[FM17] A Journeyman Story: Knocking José Mourinho Off His Perch

[noikeee]

On 2017-5-25 at 12:50, 13-gigi said:

Give it a thought as a holding midfielder. He's got pretty good bravery, work rate and teamwork, also he's tall for aerial game for those who want to pump the ball straight to your pitch. Plus, with an very aceptable strength, stamina, aggression he must be a perfect bully. just need little balance, technique and passing to be the next Touré Yaya. Instruct him to play short simple passes out of trouble with his low passing on a defence duty and he could give you some quality minutes of rest for your best bully plus the first stages of the cup.

Ehhh.. I hadn't really thought about that. I can see some elements there but it's not a great fit neither though - lacks a lot in tackling, positioning and passing to be the kind of holding midfielder I like.

[noikeee]

 

June-July 2025 - Pre-season transfers

 

 

 

A considerable amount of movement as I try to make this squad more suitable for playing in the Champions League this season. This was all funded by the sales of strikers Rey Manaj and Djamel Benahmed, as well as midfielder Mostafa Mosaad, this trio went for a total of 38M€, but the one first team starter I sold went for a much lower fee of 1,4M€ - Ales Mateju was pushed aside to make way for a pair of younger right-backs.

 

This transfer window was also notable for veteran Christoph Kramer leaving on a free, I let him go to champions Dortmund. Dunno what they want to do with him as I didn't think he was super useful enough for us anymore.

 

 

 

My new keeper looks incredible, and was hired on a discount 5,25M€. There's a reason for the discount (beyond PSG's incompetence) - he "might have problems living in another country". This is a theme with several of my signings this season, which I consider worthy gambles.

 

 

 

I perhaps slightly overpaid (6,75M€ extending to 7,25M€ on clauses) but I was desperate for a new CB which was by far the weakest position on the squad, and with limited options on the market. He's pretty good anyway.

 

 

 

An exciting young attacking fullback from Egypt, bought on a criminal 400K€. With the other right-back Gaoussou Coulibaly being also 19 years old and also African, it's the youngest position on the 1st team!

 

 

 

I needed a new holding midfielder after Benjamin Fontanella's loan expired, and this new loanee looks similarly great but could have serious problems adapting to a new country, my scouts warned me.

 

 

 

But if Roche doesn't come great, there's still this guy. Leverkusen released him on a free... uh, thanks? I don't think he's top top class but I'm very happy to pick up a talented young German midfielder for nothing.

 

 

 

A very long term gamble. I might've overpaid - 1.3M€ is quite a bit for a 16 year old who's miles away from being useful yet, but I can see a very well rounded set of skills developing.

 

 

 

I don't normally hire 30 year olds, but when they're this good and available for free... why not? Could be an upgrade on Daniel de Pablo as AMC - he's been playing consistently very well for Roma for years, before leaving on a free this Summer.

 

 

 

I was delighted to see Real let a guy this talented go for just 1,4M€. Then my scouts told me he could have serious problems adapting to a new country, and is slightly inconsistent too. I took the risk anyway, surely worst case scenario there's profit to be made here.

 

 

 

When strikers this good are available on a free, it's a dream come true. I want him to make my new forwards duo next to Fabián López, my only concern is they're both AF-kind strikers and neither really fits the DLF role, so I don't know if it'll work.

 

 

 

Another forward, I hired him more for the potential but he's quite useful now already - "fairly inconsistent" but for 975K€ and this young, you'll take the gamble.

 

 

The main squad for the 2025/2026 season:

 

 

Don't worry, Fabián López is only injured for 3 more weeks.

 

 

I dunno why my assistant manager thought starting the season away at Bayern was a good idea - this was the exact fixture that we had ended last season with a 7-1 defeat, and this friendly was arranged before my new signings had even arrived. Oh well. Anyway, this was a weird inconsistent pre-season.

 

This season we have a huge new test in Champions League football. This will stretch the squad's legs (hence why I wanted more depth), and I also suspect the Bundesliga won't quite be as easy as it seemed last year, the opposition has realized we can be dangerous. I don't think this is the year we can become German champions yet - I'm afraid of Bayern waking up - and am aiming at finishing on a Champions League spot again instead, whilst trying to get out of the groups there if possible (depending on the draw).

[BoxToBox]

Aye, those free transfers are delightful.

[noikeee]

 

Building a bit of a veterans side, I guess. 

[Slipky]

Great transfers! Looking forward for more. 

[noikeee]

Oh come on. The draw is rigged.

[noikeee]

Improvements. Lots of them. My chairman is brain dead, all I need to swing him is to say "your lack of ambition is very disappointing, I thought we shared the same ambition for the club" and he'll agree to whatever I want.

[kidthekid]

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

 

Building a bit of a veterans side, I guess. 

Total opposite of real life

[noikeee]

4 minutes ago, kidthekid said:

Total opposite of real life

Well, 8 years have gone by, plenty of time to **** on the whole club philosophy. 

[noikeee]

 

August-September 2025

 

Competitions

 

 

If last season we had kicked off in the cup with a spectacular 16-0 win over lower league opposition, this time our first match, again in the cup vs a team further down the leagues, couldn't have been more different - we looked dire, let Kiel take the game to extra-time and only then buried it with a single goal, a Arne Maier long shot.

 

In the Bundesliga the theme was similar: minimum comfort but doing the business. Narrow wins over Hannover and Mainz were sealed in the 2nd half, and against Stuttgart we took it one notch further by only confirming it with goals in minutes 91 and 92. Nevertheless that was 3 wins in a row but then the most dreaded fixture of the season arrived: away at Bayern. Predictably we were annihilated but managed not to concede any more after taking in 3 goals in the first 30 minutes. We recovered from the Munich setback with two wins in difficult matches, against Schalke and then away to RB Leipzig, but then somewhat surprisingly conceded a home draw to Köln in a poor performance.

 

In Rigged European Competition, we started our silly group by almost managing to luck out of Manchester with a point if it wasn't for a 91st minute winner by Anthony Martial (yes, he plays for City). Quite frankly they more than deserved it after hitting the woodwork 4 times. HSV-Inter next, made for a classic match as it turned out surprisingly wide open. We were more accurate than our Italian opponents and ran out 6-3 winners. Notably, Bogdan Chornyi finally scored for the club for the first time, and it was a splendorous night for the Russian striker with 2 goals and 2 assists.

 

 

 

We're in the mix in both league and Champions League, but I can't help but feel we're not quite at the level of some of our most powerful opponents just yet. This for now feels like another season of building up rather than basking in glory, although the team is still gelling together after a considerable amount of signings.

[Keano16]

If you're still building then you're doing really well. Do you feel you need more signings or just need to develop your current players more to bridge the gap?

[noikeee]

50 minutes ago, Keano16 said:

If you're still building then you're doing really well. Do you feel you need more signings or just need to develop your current players more to bridge the gap?

Signings. Heaps of them. Trucks of them. We're basically some 7 or 8 world class players of being able to field a starting 11 as talented as Bayern, and that's not getting into their bench.

One of these days I'm going to make a little squad overview of Bayern, they're just utterly ridiculous. Honestly there is no way in hell Klopp should've retained his job after last season, with that squad the league should be a walkover, yet he barely recovered to 3rd (behind us!). They're playing better now though, and when we play Bayern the difference between the 2 sides on the pitch is VERY noticeable.

As for us, the only world class players I'd say we have are Paredes (MC), Fillion (DL/WBL), the new keeper Altamiranda, and, erm, that's it? Even Fabián López with his 41 goals last year isn't as good as some of the ridiculously talented strikers we sometimes face. We're pretty vulnerable at the back specially, I'm really struggling to find truly great centre-backs and most matches we're playing a tactic with 3 of them.

[GryphonFlick]

Throwing my two cents in here to say I would love to see a squad overview of Bayern!

[noikeee]

 

October-November 2025

 

Competitions

 

 

After some fairly routine wins over Nürnberg and Hoffenheim, I expected the same in a trip to Augsburg but with tired legs from the mid-week Champions League match, the lads came back defeated. A nice big 4-0 win over Hertha (with a Fabián López hat-trick) let us forget, but again, also tired from the CL and also on very low morale after a hammering, we were surprised by recently promoted 1860 München with another 2-1 defeat - these are points we just can't afford to be dropping like this. We were then due to face Dortmund next, one of the teams we're fighting with at the top of the table, and I feared the worst but we put on a good showing, quite possibly deserving more than the 1-1 draw we got. We finished November with a difficult but rewarding 2-1 win at Frankfurt.

 

The Champions League sadly went to hell. We hardly disgraced ourselves when Real Madrid came to town, narrow 1-0 defeat. However I couldn't quite say the same after the trip to the Bernabéu where we were on the end of a massive 6-1 defeat, Real showing their full strength. We now needed a miracle to qualify, and that didn't happen as the home match against Man City was very much a repeat of the first Real match, narrow 1-0 defeat where we kept our honor. The good news is that Inter haven't scored a point yet (!!!) so if we can avoid a meltdown in Italy we'll still go to the Europa League.

 

In the cup rather surprisingly (as we were on poor form) we beat Leverkusen comfortably 3-0, booking a derby against recently relegated Werder Bremen in the next round.

 

 

 

This isn't our finest moment, as we drop silly points to beatable sides in the league, and capitulate against the massive strength of our Champions League opponents. However not all is lost as we continue not far from the top in the Bundesliga, and with a more than decent chance of continuing in the Europa League.

[noikeee]

1 hour ago, GryphonFlick said:

Throwing my two cents in here to say I would love to see a squad overview of Bayern!

Sorry for anyone with slow internet as to just how long to load this post will be. But I think it's necessary just to illustrate the utter ridiculousness.

 

So yeah. They're bonkers. At least they don't have Makeev anymore who they sold by just 124M€ this Summer:

 

 

[noikeee]

So, I've got the "continue game automatic timeout" active, which means the game continues to progress by itself as if I'd pressed continue, until the next match. This is to speed up the game whilst I do other things in the computer or am away from it.

But this means it automatically timed out this chance:

No problems, I thought. If the board wants to increase my transfer budget, I can just ask for it as a board request and they sure will accept. Right? Wrong. They rejected my request. 

So frustrating, we have a pile of cash in the bank (76M€ at the moment!!!), absolutely zero transfer budget, and I've identified a few targets I really want to sign.

[BoxToBox]

Pretty handy that as Neuer entered the golden days, they just so happened to have a 16 year old keeper in their academy who's the best German keeper of his generation. What luck.

[Benjoe]

That Bayern team is really something, but who the **** is managing them? Ending 3rd in ANY league with that team should be cause for firing. 

I like your signings overall. Lots of potential. 

[noikeee]

8 hours ago, BoxToBox said:

Pretty handy that as Neuer entered the golden days, they just so happened to have a 16 year old keeper in their academy who's the best German keeper of his generation. What luck.

The keeper is good, but quite frankly their defence isn't anything outrageously out of the ordinary (hence why I didn't post a few of the CBs), it's the attack that scares me. 

1 hour ago, Benjoe said:

That Bayern team is really something, but who the **** is managing them? Ending 3rd in ANY league with that team should be cause for firing. 

I like your signings overall. Lots of potential. 

He managed to spend most of the season last year out of the CL spots.  But somehow he avoided being sacked, recovered to 3rd at the very end, beat us 7-1 in the final day, and is now topping the league this season.

[Darius1998]

Maybe he was just warming up.

[noikeee]

 

This is very interesting because it's the first job offer I've gotten after moving to Germany, and also because it's one that I would actually consider. But not at the time - I want to win trophies with HSV first.

[noikeee]

 

December 2025-January 2026

 

Transfers

 

The Winter transfer window saw the sales of 2 players that have been at the club for a very long time and were still pretty damn good. 29 year old striker Marlos Moreno had been last year one of the squad's highlights, but he had been relegated to the bench this season by Bogdan Chornyi, it was one of the last opportunities to get a good deal for him, and I wanted to free up funds for a fantastic target I had identified in the transfer market - so he went for 16,5M€. The other important sale was of 31 year old left-back Douglas Santos, still an excellent backup choice and on top of his game, but he wanted to go and I didn't want to block him - sold by 1,6M€. There was a 3rd sale, of 3rd choice goalkeeper Christian Mathenia, and a bunch of kids who were stalled in training whilst playing for HSV II, went on loan.

 

As to the signings:

 

 

Young goalie available on a free. Not great potential, but this is a zero risk move.

 

 

 

I managed to find in Japan an excellent substitute for Douglas Santos as 2nd choice LB/LWB, for just 600K€. A no-brainer deal.

 

 

 

The one I'm really, really excited about, and the reason why I sold Marlos Moreno, I paid 14M€ for this excellent attacking midfielder. Whilst I now have a surplus of AMCs with also Joaquín Correa and Daniel de Pablo, he's on a whole other level. He insisted on a release clause of 45.5M€ but worst case scenario that's big profit. For now, he's looking sensational as he scored in his first 2 appearances in the Bundesliga.

 

 

 

There's also this kid who I took on loan from West Ham (!) as a more direct replacement for Marlos Moreno. I really quite like the look of him, we're gonna try him out for the rest of the season, and if he comes good for us I've agreed a optional 13M€ fee.

 

 

 

Competitions

 

 

Suddenly, we're now flying in the league. Wins over Leverkusen (3-1, home), Wolfsburg (2-1, away) and Gladbach (2-0, home) allowed us to recover some ground before the winter break. And we just kept going on when we returned - a 3-0 win over Hannover was memorable for Mauro Raponi scoring his first goal for the club 2 minutes into his Bundesliga career, then we repeated the same vs Mainz; and then a lone goal by Bogdan Chornyi who's finding his best form of the season, made it 7 wins in a row in the league, 9 wins in a row in all competitions. We've broken past Schalke and Dortmund and are now top on par with Bayern.

 

Earlier on, there was business to be done in other competitions as well. We travelled to Italy to face Inter again for a Europa League spot - not an issue as we had a good night with a rather comfortable 2-0 victory. And whether the lads liked the San Siro or not, we're back to it next month as we've been booked against Milan in the Europa League...

 

In the DFB-Pokal, a derby against a weakened Werder Bremen side - now down to the 2.Bundesliga - finished 3-0 with an hat-trick by Czech teenager Bronislav Divis, who was given a rare start (and would probably deserve more if it wasn't for his place in the team being occupied by Fabián López). Our quarter-final opponents are Hertha away, not a fantastic draw as they're the current holders of this competition, but if we can get past them we have a golden opportunity to win the cup, with all the big sides like Bayern, Dortmund, Schalke, Leipzig, Leverkusen, Wolfsburg already knocked out at this stage.

 

 

 

This was a really good 2 months to recover from what had been unconvincing early season form. We took advantage of a relatively easy calendar to win all competitive matches and turn the league into what now looks like a close 2-horse race between us and Bayern. And in the story of this season there's a big moment booked already for next week - we kick off February by hosting Bayern for the Bundesliga...

 

Meanwhile I'm truly quite eager to manage new signing Mauro Raponi, I think he could become a serious star for this club and make a difference.

 

[noikeee]

I hope the next 400 are filled with a few more trophies because Mourinho is far from breaking a sweat here.

[noikeee]

This is what happens when Bayern are on it.

[noikeee]

 

Youth intake 2026

 

 

 

 

A slightly underwhelming youth intake. The two AMCs are described with the "promising" tag which is a certain guarantee of potential, but their attributes don't look to be in the right places to me, personalities aren't great for them neither. Beyond those two I'm not seeing anything special in anyone.

[noikeee]

Disregard that, those players don't exist anymore - my game just crashed and the last 2 hours I've been playing disappeared. Sigh.

[noikeee]

 

Youth intake 2026

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well the game crash was very annoying and cut off my will to play the game for a couple of days, but in terms of youth it ultimately worked in my favour. Peters is a huge prospect! There's a bunch of other mildly promising kids as well.

[Rikulec]

Wow, Peters could become a great player for you.

[Fosse]

20 flair 

[Fola]

Peters looks like he could be a class act!

[noikeee]

On 2017-6-4 at 14:52, Rikulec said:

Wow, Peters could become a great player for you.

 

On 2017-6-5 at 22:59, Fola said:

Peters looks like he could be a class act!

 

On 2017-6-4 at 21:53, Fosse said:

20 flair 

 

He could be a class act and a pretty unique player too - how many Germans have you ever seen on the pitch with 20 flair? 

[noikeee]

 

February-March 2026

 

Competitions

 

 

I'm afraid I don't have good news. In the league, we failed to survive the big match vs Bayern to kick off February, and with a bunch of tough games to come, this sparked the beginning of a very bad run. We got beaten in Gelsenkirchen by Schalke, and then Leipzig came over to Hamburg and also beat us 2-0. This was 3 defeats in a row in the league, but made worse because in-between we also dropped out of 2 other competitions - more on that on a minute.

 

A away draw with Köln meant we stopped the run of defeats, but that still took yet more points away from now, with a rapidly approaching pack. We finally got properly going again when smashing Nürnberg 5-0, but after another loss in another difficult trip this time to meet Hoffenheim, we dropped to 5th place and out of the Champions League!!! We are back to 3rd after another satisfying big home win over Augbsurg, but contact has been completely lost with Bayern and now we're in the middle of an extremely tight fight for Champions League qualification.

 

But all of this wouldn't have been as bad without the disappointments in the DFB-Pokal and the Europa League as well. We had great chances in the cup, but having the relatively tough quarter-final just 3 days after the big Bayern match in the league didn't help. Hertha took us to extra-time, and then they took advantage of our considerable fatigue - the reigning cup holders are through instead of us. In the Europa League, Milan kicked off the 1st leg with a goal in what would be their only shot on target all match long. We dominated, but would only equalize in the dying minutes. It was a relatively similar match in Italy with Milan also getting a 1st half goal, and then us looking slightly better, but we didn't get the goal this time. Over and out.

 

 

 

 

A pretty disastrous couple of months sees us lose any chances of grabbing the title, retreating to an unbelievably close 4-team fight for 2 automatic Champions League places and 1 qualifying rounds place; and drop out of all the cups. Now please notice after my game crashed this is the 2nd time I've played most of these matches and it had gone just as badly the first time round, and you might understand why I've been a bit frustrated with FM lately and took ages to reach this update point. Also, Mauro Raponi after the initial promise has just been terrible and now is even injured, sigh.

 

The difficult calendar didn't help neither but I think the issue is tactical. Typically my main plan the Originals (3-4-1-2) would deal with most 4-4-2s just fine, but I've been facing some highly compact 4-4-2s lately that are unsettling us. This makes some sense - their compactness lock us out of access to the golden zone, and then winger+fullback double up on my wingbacks and beat us down the wings on their attack. This is mostly what I'm seeing on the pitch. However, I've tried a lot of different things and it's not working. I've even gone strikerless in some matches (ended up with some fairly similar tactics to @ManUtd1's crazy plans - I've read your article today on Strikerless, good stuff) but that still relies on swamping the golden zone, and when the opponent is compact there and doesn't really want to press much neither it's hard to open that up. I'm thinking of maybe creating again yet another alternate plan with wide midfielders for this very specific scenario - at least lock out their wings and grab some stability through there.

 

Still, despite all this we're not in a terrible position and can still salvage the season somewhat, to qualify for the Champions League again would be decent enough.

[noikeee]

 

April-May 2026

 

Competitions

 

 

The away match in Berlin vs Hertha would be the debut of my new "Winglocker" system - a 4-1-4-1 designed to stop teams exploiting us down the wings. It didn't really work as I imagined as we conceded 2 crossed goals, but still won 3-2 which was positive. This system would again get us a good result away at Dortmund with a 0-0 draw, in-between we'd beaten 1860 Münich with the good old Uruguayan Tiki-Taka.

 

It seemed like I'd turned things around and I was positive for the end of the season. However then bad luck crossed our path. Against Frankfurt we were on top but saw them score on their only 2 shots on target all match, including a 93rd minute winner. And in Leverkusen, a relatively even match in which we looked slightly better, we somehow lost again, 3-1. We dropped to 5th on the table and were now in serious risk of missing out on Champions League football.

 

Even a tumultous 4-2 win over Wolfsburg didn't put us in a very good position coming into the final day. We were still 5th and 2 points behind both Dortmund and Leipzig. We had to beat Gladbach away and hope either one of them lost (Dortmund at home to Köln, Leipzig away to Frankfurt), or maybe draw in Leipzig's case as we then would go ahead on goal difference. The 1st half didn't go very well, we were goalless, so was the Frankfurt-Leipzig match, whilst Dortmund were 2-0 up and out of reach. We were knocking on Gladbach's goal though and then finally a José Paredes freekick gave us the lead! With Leipzig still 0-0 we had to hold on to the lead and hope Leipzig wouldn't score. And that was exactly what happened, but we had to sweat a lot as Gladbach went on the attack, I probably messed up switching to the new Winglocker system which didn't really work this time, and Gladbach nearly scored in several instances. But at the end we pulled through - Gladbach 0-1 HSV, Frankfurt 0-0 Leipzig, and we sneaked through to 4th and Champions League football on goal difference.

 

 

 

 

 

This was a very last minute way to save the season, but we just about managed to pull my minimum goal here of qualifying to the Champions League again, although we will have to enter in the playoffs. This gives us a nice paycheck and allows us to plan next season more comfortably - the board has given me a nice 48M€ transfer budget. Ultimately 2025/2026 wasn't quite the glory year I wanted with a slight step back from last season's 2nd place, and a serious dip in form in the 2nd half of the season, but we're still slowly consolidating ourselves as one of the top German clubs.

[noikeee]

 

Season review 2025/26

 

HSV qualify for the Champions League for the 2nd year in a row, although it's a slight step back in the Bundesliga from 2nd to 4th. Not many great things to report on the other competitions this season, with forgettable performances in Europe and the cup.

 

 

Finances

 

A nice fresh check fron the Bundesliga has increased our balance to 104M€. This will now drop substantially all year long, but last season at this stage we had a 57M€ balance so we've made a lot of money this year.

 

 

Statistics, best 11, and top 5 players of the season

 

 

5. José Paredes (MC) - Perhaps not quite as impressive as last season, nevertheless I thought he remains one of our most influential players, whilst he stopped scoring a substantial number of goals, he did improve his assists number up to 10.

 

4. Bogdan Chornyi (ST) - An up-and-down season from the striker who arrived this season from Russia, he started off very badly, then started scoring regularly when Fabián López dried up, and then finished the season on the bench as Gary Mackie was starting to emerge. 13 goals isn't particularly out of the ordinary for a striker, but he did get also 10 assists which was joint best for the team on par with José Paredes.

 

3. Leandro Altamiranda (GK) - This guy was a seriously impressive signing for the goalkeeper position. I picked him ahead of several other players who got better ratings but it's so unusual to get a keeper to finish with 7.10 ratings, that I felt he deserved a pretty high-up mention. He was just brilliant all year, and even beat a record for most clean sheets that had stood since 1985. Fun fact: weirdly I just noticed he was actually here at the club on loan from PSG when I arrived, but I didn't manage to renew the loan then. Great to pick him up permanently now.

 

2. Wim de Jong (DC) - His career here for us is starting to mimick what he had done for my Twente side in previous years - didn't look that impressive at the beginning but then just kept on getting better until he became the leader of my defence. This is exactly the position he's in now, leader of my HSV defence. Shootout too to his new CB partner Dayot Upamecano who also had a good season.

 

1. Fabián López (ST, AMC) - Not as good as last year, when he had scored 41 goals, but Fabián is still Fabián and his 30 goals this year were way, way ahead of anyone else, in a side that's progressively becoming a bit boring for my standards and doesn't score much. Briefly played as AMC when I tried the strikerless system.

 

 

Mourinho watch

 

I give up chasing Mourinho. His Man Utd side won the Premier League again, and is in the final of both FA Cup and Champions League too at the time of writing. Forget it.

 

 

Career progress table

 

Season   League                  Cups                              Continental                    Other
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Central Español (Uruguay)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016     Segunda Div - 4th       
2017     Segunda Div - 1st                                                                        Champions, promoted
2018     Camp. Uruguayo - 2nd (Ap. 4th, Int. finalists, Cl. 3rd)                                  Qualified for Libertadores
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nacional (Uruguay)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2019     Camp. Uruguayo - 1st (Ap. 4th, Int. Grps 2nd , Cl. 1st)   Libertadores 1st Pre. Rnd      Lost Champions Playoff
2020     Camp. Uruguayo - 1st (Ap. 2nd, Int. winners, Cl. 1st)     Libertadores winners           League+Int+Libertadores treble
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twente (Netherlands)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2020/21  Eredivisie - 13th                                                                        Joined in December
2021/22  Eredivisie - 9th        KNVB Beker semi-final
2022/23  Eredivisie - 1st        KNVB Beker 3rd round                                             Champions
2023/24  Eredivisie - 1st        KNVB Beker winners, JCS winners   CL groups, EL semi-finals      Won domestic double+Supercup
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HSV (Germany)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024/25  Bundesliga - 2nd        DFB-Pokal quarter final                                          Qualified for Champions League
2025/26  Bundesliga - 4th        DFB-Pokal quarter final           CL groups, EL 1st KO round     Qualified for Champions League

 

[ManUtd1]

Nicely done on qualifying again. Hard to do that first year, when your side might not yet be capable of competing on two fronts.

Glad you've had some joy with tactical experiments...for a real rush, you could try out Decapitated Buffalo on strikerless. Very fluid, overload with inside forwards to give you a wider threat. 

[noikeee]

11 hours ago, ManUtd1 said:

Nicely done on qualifying again. Hard to do that first year, when your side might not yet be capable of competing on two fronts.

Glad you've had some joy with tactical experiments...for a real rush, you could try out Decapitated Buffalo on strikerless. Very fluid, overload with inside forwards to give you a wider threat. 

 I think I came across that article earlier. Mental, but I like doing my own systems and that's far too chaotic, we're a oh-so-serious meticulously organised German club, we don't drop down to that level of unrestrained chaos. 

I stayed up to stupid hours last night preparing next season, got a bunch of new signings to present. Spending money is fun!

[ManUtd1]

3 hours ago, noikeee said:

 I think I came across that article earlier. Mental, but I like doing my own systems and that's far too chaotic, we're a oh-so-serious meticulously organised German club, we don't drop down to that level of unrestrained chaos. 

I stayed up to stupid hours last night preparing next season, got a bunch of new signings to present. Spending money is fun!

That's what the missus tells me...

[Benjoe]

Uh oh.. Bayern got the machine rolling.

But as @ManUtd1 said, it was a really fine season overall. You were only a couple of goals from a direct place - of course, only a single goal from EL too.  

Looking forward to seeing your signings - you've hyped them now!

55 minutes ago, ManUtd1 said:

That's what the missus tells me...

Word. 

[noikeee]

3 hours ago, ManUtd1 said:

That's what the missus tells me...

2 hours ago, Benjoe said:

Uh oh.. Bayern got the machine rolling.

But as @ManUtd1 said, it was a really fine season overall. You were only a couple of goals from a direct place - of course, only a single goal from EL too.  

Looking forward to seeing your signings - you've hyped them now!

Good. If we want to be a big club they need to get used to the pressure. 

It really was fine margins. By half-time of the final day we were out of the CL, and even after we went ahead we still needed to rely on Leipzig ****ing up their match... ultimately Leipzig won the Europa League so they made it anyway.

[noikeee]

 

June-July 2026 - Pre-season transfers

 

First a look at the outgoing players:

 

 

Total: 39M€

 

Midfielder Arne Maier was the first big name to go. With a great personality and homegrown, I had identified him as one of my key stars to build around when I first arrived at the club, but over the course of the last 2 years he progressively lost space and now other German midfielders, younger, like Artan Stafa and Rogan Rogowski can get more playing time. Centre-back Patryk Danielak played a lot in my first season in Germany but just doesn't have the quality. Keeper Salim Nemdil, I had to sell him at a loss as he was on the last year of contract and wouldn't renew, he's worth way more than 3.4M€ but I put in a 30% profit of next sale clause.

 

The big sale was of striker Bogdan Chornyi. The Russian did contribute with 13 goals and 10 assists last season (his only season for the club), but he's 28 already, and I want to put in some trust in Gary Mackie and in another new signing I made. A 18M€ fee for a guy we picked up on a free last year is great.

 

Finally as you can see we started properly exploiting the paid loans market this season. Most of them were youngsters I would've loaned out to give them some playing time anyway, but 3 relatively young first team players left, to free up space in the squad: midfielder Daniel de Pablo (famously a Nacional youth product for myself when I was in Uruguay), striker Emilio Muñoz and right-back Ahmed Abdel Aal. They all have potential so if they perform I might have a rethink and recall them for the squad in the future.

 

 

Onto the signings:

 

 

Total: 47,5M€

 

We paid a little more for a relatively small bunch of high quality players, but retain quite a lot of unused cash on the transfer budget (in fact we're still finishing a deal for a new player who should arrive in August, and I'm saving for maybe hiring a particular massive star but for that I'd need to sell someone):

 

 

 

A steal. South African club Sundowns had him with a release clause of 625K€ and for that price he can come in and be my backup keeper. He's inconsistent, though.

 

 

 

I don't like paying huge cash for 16 year olds but he's definitely worth 2,1M€. One of the biggest prospects in Germany. Needs to improve his quickness.

 

 

 

Centre-back has been for a while our weakest position, and I've had my eye on him for a very long time. Arrives from Mexico on a 8,75M€ release clause. He's a monster defensively but could do with better technical ability, which I find important in some tactics, let's see if he won't hurt our passing game there.

 

 

 

Could do with more acceleration but I like him a lot. Dortmund couldn't find him a place on the squad so sold him at a discount 3,5M€. I think they'll regret it. Model professional, too.

 

 

 

Look who I'm managing again! When I took charge of Nacional a good few years back, he was our biggest youth prospect, and ultimately I couldn't hold on for him for long and Fluminense took him for just 5,25M€ (plus extras). All this time, for the past 6 years or so, he's been at Fluminense and playing some truly sensational football with monster ratings. I paid 17M€ - a club record and the biggest fee I've paid this career - for him thinking he'd replace Ruben Roche, but I just about managed to hold on to the French midfielder for another year on loan. So now I have to pick between Diana, Roche and Paredes for 2 holding midfielder positions - a problem I don't mind having.

 

 

 

I already presented him this January when I picked him up on loan, but I think he's important enough to screenshot again. We activated the 13M€ release clause because we liked the performances and potential of this young English striker, and I expect him to be a starter.

 

 

 

... but Gary Mackie will have some very serious competition from Filip Bondzic. I've been following Filip for a few years now and nearly loaned him in several occasions, as Inter kept on putting him on the loan list. Clearly Inter didn't count with him at all, so sold him for a discount 2,6M€. Thanks?

 

 

 

This Danish kid was just a hopeful punt for the future on a free, but seems to have real potential. Will be with the HSV II squad for now if I'm unable to loan him.

 

 

 

The main squad for the 2026/2027 season -  as of 1 of August 2026, as I'm still finishing deals:

 

 

Yes that's a "Wnt" hovering over Fabián López. That's Arsenal. And you know what, I'd totally sell him for the right bid. No, I've not gone mad and there's a very good reason why I would. Fingers crossed the plan I have in my mind will work out if a bid comes in.

 

 

We got a cup! Oh it's just "Friendly Cup". We did beat Tottenham, it's not like it's completely worthless...

 

I'm excited about all of the new signings, but at the same time I'm kinda not expecting much. Guadalupe at DC is really the only true upgrade; Diana might just rotate with Roche/Paredes for the MC/DM spots; Mackie/Bondzic are not necessarily better than Chornyi was at DLF; and Ersel Gemici isn't necessarily better than Coulibaly at RB. So I see ourselves performing at thereabout the same level of last year, but with a little more depth. The real good news is that we're piling up on cash and potential, so things are being set up for the future...

[noikeee]

 

Shakhtar awaits us in the CL playoffs. I can live with that. Could've been Man City...

[Benjoe]

None of your 5 best players last season left, and you've done some nice signings. Looks good for next season.

Diana (amazing to have him back under your wing) and Gary Mackie are my picks of the bunch, with a lot of good prospects, and the Peruvian looks solid.

A great Dane as well, with a good base.

[noikeee]

23 minutes ago, Benjoe said:

None of your 5 best players last season left, and you've done some nice signings. Looks good for next season.

Diana (amazing to have him back under your wing) and Gary Mackie are my picks of the bunch, with a lot of good prospects, and the Peruvian looks solid.

A great Dane as well, with a good base.

I did choose Chornyi as one of my top 5 players, and sold him by 18M€... but that was more because of the amount of goals+assists in total he contributed to, I think we had more important players in the side.

[ManUtd1]

Shakhtar -- not the worst draw, but not the best either.  

[Benjoe]

22 minutes ago, noikeee said:

I did choose Chornyi as one of my top 5 players, and sold him by 18M€... but that was more because of the amount of goals+assists in total he contributed to, I think we had more important players in the side.

Oh, my bad. Missed him, still looks really good no matter. To secure the deal with Gary is really going to be good I recon.

[noikeee]

 

After winning 2-0 at home, once we grabbed the early away goal in Donetsk we were pretty much through. Shakhtar threw everything forward but eventually we broke them in the counter and made this a comfortable tie.

 

 

Missing team is Red Bull Salzburg. This is definitely a better draw than last season's horror of Man City, Real Madrid and Inter, but still far from easy - we'll have to overcome one of PSG or Atlético to go through. Until we get out of the 4th seeds pot (we're still there after last year's dismal showing in Europe, sigh), we'll struggle with difficult draws.

[andychar]

As silly as it sounds you might be best dropping down in Europa League, having a good run in that competition running your coefficient up and then maybe getting a better draw in the future with the chance of topping the group.

The progress is there though.

[noikeee]

7 minutes ago, andychar said:

As silly as it sounds you might be best dropping down in Europa League, having a good run in that competition running your coefficient up and then maybe getting a better draw in the future with the chance of topping the group.

The progress is there though.

It's not silly at all, I thought the exact same.

We could've done that last year, but messed up in Europa League immediately, having drawn Milan didn't help...

[noikeee]

 

August-September 2026

 

Transfers

 

Whilst the bulk of transfers had been done earlier, there was still time for a bit of movement later on in August. Most notably, experienced AMC Joaquín Correa was sold to Milan for 3,5M€ after an accomplished single season for the club - opening up a slot for a new, highly promising youngster in the same position. I also loaned out a couple more kids.

 

 

 

This kid is a huge prospect and I'm delighted to pick him up for a daft 6,25M€. He also started off with some superb performances for the club already, but I don't want to get overexcited yet because just last season Mauro Raponi - also Argentinian, also AMC - started amazingly well too but then did nothing past his first 2 matches.

 

 

 

We also signed this Spanish kid released on a free for Deportivo. We're kinda super-stacked on promising poacher-like strikers but he cost us nothing, so...

 

 

Competitions

 

 

After a slightly unconvincing pre-season in which we finished off with a trip to the USA to meet our new feeder club (for marketing purposes) New England Revolution, we hosted another marketing specialists, Red Bull Leipzig errrmm I mean RasenBallsport Leipzig, to kick off the Bundesliga. Lined up in the Originals, in an incredibly open match we had it won in several occasions, only for Leipzig to keep on equalizing, and then beat us 4-3 with a 90th minute winner. Not the start I wanted. Off to Frankfurt and we found ourselves a goal down after 20 minutes. Frustrated, I abandoned the Dutch Diamond I had started the match on with, and switched to a strikerless-but-not-really-strikerless plan I had briefly experimented with last season, and gave it a couple more tweaks. It would be the beginning of something beautiful.

 

That day, the turnaround in Frankfurt was sensational - Fabián got an hat-trick and we beat them 4-1. And then we just kept going. On the same match plan, we beat Freiburg 3-1. Bochum were also annihilated - a big 4-0 win. Designed to try to exploit the deficiencies of tactics like the 4-4-2 and 4-4-1-1 we often face in Germany, this was working great, but the big test came against the biggest 4-4-2 team of all in the current era: Bayern Munich. And off we went to Munich to face them, and to my absolute shock we were ourselves winning 5-1 at half-time!!! This was amazing, after all the big defeats we've had against them. Then it kinda all self-destructed as Bayern switched to a 4-2-3-1, scored 3 in the 2nd half and nearly equalized, but we still won 5-4 in an epic match that put us top of the Bundesliga for now.

 

In the Champions League, Gary Mackie's brace at home to Shakhtar put us in a great position coming into the 2nd leg with a 2-0 win. Mackie scored immediately in Ukraine which effectively settled the tie, but Shakhtar still scared us a few times until we scored 2 late goals. As the groups started we were now starting to test my strikerless-not-strikerless experiment. It went very well against Atlético in one of the critical matches of the group, we beat them 2-0 although it took us long to score. And it also took us long to unlock Club Brugge's defence in a 1-0 win in Belgium in which we lined up in the Uruguayan Tiki-Taka tactic instead.

 

We also played in the cup and there we beat TeBe Berlin 3-0 with a Bronislav Divis hat-trick. Next, Freiburg away.

 

 

 

This feels like it could be a turning point. We've started the new season really strongly, but more importantly, I've come up with a system now that I feel can actually be highly efficient against the 4-4-2s (and variants) we've been struggling sometimes for the past 2 seasons, and it's really fun to watch, too.

[john1]

Cracking start to the season, with beating Bayern away from home