Tenerife Triple Threat - Taking Three Teams To The Top

[MarcxD]

Introduction

Welcome to my second FM18 thread. Forgive me for my love of alliteration. This will be a wordy introduction but I'll be getting to my usual style with screenshots soon.

I’ll be returning to what I like to do best here: a single club career, with a focus on youth development, and in Spain, which is my favourite place to manage in Football Manager. It will be (at least slightly) different than before, though.

While the inclusion of B- and even C-teams in the main league pyramid is not for everyone, I for one am a big fan of it. That is why for this save I will not only be taking over the first team of a club, but also the B and C team, with different managers. Since, if you did not know already, in Spain the B and C teams are represented faithfully in game as separate clubs. Most of the time these B and C clubs are former independent clubs taken over by a bigger club in the neighbourhood to be used as a feeder team. There are also remarkable stories with this, like in Malaga. The main club was bankrupt, so the former B team became the main club – and still is to this day.

If I do this with three managers I have total control over the three teams and its players, and can really follow their development up close. Of course you do have to play a lot more matches per season (praise the IR button!) and there can be a few issues in FM since I don’t think this is exactly what they had in mind. At least in FM17, where I tried a save like this out for a few seasons, the contracts of the B and C team managers couldn’t be renewed even though the board offered new contracts. The only way to circumvent that issue was the use of the IGE. I don’t know yet if this is fixed for FM18, we will see I guess.

To be able to do this at all you need more Spanish leagues than are in the vanilla version. The highest C clubs play in the Tercera Division, the fourth tier of Spanish football. There are five of these: Villarreal, Sevilla, Real Sociedad, Athletic Bilbao and Las Palmas. (in previous times Real Madrid, Atletico and Barcelona all have had C teams but have since given up on them for a variety of reasons. Messi played his first league matches for the C team for instance). But I’ve decided to go for a different route. When you go further down the Spanish pyramid, you’ll keep on noticing a ton of B teams, but also a few C teams here and there. Some amateur teams even have D teams in the real life pyramid, but I did not found those in the database I have downloaded (from fmsite.net if you are interested).

That database goes to down to the Cuarta regional, the 9^th and lowest tier of Spanish football. There are relatively few tiers but the Spanish league system has a remarkable amount of regional sub leagues on each level (4 on the third tier, 18 on the fourth tier and much, much more on lower tiers). The lowest possible I could’ve gone was for a semi-pro club, C.F. Trapagaran, whose main team play in the 6^th tier, the B team in the 8^th and the C team in the 9^th. Perhaps that would’ve been an awesome challenge, but a little bit too daunting (I also do not particularly like semi-professional management) – added to the fact that going this far down you have thousands of clubs and hundreds of leagues, and it just was a bit too slow, even on a pretty good computer.

So I’ve gone for one that I find interesting – a decently big professional club, Tenerife. Their main team plays in the Segunda Division, and they are (obviously) based on the Island of Tenerife. Their rivals are Las Palmas, the other big Canary Islands team, who have done incredibly well over the past few seasons and built themselves up, higher than Tenerife. Tenerife’s B team plays in the Tercera division, and their C team plays in the Segunda Regional, the 7^th tier. In the database I’ve downloaded that team plays in a Catalan league, which seems very incorrect but that doesn’t matter too much for me, they should be moving on soon any way.

To create a bit of a narrative I’ve decided that the three managers will be three brothers. With Andorran-Dutch nationalities, obviously. The elder brother, a certain Marc X, you might be familiar with already. Let me introduce you to his siblings: Benito X, a younger brother and manager of the B team and Xavier X, the manager of the C-team.

All the three managers will stick at their clubs for the duration of this save, is the plan.

Don’t expect crazy narrative stuff from me like some of the legends on this board, but it’s just a little bit of a fun added thing in the thread.

Strategy, Limitations, Style of Play

Now onto the way I am actually planning to do this save and post here. It will not be 100% youth only, although all youth prospects will be signed every year and a lot of them will be given chances in the C and/or B teams. As for players I am signing, I have decided to take a little bit of a different route.

I will allow myself to buy players, but only from nations that I consider unlikely to have great players – the weaker nations internationally. These can be nations like Andorra, San Marino etc from Europe, or Bolivia, Mozambique, Cambodia, etc. To make sure that a lot of these nations actually have players (and newgens) I have loaded a lot of these nations’ players in the custom database settings. I have not loaded their leagues but the domestic Claassen updates are loaded so that the clubs and leagues should be somewhat realistic for these smaller nations.

If you’re wondering how this goes with foreign rules, I have the answer for you 😊 In Spain at first glance the rules seem really strict, with only 2 non-eu players allowed in the Segunda Division and 3 in La Liga, but then you need to look closer. All Conotou nations are not considered non-eu. Which means that a ton of Caribbean, African and Pacific nations do not count (pretty much all African nations outside of North Africa, pretty much the whole of Oceania outside of New Zealand). Usually this would not matter much, but since these are the places in the world I am specifically looking to sign players from, this will be interesting. Asian players and certain north American nations will be tougher to deal with, since it will take a whopping 10 years for non-EU/South America foreigners to get Spanish nationality. As a Dutchman I am particularly interested to see if there can be any good players coming from places like Aruba, Curaçao or Bonaire. The chances are very slim but you never know. Usually I would skip even looking at places like the minnow countries, but it should be interesting to see if some of them can become decent players or more.

At some point, with young players coming in this way, and through the youth intakes, there will simply be too many players for the three teams. If that is the case I will start loaning players out. Since I will always keep around at least 5 tiers in Spain (perhaps only removing the 6^th and 7^th if the C team goes up the ranks, depending on game speed) I can look for teams on a variety of levels to give them playing time in league football as well. It of course can also be the case that a player is just too good for the C team but not good enough yet for the B team, or the same for players between the B team and the first team, I will loan them out as well. I will have some foreign leagues on view-only, like the Dutch, Portuguese and the PL. The only foreign leagues I will add playable are the Andorran leagues.

As far as the tactics are concerned, I will mostly be using a similar style of play as I did in my previous save, a kind of direct 4-2-3-1 but for the B & C teams a little bit more simplistic so that the defenders don’t need to be ball playing defenders right away etc.

Anyway, as should be clear by now I’ve wanted to do this for a while and have thought about how I would go about it, so I’m excited to finally give this a full go.

In my next post I will be getting into the players, the squads and what will need to happen in the first transfer window.

Edited January 23, 2018 by MarcxD
Slight changes....

[Timetxu]

This sounds highly technical and awesome at the same time, a bit like the minor league system in American sports. Can't wait to see what you're going to make out of this!

[MarcxD]

22 minutes ago, Timetxu said:

This sounds highly technical and awesome at the same time, a bit like the minor league system in American sports. Can't wait to see what you're going to make out of this!

Hopefully not too technical, just wanted to get all the information out there! Cheers!

[BoxToBox]

44 minutes ago, MarcxD said:

As a Dutchman I am particularly interested to see if there can be any good players coming from places like Aruba, Curaçao or Bonaire. The chances are very slim but you never know. Usually I would skip even looking at places like the minnow countries, but it should be interesting to see if some of them can become decent players or more.

You'd be surprised of some of the talent that can be generated there. In the Mexican save I had all of the Caribbean active since it's part of North America, and I got some fine talents form Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, usually Haiti can have some real gems too. Had one lad pre-arranged, but he never arrived before I shut up shop, from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a wingback I had quite a bit of hope for.

Outside of the Caribbean, Honduras was an absolute talent factory.

[john1]

Good luck  

[noikeee]

Tenerife! My neighbours! Always love to see a career in the Canary Islands.  

Think you might be a bit too ambitious to take over the B and C teams though, it sounds like a great idea but I think it could be a nightmare to play with how much longer it'll take to progress, and how much switching between managers you'll have to do. But if you pull it off this could be a fantastic career.

[MarcxD]

Database and Squads at the start of the game

Before getting into the squads I wanted to show how I set up the database for this career. Also don't worry, I've holidayed this to check if it works and is not too slow.

A large database, all international players and contintental reputation players plus a whole bunch of nationalities loaded. That leads to a 60K player count at the start, but that will rise quickly. As I said before, that will be limited by the removal of some of the lower tiers of Spanish football.

These are the leagues loaded.

By the way, I have not ticked the box add players to playable teams, so the lower league teams might be without a lot of players for the first couple of seasons.

Now lets get to the actual game...

There is not a lot of room in the wage budget, we're actually overspending. So for the first summer most if not all recruits will be young players on low wages. I will also need to take a look at the staff, scouts will be very important for this save as are coaches.

This is the first team squad at the start. The sole non-eu player is Bryan Acosta, from Honduras. Also cool to see someone with Guadeloupe nationality. About 22 players, not counting the player that's loaned out. 

Well... room to grow in the B squad. Although there's a Tanzanian player here, awesome. Not a lot of huge talents though, it seems like.

The C team is more or less the same size, and doesn't actually seem to be much worse than the B players. They should definitely run away with their league. For now I am not going to switch around the players too much, before getting some more players in.

EDIT -- there are a few players in the u19 squad as well.

Not bad, will be moving them to the C squad immediately.

Edited January 23, 2018 by MarcxD

[MarcxD]

8 minutes ago, john1 said:

Good luck  

Cheers!

7 minutes ago, noikeee said:

Tenerife! My neighbours! Always love to see a career in the Canary Islands.  

Think you might be a bit too ambitious to take over the B and C teams though, it sounds like a great idea but I think it could be a nightmare to play with how much longer it'll take to progress, and how much switching between managers you'll have to do. But if you pull it off this could be a fantastic career.

That has been a slight worry for me, but I've tried it for a few seasons last year with Villarreal, before I did my F.C. Andorra save on here. I had a lot of fun doing that, but that was only 3 seasons or so. You never really know before you try it I guess.

[Rikulec]

Following, good luck.

[MarcxD]

41 minutes ago, Rikulec said:

Following, good luck.

Thank you man, hope you enjoy it.

[WeegieFM]

Have literally been contemplating doing this kind of save! Will be following along! 

[oriole01]

Following! Good luck on this one, it's certainly a new idea .

[SixPointer]

Use to sign a striker Nino from Tenerife was a legend!! Best of luck. Very interesting concept taking over all 3 teams!!! 

[MarcxD]

3 hours ago, WeegieFM said:

Have literally been contemplating doing this kind of save! Will be following along! 

 

1 hour ago, oriole01 said:

Following! Good luck on this one, it's certainly a new idea .

 

1 hour ago, SixPointer said:

Use to sign a striker Nino from Tenerife was a legend!! Best of luck. Very interesting concept taking over all 3 teams!!! 

Thank you guys, pre-season is now done.

[MarcxD]

Pre-Season 2017

First pre-season done, not a huge amount of business with a limited amount of players available yet.

These were all additions to the B & C teams, to fill them up. Most of them will not stay on for long. I've added their nationalities and the year of their birth in their nicknames. Venezuela and Senegal perhaps are countries of a bit higher reputation than I was going for but for now there aren 't a lot of players even known to me from smaller nations.

First Team

Top half finish and fourth round in the cup, should be very doable. 

We are predicted to finish 7th, but a play-off spot could be possible. I would be fine with not getting promoted this season already though.

Kind of a busy pre-season with some friendly tournaments added in the database, won two but lost in the Copa de Canarias to Las Palmas  Lovely to go into the league with those huge wins but they are low league.

Tenerife B

Predicted to finish first, but a lot of teams close to each other. That Las Palmas team is their C team. Do very much hope to finish above them. The expectations, as usual for reserve side management, simply is not to get relegated. I would like to get to the play-offs, promotion is not yet a must this season although it would be nice obviously to get some higher level opposition.

Pretty convincing all around.

Tenerife C

Also predicted to finish first, and with the C team I'm really expecting a title and promotion. Would be very disappointing not to.

Good performances in the friendlies.

All teams gelling, got the tactical familiarity there, let's see how the teams do against actual opposition.

[MarcxD]

August 2017

First Team

I was slightly disappointed to draw against Cordoba after beating them 4-1 in the pre-season, but otherwise a fantastic start.

In first already.

Tenerife B

Fantastic win to start out with but lost to Las Palmas C  Played Las Palmas in various forms three times now, lost all of them. Hoping for better times soon!

Not sure yet if I want to show the full league table here every month for the reserve sides but at least for the first month here ya go.

Tenerife C

Only the one game so far, a good away win... not showing the table here, bit pointless after 1 match. Obviously Tercera Catalana seems incorrect for us, but oh well. I just hope if the team gets promoted it'll get into a Canary Islands league.... but that's getting ahead of myself.

[BillHoudini24]

Hope you are Instant Result-ing with B/C Teams, otherwise it's gonna bit madness and very time consuming! Very interesting project, following as well!

[andychar]

Good luck with this. Just reading the first post made my head explode but will be following with interest!

[Dexter_Morgan]

Something i've thought about but know i've not got the patience for  Good luck will be following 

[MarcxD]

7 hours ago, BillHoudini24 said:

Hope you are Instant Result-ing with B/C Teams, otherwise it's gonna bit madness and very time consuming! Very interesting project, following as well!

Definitely. I'm a big fan of the IR button anyway. I'm also using it for most of the first team matches.

2 hours ago, andychar said:

Good luck with this. Just reading the first post made my head explode but will be following with interest!

Haha sorry about that, should be simple enough from now on...

1 hour ago, Dexter_Morgan said:

Something i've thought about but know i've not got the patience for  Good luck will be following 

Cheers! It's not too bad for now, obviously it's taking longer to get through a month but not excruciatingly so. Just need to get the hang of things and the change manager button is quite handy. I'm not using it yet but I could always just use the holiday to next match thing for the b and c managers at some point.

[MarcxD]

September 2017

First Team

Not a good month at all. Lost to Cadiz so we're out of the cup immediately and some poor results in the league, against teams we should be able to beat probably.

Down to fourth which is not even that bad, the goal still is play-offs for me.

Tenerife B

Only 4 games but all convincing wins. 

Las Palmas C still higher than us in the table, but we're looking better and better, definitely going at least for the play-offs positions.

Tenerife C

Well the C team is just running away with the league, as was to be expected. All big wins and no goals conceded.

Full table for the first time here, only team with the perfect record so far.

[MarcxD]

October 2017

First Team

A much better month this time around, with some very good wins.

Actually back in first again!

Tenerife B

Some more very strong performances here. Also in the game against San Fernando a hattrick in the first six minutes. That has to be among the quickest ones I've seen.

The top teams all keep winning though, so we have to as well to keep up.

Tenerife C

As you were...

Unbeaten season should definitely be possible, but can we win everything?!

[Rikulec]

Smashing start.

[BoxToBox]

Killing it on three fronts, amazing!

[MarcxD]

29 minutes ago, Rikulec said:

Smashing start.

 

1 minute ago, BoxToBox said:

Killing it on three fronts, amazing!

Thanks guys.

I'm sorry to say I've found an annoying bug though, not sure if it's because of me playing with three managers or if it's just the C team being bugged in general...

Players that have played 10 matches for the C team, regardless of whether they've never played a game for one of the higher teams or did suddenly become ineligible. Somehow the game thinks the C team is also the first team or something? I've found a work around by moving the players to the first team and then making them available for C team selection, but then they aren't in the C team squad and only u23 players can be moved between teams outside of transfer periods.

[BoxToBox]

Oh that sucks!

 

[MarcxD]

24 minutes ago, BoxToBox said:

Oh that sucks!

 

It does, but not a game breaker for me so far.

At least the contract extension issue I had last year is gone now. 

[MarcxD]

November 2017

First team

Convincing at home, a bit lacklustre away, but unbeaten for a long time now so that's pretty good.

Still in first, but a lot of clubs closely following.

Tenerife B

Wow! 5 games in a row scoring at least 6, while only conceding once. It would be good to get the B team to segunda B as quickly as possible. This is getting a bit silly.

Finally in first and above Las Palmas C, but still tight for the first spots. 

Tenerife C

Despite the bug still going strong.

Pointless season really, a lead of 15 points already. Just needed to get higher up. Kind of waiting for the first youth intake so that I can offload all the players at the club that are obviously way too good for this level but will never make the first team.

[Icedemon125]

2 minutes ago, MarcxD said:

Tenerife B

Wow! 5 games in a row scoring at least 6, while only conceding once. It would be good to get the B team to segunda B as quickly as possible. This is getting a bit silly.

Finally in first and above Las Palmas C, but still tight for the first spots. 

First place with 74 goals and 8 conceded . Nice 

[MarcxD]

December 2017

First Team

Poor.

Still in second, the top teams are really really close. Interesting!

Tenerife B

A loss against one of the top teams in the league, but otherwise kept a decent run going.

3 points behind Marino, but still above Las Palmas C.

Tenerife C

Very good, with a random friendly in the middle.

Just the lead of twenty points at the middle of the season. 

[Maw74]

Great Idea but a lot of work, will be interesting to follow, going great so far.

[Minuy600]

More interesting than I thought this was going to be. Great.

[MarcxD]

2 minutes ago, Maw74 said:

Great Idea but a lot of work, will be interesting to follow, going great so far.

Thank you! It's going slower, that's for sure. The big test will be if I still am going 5 seasons in or so, but for now I don't mind so much. 

Just now, Minuy600 said:

More interesting than I thought this was going to be. Great.

Haha, cheers. Hopefully it gets even more interesting when the C & B teams get some real opposition and I get some more outlandish foreigners and youth intakes in! 

[MarcxD]

January 2018

First Team

Well, that's better. If I have to lose I prefer a 4-5! 

In first again.

I've signed this guy for the first team as a back-up/rotational keeper...

Because I sold the first choice GK (Hernández) and Carlitos, a B team right-back who I signed in the summer for free. Both those offers were pretty good, since they are 30+ year olds and some more transfer budget since I am looking through the youth intakes internationally (TRIALS! MORE TRIALS!) and trying to buy some. I have 4 future deals agreed already... 3 from Zimbabwe and 1 from Ecuador.

Tenerife B

Fantastic, and beat Las Palmas for the first time!!!

Got to 1 point of Marino and over 100 goals scored already!!!

Tenerife C

Who would've thought, 4 more wins.

Close to 100 goals here as well...  25 points lead now.

[Monceanu Rares]

Are there any added cups in the db?

[karremansje]

This thread is already amazing !!!! Waiting for the next Inaki Torres.....

[Johnny-Trotter]

Very interesting project - one quick question: what are the 'limits' at which the B and C teams cannot be promoted above?

[MarcxD]

2 hours ago, Monceanu Rares said:

Are there any added cups in the db?

There are quite a few Copa's and Tropheo's added that aren't in the vanilla version. A lot of them might be quasi-friendly tournaments like the ones I had in pre-season though, I wouldn't really know. 

2 hours ago, karremansje said:

This thread is already amazing !!!! Waiting for the next Inaki Torres.....

Thanks man, me too!

2 hours ago, Johnny-Trotter said:

Very interesting project - one quick question: what are the 'limits' at which the B and C teams cannot be promoted above?

None really, outside of them not getting into the same division. As you can see in the Segunda Division where the first team plays there's Barcelona B and Sevilla Atletico, two B teams... so that's the best league the B team could get into, the C team can't get higher up than the Segunda B division (third tier). 

[MarcxD]

February 2018

First Team

Pretty good, although another loss to Cadiz.

In second. Title, second or play-offs seem likely. A lead of 12 points to 7th. So really I'm going to be happy with whatever we're going to get. 

Tenerife B

Very good, once again, although we couldn't manage another perfect month.

Marino keeps winning, and we're now in third but Mensajero played a game more. It's going to be top 3, but the title will not be easy.

Tenerife C

Some more good results...

Which was enough for the title, already - in February.

[Fola]

This is fantastic- what a great idea. I will 100% be reading this.

Just a quick question, in all of the FM's I have never understood how people have managed to get players in from other countries/clubs during the youth intake. Whenever I look at the youth intake and look at other clubs, they have already all signed deals tying them to their club. Please can you explain how you do this? For example, youth intake day I go into the player search and look for players aged 15 but all have signed up with other clubs. The only reason I ask is because you said you've already got 3 Zimbabwean youth coming in.  

[MarcxD]

13 minutes ago, Fola said:

This is fantastic- what a great idea. I will 100% be reading this.

Just a quick question, in all of the FM's I have never understood how people have managed to get players in from other countries/clubs during the youth intake. Whenever I look at the youth intake and look at other clubs, they have already all signed deals tying them to their club. Please can you explain how you do this? For example, youth intake day I go into the player search and look for players aged 15 but all have signed up with other clubs. The only reason I ask is because you said you've already got 3 Zimbabwean youth coming in.  

Thank you!

Well yeah they've signed contracts at their respective clubs, I have just agreed transfers for them, paying a bit of money.

 

[MarcxD]

Youth Intake 2018

I had been looking forward to this, since I can really make all the squads much more my own with the youth players and incoming foreign kids... but this is not exactly what I had in mind.

Does not look any good to me, outside of his quickness, but we will see I guess.

The HoYD thought this guy was the most interesting from the intake, and there could be something about him perhaps... if he develops a lot.

As I said in the first post though, all players will be signed and will mostly populate the C team next year (or 19/loaned out...it depends) so it's a good thing that they'll still only be playing on the 6th tier then... 

 

[MarcxD]

March 2018

First Team

Perfect month, and a what a time to do so.

Gijon also keeps winning, but a lead of 8 points on third place seems very promising. Still 10 more matches to be played though.

Tenerife B

Disappointing to lose to Mensajero, a title rival.

That means we're now definitely in third, 6 points behind Marino.

5 games remaining. Marino's games are tougher than ours and we play them, but with them only not having won twice so far this season it seems unlikely we can overtake them.

Tenerife C

Another month of all wins, no goals conceded.

5 games remaining, hopefully an all-win season.

[noikeee]

Looks like this is going to be a triple promotion already.

[MarcxD]

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

Looks like this is going to be a triple promotion already.

Hopefully, I'm surprised with how well it's going with the first team. Promotion to La Liga would be fantastic for the future especially financially.

[MarcxD]

April 2018

First Team

Not a great start to the month, to put it mildly, but two wins make sure we keep doing well enough.

Especially seeing that Gijon has had a bit of a nightmare month, and they'll need to do better in the last 5 matches if they even want to finish second. Title is not in the bag, far from it, but we're looking good. the 8 points lead to third place should be enough to get promoted automatically anyway.

Tenerife B

A huge month, won all games but especially important we beat Marino Tenerife.

Still in third though, and perhaps it isn't likely that the other teams drop points in the final match of the season. But what a three-way title race!

Tenerife C

Four more wins, as is expected.

One more win and a 100% perfect score. 

[oche balboa]

Great stuff any link to the database? 

[MarcxD]

4 minutes ago, oche balboa said:

Great stuff any link to the database? 

https://www.fmsite.net/files/file/692-divisiones-regionales-de-españa/

 

[MarcxD]

Damn, this save might have met an unfortunate end already... the game won't progress past may 7... no error message but it just stays processing without doing anything (the stats/hints at the bottom also stay the same), I've reloaded and holidayed but it keeps on doing it. Dunno why, when I  holidayed a game to test the database it worked and progressed till the new season but now it might be broken.... I'll keep it running for a while longer to see if it'll do anything, but this might be it.

 

EDIT: ignore this, it just took 15 minutes or so to process from 9.00 to 13.00

Edited January 26, 2018 by MarcxD

[MarcxD]

Looking good.