Muttley84 Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 After previously failing in Italy decided to go for a country I have never managed before. Among the several European places I have never set foot in my years of playing, one attracted my attention. Belgium football is so complicated and messed up (regarding the rules and structure) that it can only represent a challenge to get through it. Took me a whole day of reading just to understand all the league structure and how the seasons will enroll. To make matter worse, I have set myself a difficult task - go youth only while playing on FM Touch. Hope I will survive through the horrors of the small intakes and have enough to build on to grow a club in the medium and long term. I have yet to pick a club but having mapped all of the clubs in the first three divisions of Belgium (it was fun making it and I love playing around with Geography) one thing comes to mind: the large difference between how many clubs are in Flanders and in Wallonia. Therefore I am tempted to start with one of the clubs in Wallonia, as it seems the french speaking part has fallen a bit behind the dutch speaking part. There are not really a lot of options as I would like not to start in the first division - Belgian Pro League A, where we already have four clubs in Standard Liege, Charleroi, Mouscron and Eupen. Therefore we are left with five clubs in the second and third division. We are now going to start digging for information about them. Tubize - The only club in the second division (funny enough called Belgium Pro League B), having spent a single year in the top flight and a bit to close to capital region and the Flemish border. Dessel - Situated pretty close to Charleroi, not a lot of history but interesting color scheme and shirts. RFC Liege - Has already 5 league titles and a cup, all long time a go, but do I have room to grow in the shadow of the big brother Standard? Seraing - Pretty close to Liege and not much to pick from there. Excelsior Virton - To my knowledge no club from the Luxembourg region of Belgium (just ~250k people) has ever played in the first division so might be a challenge there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 I wish you luck because as you said. Belgian football structure really is screwed up. The top two leagues (Pro League A and B) consist of the only Professional clubs in our country while the third division are semi-professional clubs. Flanders have the most clubs compared to the more poor region of the country Wallonia. You'll be up for a challenge because Belgian football is going downhill and it'll be real hard to maintain a healthy financial club. 3 hours ago, Muttley84 said: Dessel - Situated pretty close to Charleroi, not a lot of history but interesting color scheme and shirts. You made an error here because Dessel is in the Antwerp province, much closer to Antwerp than Charleroi Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
nie jem frytek Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 Youth Only on FM Touch sounds crazy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 12, 2019 Author Share Posted April 12, 2019 9 hours ago, yipster1986 said: You made an error here because Dessel is in the Antwerp province, much closer to Antwerp than Charleroi You are so right. I was thinking and have on the map correctly placed Chatelet but got them mixed when copying the logo. I didnt knew finances are that bad at Belgian clubs but we will have to wait and see. 9 hours ago, nie jem frytek said: Youth Only on FM Touch sounds crazy Simulated 5 years ahead and the clubs on the shortlist average between 2 and 6 players in the intake. Played in the YAC in FM17 and after 3 fails it took me like 25 years with Ergotelis for Greece to finally make it. In FM18 and FM19 I have failed all those tries of youth only on Touch, but I guess I enjoy the pain a bit. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 13, 2019 Author Share Posted April 13, 2019 I have finally decided to start off the challenge with Royal Excelsior Virton, a small club from a small town situated in the Luxembourg region, near the border with the same named country and France. The fact the position is so peripheral to Belgium is sustained by the other rivals (we dont have any fierce ones) we can find in the club information screen: Lorrain Arlon (Belgium, regional capital), Jeunesse Esch (from the Luxembourg country) and Sedan Ardennes (from France). The club has a pretty empty cabinet waiting to be filled, with some presences in the second division (the highest we've been). We are semi-professional with okay finances, and have basic corporate facilities, average training facilities, good youth facilities, good junior coaching and above average youth recruitment. All of these in an over 4000 stadium is really not a bad place to start our journey into the Belgium league. Next step, analyzing the staff and players currently at the club. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 13, 2019 Author Share Posted April 13, 2019 It seems that we have enough quality in the team, with solid options for all positions. We also have a fair share of foreign players, especially from the neighboring countries of France and Luxembourg. Also, the reserves team is filled with players, and even though their potential is not that great we have at least enough depth to sustain a no-transfer policy. Will try to make some order this season in the squad but will have to be careful as a lot of the players are in the last year of their contract. Will try to make a rule of keeping in the first team just a smaller number of players and keeping one good prospect in the reserves for development. Squad rotation is pretty tricky as it seems that in the Belgium 3rd division you can only have 4 people on the bench. The staff at the club isn't really that great, but in all fairness despite my efforts of both placing job adverts and searching manually I was not able to find anything better willing to join a part-time club like us. Lucky for us the best one is our Head of Youth Development and hopefully he can deliver at least in the first intakes. I was considering at some point in making this another "regional" challenge, but after making a filter of over 40 municipalities from Belgium I had the surprise to find exactly 9 players born here in the database! Haha, not a lot of options there as 4 of the 9 are already with us. The pick of the bunch is Thomas Meunier who is also a club icon. Would love to bring him back at the club at some point, that's why I am changing the rules we started from - instead of the Youth Academy Challenge I can sign any of the other 5 players born in Luxembourg region of Belgium (haha). Hope you won't think less of us because of that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 13, 2019 Author Share Posted April 13, 2019 A perfect debut of the season, but that could also be from meeting only lower league teams. We also won in the two stages of the cup, pretty hard with penalties in both games. A nice spread of goals around the team also and our attacking 4-2-3-1 control possession is proving to be very effective so far. Just look why we ended up in the penalties in the cup. We dominated both games in both possession and occasions but could not capitalize that into clear wins. Wonder what will happen when meeting stronger teams. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 13, 2019 Author Share Posted April 13, 2019 Having so many foreign players is great until you have your first league game and five of your players are away on international duty with Luxembourg. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 13, 2019 Share Posted April 13, 2019 I'm following this with great interest! Keep us posted Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 14, 2019 Author Share Posted April 14, 2019 10 hours ago, yipster1986 said: I'm following this with great interest! Keep us posted Thanks. So far so good but its a long road ahead. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 14, 2019 Author Share Posted April 14, 2019 Well, at least we have a high-profile fan following our results: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 14, 2019 Author Share Posted April 14, 2019 We continued our good run of results and we were undefeated in the six games of September, including a superb victory in the cup against first division team Zulte Waregem. After the 5-0 thrashing of Chatelet which delighted our fans came the first defeat of the season, away in Brussels and RWDM took our first position the the table. I think they deserve it so far as they are the only undefeated team but we are also in the playoff positions (first 4 places) and that's all that matters so far. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 14, 2019 Author Share Posted April 14, 2019 Oh, @yipster1986 was so right about the financial state of Belgian clubs. And its only November and we're already insecure, even though our wage budget is well under the limit. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 14, 2019 Share Posted April 14, 2019 Just now, Muttley84 said: Oh, @yipster1986 was so right about the financial state of Belgian clubs. And its only November and we're already insecure, even though our wage budget is well under the limit. I know, it's really hard to be profitable even being well below the wage budget. It's totally crazy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 14, 2019 Author Share Posted April 14, 2019 We are out of the cup, but we can't really complain at we played against a full squad of Anderlecht and we managed to give our supporters a spectacular match. The players were a bit fatigued and 3 days later we lost again in the league away at Dender for the second time in this campaign. But we are past the halfway mark and we are still in the promotion places, now in 3rd, at 5 points away from the new league leader Seraing and 5 points from the first non-playoff position. If we could hang-on in the first four places I would consider this to be a very successful first season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 Not the best news you wanna receive at the start of the new year: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 Despite our financial difficulties we continue our good run of result and finish the February month in first place. With six games to go its pretty sure that we are gonna make the final playoff with the first 4 teams in the league. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 We had some fails in the season finale, including a loss in the last stage against Dender (who is proving to be our boggie team) and therefore we have slipped in the table and finished 2nd in the regular season. Not to much between the 4 teams (us, Seraing, Aalst and a phoenix of Lierse) cause after the points were split in two we are all in just 3 points gap. Its gonna be a tight race with intense 6 matches. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1 Posted April 15, 2019 Share Posted April 15, 2019 Good start in Belgium Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hootieleece Posted April 15, 2019 Share Posted April 15, 2019 Playing Youth only on FM Touch...are you masochist? Also picking the least pedigreed team...I guess the rewards will be sweeter. Hoping for a better outcome than the "Calabrian Catastrophe" (A little hyperbole) I only play with the full FM19 (without editor) and I do have a skin with Instant result button. (I abide with any result because I abhor save scumming) That allows me to plow through seasons. That said I am still spending a lot of time playing FM. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 5 hours ago, john1 said: Good start in Belgium Thanks, things are looking good indeed. 4 hours ago, Hootieleece said: Playing Youth only on FM Touch...are you masochist? Also picking the least pedigreed team...I guess the rewards will be sweeter. Hoping for a better outcome than the "Calabrian Catastrophe" (A little hyperbole) I only play with the full FM19 (without editor) and I do have a skin with Instant result button. (I abide with any result because I abhor save scumming) That allows me to plow through seasons. That said I am still spending a lot of time playing FM. Not actually entirely true, as Virton had probably some of the best youth recruitment in the teams from Wallonia. I enjoyed the road so far as I did in Calabria, so no regrets. I just love playing some challenges after 10 years it would be to boring to play classical careers. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 It seems qualifying in the playoffs was enough to convince the board. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManUtd1 Posted April 15, 2019 Share Posted April 15, 2019 Talk about a challenge, as others have noted. Very cool to see, though! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 15, 2019 Author Share Posted April 15, 2019 38 minutes ago, ManUtd1 said: Talk about a challenge, as others have noted. Very cool to see, though! To be fair now should be a bit easier as Belgium produced some nice regens in my previous FM19 saves and with the mentoring introduced development should be easier. The key element here is if we get enough players in the intakes to replace the ones we lose to retirement, not good enough anymore and bad chairmen on selling sprees. But as said before, I do like a bit of pain. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sherwinriga Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 I supposed that I want to reply you in your last save, but I don't know if you will close that thread soon. But if you can ask the mods to close your thread for your last save, I would be appreciated if you will do it. But on the other hand, Belgium is good for you to manage, even there are a lot of challenge you would await! Hopefully, you'll be able to knock Italy down soon with your new team. Good luck! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 We were superb in the play-off matches. From the six matches we draw only once at home with Aalst and won the rest of the five matches, including four without any goals received. Therefore we won the promotion playoff in a convincing manner and therefore by winning the division we are promoted to the second division of Belgian football. The good news keep coming as playing in the second division means that next season we will turn professional (dunno what impact that will have financially on the wage budget once we renegotiate the contracts). The board have given us 1.77 million yearly for wages and will need to make sure that is enough for us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Our tri-national based squad (Belgium, France and Luxemburg) responded pretty good this season. and with 7 players over the 7.00 average that is some pretty good performance. Already managed to renew all the contracts of the important players (as you can see) and now we just have to wait and see what the intake brings us this year. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Seems like FM did a pretty good job in predicting the Belgium First Division, as it got all the right teams in the championship playoff. Just not sure it will be the final standing in real life, but with an Anderlecht collapse and Genk battling Brugge for the title its pretty damn realistic. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Of course no players in, but some left the club. Mostly ageing or foreign players who were not getting much game time. The only one who didnt left for good is Vumbi who returned from the loan in Congo and played almost all games in the second part of the season reaching the team of the year. We made some little money off of it also, so pretty satisfied here. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 It has now happened in the large majority of my saves that the first Youth Intake is a good one, and this one is also like that. I am happy with the number and quality of the players (not sure how much of it is represented by them being really good or our current squad rather weak), but their personalities are not that great and also we are missing midfielders bad from the intake. No surprise that we got good prospects in GK and ST, seems that those positions are always represented well. Going to tag all of them as coming from this intake and also take a closer look which ones are from the Luxembourg region and which aren't. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 Congratz on the promotion! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 1 hour ago, yipster1986 said: Congratz on the promotion! Thanks. Hopefully that can balabce our finances a bit, other than that after looking at the other 7 teams it's really not a huge gap to them. We aim at consolidating this season and givin some game time when possible to the youths. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 17, 2019 Author Share Posted April 17, 2019 The second league of Belgium contains only 8 teams. We first play each other twice for 14 games. And then again twice for 14 games. The winners of the two stages meet in the playoff final for promotion to the first League. The last 4 places in the overall table are playing the relegation playoff. The board just wants us to avoid relegation, and I think that is doable. We started off pretty good, with 2 wins and 2 draws in the league (which is currently placing us first in the league table) and with passing two stages of the Cup against lower league opposition. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 Not even in our wilder dreams did we expect things to go this well at the point of the season. First of all we managed to get a first division team (Eupen) all the way to the penalties and took them out of the Cup. Second, we only lost once in the league (a totally undeserved loss at Westerlo) and with two games to go we are sitting first in the league. Considering we are meeting Mouscron (who are 2nd) in the last game of the period, that would probably be the match deciding the winner of the first period and the first team qualifying for the promotion playoff. Not sure if our good run of results is due to other teams in the division not being so good, or to the fact that we kept our same core group of players while the others are struggling to find the perfect balance, but will enjoy this as long as it lasts. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 After a draw against Mouscron in the last game of the first period we managed to finish first and therefore qualified for the promotion playoff already from November. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 If you manage to win the second period as well there won't be playoffs. You'll get instantly promoted Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 1 hour ago, yipster1986 said: If you manage to win the second period as well there won't be playoffs. You'll get instantly promoted Oh, I do like the sound of that. But dont know if we can keep up that level for the entire season. Fingers crossed. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 18, 2019 Share Posted April 18, 2019 1 hour ago, Muttley84 said: Oh, I do like the sound of that. But dont know if we can keep up that level for the entire season. Fingers crossed. It's like that in real life so I suppose it works the same in FM. Congratz on winning the first half of the season! Quite impressive really. Care to show us what tactic you're using? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 We continued our good run of results in the second part of the season also, being undefeated in the first 6 games. We are out of the cup though as Saint Truiden proved to be the end for us this season. The good news is that we are attracting crowds over 3000 for each of our home games. 1 hour ago, yipster1986 said: Congratz on winning the first half of the season! Quite impressive really. Care to show us what tactic you're using? I am a bit ahead with the save and the story has left behind, but used both in 3rd league and now in the 2nd the standard default tactics of 4-2-3-1 Wide with control possession. I only tinker with player roles especially for the ones on the sides of the pitch depending on the player I put on. I did tried for some games to pull the AMC into a third MC but that seems a bit unbalanced to me. Will show off the details tactics when I reach the current time of the save Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 From the youth intake we have 7 players moved to the first team, mainly so I can include them in mentoring groups (somehow found I cannot select them if they are in the reserves), but tried to give them some game time only, so most of them already have 1-3 games in their books. Nothing special, but now came January and continuously receiving and rejecting offers for four of them from first division clubs. I don't wanna sell any of them, so not sure what strategy to take here. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 18, 2019 Author Share Posted April 18, 2019 Here goes the first one and nothing I could do about it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 We did it. We were the better team in the league for the entire season, and managed to somehow win the second stage also. Its March 1st and our season is pretty much over, as it seems that the winner is rewarded just with promotion and that is it, while the teams situated 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the overall table go into the European places playoffs, while the bottom four join the relegation playoff. So a long period of nothing to do here.. from March till next season, and this is a first to me, never had anything like it. The board has already started preparing for the next season so increased the wage budget. I know it seems a lot but its really not, as most of the players don't wanna extend their contracts unless given significant increases in their wages. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 Despite not getting any younger, veteran striker Joachim is still our main man up front while Luca Napoleone holds the midfield like no other. No real breakthrough for any of the youth players, just Bodin 19f who was the main substitute when Joachim was tired and therefore got some extra game-time. Almost all of the first team and backups averaged around 7.00 so that is pretty impressive, as it is the fact that we only got 2 red cards the entire season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 Had nothing better to do in this long period without any games then to bring a new HoYD at the club, one with Professional personality and better skills. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 Congratulations! I'm jealous how some of the people around here make it seem so easy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 12 minutes ago, yipster1986 said: Congratulations! I'm jealous how some of the people around here make it seem so easy The you definitely did not follow my previous careers on here. Spoiler, I did not survive the first league in any of them. Haha, guess I'm a lower league manager and that's it, never won the Champions League in FM19 so far. Actually, my best results is a national title (out of 3 career attempts on the national forum) in Romania. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 Several other players have left the club this year, but managed to limit the loss of youths to only one sold by the chairmen. Still not a lot of action at the club but we'll reach June soon, when we get the new intake and also begin preparations for the new season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
yipster1986 Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 2 minutes ago, Muttley84 said: The you definitely did not follow my previous careers on here. Spoiler, I did not survive the first league in any of them. Haha, guess I'm a lower league manager and that's it, never won the Champions League in FM19 so far. Actually, my best results is a national title (out of 3 career attempts on the national forum) in Romania. I'm trying the youth only challenge myself and it's not been kind to me so far Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hootieleece Posted April 19, 2019 Share Posted April 19, 2019 @yipster1986:Youth Challenges seem to be like the lottery because of the intakes. You can be a tactical genius, but if you don't have a player for a certain position your screwed because you can't buy or sign a replacement @Muttley84: Your youth challenges on the forum show what can be done without cheating and or a bit of luck. Keep your head up your making great progress. In my own Youth League save I am only hoping for survival in the VNN (England) as Stalybridge Celtic! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted April 19, 2019 Author Share Posted April 19, 2019 I am pretty sure we did not really needed this at this moment, but I guess they are some requirements in playing in the first division. We are moving to Eupen for the season which is not really close, and will be hard for us at the first season in the league playing all the games away from home. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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