FM23 - Glory Hunter (Rebirth)

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone!
I'm restarting another one of the saves I lost a few months ago. This time it's the Glory Hunter challenge.
Even though I love the Youth to Gold save I currently have with Vitória SC, I need a break from only signing U19's and need a new challenge. With that said, let's get it started!

Rules and objectives:

- Win every league title and main cup of the top 5 leagues;
- Win every European continental competition;
- Don't use the editor (I don't really have it so that will be easy);
- Win all the international competitions (optional - not sure if I'll go for this one since international managing doesn't interest me);
- Complete the challenge in 20 seasons or less.

The first league and club were picked using a random wheel in which I put the top 5 leagues and the top 6 teams from the winning league. Let's see where we ended up.

S.S. Lazio

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The wheel of fortune decided that Quim Tropedo's first job would be in Roma managing in the Stadio Olimpico di Roma. Fun fact, the Olimpico is one of my favourite Italian stadiums.

Starting in Italy gives us a real challenge because we will be fighting against a lot of teams for the top spots.
However, we are already in the Europa League and if we manage to win it this season that would be great. Checking any of the trophies early on is always nice.

The Staff

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The first thing I like to do everytime I start a new save is take a look at the staff. After seeing all their profiles, this is what we were left with.
A lot of empty spaces that will all be filled in the next few days. There's only one role I won't be assigning and that's the Loan Manager since I never use him. I also never use the Technical Director but I don't want to be worrying about the youth system so I will sign one.

The Squad

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With the staff taken cared of we need to take a look at our squad.

Looking at it we can already see a major flaw, we only have one striker. Ciro Immobile is an outstanding striker but he needs someone to play when he needs some rest. I'll be looking to sign one this summer.

Every other position is basically filled with good(ish) players. Obviously our main strenghts come from the midfield positions. Milinkovic-Savic and Luís Alberto will be essential for us. There are some players I wouldn't mind letting go to make some more cash though.

Oh yeah, finances are a bit tight in Rome.

Finances

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As you can see, we only have around 13,5M€ to spend and a bit over 100k in wages. That won't be bringing many players but we need at least one signing. Let's see what we can do.

Schedule

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In July we only have a few friendlies so nothing major to show here. The league starts in August but I'll show the schedule when we get there.
Regarding our friendlies, it shouldn't be too hard to get the best of them.

I'll be back in August with the first update!

 

[misterioBean]

August Update
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Some interesting things happened in only 1 month. I'll explain that in a second.
For now, let's take a look at some of the changes we had.

Staff

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After firing basically everyone, we now have our staff completed. It's looking good but we can do better if we stay one more season.

Tactic

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I forgot to show this on the last post. With the squad we have I feel like a 4-3-3 DM was the right choice because of all the good midfielders we have here.

Transfers Out

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I decided to sell Adamonis since he was basically our 3rd GK and that way we could free some wage. Mohamed Fares was already transfer listed and I didn't plan to use him so he left for 1.8M.

The only big loss we had was Pedro. He came to me saying he would leave at the end of his contract and since he was on fairly high wages I decided to sell him and make some money with him. 1.3M is not that bad for a 35 year old.

Transfers In
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We had already established what we need to bring in but with Pedro leaving we also needed to bring in a new winger for his position. Let's see who joined us in July.

Lars Stindl

We paid 1.3M to bring in the 33 year old but I think he can still help us when Immobile needs to rest. However, 2 strikers was not good enough. If one of them gets injured we had noone else to play.

Nano Mesa

That's why Nano Mesa joined us as well. He is not good but he is not horrible either. In fact, he offers us something Stindl doesn't: pace.
Yes Immobile is faster but he is also older and his physicals will go down soon. Mesa still has some good years in him. He won't ever take Immobile's spot but is a good addition nontheless.

Lorenzo Melgarejo

When Pedro left I immediately searched for a new winger and found Melgarejo. He was cheap, only costing us 2M and looked decent. There was only one problem. We couldn't register any more non-EU players this season. I forgot this when I signed him so I had to send him away on loan to free his wages. With him leaving, we still needed a winger.

Gelson Martins

The player I found was Gelson Martins. We didn't have much money left so a loan deal was ideal. He is not the player he once promised but can still help us this season. He came in as a squad player and we included an optional buy clause of 2.2M. The problem we may face with him are his wage demands but one step at a time.

Jesús Vallejo

I decided to bring one more loan player in. I wanted one more CB because we only have 4 and Patric got injured. If it happens that we lose 2 of our CB's we would be left with no more if needed. Much like Gelson, he didn't reach the potential he once showed but is still a good player. He also has an optional buy clause of 4M.

Joan Jordán

Another loaned player to add depth. Playing a 3 midfield formation, I felt like we needed an extra man just in case. he came in with a 3M buy clause. His wages are also low for the team standards so I was happy to have him.

Schedule

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Our preseason is over and despite the draw against Sassuolo we did pretty good.

Now for the start of the season, we will be facing Empoli, Hellas Verona and Fiorentina in August.
I'm expecting to win at least the first two. Fiorentina can be tricky but playing at the Olimpico I want to leave with the 3 points too.

I'll be back in September with more updates!

 

[misterioBean]

September Update
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The transfer window is now closed as we turn our focus to the first part of the season.

Schedule

First game of the season and we destroyed Empoli 5-0. They couldn't even get into our defense. Provedel really had an easy job this game.

Another win against Hellas Verona. This one was harder to get, they were defending well and we just didn't have the accuracy of the first game. Milinkovic-Savic unfortunately came out injured in the first half.

Another win and another 5 goals scored when we faced Fiorentina at the Olimpico. Another game in which they couldn't shoot. It's a shame that they scored on the only shot on target they took the whole game. But a win is a win and we are 100% victorious for now!

League wise, I think we should be able to keep our good form. None of the games should offer us a high difficulty level. I'm hoping we don't draw against Sassuolo again.
We will also start our UEL journey in September and as you can see we will face Olympiakos and Nantes, but there's still another team. Let's take a look at our group.

We should be happy about our group. I'm expecting to finish 1st and only Olympiakos should be harder to overtake. Let's see though.

Transfers

I wasn't expecting any other deals to come through but then this happened:

5 months out for our main guy in the midfield. You can also see we have been having a lot of smaller injuries in August.
With Milinkovic-Savic out until January, we had to start Vecino for the next games, being left with Marcos Antonio and Basic. However, I needed to free one registration slot if I wanted to bring someone better because Basic was not the best.

With that said, Basic was loaned out and we brought another midfielder.

Dani Ceballos joined us from Real Madrid for only 3.8M€. He is currently injured as well but his injury is not too concerning. He offers us versatility since he can play as both B2B and AP quite well.

Finances

Our finances really took a beating as we currently have no transfer budget and our wage budget is really tight as well. Cataldi was drawing interest from the Premier League but noone made an offer so for now we will be like this for a while. I'm expecting it to go up though.

The next update will come on the World Cup break.​

 

[misterioBean]

World Cup Break
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We had some interesting couple of months at the start of the first season.

Schedule and League Table

Looking at this, we can say we have been good for now. We lost two games but they were two hard ones against Inter and Juventus. We also drew two games against Udinese and Atalanta, who can both be very tricky teams to go up against, specially playing in their grounds.
In the Europa League we drew 3 and won 3, not amazing but enough to go through.

We currently sit in 3rd just behind Inter and Napoli, along with Atalanta and Milan right behind us. All the europeans slots are hard fought off for now, but we are still very early in the season and a lot can change.
We also won our UEL group and will be in the next round. Our rival's still unkown. Hopefully we get a good draw. I think it's easier to win the UEL than the league this year. Not sure about the cup, we can be very lucky or unlucky with the draws we get.

Random stuff

We have had some teams showing interest in our players, specially Cataldi, Felipe Anderson, Immobile and Lazzari.
We currently have no money and are spending over our wage budget (Zaccagni signed a new deal) so if we can sell at least one of them that will help us a lot. Specially Immobile due to his 617k/m wage and since he is still worth around 30M that only sale would be amazing and I'm already thinking about who will replace him if he leaves.

Don't get me wrong, he is amazing and already has 19 goals across all competitions, but with his age + his wage I think we could let him leave.

All the others are on much lower wages but in terms of potential fee's Felipe and Cataldi could be sold for over 50M combined. We will see how things go.

See you in January/February.​

 

[misterioBean]

End of Season 2022/2023
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First season has gone by and there were some interesting things happening.

League Schedule and Table

Some good results in the league, with some very bad ones in the mix. We lost games we shouldn't have and drew a lot too.

With the results we had we couldn't get higher than 3rd in the league. However, we were not even a title challenger in the beginning of the season preview, so 3rd spot is actually very nice.
Shoutout to Ciro Immobile who scored 35 goals in the league alone.

Even though we didn't win the league, we won the Coppa Italia. Just 3 days after the 1-1 draw against Milan, we battered them 3-0 for the cup and brought it to Roma.

And we also won the Europa League. I don't know how, you can see we drew one game in every round but the 3-1 win against Man. United in the final is just unbelievable.

So, in our first season we already took off 2 titles.

Now we need to decide if we stay at Lazio some more time and try to win the league with them or if we leave for a different country, in hopes of coming back to Italy in the future to end our job here.

Our finances are not great though, so winning the league at this stage may not be too realistic to go for. If any interesting jobs become available we may leave Lazio and take a new challenge. If not, we will stay at the Olimpico.

See you soon!​

 

[misterioBean]

Start of Season 2023/2024
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Current Trophy Cabinet:

- Europa League x1
- Coppa Italia x1

Looking at this image you already know we didn't stay at Lazio despite our good season in Italy. In fact, there was only one job available in June at Leverkusen, to which I applied but got no response. However, in the 1st of July Lampard's contract expired and Chelsea started looking for a new manager. After just 4 days, Tropedo became the new manager at Stamford Bridge.

Finances and Transfers

When we first joined, we were greeted by this abismal finances. The transfer budget was at around 100M but we were 1M negative in the wage so after moving it around we ended up with this. When I looked at some of the players wages it was easy to understand why.
So the first job in London was to stabilize the finances a bit more.

After the transfer business, we ended up with less money in the bank, but with way lower wages. Since we are currently in the UCL, I expect the finances to go up a bit in the next few months, specially because we should be going through our group easily.

After looking at the squad I decided it was best to let some players go. Lukaku was the first to go. Even though he is amazing in the game, he never took off in Chelsea and his wages were way too high, so 70M€ was the price Real Madrid were happy to agree on. Almost 2M/m saved in just one player.

Kanté was also on high wages and he is pretty old now. We also had quite a lot of options in the midfield so getting 38.5M for the 33 year old seemed like good business.

Everyone else was sold at sale price to save us some money in wages. Thiago Silva and Aubameyang for instance, they are old and we had a lot of better options so off they go.

In terms of who joined us, both Toni Kroos and Marco Asensio came to England before we joined so I had no say in those. I probably wouldn't sign Kroos due to his age.

Amaro was a transfer I made because we lost Malang Sarr and Thiago Silva, but I ended up loaning him out to Vitória SC again so he can get more gaming time and develop a bit more. I only made this deal because I don't think we will be leaving next season.

We also brought Gabriel Barbosa and Ansu Fati for the striker position. We ended up sending Pulisic to Barcelona for Fati who is just a way better player in every shape or form. His wages are a bit higher than Pulisic's but he came as a first 11 player so I was happy paying them. Gabriel Barbosa came first but will be his backup.

And lastly we brough in Salisu because I felt we needed someone better to play alongside Fofana. I tried selling Koulibaly but the best I was able to get was a loan move to Newcastle.

The club also brough in Dybala in June for 20M€.

Schedule and Table

Our league form for now has been quite good, yeah we draw our first game but I was trying a strikerless formation which I ended up giving up on.

We are currently 6th but it's still very early in the season.

As I said, our UCL group should be easy, only Napoli could give us a hard time.

The Tactic

As for the tactic, I'm trying out this one, with Asensio, Dybala and Havertz I felt like I really needed to use a SS behind the striker. Still trying it out though, I may pull Havertz to the wing and bring Asensio/Dybala to the middle.

I think this time I'll be giving an update after the season is over. So until then, see ya!​

 

[misterioBean]

End of Season 2023/2024

So the season is finally over and we ended it in the 4th position, qualifying once again for the UCL.
Could have been way better, but we dropped way too many points, finishing the season with a total of 10 draws.

Our FA Cup journey also had a trophyless end to it, losing 5-2 to Liverpool in the Semi Final, who ended up winning the whole thing.

Our UCL journey ended with Liverpool lifting yet another title, in a season in which they made the treble.
We were able to defeat Bayern Munich and PSG, but Liverpool overtook us on the penalty shootout.

We ended up the 2nd season of this challenge with no more trophies to add up to our trophy cabinet as a manager, but we still have 18 seasons left to lift them all.

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Current Trophy Cabinet:

- Europa League x1
- Coppa Italia x1

Stay tuned for the next update!​

 

[misterioBean]

Start of Season 2024/2025
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Current Trophy Cabinet:

- Europa League x1
- Coppa Italia x1

Back to Italy we go, this time to manage Juventus and try to lead them to the Serie A title. They finished 3rd last season just 2 points behind the 1st.

We brought in some players to improve our squad. Only from Jonathan Tah forward are signings I made.
Jonathan Tah and Lenglet came in because we only had 2 CB's and tbh only Bremer was good enough to be a 1st team player.
Raspadori came because Vlahovic was the only good option we had in front, with Moise Kean being his backup.
Valeri was bought to be our LB backup and finally Vicario came because Perin wanted to leave and Sczesny is already 35 years old so I felt we needed a better keeper for his place.

Our first two games were very nice and we will now be facing Napoli in our next feature.

Our UCL league phase was drawn and doesn't look too bad, we may have some good chances to go forward.

I'll be updating in the end of the season, hopefully with some new trophies for our trophy cabinet.​

 

[misterioBean]

Season 2024/2025

With the image above you can all guess what happened in Italy this season:

That's right, Juventus are the Serie A winners once again after 4 winless years.
With this win, Quim Tropedo can add his first league title to his cabinet and be thankfull about finishing Italy for the challenge.

Unfortunately, we got eliminated from the UCL in the Round of 16 by non other than our last team Chelsea. We lost 3-0 in Stamford Bridge after winning 3-1 in Turin. Hard pill to swallow but it is what it is.

We also got eliminated from the Coppa Italia by Spezia in a humilliating 3-0 loss in our stadium.

We were the better team but when it's not our day it simply isn't. We already won this trophy with Lazio so it didn't really matter much to our campaign.

Our current trophy cabinet is:

- 1x Coppa Italia (Lazio);
- 1x Europa League (Lazio);
- 1x Serie A (Juventus).

Not much but we are only 3 seasons into the challenge. We still have a lot of trophies left to win so we will most likely be leaving at the end of the season if there's any available teams with possibilities of challenging for a title.
If not, we will stay one mroe year with Juventus and try to go for the UCL.

In the case we end up staying, there's a lot of work to do here.
Vlahovic's contract will end next year and he already told us he has no intention to sign a new deal, so he will be sold in the summer to get some money for him.
Players like Szcesny, Danilo, Amrabat, Kostic and Paredes will also leave.
Other potential players to be sold are Pogba, McKenzie and Moise Kean but we will see.

I'll be updating again in September!​

 

[misterioBean]

Start of Season 2025/2026

There were no clubs looking for a new manager this summer, at least none that fits the our needs, so we will remain at Juventus for one more season and see of we can bring the UCL to Turin exactly 30 years after the last one they were able to get, in the season 1995/96. Since then they got to the finals in 5 other occasions and lost them all. Hoepfully that will change this season with Quim Tropedo.

Transfer Business

Like I said a lot of players left our club this summer.
The reasons varied, they were either getting older and losing space, not good enough to be with us or said they would leave on a free next season.
178M€ is a nice amount to get adding up to our initial budget of around 100M.
We also loaned out Leandro Paredes because noone wanted to buy him.

The players we saw coming in are exactly what we needed for the season.

We brought in 2 wingers in Zeballos and Bardghji, who cost us around 20M combined;
We also got Taylan Bulut for the RB spot because Bellerin is already 30 years old and Bulut is a bit better than him with 19 years old.

We bought André Amaro from Chelsea because we needed a new CB and he was listed. He also became our 2nd best CB just behind Bremer.

We needed a new GK to be Vicario's Backup and when I saw Carnesecchi listed I just went for him because he is very capable to be our main GK if anything happens to Vicario.

And finally, we brought 3 strikers. Baldanzi and Gelhardt will be Immobile's and Raspadori's backups.
I know what you're thinking, back in Lazio I was talking about selling Immobile due to his age but just look at this:

I mean did this guy even age at all? He is very capable of banging a lot of goals for us and maybe get us closer to the UCL title.

So, I sold Vlahovic and bought 3 strikers. We still had Raspadori, Moise Kean and Liel Abada (who is quoted as our best striker btw), so that makes 6 strikers. Why's that?

If you saw my Youth to Gold save with Vitória SC you already know I love a good 4-2-4 tactic.
I felt like we lost quite a few midfield players this summer but I wasn't really willing to replace them all, so I just went and changed to this system to see where it takes us.

Liel Abada is out for 3 months but we still have a lot of good strikers.

Schedule

We had a fairly decent start to this season so far with 2 wins in 2 games. September is also not looking too bad and we should be winning most of this features.

Our UCL group phase had me going through a mix of feelings. Won't be easy to get good results in every match but I guess we should be winning at least 5 games out of the 8. To be honest I think we can get through with only 1 loss if we keep our heads up and focused.

I don't think I'll be updating again before the season ends but if I feel like there's something I should share I will post an earlier udpate.​