Stefano Beltrami - an Italian prodigy

[yipster1986]

I have a special place for that name. You’ve never heard of him, as he was a regen in my FM15 save. I’m going to give you lot a little background about why I still remember this guy.

 

When I took over the job at Stockport County after they failed to promote to the Vanarama National League 3 seasons in a row I had quite a challenge. Most of the top players of the team were gone or disgruntled, the squad wasn’t well balanced and morale was low. Financially they were in a good enough place because of the big stadium and attendance was pretty high for a club in the Vanarama North. I promoted the first season, the first season in the national league we bottled it in the playoffs but we managed to go up the next time around. Another promotion through League 2 followed the next year and we had to strengthen the squad for the upcoming season in League 1.

 

For funsies I was browsing through Barcelona B and saw this 17 year old kid who was worth quite a bit available for loan and unwanted by any club. Mind you, this is with attribute masking so I had no idea what I was getting. I applied for a loan deal and I was sure they were going to reject it but no. In came Stefano Beltrami. He was a very technically gifted attacking midfielder with good mentals and decent physicals for his age. Along with a permanent signing I made, an 18 year old striker from Basingtoke, they terrorized League 1 in our 4411 formation and got us promoted instantly. Stefano stayed with us the following two seasons, one where we avoided relegation and the other where we became champions in the Championship. This kid single handedly got us from League 1 to the Premier League. As he had so much game time he developed strongly over the years and back to Barcelona he went to star in the first team.

 

Stefano leaving left a void in the team which was hard to fill. We had to change tactically because we missed a lot of his flair and vision. Anyone who could fill his shoes was not willing to join us anyway. After a couple of building years we managed to make a bid for Champions League football and we came across our former superstar who was a blight to play against. He was still playing at Barcelona like the star he was, winning trophies all over.

 

At a certain point I felt nostalgic and decided to get him back. I sold my two best players to gather enough funds to make a bid. It still wasn’t enough for Barcelona so I broke the bank even more. We managed to get him for €140M, his bloodsucker agent added a lot to that but we got hold of him. We barely scraped through the FFP though.

 

The next seasons we dominated both in Europe as domestically, winning Champions Leagues as Premiership titles. Stefano managed to get the Ballon d’Or twice as well in that period. As time went on, so did the Italian stallion. At the age of 33 he was still going strong albeit less in a physical manner. I was hoping to get someone through our youth ranks but alas, noone even got close to the potential and ability he had. So we started scouting and after a couple of weeks of intensively looking we found what we were looking for. A 20 year old playing for AS Roma. The kid had everything we looked for but not as great as Stefano. AS Roma relegated that year for some bizar reason and that was our chance. We brought him in, was Stefano’s backup and tutored him. He became amazing as well!

 

Three seasons later Stefano decided to hang up his boots, he accomplished everything. As I was feeling a bit gutted about him leaving I offered him the job to become my Assistant Manager when the season was over. Gladly he accepted and we both went on to win silverware together.

 

Edit: I'm sorry I have no screenshots of him. I have a different computer since then and my screenshots were stored locally.

 

[yipster1986]

OK I lied, it wasn't a 'little' background but I hope you understand where I’m coming from when I say I grew attached to that guy.

 

Now for this save I’ll be playing as Stefano Beltrami in his first managing job starting out in Italy. I also like to play with some rules and it could be hard to achieve but I came across some interesting stuff the other night reading articles from Cleon and wondered if the following could be done:

 

• Start out in Italy using Claassens (spelling?) database for the Serie D. I have the fmsiamo db with the Eccelenza leagues and below as well but this seems a bit overkill as those are a lot of clubs and all amateur (which I hate)
• Start unemployed with no coaching badge but with International experience. The ‘no coaching badges’ is up for debate as he was my assistant for quite some time and received all courses in the FM15 save.
• Only apply for jobs in the Serie D at the start.Use no attributes! This is where it might get a bit iffy. The TCS 1.5 skin allows you to hide their attributes panel on the profile page. I need to check where else I need to hide them. If anyone has any suggestions or knowledge on how to go about this that would be great. To pull this off I need to go by the reports sent to me by the staff. Scouting also needs to be done like this, meaning I need to go some games myself if I have the time.
• Work out a realistic setup when the club operates under a DOF. Here I need some help with how to setup staff responsibilities regarding DOF. Transfers will be arranged through him. This is going to take a bit of research how to set it up correctly.
• If possible: focus on youngsters and going abroad.

 

Goals for this save? Become as successful as a manager as he was a footballer. So no real goals. However, the way the game is set up regarding DOF and with the no attributes would make this challenging.

Here’s where I need some help:

• A skin to hid player attributes. I know TCS 1.5 can but 1.6 can’t for some reason
• Staff responsibilities for a realistic DOF setup.

EDIT: no idea why this formatting seems so weird, must be something with the copy/paste from Google Docs