I´ve playerd Fifa Manager 2006, 2007, and 2008. Never tried 2009 - mostly because I found 2006 to be the best of them, and wasn´t pleased about the loss of quality that the franchise was going through. But that´s only my opinin, though, and 2009 might have been better.
Man, that would be very good for brazillian football. I support Corinthians, but it´s an awful situation for the players and fans. It´s very, very common that players and the club staff don´t get their wages paid - so, almost every player wants to go to Europe as soon as possible. And almost...
The way that Corinthians is represented in 2008 is very unrealistic. The team never went through those harsh financial problems, and mounted a top squad for the second division. That is mostly because every brazillian team operates under heavy debts, unpunished. The game does not know how to...
Sadly, even if this is very irritating, it is also very, very true. Just take a look at Real Madrid. And, **** it, even teams like Inter, Bayern and Manchester United are getting their players unsettled these days. Bad times for football ...
I usually use the style of defence you mentioned before: zonal marking without tight marking. But I also combine this with high closing down - so, maybe this is your problem, just as JM suggested. Another hypothesis is that your defense is too away from your midfield - a more compact setting...
rrrrrrrrr is right, you have to set your database to large. Also, if you want to manage a specific nation from the beggining of the game, you have to load all the players from that nation - wich can be done through an option just below the database size.
From the original list, the only team I think that should be dropped is Man City. But all the others seems fine to me, including the suggested Liverpool. I guess it´s really up to you, that is organising the challenge.
Just ignore the board. :D
Since you´ve joined Groningen to keep some of your players playing, it´s better not to resign, since there would be no guarantee that the next manager will let them play.
I admit I have that doubt as well. I would suggest just to add them, but since it´s already difficult to find enough players, I really don´t know which teams to take out. Anyways, I think Man City could be excluded for a little more of country diversity.