[FM20] Tubize or not Tubize - Not Your Average Club & Country Save

[The Warrenburgh]

Youth FC Hungry Eleven Challenge

So i had always wanted to do a lower league save in Belgium but i had put that on hold since i wanted to do a club and country save and they were already ranked too highly as a country. So i was planning on trying to bring Scotland to glory after many years building from the lower leagues. That was until i stumbled across a team in the third tier of Belgian football with a very strange club vision which i thought deserved further investigation, why? Well because they had the club vision requirement to "Sign South Korean players" which just seemed bizarre to me. After reading this i got the idea to do the club and country challenge with a twist, where i will attempt to develop South Korean football while using a team in Belgium to do so.

The Inspiration/Team

So turns out that in the Belgian leagues there are a lot of teams with foreign owners as teams are comparatively cheap when compared to other European countries. Also the restrictions on foreign players and requirements for local players are quite minimal. The team I stumbled across was AFC Tubize and as of the start of the 19/20 season they had just been relegated to the third tier, despite being up in the top tier as recent as 2009. A return/rise to glory story just waiting to happen. They were taken over by a South Korean marketing firm named Sportizen in 2014 with the supposed intent to provide a bridge to Europe for young asian players. This apparently came in the form of a reality TV show called "Youth FC Hungry Eleven" where 20 young Koreans turned up and were put through their paces in the hopes of making the first team... only two ever did, well the bench anyway. Seems more marketing stunt than investment for the future to me, so here we are. 

As a result the Club Vision at the beginning of the game read as follows:

Thats right, the highest priority is to sign South Korean players, hopefully high profile ones at that. Looks like i'm going to sign Son everyone... eventually when he is a bit older anyway, ok maybe just as a coach after he retires.

The Aims

I will attempt a sort of club and country challenge, creating my own Youth FC Hungry Eleven squad. More specifically i have two main goals:

• Secure Champions League glory with a minimum of 11 South Korean players in the first team squad (they don't necessarily have to all be starters but i will do my best, already seems like this might be crazy enough).
• Secure World Cup glory with the South Korean national team with hopefully many of my own players, improving the standing of South Korean football along the way. 

Further Considerations

• I will start with Belgium, South Korea and a couple nearby european countries loaded as playable (I will add a bunch of the other nations as the years go by in order to ensure the international stage is competitive, however i have a few promotions to do first).
• I will be playing as a South Korean manager (hopefully i can get some Korean regens in my youth intake, not sure if this will actually work but hey).
• In proper lower league fashion I will also be starting with no coaching badges and sunday league footballer experience determining my available coaching stats. (hopefully this wont get me sacked, since the team reputation is actually decent)

 

PS. If i do get fired from AFC Tubize then this may just become more of a standard club and country save and i will move to a Korean club i guess, either way i am in for a ride. Also if the club gets taken over at any point i don't know if this will affect the club vision requirement to sign South Korean players, we will have to wait and see.

 

Edited July 18, 2020 by The Warrenburgh

[LUFCspeni]

This is a fantastic idea, really good find! 

[Brentmeister]

I love this idea. I've managed in div 3 in Belgium many times attempting the youth academy challenge and always sign this guy in the first season as either my hoyd or as a coach! He's unemployed at the start. Has a great personality, media handling, determination and wwy for this level, perfect as a hoyd imo.

 

Edited July 18, 2020 by Brentmeister

[The Warrenburgh]

Assessing the Situation

The Manager 

So i will be playing as Jo Seoseok who was an up and comer in the marketing team that helped Sportizen with the acquisition of AFC Tubize in 2014. However my role in the team has since become redundant, but because of my good relationship with Director Do Kuen Ho they have given me an opportunity as manager of AFC Tubize. Hence my starting attributes. (Also used a picture of Son Heung Min for the manager, unfortunately FM's face generator murdered his face haha). 

Also forgot to mention i will general self impose that i cannot use the "player search" and "staff search" functions for a bit of realism and immersion. So i would rely on recommendations from the Dof or my scouts, or sometimes news articles and just other ways that feel more realistic. I usually only hire staff that apply for my job adverts or get recommended in the backroom team advice report. But given the inherent difficulty of the task at hand i may cut myself some slack on the matter, regardless thats how i like to play so we will see.

\

Expectations

Im a little concerned that the players won't respect me due to lack of reputation and if i don't get immediate results that i will get fired real quick. (Also promotion next year, yikes hopefully we can get some momentum going early).

Also how many South Korean players do i actually have to sign to begin with to not get fired?

We Got Problems

Somehow i was expecting to already have some South Korean players in the team seeing as we had the Club Vision to sign South Korean Players, well i was wrong... We have none... Also we can't even scout South Korea, which isn't really surprising i guess since its almost exactly the opposite side of the globe, but still. So just buy some you say, well unsurprising for a team that rose to the top league and dropped back down again pretty quickly the finances ain't so good.

Transfer Budget €0

Wage Budget €39,467 p/w

Available Wage Budget €0

Atleast the bank balance is still €144K, although projection for this time next year is €4.03M in debt so we got some work to do on the finances, and quick. 

Oh and who is our highest earner? Maybe i can sell him for some cash? Nope wrong again. For some reason the highest earner at the club is some Chinese kid in the U21 team with mediocre potential at best, that has never even played a game. First step get rid of Zhou Zhuoyue and his two mates contributing €7,800 p/w to the wage budget for hopefully €0, i just hope someone will take them off my hands. Who signed these kids in the first place and why are they getting payed so much money to play in the U21 team. So many questions, something smells fishy to me?

Team At A Glance

Just in case you didn't believe me, there it is highlighted for you to see. Three of my top earners, all chinese youngsters in the U21 team that will never even be good enough to make the bench, let alone the first team. Hell i got a free regens in my U18 team that are already better than them.

I guess its time to get the trial conveyor belt started and try and find some bargains, and also try and offload a whole lot of dead weight.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Interesting idea for a save, I like the look of this.

Good luck and hope you have fun.

[karanhsingh]

Love the idea. BTW which other clubs did you find with policies like this? Good luck! 

[The Warrenburgh]

On 18/07/2020 at 21:24, Brentmeister said:

I love this idea. I've managed in div 3 in Belgium many times attempting the youth academy challenge and always sign this guy in the first season as either my hoyd or as a coach! He's unemployed at the start. Has a great personality, media handling, determination and wwy for this level, perfect as a hoyd imo.

 

I think this guy used to work at Tubize in real life judging by his work history. haha

On 18/07/2020 at 23:17, Ronaldo Beckham said:

Interesting idea for a save, I like the look of this.

Good luck and hope you have fun.

Cheers, hopefully it pans out.

On 18/07/2020 at 21:18, LUFCspeni said:

This is a fantastic idea, really good find! 

Thanks Mate

On 19/07/2020 at 16:14, karanhsingh said:

Love the idea. BTW which other clubs did you find with policies like this? Good luck! 

In the Belgian first Division there is Eupen (Sign Qatari Players), KV Kortrijk (Sign Malaysian Players), STVV (Sign Japanese Players) and in the Belgian Third Division FCV Dender (Sign Indonesian Players). There is also Mouscron in the first division but they have a few too many different sign player from x country club cultures that it seems ridiculous.

[James__Curtis]

A fantastic idea. Good luck and I'll definitely be following this! 

[Ronaldo Beckham]

6 hours ago, The Warrenburgh said:

I think this guy used to work at Tubize in real life judging by his work history. haha

Cheers, hopefully it pans out.

Thanks Mate

In the Belgian first Division there is Eupen (Sign Qatari Players), KV Kortrijk (Sign Malaysian Players), STVV (Sign Japanese Players) and in the Belgian Third Division FCV Dender (Sign Indonesian Players). There is also Mouscron in the first division but they have a few too many different sign player from x country club cultures that it seems ridiculous.

Mouscon sounds interesting. What nations do they usually sign players from ?

[bigmattb28]

Unique idea this, following

[The Warrenburgh]

Pre-season Wrap Up

This club really is in some bad financial shape, so before i can even think about making Korean football great again i need to get this club out of the money pit it has found itself in.  More immediate concerns were however to come up with a tactic and get some team cohesion going because we all know that in the end the solution to most problems in FM is to just win some damn football games.

Also discovered that apparently we are 10.5M€ in debt thanks to a 10M€  "gift loan" from the chairman at some point in the past, no sign of any of that money now though...

Tactics

So the tactics, FM20 has been my first football manager game and i have watched countless series on youtube and learnt a lot from the likes of Lollujo, Zealand, Second Yellow card, Dr Benjy and of course the epic Park to Prem with Workthespace. I did a dafugesque save previously in England and have generally found success playing high tempo attacking football with marauding fullbacks overlapping in various formations. Also gegenpressing seems to be all the rage these days. So for this save i wanted to try a different approach and really wanted to develop some kind of tactical identity as a club. The club culture dictated that i play possession football and it is of desired importance so thhis was a good starting point.

At first because of the shear quantity of strikers in the squad i was trying to play a 2 striker system which looked something like this, not so dissimilar to a 442 i have used before. But i had developed a fascination with Defensive Wingers.

  

It didn't take long before realising these weren't operating how i wanted, of course its hard to assess how a tactic is performing when your team cohesion is in the toilet, like really really in the toilet. But change was needed even though i though these looked cool.

So i went back to youtube to learn a bit about some roles i hadn't really explored using before. Then after more experimenting during preseason and a little bit in another save i think i have settled on 2 main tactics which will serve as the basis for our tactical identity... depending on how the season goes anyway. I have enjoyed using DLPs a lot previously but wanted to try something slighly more dynamic and given Regista's description says its good for a high pressing possession system i figured i would give it a try.

   

Much like the position description says the Regista does seem to push up the pitch quite aggressively looking for advanced players. The IWBs seem to complement him quite well as they drift up and stay narrow when in possession giving the REG or CBs an easy outlet and also helping recycle possession as they usually pick it back up in more advanced positions. They also tend to put more through balls as they tend to sit more in the channels rather than out wide, leaving the crossing to my wingers. I think i might be onto something here =]. Turns out you don't have to simply play high tempo attacking football all the time, i think. In terms of individual player instructions, my CM-A is set up with similar instructions to a MEZ apart from the stay wider instruction as he is still staying in the centre, also added tackle harder to the CM so the REG doesn't get burdened with too much defensive responsibility. Also I have my CB's closing down less so that if we get hit on the break they will hopefully hold off long enough for defensive back up to arrive in numbers, rather than just jumping into tackles.

In terms of preseason training, my main focus was to improve team cohesion from being abysmal which took some time and generally looked something like this:

Just some physical sessions and a lot that improve team cohesion to a greater extent. Eventually we even started to win some games which really helps with team cohesion and happiness. However my assistant manager had organised friendlies with some really big rep teams, so i had to cancel those and organise some more realistic matches.  Here is how they went:

Eventually we found our feet and won a few cup games which was good for morale, the last team of which was from our division as well so that's hopefully a sign of things to come.

Next up transfers...

 

 

[The Warrenburgh]

Transfers

So not being able to scout players in Korea could be a problem in the future given the premise of this save, but thankfully we have some knowledge of Korean players given that my in game manager is Korean. So we were able to get in a few DOF recommendations from Korea. Also i didn't know that the K-League operates March - November with players contracts being up in December, so hopefully i can pick up some bargains in the January transfer window. 

Also given the financial state of the club we had a bit of a fire sale in order to free up as much wage budget as possible to make room for players that can actually do a job for us. We were only relegated to this division last year so our reputation is still actually quite good but we had a lot of overpaid players to take care of. Also players that we got in on trial were quite often requesting wages more in line with the division above. But i still managed to find some deals and get rid of a bunch of deadwood, we still have the highest wage bill in the league though. However it is lower than any teams in the league above, so some room to grow. 

Outs - Fire Sale

So funnily enough my chief scout got poached leaving us with €115K in compensation and his €2.5K p/w wage off our books. He was good but nonetheless no complaints from me. Next our biggest transfer out of the window was none other than a 15 year old DM that generated at the club at the start of the save only 2 months ago, managed to get the sale up to €225K (€125K up front and €100K over 2 years) plus a 50% of profit from next sale. Not too bummed about this one, the board probably would have sold him from under me for less if i didn't negotiate the deal given his value and the clubs financial situation. Also he's not Korean, so no reason to get attached in this save.

Basically i tried to get rid of any players that were on more money than me (€1.9K p/w), most of the teams in the league had their top players on about €1.5K p/w. I also tried to get rid of any players that i felt would never make the first team starting of course with our highly paid Chinese boys with no ability or potential. I was quite surprised anyone would take them off my hands to be honest, one of them even opted to stay 2 or 3 times before he was successfully moved on.

    

Got rid of about 10 other players, mostly low potential players or just to get wages off the books. Made a small amount of a few players, but really any money will make a difference at this point.

Ins - Need More Talent and Koreans and Talented Koreans

So i had the trialist conveyor belt rolling in and managed to pick up a bunch of quality freebies. Didn't get enough South Koreans to make the board happy though, so again i guess i will try and grab some end of contract bargains in January but here are the Korean lads i was able to get Ahn Jae-Joon is the only first team regular, the rest were just squad depth and hoping they would appease the club requirement to sign Korean players. I think i might have needed to get more first team quality south Koreans to make the board happy but i'm not exactly sure, or maybe just less of other nationalities. Would be nice to know exactly what the club culture requires as the description of "to sign a good percentage of South Koreans" is a bit vague.

      

I also got a bunch of new first team players, these being a few standouts. The first is our new captain Pierre-Baptiste and Regista extraordinaire. The second a bargain and versatile signing Mehdi, i tried to sign this guy almost immediately just because he didn't want very much money. The last one is a slightly younger first team player Yoann that i almost didn't sign because of wage demands.  He is earning more than me, but only just and he will be very useful through the middle and is only going to get better.

    

In total i brought in 13 players, all freebies, 8 of which were at least regular starters and the rest just depth options.

 

Leftovers - The ones that wouldn't leave.

These are the ones i couldn't get rid of even if i offered them out for $0, due to wage demands i guess or potentially because they just came to the club. The first guy will at least be useful until i can sell him, he's just on way too much money for his role at the club. The other two would just never make the first team, a CB with jumping reach of 5 i mean come on and well we have plenty of strikers. Similarly their wages aren't justified. I even tried to put them in as part of cost of some transfers but they all fell through on contract negotiations.

  

Suffice to say the Board didn't love my transfer activity, selling players for €0 generally doesn't go down too well. So here is how we are fairing with the club culture stuff... not great. Hopefully i can at least nail the play possession football requirement and go up a year early but we have a long way to go.

Forgot to mention but the team cohesion is getting close to serviceable now after our recent run of wins in the cup, despite all the ins and outs.

Time to kick on with the season and hopefully get a string of wins under our belt.

 

Edited August 5, 2020 by The Warrenburgh
unfinished

[dllu]

Interesting idea - I had no idea about this "quirk" of Belgian football. Looking foward to seeing how far you can go!