[FM20] - Arctic Triumph : the Only Way Up is Down

[Timetxu]

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Kiruna is the northernmost city of Sweden, almost 150 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. The city was founded at the end of the 19th century because vast iron ore deposits were found. The city as it is today therefore thanks its existence mostly to the existence of the big public LKAB mine: the biggest and purest iron ore mine in the world.

However, as the mining company has to start digging deeper and deeper under the city to reach the ore, the city is at risk at sinking down into the mine. Therefore, the city, in combination with LKAB, has taken it upon themselves to move a third of the entire city and all its residents about three kilometers east. This outerwordly undertaking would take about thirty years to complete.

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My unhealthy mix of love for anything involved with mining culture and Football Manager led me to come up with a challenge: take over Kiruna FF, the northernmost team in the Swedish football pyramid, and take them to glory with solely players whose roots are north of the Arctic Circle. 

To be able to scout more effectively, I've drawn out the map which regions I'm allowed to get my players from. I've decided to choose every first administrative subdivision in continental Europe that either lies on or above the Arctic circle. For Norway these are the Nordland and Troms og Finnmark counties, for Sweden this is Norrbottens län, for Finland this is Lappi region and in Russia this is the Murmansk Oblast. Which gives us roughly this map to work with:

An area the size of about Spain, but with only 1,5 million inhabitants. The only city with a decent team in this area is Tromsø IL from Norway. It's probable that this save therefore will turn out to be a mostly youth-only save, but I've loaded up all the lower leagues from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, so we'll see what we can do.

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Let's look at the status and expectations of the club first:

My Swedish alter-ego Tim Gustafsson has been given quite the task as the board expects us to gain promotion from the Division 3 Norra Norrland right away. After that, the expectations are slightly more realistic.

Speaking of the Swedish football league structure. We find ourselves in the fifth tier. I've loaded up down to the sixth tier as Kiruna FF 2 play in the Division 4 Norrbottens Norra, the lowest existing football league in the northernmost region of Sweden. The rest of the Swedish football pyramid goes down to a tenth tier btw.

In the next update I'll analyze our team.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Timetxu

[noikeee]

This is an interesting idea but I've always been **** scared of trying something like this, just for how big of a pain in the arse it must be to set up those player search filters. 

Good luck. 

[bigmattb28]

What database you using to get that low in Sweden? Good luck btw.

Edited June 12, 2020 by bigmattb28
Housekeeping.

[ToMexico!!]

Holy-specificity! Interesting idea and limitations to the save. Good Luck. 

[OlivierL]

Good luck, did u tag the cities in the editor ? Because this saves you a lot of time and frustration when scouting,filtering , shortlisting etc.. I did this for my Paris FC save (Ile De France region).

[Timetxu]

2 hours ago, noikeee said:

This is an interesting idea but I've always been **** scared of trying something like this, just for how big of a pain in the arse it must be to set up those player search filters. 

Good luck. 

Thanks! Luckily there aren't that many cities in the area, so it'll be more doable than if I'd gone with a very urbanised area of Europe for example.

1 hour ago, bigmattb28 said:

What database you using to get that low in Sweden? Good luck btw.

It's a file called "Helsvenskan" from the workshop made by someone called Justus.

1 hour ago, ToMexico!! said:

Holy-specificity! Interesting idea and limitations to the save. Good Luck. 

Thank you! The wackier, the better!

1 hour ago, OlivierL said:

Good luck, did u tag the cities in the editor ? Because this saves you a lot of time and frustration when scouting,filtering , shortlisting etc.. I did this for my Paris FC save (Ile De France region).

I did not... yet... That would've actually been a good idea. However, the reality is that my scouting only allows me to go for players in Sweden and almost all automatically generated players (to fill the teams) are from one of 5-10 cities. 

[OlivierL]

30 minutes ago, Timetxu said:

 

I did not... yet... That would've actually been a good idea. However, the reality is that my scouting only allows me to go for players in Sweden and almost all automatically generated players (to fill the teams) are from one of 5-10 cities. 

I don't think u can do this after your save has started (or you should use an in game editor. I understand that your cities will pop up most of the times but i really would suggest tagging them.. it's not hard and it helps you to search players via filters. take a look at my intro if you don't know what i mean .

 

[Timetxu]

10 minutes ago, OlivierL said:

I don't think u can do this after your save has started (or you should use an in game editor. I understand that your cities will pop up most of the times but i really would suggest tagging them.. it's not hard and it helps you to search players via filters. take a look at my intro if you don't know what i mean .

 

Unfortunately I can't resolve it with the in-game editor and I have already progressed a fair bit with setting up search parameters. However I don't see it preventing me that much in this save because the amount of talent in the area is so slim that I will be needing to use my youth setup more than in your save. Thanks for your suggestion though, I'll make sure I'll use your advice in another save because it does sound like a lot less effort.

[Timetxu]

2020 PRESEASON

Winter is long and rough, so we had to wait until April for our first game.

Board wants us to go up, media expect us to go up. It's going to be tight, though.

With the recent Spreadsheet Manager virus sweeping FMCU, I thought to try my hand on something similar. I've tried to visualize the octagons into a colourful version of the American 20-80 scouting system. This is basically a 13 step scale with increments of 5 where 20 is the lowest and 80 is the best. 50 is therefore average, comparable to an attribute level of 10 or 11 in Football Manager.

 

[Timetxu]

APRIL 2020

Two late wins to start the season, but we're perfect so far!

[Timetxu]

He's not our first striker, but still. Big yikes. Sustained this one while playing for 45 minutes for the u19s too.

[Timetxu]

MAY 2020

Bergnäsets look like they're from another planet. We dominated against Lillipite, but they equalised immediately after our stoppage time goal.

[Number seven]

Will follow as I am thinking about doing the same as you getting Kiruna FF to the top. They almost got promoted to Allsvenskan in the end of the 1980ies. One thing you have to try to do is to always have a player with the last name Stridsman as the name is almost synonymously to the club. Several of the clubs big players has had that last name.

[Timetxu]

On 12/06/2020 at 22:47, Number seven said:

Will follow as I am thinking about doing the same as you getting Kiruna FF to the top. They almost got promoted to Allsvenskan in the end of the 1980ies. One thing you have to try to do is to always have a player with the last name Stridsman as the name is almost synonymously to the club. Several of the clubs big players has had that last name.

Thanks for the inside information! I see I already have a Stridsman (who is one of the three real life players in my squad). Let's see if FM shows its genius and can provide me with a Stridsman regen  .

[Timetxu]

Pretty happy with the promises, as the age is showing in the striker position and fullbacks are always very welcome. But to accomodate the center midfielder, we might have to change our tactic a bit.

Edited June 15, 2020 by Timetxu

[Timetxu]

JUNE 2020

Daunfeldt is absolutely tearing it up as we only fall once this month. Unfortunately, though, it's the other team we share this three horse race with.