beat better teams, but an actual tournament win is probably too much too ask anytime soon.

[MarcxD]

Update 15: AFC 2024-2025

Every previous season we got closer and closer to the Eredivisie title, would this year be ours? First, as always, let's take a look at the transfers. As far as the incoming players are concerned, most excititing are new Peruvian striker Marco Pastor, who'll compete for the position with last season's star player Fernandez. Chilean right-back César Tello was a great addition as well, he has a lot of potential and would get a starting place immediately. We also managed to buy Landolina, after we had loaned him for the last couple of seasons. I can understand why Inter put him on the transferlist, but for us he's definitely a decent keeper.  The other buys are mostly players for the future. On the other side we got rid of some players who just weren't good enough anymore for our current level, and once again we sold Ratkelic. With the two strikers we now had we didn't need him anymore, so when Sturm Graz offered €4.6M for him I snapped at it. We got some further money because ex-player Juan Fontana was sold on from Napoli to Fiorentina. That meant we couldn't loan him anymore but an extra €3M is not too bad really.

The season started with this message:

We can finally play in our own stadium, also in Europe. Nice, although I think we'll have to expand quite quickly.

The friendlies went okay, with mixed results although a win against Juventus is obviously very nice to see. Next we played in the Champions League play-off (we only had to play 1 qualifying round) but sadly our opposition was just a bit too strong for us.

The Europa League it was, then. We were put in a group with Olympique Lyonnais, Malaga & Maccabi Tel-Aviv. I think I expected that a 2nd place was possible beforehand, but it all went much better than that. We easily won the group, although the games against Lyon were pretty tough. After that we were drawn with Valencia. These games were not easy, and we just edged them out on extra time. We needed a bit of luck there. Next up we played Galatasaray, and we won those games a bit more comfortably. That meant we made the quarter-final, and we drew Guimarães, which I thought should be doable. Sadly though, they were our undoing. After getting a 1-1 draw away from home we couldn't finish the job at home.

We did well in the cup too. Convincing wins against Vitesse & Ajax were lovely to see, but in the final we weren't able to push on. We probably had more chances than Feyenoord did but when you don't score them... Feyenoord won on penalties, so we just missed out on our second cup win.

But most important of all: the eredivisie. Last year we were from 4 points from the title, could we do it this year? 

YES! We did it. We won the eredivisie title in 2025. Some things to note: we competed relatively consistently, and the opposition simply did not. We actually gained 1 point less than we did last year, but we still finished with a walloping 17-point lead on Feyenoord, and a 21-point lead on Ajax! Ajax especially was really very poor. For much of the season they were around mid-table, but in the end they did qualify for Europe. There was no great exciting rival-battle for our first eredivisie title, but it's hard to complain when you win! 

The games show how consistent we were. Especially great was our amazing form in October, November & December: we won all except one game. That one game had to be against Ajax, of course... 

This is the team that won the very first AFC eredivisie title:

Squad

Season Review

Europa League Review (AFC overachievers)

Eredivisie Review

End of Season awards

AFC - Best Team All Time

young striker Marco Pastor was definitely our star player and won topscorer, talent of the year (with Tello 2nd) and Player of the year (with Tello 3rd)! Meanwhile, Landolina got second in GK of the year, and I got manager of the year and I became an AFC icon. 

Oh yeah - our reserves won the title as well.

Lest I forget, we of course had a youth update as well. It was pretty good! Gerard Kraaibeek looks pretty exciting to me, should definitely one day make the first team. 

Obviously this was a super successful season. We won the title very convincingly and we nearly won the double. I'm guessing next year should be a tighter battle for the Eredivisie, plus I'll have to deal with the Champions League. The first big goal of this save has been achieved, quicker than I anticipated. Now I want to go on, to win more titles and have some success in Europe. I also want to continue to build the club, and try to get more youth players in the squad. Currently my back-up left-back Selim Serbest is really the only one, so I'll try to improve on that front. 

 

 

 

[noikeee]

Congratulations on a very comfortable first Dutch title. 

[Koennn]

Really nice story! Definitely going to follow this thread. Congrats on beating your big brother. I hope you will keep improving!

[MarcxD]

On 11/16/2016 at 14:07, noikeee said:

Congratulations on a very comfortable first Dutch title. 

Cheers! 

On 11/16/2016 at 21:30, Koennn said:

Really nice story! Definitely going to follow this thread. Congrats on beating your big brother. I hope you will keep improving!

Welcome and thanks  

[MarcxD]

Update 16: Dutch National Team in 2025

After the excitement of Euro 2024 we had to get back to the qualifiers, this time for the world cup of 2026, to be held in the USA. We were drawn with Denmark, Russia, Romania, Armenia and Liechtenstein. Should not be too big of a problem, although of course we can't forget we played Denmark in the semi-final in the Euro's and Russia and Romania are no pushovers either. Apart from the qualifiers we also had a semi-final in the nations league tournament. Let's see how we did:

Well, not too much trouble with our opponents, although Denmark probably should have beaten us in the away-game. The nations league was a deception though, France was much better. This shows pretty well where we stand I think: we have a decent to good team but we have to play amazingly to have a chance against the absolute top nations of the world.

Just to be complete, here is the team of the year for 2025; notice there are two AFC players - Cañas and Salto. They were both originally Spanish and are the captain and vice-captain at the club. I give them precedence over others because they're AFC players obviously, but they do fit in. They are good enough to play.

Nothing else to add really. This was just an in-between year for the national team - but AFC offers enough excitement in the meantime (let's just say the title race is on this year).

 

 

 

[MarcxD]

Update 17: AFC Season 2025/2026

 

Alright, so after a little forced break we're back with another season. Last season was a great one, with our very first eredivisie title. Could we do it again? ... I did not change a lot, some transfers but nothing huge. Any offers for my players weren't good enough, so no first team players were let go. In January I was able to sign Gerard Diabete for a relatively small sum because his contract at Sparta would end at the end of the season. 

 

The season started (besides the friendlies) with the Dutch Supercup, known as the Johan Cruijff Schaal. We played Feyenoord, but they were no match for us at all..

The cup was much of a sameness. Once again, we got through the rounds pretty comfortably, but we lost the final again....... it's getting to be pretty annoying! 

This season was the first time we played in the group-phase of the Champions League. We were drawn with Manchester United (one of the best clubs in the world in my game), Inter (we're their affiliate club!) and Fenerbahçe. I was aiming for a second or third place, since I knew Man. United would be too strong. I was pretty pleased with how it went, excluding a shameful 0-6 loss at Old Trafford.

As you can see Atlético were too strong for us in the first knock-out round. Pretty rough draw, really, and at the very least I was happy we didn't suffer another big defeat.

But, perhaps most importantly, were we able to win the eredivisie again? Well, it all depended on the last game of the season. 

As you can see, the 'traditional top 3': Ajax, Feyenoord & PSV once again were no match for us, but Vitesse was. One final game to play, and they were one point ahead. Who did we have to play in our last game? .... Vitesse. What an end to the season!

And we did it. We were the better team and never really looked in danger of not winning the game. Very happy that we were able to win the Title again, but overall I wish our performance had been a bit better. When you just take a look at the points you'll see we didn't do as well as last year, which is probably the first time in this entire save! Of course overall, I can't be too upset, but it would be nice if we could make a step forwards. The only club with more money and better reputation than us in the Eredivisie is Ajax, but they have not performed well at all for the last two years. That means that the chance is there for AFC to start dominating the league, if Ajax doesn't improve radically. 

Eredivisie Games

End of Season Awards

Squad

AFC u19s win league

Reserves win league (again)

Youth Update

Team of the Year

Team of All Time

Fernandez Topscorer

 

In other news: I became a club legend, became manager of the year.

I want to improve next year, and really I want to make a big sale, which has not happened for a few seasons now. A new stadium is also right around the corner. The future is golden! Hopefully.

 

[ManUtd1]

Loving the thread and progress. Excellent stuff! Will be following!

[noikeee]

Wow, that must've been quite the finale for the league!

[Koennn]

Shame you drew Atletico Madrid in the first knockout round. You really did well in the Champions League. Keep up the good work!

[MarcxD]

On 12/1/2016 at 17:01, ManUtd1 said:

Loving the thread and progress. Excellent stuff! Will be following!

Thanks a lot, appreciate it. Welcome!

On 12/2/2016 at 11:29, noikeee said:

Wow, that must've been quite the finale for the league!

Yep, very very close. I had almost given up already, but when I saw in the schedule that the last game was at home against Vitesse I knew there was a chance. Pretty tense viewing that last match!

On 12/3/2016 at 12:57, Koennn said:

Shame you drew Atletico Madrid in the first knockout round. You really did well in the Champions League. Keep up the good work!

Thanks, it was a tough draw but that's something to get used to if I want to achieve anything in the champions league! 

[MarcxD]

Update 18: World Cup 2026

After our very good performance at the Euros in 2024 another tournament is upon us. The 2026 World Cup was held in the United States. We were drawn in the group phase with Ghana, Slovenia and Australia, so you could definitely say the draw was kind to us. The squad still looks much like the one of two years before, although now even more players are regens. Star player is definitely striker El Bahraoui, but Memphis Depay is still hanging on as well. He has since become the player with most international caps ever for the Dutch team: over 150.  The AFC contingent has grown as well. Midfielder Rafa Cañas and defender Alex Salto (both of Spanish origin) are still included (And starters, most of the time). They are complemented with Ifeanyi Martins (right-winger), who has played there in the past as well. Especially new and promising is left-back Selim Serbest. What makes his presence awesome is that he's an AFC youth product. 

Before the tournament started we played some friendlies of course, one in March, and three in the actual build-up. 

Some decent performances, although the draw against Sweden was not exactly the result I had in mind. We played all right in these matches though. At the same time, we all know friendlies don't really mean anything.

The group games were won with relative ease. We dominated all three games, and we comfortably finished first in our group. 

But then, you could say, the tournament only just got started. First we had to play Croatia (again!), which we won thanks to an amazing 4 goal-performance by El Bahraoui. Next up was Italy, never to be underestimated. It was a tight game but we were just able to sneak a victory past them. Next up though, we faced one of our least favorite opponents: France. They beat us last year in the Nations League semi-final, and now we had to play them in the Semi-final of the World Cup. Once again, they were just too damn strong. No final for us, sadly. France would go on to win the tournament after a final win against Brazil, and we played England for the bronze medal, also known as the match no-one really wants to play. It was a drab affair and after 90 minutes no goals were scored. In extra time experienced midfielder Bart Ramselaar scored the winning goal, so a third place was to be our final result for this world cup.

Mostly thanks to his heroics against Croatia El Bahraoui grabbed a third place for the golden boot (/ topscorer) trophy

What was very pleasing to see though was that AFC's very own Selim Serbest became talent of the tournament:

 

[MarcxD]

Update 19: Dutch National Team 2026 post-world cup

I have been busy with irl stuff so the updates are a little more sparse than usual. Anyway, here's a short little update to recap the games I've played with the Dutch National Team after our efforts at the world cup. We had to play the Nations League group. This time we drew Italy and Switzerland. Most of the games were relatively close (except for the home game against Switzerland when we trashed them 5-0) but I can safely say we were the better team in all of them, which of course shows in the end-results:

And the team of the year, with all 4 Dutch internationals who play for AFC included. Note AFC-youth product Selim Serbest having by far the best average rating of all players! There are 6 players left in this team that were already in the game from the start (so not newgen): Alex Salto (AFC), Jairo Riedewald, Riechedly Bazoer, Mitchell van Bergen, Memphis Depay & Jorrit Hendrix. 

 

[noikeee]

I think the Dutch fans can be happy with a run to the World Cup semi-finals.

[Deisler26]

Brilliant work!

[MarcxD]

On 12/9/2016 at 13:57, noikeee said:

I think the Dutch fans can be happy with a run to the World Cup semi-finals.

They better be!

 

On 12/12/2016 at 12:02, Deisler26 said:

Brilliant work!

Thanks a lot!

[MarcxD]

Update 20: AFC season 10!

The tenth year as manager of AFC, and we had the chance to become eredivisie champions for the third time in a row. Would be pretty special. It started with the nice message that our stadium would get an expansion, and during this season we would move to the Amsterdam Arena, Ajax' stadium. A bit strange and awkward to play in half-empty stadium... I think we only sold out once in a home match, and that was against Ajax, whose fans filled half the stadium. 

The transfers were more exciting this year. Remember me saying that I hoped for  a big sale? Well, the biggest yet happened. Chilean Right-back Tello, who we signed for free, signed for Sevilla. They paid a starting fee of €22M, which could possibly rise to 29.5M (although they would have to win the europa league for that).  I decided to take it because I knew right away I could buy a replacement.  Andy Driessen had been on the transferlist for a while at Feyenoord, and I decided to pay the 7.5M they wanted. What a player he is! Besides him Adachi is another great Japanese newgen talent, an AMR. He has played a lot of games in his first season and I hope we can keep him for a while longer because he looks very promising. Popisil is a young leftwinger who also has quite a bit of promise. I also sold Portuguese midfielder Filipe Soares. Even though he has played quite well for us, we have a lot of (young) midfielders who need playing time and 7.75M was a decent bid.

The friendlies went okay, although a loss against Gent wasn't all that great. The supercup followed, which we sadly lost...

The Champions League was much like last year. We had one very tough opponent in Manchester City. Unlike their city-rivals last year though, they did not manage to defeat us. Poor results elsewhere meant we didn't got first place in the group though. In the first knock-out round we had to play Atletico again. And even though they were not able to beat us, we drew two times and they went through on away-goals advantage. Boo! 

The u19's did a bit better in europe:

The cup was an utter failure and I'd like not to speak of it ever again.

Now as to the main event of the season, the league. For the first half of the season, it was very tense. We performed well, as you can see in the Eredivisie games, despite two losses. But PSV did even better! We trailed them for months on end, and I thought it was going to be another very exciting season. I was wrong though, because after the half-way point PSV just gave up. They won only a few games in the last months of the season and we very comfortably won the league for the third time in a row. 

The youth candidates screen was a bit more exciting this year: we finally got a 5* potential talent! Yassine El Amrani still has some work to do but I'm hopeful about him!

The team of the year.

AFC Team of All Time

Squad

3rd in manager of the year :(

Adachi Talent of the Year (with Serbest 2nd)

Landolina keeper of the year

Alex Salto wins Player of the Year (Adachi 3rd)

End of season awards

Season Review

AFC Reserves win the league for the fourth time in a row

[theFOOTBALLlover]

Fantastic story. Very similar to what I'm hoping to do with my local team in Portugal. What's your next goal? League title, UCL qualification or do you want to move on?

[MarcxD]

7 hours ago, theFOOTBALLlover said:

Fantastic story. Very similar to what I'm hoping to do with my local team in Portugal. What's your next goal? League title, UCL qualification or do you want to move on?

Thanks, good luck to you.

I still want to achieve multiple things. First and foremost I want to win something in Europe, obviously preferably the champions league. That's going to take quite a while yet though. Besides that I want to continue building the club. Higher reputation, better facilities et cetera. Trying to play more and more youth players, besides just buying talents from abroad which I've mostly been doing so far. By doing all that I also hope Dutch football / the eredivisie can rise up.  So I don't see myself moving on any time soon!

[noikeee]

Yeah seems like you've stabilized at that level, however your past history leads me to think that slowly things will improve more and more, keep pushing and you'll eventually break past into deeper stages of the Champions League.

[MarcxD]

Recap, 10 years in

I thought it would be a good idea to post a bit of an update and recap into the club, after 10 seasons. I'll probably post a game-state thingy soon as well, with the biggest transfers and league winners abroad

Pretty much an improvement year by year, especially the  jupiler-league winning year, also the year I finished 3rd, which was a big step up. The last 4 seasons have been very similar when you look at the results and points. 

We started strong in the cup, but the last couple of years haven't been great. It's obviously a secondary trophy, but it would be nice to win it more often.

Europe has been decent, but we just need to make that step up to be able to perform better in the knock-out rounds. Maybe it would help if we wouldn't draw so much Portuguese and Spanish teams!

I've upgraded the facilities and youth recruitment stuff mostly as much as possible, and it's pretty good but of course we aren't finished yet.

3.5* reputation, and we're the most reputable club in the Netherlands (some other clubs also have 3,5*). I'm the only legend, and a couple of players are favored personnel. Quite strange that Rafa Cañas isn't one of them, he has played more than 300 games for the club. The estimated club value is pretty high, the highest in the Netherlands but not even close to the clubs I'm competing with in Europe. That's just the fate of playing in a smaller league though.

 

 

 

 

[MarcxD]

40 minutes ago, noikeee said:

Yeah seems like you've stabilized at that level, however your past history leads me to think that slowly things will improve more and more, keep pushing and you'll eventually break past into deeper stages of the Champions League.

Yeah I hope so. the new season has started with a lot of clubs going after my players with big money so I'm currently thinking about whether I should invest a lot of that money into new players or if I should give some of my bigger youth talents a shot. 

[MarcxD]

21 hours ago, MarcxD said:

Yeah I hope so. the new season has started with a lot of clubs going after my players with big money so I'm currently thinking about whether I should invest a lot of that money into new players or if I should give some of my bigger youth talents a shot. 

This is what I meant.

[the--dud]

It's brutal like that, I'm experiencing exactly the same thing myself. I guess untill your club and league reputation rises to the very best then it's just something you have to deal with

Keep signing amazing young players, develop and play them for 2-4 years, sell for a bunch of money to rich clubs. Repeat repeat repeat! It's like real-life Ajax but supercharged  

[MarcxD]

22 minutes ago, the--dud said:

It's brutal like that, I'm experiencing exactly the same thing myself. I guess untill your club and league reputation rises to the very best then it's just something you have to deal with

Keep signing amazing young players, develop and play them for 2-4 years, sell for a bunch of money to rich clubs. Repeat repeat repeat! It's like real-life Ajax but supercharged  

Yeah, usually I don't really mind, I like renewing the squad, watching players develop and making profit on players, but selling three defenders in one summer is a bit much.. 

  I have a gigantic transfer budget now, but it's hard to find players who want to join the club AND are worth that kind of money, so on the transfer front I'm kind of stuck buying young talents...

[the--dud]

Yeah 3 defenders at once is quite idiotic of your chairman I wonder if maybe some chairmen are more inclined to over rule transfers than others?

What I do is I try to have a constant "pipe-line" of youth players. I constantly assess all my youth players and think "he can be sold", "he could join the first team next season", "he can go on loan for 2 years then maybe he's ready". 

But of course it's hard to plan for losing 3 defenders in one window... I'm sure you'll get over the rough spot and back into the swing of things Maybe you'll find an Argentine 17 year old wonderkid DC or something to sign! The good thing about regens is there are new ones every season  

[theFOOTBALLlover]

I have a similar issue. Every season that I play, my best players are chased by clubs in the top flight of Romania and other similar footballing nations. It's annoying because it can be hard to build on something (it has taken me 5 seasons to get promoted) but it is also enjoyable to watch players develop and sell them for decent money to keep the club from going bankrupt. 

[MarcxD]

On 12/16/2016 at 11:50, the--dud said:

Yeah 3 defenders at once is quite idiotic of your chairman I wonder if maybe some chairmen are more inclined to over rule transfers than others?

What I do is I try to have a constant "pipe-line" of youth players. I constantly assess all my youth players and think "he can be sold", "he could join the first team next season", "he can go on loan for 2 years then maybe he's ready". 

But of course it's hard to plan for losing 3 defenders in one window... I'm sure you'll get over the rough spot and back into the swing of things Maybe you'll find an Argentine 17 year old wonderkid DC or something to sign! The good thing about regens is there are new ones every season  

To be honest I can't blame the chairman! The only one to blame is me, I'm afraid. And if a club comes around who pays a limited fee after you've already sold two...

9 hours ago, theFOOTBALLlover said:

I have a similar issue. Every season that I play, my best players are chased by clubs in the top flight of Romania and other similar footballing nations. It's annoying because it can be hard to build on something (it has taken me 5 seasons to get promoted) but it is also enjoyable to watch players develop and sell them for decent money to keep the club from going bankrupt. 

Yeah, that's why I think it's really important to have a good and decent core to a team. If you rely too much on one or two players you can really get screwed if they're sold (or if they're really unhappy that you refuse to sell them!)

[MarcxD]

State of the game-world, 11 years in

As I promised, here's a little update to show how the game-world looks like right now. Which clubs have dominated the biggest European leagues? What are the biggest transfers?.... Here we go.

Nothing too surprising to see here really. Liverpool finally won a league again in 2026, after some dominating prowess from Manchester United. Real and Barca both won 5 league titles. Juventus' supremacy is over, and AC Milan has returned to the top; Bayern no longer is the only contender for the German Title. Portugal surprised me, you would think Porto would be a stronger rival for Benfica. Zenit is logically still the main team in Russia. After 10 straight league wins (or 14 if you count the real-life ones!) Monaco has finally managed to usurp the league title. 

It's been England and Germany on top in the Europa League, and Ajax' win was very impressive. Motivation for me to at least equal their achievement! Champions League victories for some of Europe's biggest teams, of course. 3 for PSG and maybe even more surprising 3 for Arsenal in the last four years! NO wins for either Barca of Real Madrid and only two for the Manchester clubs. 

5 €100M+ transfers so far. Pretty interesting to see that, SI have definitely upped some of the AI spending compared with previous versions I think. 

Just a short look at the most expensive newgen player: Eric Correa, an Argentinian AML. 

Notice how Real Madrid paid €775K for him. They made 140 times that amount when they sold him. Damn. Nice job Madrid scouts!

We will be back with the regular programming next time around... 

 

 

[MarcxD]

Update 21: Dutch National Team in 2027

This will be a short update. You'll soon find out why.

2027 is one of those in-between years for the national teams. We have to play qualifiers and the final rounds of the Nations League. In the latter tournament we play France for the third consecutive year in a semi-final. 

After two regular wins in the qualifiers we lost AGAIN to France. 

I had a decision to make. Would I stay and try to beat France the next time around? Or would I leave?

So, I quit. It's time to focus completely on AFC once again. I had thought about sticking around, to give my AFC players a lot of playing time in the national team, but I decided not to. Playing without progress seems pointless. Making AFC a real competitor in European football was the main objective and it remains so.  

[noikeee]

Don't blame you, managing the national team can be boring. Specially when you feel you need to hire better players to get better...

[MarcxD]

Update 22: AFC Season 2027-2028

This has been a momentous season. First of all, as I have eluded to above, I sold a lot of players, so let's take a closer look at the transfers. 

Over €100M in sales. I'll explain some of the bigger ones. I sold Serbest simply because I thought it was crazy money for him + the other left-back I have, Diabeté, is actually better than him. He's the first real succesful youth product from AFC though, so it still hurt a bit. The story with Adel was similar, I also thought 15M was decent money for a player of his talents and I knew I could get a better replacement right away: I got that in Kanouté for only a margin of the sum I got for Adel. Then PSG came along though, to buy Driessen. 31M is a big sum but I wasn't all that happy with it. Obviously I didn't need the money after those other sales, I had no choice in it since they paid his limited fee, and he only played for 1 season at AFC after I bought him from Feyenoord for 7.5M last year. There are of course other playes I sold, mostly just back-up though. Martins had become third-choice right-winger and Southampton agreed to pay 10M, so that was nice. As far as players that I signed, you'll probably notice the three players from Barcelona. They are some talents they had bought earlier on and I had on a shortlist, and they transfer-listed them just after the summer window so I acted immediately and bought the three of them. Two talented midfielders in Savic and Djokovic; another decent young defender in Iddir. Also at the start of the season I bought a new goalkeeper from United for a small sum. The only negative is that they come from big clubs so are on higher salaries than most other players.

But all those transfers weren't all what made this season so interesting. We had the best run yet, by far!

We played in our expanded AFC stadium, by the way, which was filled quite well. We'll need to expand soon again. After some decent friendlies and a win in the Johan Cruijff Schaal (after penalties) let's take a look at the Champions League. I was drawn with Wolfsburg (a very strong club now), Juventus (not quite as strong as they used to be) and Red Bull Salzburg. Wolfsburg dominated the group. We managed to get two 3-2 wins against Juventus, and the other results were good enough for a second place in the group.

The first knockout round we played against Inter, who we still are affiliated with, but they're not really of a higher stature anymore. We beat them pretty comfortably at home, after a draw at their stadium. Next up was Olympique Lyonnais in the quarter-final. The matches against them were similar to the ones against Inter and we went through to the semi-final! Up was Arsenal, who as I showed had won 3 of the previous 4 champions leagues. So did they show that prowess? yes... they did. We were obliterated at home and the away-game didn't matter anymore. Still though, reaching the semi-final is a great achievement. We were a bit more lucky this time around with the draw, sure, but still. Something to build on. The games against Arsenal showed we have a long way to go yet to actually compete with the best in the world.

The Eredivisie was even better than our champions league run. We absolute ran with it, while none of the competition was even close. We were so much stronger that we managed a season without one loss (games).

And apart from the eredivisie, we also managed a good cup run for once!

It was actually pretty spectacular: no goals conceded in the entire tournament. An away-win of 0-4 at Feyenoord was especially enjoyable.

So you'll see why I thought this was an amazing season. But, we're not ready yet.

The AFC reserves won their league, again, for the 5th time in a row. The u19's also won their league, and they won something else too.

I'm very hopeful for the future!

Manager of the Year

End of Season awards

Team of the Year

Team of All Time

Squad

Season Review

The only kinda disappointing part of this season were the youth candidates although they weren't that bad, just no potential world beater.

I've decided to try and make the step up I'm not going to be wary of making a big money transfer next season. So hopefully next season will be just as spectacular... 

 

 

 

[noikeee]

Wow, fantastic season with AFC!

[Deisler26]

Magnificent season with AFC!

[MarcxD]

On 12/21/2016 at 13:45, noikeee said:

Wow, fantastic season with AFC!

 

On 12/21/2016 at 15:48, Deisler26 said:

Magnificent season with AFC!

Thanks guys! It really was amazing, one of the best domestic seasons I've ever had.

[MarcxD]

I said I was planning on spending this summer, and I did. I might've gone a little bit insane. We'll see how this'll pan out. 

[MarcxD]

Update 23: Olympics 2028

While I had given up on success with the Dutch national team, I thought it could be worth a punt to try it on the olympic stage. I applied for the Dutch u23's and I got the job. It was interesting pick a 18-man squad with 3 players over 23. Pretty tough as well. In the end I ended up picking one former AFC player: right-back Andy Driessen, whom I sold to PSG. I also picked Tom Boogers, who is one of the world's best players (he actually won one ballon d'or). He also plays for PSG.

First we played some friendlies to get a feel for the squad

I chose some African nations, including South Africa, who we actually play in the group as well. The wins were convincing but of course as always they're just friendlies. Pretty insulting that only about 300 people attended these games though!

At the tournament it didn't go quite as smooth. We were unable to repeat our win against South Africa and Mexico was actually better than us in the game and we were lucky to get away with a draw. 

5 points was enough to go through, but beforehand I had hoped for better. I had to rotate because the players were getting very tired already. Next up was Argentina u23.

We played much better in these games, even though it showed how the 18-man squad was an issue. Pretty much all players were very tired at this point. We were definitely better in both of these games but of course we needed a bit of luck as well. Knockout-football, especially on the international front is like that most of the time I find. Anyway, we made it to the final. Before you read on, make a guess which nation we had to play in the final. ....

Of course, it had to be France. My nemesis on the senior international level, would it be time for revenge? 

Haha! Yes it was! We won the gold! And we smashed them, as you can see. From the start we were in control, getting a quick goal and barely conceding any chances, besides a penalty later on, which they missed as well! Oh, this definitely felt great. 

Of course I resigned after the tournament was done, but in the end I have managed to win at least one international trophy! The Dutch FA actually contacted me to become manager of the Senior Dutch team again.... but I refused. From now on it's time to focus completely on AFC and winning the Champions League.

 

 

[Keano16]

Nice to finally get one over on the Frenchies! 

[argento]

congrats on the Olympics did a similar thing with Italy on my game, remarkable work club wise as well!  wheeler dealer extraordinaire 

[MarcxD]

On 26-12-2016 at 15:03, Keano16 said:

Nice to finally get one over on the Frenchies! 

Yeah, definitely. Thanks!

On 26-12-2016 at 20:37, argento said:

congrats on the Olympics did a similar thing with Italy on my game, remarkable work club wise as well!  wheeler dealer extraordinaire 

Cheers, appreciate it! Not sure if I'm that great of a wheeler dealer but thanks nonetheless 

The laptop I play FM on crashed in the meanwhile and I lost all data so the next update might be a little longer away..... (having to download and install various stuff... fun times) thankfully I had cloud-saved this career though, so I can continue. I just lost some screenshots. 

[MarcxD]

Update 24: AFC 2028-2029

As I alluded to, this update will have a few less screenshots since I lost them in a crash, but the screens I could still access after the season was over I can show, so here we go.

As always I'll start with the transfers, which were huge. I'll go into a bit more detail than I usually do.

Drews is a 'world-class striker'  (Screenshotted above), who proved to be an amazing performer. Too bad the big clubs already tried to sign him in january. I rejected their offers and he got pissed. He still performed well in the second half of the season though, so for now it's not too worrying. I just hope he'll want to renew his deal or I'll have to sell him after only 3 seasons.. Anyway, as a consequence Pastor was sold because I only really want 2 players for every position in my first team squad (with perhaps some youth added in the mix). I was not necessarily looking at making big sales, but I thought the Kanoute offer from Wolfsburg was just too good, and after he was sold they paid AMR Adachi's limited fee so he was let go as well. I was weakened quite a bit though, so I decided to splash the cash to replace these players (although not as much as I got of course): so I bought the very talented French defender Andre David from Monaco and Brazilian AMR Mauricio for a combined 42M. In January I bought William Henrique; he's a Brazilian defender who is a possible back-up for both fullback positions plus he's now the second-best central defender. Record-holder Alex Salto is getting older and is now the third-best central defender at the club. I sold the superfluous Csurka and Iddir (also both central defenders). In february Chinese club Jiangsu was bothering me for Bujan, my first-choice AML. In the end I acquiesced, because he really wanted to leave (he could earn much more money there) and 16M for a 31-year old is pretty decent.

Anyway, now let's get into the actual football. 

First we played some friendlies which were all comfortable wins, although they were against teams that we should be able to beat now pretty easily. Up next was the Dutch supercup, which was a good win, although both my strikers were injured! Midfielder Savic filled in, and he scored a hattrick... Mauricio was also injured at the start of the season, so that wasn't exactly the way I wanted to get the new signings started. Luckily there were no leg-breaks or anything like that.

After we demolished an amateur team in the cup we had some close games which we won on penalties but in the final we weren't able to - this time we lost against Feyenoord on penalties. Another cup final lost...

In the Champions League we were drawn with Celtic, Basel and... Arsenal, who demolished us last year in the semi-finals. We lost 3-0 in England, but at home we managed a very pleasant 3-1 win!

Once again we finished second in the group, but all by all as you can see it was a very convincing performance. 

While we performed very well in the league I thought we wouldn't do quite as well as last year, if only because pretty quickly in the season we actually lost a game. We did score a lot more, thanks to the new players of course, and quite consistently as well. 

In the end we barely drew any games and this way we managed to gain just as much points as last year, another 90 points for AFC! And because we scored so much more I think this was actually a better season in the league.

Let's get back to the Champions League though, because what happened there I just... I don't know how to say or explain it. There were some performances and results that were just outlandish.

First up we played Juventus, who we beat pretty easily. Then, the quarter-finals: Arsenal! I thought we were f...'ed, but this was probably the best match we every played up to that point: we were so much better and won 3-0 at home. In the away game we lost, but thanks to a strong and especially determined performance we scored 2 goals and the 2-4 was enough for us to go through to the semi's. We had to play Schalke (or Gelsenkirchen as the game calls them) and it was closer than I imagined. They were definitely the weakest team in the semi's (the other semi-final was a match between Barcelona and Manchester United) but in the first match, in Germany, we lost 1-0. Not too bad, of course, but still we had to perform very well at home and we did. We won 2-0, although I was very tense, especially during the first half. But, we won - and we were headed for the final. The very first European and Champions League final for AFC, and would AFC be the first Dutch team since Ajax in 1995 to win the big trophy?

The final was held in Istanbul and we had to play Barcelona. They had not won a single champions league since this game started, so their last victory was in 2015. This was a huge day for both teams. Would it happen?

We were so much better. We won. A quick goal in the beginning and a second one at the very end. Drews scored both goals - of course - and he could've scored a hattrick had he not missed a penalty. Our midfield consisted of two ex-Barcelona players in Savic and Djokovic. They had a pitbull, but it didn't matter!

Here you can see how amazingly important Drews was. He was topscorer in the Champions League,, of course thanks to his consistency and an amazing 5-goal performance against Basel. Overall, when you look at all competitions and games he played, he was running close to a 1 goal per match average (and he probably was at about 90 minutes per goal, since sometimes I started him on the bench when he was tired)

Best team of All Time

I also want to show you the records-screen on the history page of AFC, because you can see how many records were broken this year: 

Most goals in a season (Drews), Top league goalscorer (Drews), Highest Average Rating (Mauricio), Most Assists (Mauricio), Most Clean Sheets (Bos) and most Games without conceding. 

I was  shocked at how good we performed, especially the quarter-final win against Arsenal and the final. Only 1 shot on goal conceded, absolutely spectacular.

I can't imagine how we can ever top this, but we'll try to perform very well next year as well. I'm not planning on spending much money next season - but I also don't want to sell. Hopefully the players can deal with another year in the Eredivisie and the red-black colours of AFC. 

This has been one of the best seasons I've ever played on FM, in any year. I was not being humble when I said in my beginning post that I'm honestly rather average at FM - winning the Champions League is something I have only rarely performed previously, and never with a club that I've built up from such humble beginnings as with AFC. This could turn into my best save ever... 

 

 

 

[Deisler26]

Brilliant work, my friend. Amazing.

[noikeee]

Fantastic achievement to win the Champions League with AFC! Congratulations!

[deltablue]

That was seriously impressive!

[MarcxD]

On 12/31/2016 at 18:16, Deisler26 said:

Brilliant work, my friend. Amazing.

 

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

Fantastic achievement to win the Champions League with AFC! Congratulations!

 

1 hour ago, deltablue said:

That was seriously impressive!

Thank you all very much. 

[MarcxD]

When I signed Drews last year his agent forced a 74M limited fee on me. I certainly was not planning on selling him after his performance last year, but PSG paid the fee so after only one season he is gone. In haste I bought the best immediate replacement I could get, for 66M. More expensive than Drews last year and not quite as good, but I decided that I needed a great striker to stay competitive in Europe.

[ManUtd1]

Congrats on the CL win!  Amazing journey!

[Ceching You Out]

Congratulations on the CL! Very impressive.

[MarcxD]

On 2-1-2017 at 18:40, ManUtd1 said:

Congrats on the CL win!  Amazing journey!

 

On 3-1-2017 at 02:23, Ceching You Out said:

Congratulations on the CL! Very impressive.

Appreciate it guys, thanks!