European Journeyman

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone and welcome to my newest challenge.
I was looking for a new save to start and came across this interesting concept.

The European Journeyman challenge consists, as the name says, of starting unemployed and manage clubs all around Europe.
However, we can't just manage any club we want, we need to climb up the ranks. Let me explain.

This is the UEFA Country Ranking 2024, or at least the top 30 of it.
The challenge divides this in 6 tiers:

Tier 1: Sweden, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia
Tier 2:Croatia,Poland,Russia,Cyprus, Hungary
Tier 3: Denmark, Greece, Israel, Ukraine, Serbia
Tier 4: Czech Republic, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, Norway
Tier 5: France, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Turkey
Tier 6: England, Italy, Spain, Germany

The goal is to win the domestic league and domestic club in one of the countries of each tier, along with any European competition.
However, I want to do this with a little twist.

The way I want it to be is simple:
We need to start from the lowest possible country and win the domestic league and domestic club and then advance to the next one. So we will ignore the 6 tiers defined and will just go from country to country and eventually win an European competition along the way.

The Rules:
Starting manager stats: Continental Pro ; Professional Footballer.
Start unemployed.
Moving clubs to a higher league can only be done in the summer (end of season).
No jumping over leagues is allowed. Each league must be played and completed.

Now that all of this is out of the way, let me show you our first job and how the first season of this challenge went.

Slovenia

The first order of business was getting a job at Slovenia and I was very surprised to see Olimpija Ljubljana looking for a new manager as they were champions of the Slovenian league in 2023.

They offered me a job a couple of days after my interview so I accepted and started our European journey.

This club has a good history in the Slovenian League. They were national champions on 7 occasions, the last one being in 2023 and lifted the national cup 8 times, the last one also in 2023, which means last year they did the national double.

We are also qualified for the UEFA Conference League, which is weird because the Slovenian champions qualify for the Champions League Qualifying Rounds. Maybe their coefficients weren't that good before.

The club also has very good facilities which is nice to see and our kits are actually pretty nice.

According to our staff, the 19 year old center back Marcel Ratnik is our best player and he actually looks very good.

The second best player in our squad is the 20 year old winger Nemanja Motika, who also looks very good for this league.

After looking at our squad I decided to change my old habits and use a 4-2-3-1 formation with 2 DM's.
All our wingers are inside forwards so I didn't really have much of a choice there.

Our squad depth is honestly very balanced but we need a couple of midfielders.
I don't think we need 4 strikers or 4 goalkeepers though so we'll need to try and make some deals with them.

Our finances were decent so I thought we could make some deals happen.

After looking at our staff, I got rid of pretty much everyone at the club so we also needed to replace them.

Transfers Out

We weren't able to send many players away.
We loaned out Pedro Lucas, a Target Forward who doesn't really fit into my tactic, and Zan Kovacevic, who's a young winger with potential.

Pedro's deal included an obligatory buy clause so at least we got rid of him permanently.

Transfers In
I forgot to take screenshots of our signings at the time so this will look a bit off.

The first signing we made was the 36 year old Matías Sánchez who was available on a free transfer.
He came in to be our main ball winning midfielder and he did his job. Played 18 games this season and had an average rating of 6.98.

We then signed Salvatore Alloi for the playmaker role in our defensive midfiield but this one came as a backup for Agustin Doffo.
He still played a total of 33 games and got an average rating of 6.94 in all competitions.

Lastly, we were forced to look for a new RB after Jorge Silva got injured. so we signed Bruno Peres on a free transfer but he ended up not playing as much as he was supposed to because his backup, Justas Lasickas, was playing very well and didn't occupy a foreign place in the team.

July - December

The Slovenian League has 36 fixtures but only 10 teams, which means every team face each other 4 times over the season.
The first two quarters of the season went amazingly.
We only lost one match and drew 4 in the league and were leaging the table with a good advantage over 2nd place Maribor.

In the Pokal Slovenije, the Slovenian Cup, we won our first two fixtures but were immediately eliminated from the UECL by Torpedo KIutaisi from Georgia after an abysmal 1st leg.

January

On the last day of January, Marcel Ratnik ended up leaving us to join Liverpool, but agreed to stay at the club on loan until the end of the season. This way we didn't need to get an immediate replacement for him.

The only signing we made was the 28 year old midfielder Jalil Elias, who was available on a free and added a lot of quality to our midfield.

January - May

The league stopped in January but when we got back in February we picked up where we left it.
We kept winning games but lost 3 this time around.

We topped the league as Slovenian Champions with a 6 point lead over Maribor.

We also lifted the Pokal Slovenije after beating Celje on the Final 2-1 to complete the national double on our first season as a professional manager.

First Season Recap
After winning both domestic competitions, we successfully completed the first step of the challenge.
Now, we need to move over to Slovakia to keep grinding the ranks.

Unfortunately, there are only two jobs available and none of them are from Slovakian teams so we will need to wait and see if any comes up.
If there's no job available in Slovakia until the end of the summer transfer window, we'll stay at Olimpija Ljubljiana for another season.​

 

[CrokayVessel]

Looking forward to this save!

 

[misterioBean]

Season 2
Still in Slovenia

As the title says, we were unable to find a new club during the summer, so we kept going with Olimpija Ljubljana for another season and let our contract run out.

Transfers Out

We had a lot more players leaving us this year.
We said goddbye to some players who signed last year, such as Matías Sánchez and Bruno Peres as they were already 35 and 33 respectively.
All the other departures were squad players who wanted to play more football but I couldn't give it to them so decided to let them leave.

Transfers In
​

Jost Pisek - 1.2m

The first player we signed was the midfielder Jost Pisek, who joined us for 1.2m and was an important player for us, specially towards the second half of the season.
​

Georgi Terziev - Free

We then signed an experienced DC for our back duo but he only came as a backup, which he was happy with. For free, we can't ask for much more.
​

Nick Perc - 1.2m

A week later, I saw this 20 year old winger available for cheap. I was looking for a striker and he could already play as an AF and I knew with the right development he could be very good for us. Even though he started the season as a backup, he still scored 19 goals in 28 games.
​

Lukas Hempt - 1.2m

We then signed another CB to replace the one we sold to Liverpool last season and it was only fitting to get another promising young defender as his replacement. Even though we won't stay here for long, Ljubljana will have a good defender for the future.
​

Beno Selan - 1.2m

The last player we signed was the young midfielder Beno Selan for 1.2m.
He was regarded as one of the best players in the league and since we needed to replace Sanchez it was a no brainer.

August - December

We kept our good performances from last season, only losing points in 3 occasions during the first 2 quarters of the season.

We only lost one player during the winter. Our 3rd choice striker wanted more football but wasn't good enough so he left to Sweden.

The last 2 quarters of the season were exactly the same.
We once again won the cup along the way to ciment our domestic domination.

We won the league back in March and ended the season with a 31 gap between us and Bravo.

European Competitions

We were not so happy in European competitions though.
After falling to FC Kobenhavn in the UCL we had to fight in the UEL Playoffs. Even though we beat Ferencvaros at our home stadium, we let them score 7 when we visited them but also scored 4 in the process.

The League Phase was not too bad and we qualified for the playoffs in which we beat Malmo but ultimately fell to Sturm Graz in the Round of 16.

Season Recap

This season in Slovenia was, once again, a huge success.
We dominated domestically and did a decent job in Europe as well this season.
However, there's currently no job available in Slovakia once again and to be honest there's not many options in other countries as well.

I was thinking of maybe changing the rules for this challenge a bit and be able to change to a team in either of the countries present on the tier we are currently in, which means that instead of moving to Slovakia we could go to Hungary, Bulgaria or Sweden if there's any available jobs there. However, we can't move to any country of the tiers above before completing all of them.

This way we won't be just sittign waiting for one job in a specific country. I'll have to think more about it.​

 

[misterioBean]

Season 3
A New Home

When we left Slovenia, these were the jobs available for us to take.
When we look deeper at this teams, there was not any amazing one for us to take.
In Hungary, MTK Budapest and Zalaegerszegi were both mid table teams who are behind the top teams in the country by a while.

In Romania, the situation was more or less the same. Decent teams but who were not able to compete against the top dogs.
However, I sent applications to all of them because having a job is better than not having one.

We were not reached by any of them until the start of July but at that time my eyes were already somewhere else.

Ludogorets Razgrad, Bulgarian champions, were looking for a new manager.
This was an amazing opportunity as we now have the chance to tick one more country off the list.

As you can see, Ludogorets is a very honourable club in Bulgaria.
National champions in 14 occasions and 4 cups to add to it, as well as 9 supercups.

The best player in our team according to our staff is the midfielder Jakub Piotrowski and it's easy to see why.
He's a very complete midfielder who can bring both offensive and defensive options to our squad.

Another great player in our midfield is the 24 year old Ivan Yordanov who's a terrific playmaker and can play in a lot of positions in case it's needed.

Our team's top 3 ends with the wing back Fodé Ballo-Touré, who just recently joined the team and he also looks very good. His physicals are amazing and he also has very good technical capabilities as well as mental attributes.

Our predicted goalscorer is the Ghanese striker Kwadwo Duah and honestly his pace will come in very handy even if he doesn't have the best all around stats.

Our squad depth is not that bad.
Looking at our team as a whole there are definitely a few areas that need some new faces but I'm happy with the depth we have available.

However, I quicly ran into a problem concerning our squad's average age.
We have a lot of players over 30 years old or close to get to 30 and very few young players, which makes our squad average age be at the 28 year old mark.

In addition to that, we have some of our best players on this list, so we needed to rebuild this team in case we find ourselves stuck here for a while.

Another factor we had to take into account was the European registration rules. We didn't have many Bulgarian players in our squad and that caused me some issues when registering players for the UCL qualifying rounds, so it needed to get sorted asap.

Transfers Out

We were relentless this summer. In total we had 15 players leaving our club permanently.
They were either too old, not Bulgarian or too weak for our team so ew had to let them go to free up some space for new faces.

Transfers In
​

Bingorou Kamara - Free

The first position we focused in was our goalkeeper since both our best ones were old and not very good.
I already had my eyes on Kamara when we were in Slovenia but his wage demands were far too high for Olimpija Ljubljana. However, here at Ludogorets we have a lot more money to play with so I was happy to bring him.
​

Krasian Kolev - 2.2m

We then started tackling our lack of Bulgarian players and signed the international 21 year old midfielder from another Bulgarian team. He looks very good and still has space to improve so I think it was a good deal.
​

Jean-Daniel Akpa Akpro - Free

​

I needed to sign a new midfielder for the B2B role and there were no Bulgarian players available who were good enough for our team, so we had to sign the 32 year old French Akpro who was available on a free transfer.
Despite his advanced age, he still has a lot of quality to give to our team.
​

Milan Ristovski - 65k

Another area I felt needed some fresh faces was our striker postion. Even though we have Duah as our main guy, we needed a suitable backup and this guy was too cheap to pass on.
​

Matous Trmal - 55k

After signing Kamara I wanted a younger backup for him so when our scouts recommended the former Vitória SC goalkeeper Trmal I had to sign him. His price was also a huge factor on it but he looks very good for the price to be fair.
​

Martin Georgiev - 1.6m

Once again we tackled two problems with one signing.
We lacked Bulgarian CB's and also some youth in this position so Georgiev came in to bring both.
​

Martin Minchev - 7.5m

This is a big one.
I was having serious trouble with registration rules for the UCL and the only position I could think of to solve it was the wingers.
I was looking around for some suitable players but Minchev was the only one who was even remotely good to come to our team and still have an impact. His price was very high, but it was a needed expense.

Tactic

I decided to go back to my trusted 4-3-3 DM for this one since we had the players for it.
Very basic stuff and nothing fancy whatsoever.

August - December

The first part of the season was similar to our spell in Slovenia. We dominated everyone in our league and only lost points once so we can say it was being a very productive season for our end goals.

January - May

In January we ended up selling our 3rd choice midfielder Ivaylo Chochev who forced a move after not being used and Petar Kirev, a youngster with no potential.

The second half of the season was basically the same, although with some more setbacks.
However, we were just too much for the other teams to handle and ended up being crowned champions just two games into the Championship phase and winning the cup along the way as well.

So after just one season we can tick off Bulgaria from our list of leagues.

UEFA Champions League

Contrary to our European journey in Slovenia, we were actually able to qualify for the UCL League Phase with Ludogorets with some very good wins specially against Young Boys.

Unfortunately, our League Phase didn't go so well and we ended up being eliminated from the UCL.
Gotta give it to the players though, a huge win against Atlético Madrid and drawing against Monaco were some decent results, but losing to Slavia Prague and drawing to Rakow Czestochowa was the main reason we didn't get a place in the playoffs.

Season Recap

We are currently 3 seasons into our European Journeyman carreer and already ticked off two countries from the first tier.
We still have a long way to go though.

Right now, there are only two available jobs and both of them are over in Hungary.
Once again, I'll wait until July to see which teams will open vacancies for the manager position, but there's only one certainty right now: Next season, we won't be in Bulgaria.​

 

[misterioBean]

Season 4
Trip to Slovakia

After a very successul year in Bulgaria, we finally saw a job opening in Slovakia. Better yet, it was from the league champions once again. This just seems to keep happening, the best teams around us lose their managers one way or another. I'm not complaining though as it makes our job a bit easier for the early seasons.

With that said, we joined Slovan Bratislava, 16 time Slovakian champions and 17 time national cup champions.
We signed a 2 year deal, but I expect to be out of here in a season once again.

However, when I joined the team, I saw why the last manager must have left.

Squad

The squad was incredibly small and lacked quality depth pretty much in every position, which needed to be sorted during the summer.

When I saw our squad's average age it became even more clear. Our youngest player was 24 years old and half the squad is over 30.

Our best player according to our staff is Péter Bárath, a 24 year old midfielder who can play in a variety of roles.
Compared to what we saw in Bulgaria, it's not that good but it is to be expected since this is a lower reputation league.​

Our 2nd best player is also a midfielder. The 25 year old Filip Lichy is a more defensive minded player but can still create a lot of chances.​

Our top 3 is occupied by the Norwegian wing back Lyngbo. He looks very good and is not very old yet.

Tactic

For the tactic, I'm sticking with the same we used at Ludogorets since our team fits in very well... mainly because we don't have many players but it is what it is.

Transfers Out​

We sold some older players and loaned out some younger ones.
Some of this players were in our B team but didn't have any potential. We didn't make much money though but I wasn't expecting to since these players were either very bad or very old.

Transfers In
​

Michal Tomic - Free

The first player to join our new club was the Slovakian international winger Michal Tomic, who was available on a free transfer after running out of contract with Slavia Prague.
He's a good option for the entire right side of our team so I'm happy with this signing.
​

Lubomir Satka - Free

​

Another international player available on a free transfer as the 30 year old central defender comes in.
Once again, he's a good option for our defense but won't be starting most games.
​

Rocky Bushiri - 2m

The first player we spent money on was another CB, this time the Belgium Bishiri who comes to be one of our starters. He's a fast defender to handle the faster opponents allowing the other to be a bit more positional minded.
​

Miha Kompan Breznik - 1.8m

For the left side of our defense, we signed the 22 year old Slovakian Breznik who added a lot of needed quality to this position.
​

Zelkjo Gavric - 1.1m

We then signed another winger for our attack as Gavric joins as a good option for both sides.
​

Jost Pisek - 1.3m

After that, we strenghtened our midfield with our former player at Ljubljana, Jost Pisek who's a terrific player for this league as he was for the Slovenian one. We payed only 100k more than what we did in Slovenia as well.
​

Samuel Datko - 400k

At this point we were running out of money but I used the little we had to add yet another Slovakian winger to our books.
He's a decent backup for both sides as well and didn't cost us much.
​

Lubomir Belko - Free

Finding a good keeper was a challenge. We didn't have any money left at the transfer budget and our wage budget was pretty much full. Thankfully I was able to find Belko looking for a new club after running out of contract and I'm happy I did because he's better than our other keeper.

July - December

Our league campaign was similar to our last few spells, with a lot of wins and some missteps along the way. However, we were 1st in the league in January (I always forget to take a screenshot of this but trust me lol).

The winter transfer window didn't bring any new faces to the club but saw two players leaving definitely. The striker Sgarbi was already loaned out in the summer but ended up leaving permanently and Radovanovic also left since he was old and didn't play much.

After we finish the regular stage of the league with 4 wins, we cruised through the Championship Group and lifted the Fortuna Liga title.

Like I said, this was going to be a very short trip in Slovakia... Or so I thought.

We were eliminated from the Slovakian Cup in the Third Round against the team that also beat us in the league just a few days before.

This means we are stuck in Slovakia for at least another season and we need to focus on the cup so we can leave at the end of our current contract.

Our European journey this year was a bit better. We didn't make it to the Champions League League Phase but we made it to the Europa League and actually got 2 wins and 4 draws. We got eliminated on the Play Offs against Antwerp though but hey, we'll take what we can.

Season Recap

For the first time in our career we were unable to win everything internally for a team on the first year, a record I wasn't expecting to finish so soon considering we joined the best club in Slovakia.

We don't have much money to play with next season and we need to replace some of the old players that are still with us. Some of them will run out of contract in July and the rest will probably be sold unless I can't find good replacements for them but I already instructed our scouts to look for good options for their roles.

Managerial Record:
​

Slovenia:
- 2 PrvaLiga Telemach;
- 2 Pokal Pivovarna Union.

Bulgaria:
- Efbet League;
- Sesame Kupa na Bylgarija.

Slovakia:
- Fortuna Liga;
- Slovnaft Cup (Loading...)

 

[misterioBean]

Season 5
Getting It Done

As you know, last season we joined the Slovakian side Slovan Bratislava who are the best team in the country.
However, despite winning the league title we failed to lift the Slovnaft Cup, aka the Slovakian Cup.

That meant we needed to stay at least one more year at Bratislava and give all of ourselves in the cup so we can leave and join another league.

Transfers Out

We didn't have a lot of people leaving the club in the summer. Szoke, Medvedev, Wimmer and Di Chiara were all over 30 years old and already declining in quality so I decided not to renew their contracts.

The only departure I was sad about was Lyngbo, who joined Al-Arabi when they paid his release clause. I tried to offer him a new contract but he asked for too much money so we had to let him leave.

Kyriakos Savvidis, our main playmaker in the midfield, also left in June for 325k due to his age and not being amazingly good.

Transfers In

Before showing any of the players who joined, I will just say all of them came in as free transfers and there were no fees involved in any of this deals which was amazing considering the quality of the players who signed for us.

James McAtee

If you followed my Manchester City you can probably guess how happy I was when I saw McAtee available on a free.
He is an amazing playmaker and is still 25 years old. He also comes in as a backup so he won't be mad if he doesn't play much which is amazing since Jost Pisek is slightly better than him.

Despite being a backup, he still played 36 games and had an amazing 7.47 average rating so I'm very please with this signing.

Facundo Bernal

With Szoke's running out of contract, we had to sign a replacement to play as a backup for Lichy.
However, my scouts recommended me this 24 year old Argentinian who was way better than Lichy and was available on a free.
He does take one of our 5 foreign players spots, but looking at him it's well worth it.

Christián Herc

One of my favourite ways to signing players this save is looking at the national teams and see who is available on free transfers. I already found a good number of players in all 3 clubs we were in using this method and at Bratislava I used it to sign Satka.

This season I went back and found Herc who is a very well rounded midfielder who can play effectively in every roles we use so I had to pick him up.

Miro Muheim

Di Chiara's departure left a hole at the left side of our defense so we had to look for a replacement and once again our scouts did a very good job recommending me Miro Muheim who was running out of contract at Hamburg. He's very similar in quality to Breznik so choosing one over the other was not easy. They basically rotated the whole season between each other and both of them were great.

Marcus Mathisen

Another position we were left with few choices was our center back. Our scouts recommended me 2 free players but I ended up going with Mathisen for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, he was stronger and taller than his rival despite not being as fast.
The 2nd reason I chose him were the amazing mentals he displays, which compared to the other option were way better.
And lastly, he was around 40k cheaper in monthly wages.

Jordan Williams

Unfortunately, we couldn't replace Lyngbo with someone who was better or as good as him.
The best option we found was the English Jordan Williams. Don't get me wrong, he is very decent but Lyngbo was one of the best players we had in our squad.

Finley Burns

The last player we signed was another known player from the Man. City challenge.
However I didn't remember Burns being this good at all. I'm pretty sure he got a huge upgrade in the winter update because this is nothing like it was back then.

I'm not complaining though. He looks amazing and had a terrific season.

July - December

We started our season like we finished the last one, winning most of our games even when we used our backups.

I only used our backup team in European matches because it's not a priority for us but we still ended up qualifying for the Europa League League Phase.

January - May

Sadly, we were unable to get an unvencible season and ended up losing two matches for the league, both against Dunajska Streda.

Despite those losses and another two draws along he way, we finished the season as Slovakian Champions once again and even broke the record for the league's highest points in a season.

UEFA Europa League

I have to say I was very impressed when I saw our backup team qualifying for the Playoffs after winning 4 games in the League Phase, but when we beat Midtjylland and made it to the Round of 16 I was even more impressed.

We were somewhat unlucky with the draw and Newcastle really showed how far behind we are from the other teams in the competition.

Slovnaft Cup

Despite our European campaign coming to a sad end, we absolutely demolished the cup fixtures and ended the season lifting the double!

Season Recap

After two seasons in Slovakia, we lifted both the league and the cup in 3 different countries: Slovenia, Bulgary and Slovakia.
There are three more countries on the first tier of this challenge: Hungary, Romania and Sweden.

I saw multiple teams from Hungary looking for a new manager every year since we started our career, except for this one.
In fact, as of May 20th there are no clubs looking for a new manager to take control.

Sweden I kind of understand since right now they're at mid season so there's always a chance any manager are sacked over there.

Let's hope something comes up because, as you know, we can only sign a new contract during the summer, which means that if we don't get a new club now we will be out of a job for a whole season.

Managerial Record:​

Slovenia:
- 2 PrvaLiga Telemach;
- 2 Pokal Pivovarna Union.

Bulgaria:
- Efbet League;
- Sesame Kupa na Bylgarija.

Slovakia:
- 2 Fortuna Liga;
- Slovnaft Cup.

 

[misterioBean]

Season 6
A New Home

Before diving into a new season I need to correct something I said on the last update.
Hungary is not included in the first tier of the challenge so I can't go there yet. That left us with 2 options: Sweden and Romania.

After a couple of days of unemployment I started getting a bit anxious about not seeing any jobs available.
When I went looking into the job security tab I saw some insecure positions in Sweden so I decided to declare interest in one of them. Next thing I know BK Hacken fire their manager and call me up for an interview.

The Club

After about 3 days they offered me a job and we found our new home for the next few seasons. And I say "few" because this will be the biggest challenge we had since we started this save.

You see, we only really have experience managing big clubs, the best of the best in their countries, but here we now face a huge problem called Malmo who have been dominating the league for the past 5 seasons.

BK Hacken is a modest club. Their trophy cabinet consists of 1 league title in 2022 and 2 Sweddish Cups, the last one won in 2019.
However, after winning the league in 2022 they have been bouncing around the table, recording a 2nd, 6th, 8th and 2nd place in the following seasons.

When we were hired as their manager, the club was sitting in the 8th place after 13 games despite being predicted to finish 3rd.
The board wanted us to finish in the top half which seems reasonable.

The team's road this year hasn't been great. They got eliminated from the cup on the group stage and only won 2 of their 13 games. They did win the last one though which is surprising considering they didn't have a manager at this point.

The Sweddish Cup has an interesting schedule. It starts in August, midway throught the season, with 2 qualifying rounds.
Then the teams who win are drawn into groups and those games start along with the calendar season in February.

This means we have to win this game if we want to have a chance at it next season.

The Squad

When I met the squad I immediatelly saw a few problems that needed solving. Firstly, we don't have any depth on the wing back positions.

Secondly, our depth in the wings was not the best and both backups (Poku and Matthews) were getting paid a lot of money despite not being first team players. Poku was actually the biggest paycheck in the whole team so that needed to be sorted as well.

Our staff identified Roméo Amané as our best player and is easy to see why. He's a very complete midfielder who can play effectivelly in pretty much every role we need him to.

Our best striker is Oskar Siira Sivertsen who is regarded as a winger but I decided to play him upfront.

The podium is closed by Alexander Isgren who was signed by the club at the beginning of the season.
I honestly think we had better players in the squad but our squad seem to like Isgren's speed a lot.

Unfortunately, we had basically no budget to bring in new faces to solve the problems we identified so we had to make some moves.

Transfers Out

Like I said, Poku and Matthews were getting paid too much money for the role they were playing so we sold both of them and freed up around 50k in wage budget. We only got 15% of the fees we got though which is kind of a let down but it is what it is.

Transfers In

Similar to last season, there were no fees involved in any of the deals we made during the summer.

Momodou Sonko

Like I said in the last update, I love checking the national teams for free players and when I looked at Sweden I saw Momodou Sonko who just left Arsenal and was available on a free. His wage demands were very low comparing to Poku's.

Sory Traoré

Having little to no money available makes it harder to find good players so we had to make due with what we found.
We needed a new backup and Traoré wasn't asking for a lot of money so we signed him to fill the gap.

Noah Hay

Same thing here. Hay was the best option available to us who we could actually afford.

Diogo Pereira

We had a very hard time founding someone for the left wing back position. There were very few players available and those who were either refused to come to us or asked for way too much. We had to settle for a loan player from Portugal but he did the job well when needed.

The Schedule

When we sat in the bench for our first game ahead of Hacken, I was shocked.
We were playing so well I had to think the last manager completely lost the dressing room or was not using the team to their fullest. We won 4-1 and looked amazing.

Then I got a bit scared when we drew against a team who was ahead of us only by a few points. And then I got reassured something bad had to happen between the players and the last manager.

We went on to lose only one of the games we played and drew only three which is amazing considering the team's season so far.

We finished in an impressive 2nd place only 8 points behind Malmo, but Hammarby was very close as well so it could have easily been a 3rd place if they didn't drop points in the last game.

We also started our European campaign in July and qualified for the Conference League League Phase, which has been going okay with 3 wins and 3 losses.

A few interesting games as we faced and beat the team I support Vitória SC and later faced our former team Slovan Bratislava but failed to get anything out of that game.

We now have one month of rest before getting back to work as we will have the UECL Playoffs and the Cup Group Stage and I really want to make a good cup campaign this year because I doubt we can win the league but there's always a chance to lift the cup title.

Season Recap

We joined BK Hacken midway through their season and were able to get a 2nd place despite their awful start to the season.
If we can make a full campaign playing like we did in the last few months we can actually have a shot at the title but going against Malmo and Hammerby is always a tough challenge.

This was the first season in which we didn't win any trophies. Since I started this challenge I wanted to make it out of every league as soon as possible so we could join the next one and get to the best leagues faster but I forgot that it will become increasingly harder and harder to get good jobs as we move up the ranks and we will eventually have to settle for minor jobs before jumping to the big ones.

That's probably way down the road though and I think we are still capable of getting any job we apply for in the first 3 tiers of the challenge. Let's wait and see, for now, our aim is to beat Sweden...

Managerial Record:
​

Slovenia:
- 2 PrvaLiga Telemach;
- 2 Pokal Pivovarna Union.

Bulgaria:
- Efbet League;
- Sesame Kupa na Bylgarija.

Slovakia:
- 2 Fortuna Liga;
- Slovnaft Cup.

 

[misterioBean]

Season 7
This Can't Be Real

After a good first season in charge of BK Hacken we needed to prepare ourselves for the upcoming season.

In theory, the board gave us a respectful transfer budget to work with. The problem is the theory is based on what we see on this message because in reality we needed to change them a bit in order to get a good wage budget so we ended up with a litle over 1m for the season which is not ideal.

Transfers Out

As you can see we had a lot of players leaving the team during the transfer window. However, a lot of them were not in our first team so I will just talk about those ones since the others are not as important.

Mert Alegoz was our backup goalkeeper and he was entering the last year of his contract. Since he wasn't very good didn't count as a homegrown for the European competitions I decided to let him go.

Roméo Amané was really a shame. He was on the last year of his contract and was asking for way too much money which we didn't have so I had to capitalize on his value no bring in a bit of cash. After selling him, I noticed we only kept 15% of transfer revenue so that came out to bite me in the end I guess.

Julián Chicco and Samuel Gustafson were already way over 30 years old and getting worse quickly so I sold them for as much as I could.

Lastly, Bruzelius was not very good and wanted to leave so we sold him for what we got offered.

Transfers In
​

Thomas Isherwood - Free

The first player to sign for us in the new season was the Sweddish center back Isherwood who was available on a free transfer after terminating his contract with Djurgardens IF. He comes in as a backup and he was happy to do so.
​

Diogo Pereira - 70k

After a good first season on loan with us we decided to bring in Diogo Pereira definitely for the left side of our defense.​

Luis Marquínez - Free

With the departure of Alegoz we needed to find a replacement for him. Marquínez was available on a free transfer and is better overall when compared to Alegoz so it was a good deal in my eyes.
​

Anthony Elanga - Free

It's not everyday that a name like this is presented to us on a free transfer. Okay he's far from being the player he once promised to be but he's still a good addition to our squad and with his speed he can do serious damage here in Sweden.
​

Celso Rojas - Free

We keep looking to improve the team with good bargains and Rojas is exactly that. What a player and what a signing for our team.
​

Asael Panesso - Free

Another South American joined the squad, this time from Colombia. Panesso was also available on a free and I spent no time bringing him in.
​

Kári Jónsson - 1.2m

The only player we spent a fee on was the 20 year old midfielder from Goteborg and I really can't express what a steal this was. He looks amazing for this level and I'm sure he will jump into the first team with no problems.

February - July

Our league season only started in April despite our actual season starting over in February. Despite that, we had a tremendous start to the season and this put us fighting for the top spot against the likes of Malmo, who we beat 2-0 y«by the way.

When it came to the Conference League we were eliminated on the Play Off by our former team Slovan Bratislava.

During the transfer window, we sold Opsahl because he wasn't playing as much and asked to leave so we still made a bit of money with his departure.

His relacement was the 28 year old Noah Soderberg who was available on a free transfer and was happy to come as a backup.
(I forgot to take a screenshot when we signed so, upps.)

July - November

The 2nd half of the season was not as good as the first one as we did lose 3 times and drew another 2.
We did beat Malmo once again though so that's a good sign at least.

In the end those losses didn't matter.
We capitalized on the awful season Malmo had and took the title away from anyone else.

After 7 years, BK Hacken are once again champions of Sweden.

Cup

We also ended up winning the Sweddish Cup way back in May, which means we already completed Sweden even though I was certain we would be here for longer.

Sometimes all it takes is for the other teams to have bad seasons and things like this can happen, but I think the quality of the signings we made also had a big impact on the season's outcome.

UEFA Europa League

I'm going to be hionest here, I have no idea how we are getting this kind of results on the UEL.
I've only used our backup team on Europeans fixtures to make sure our first team is always available for the league but we only lost one European gameso far and it wasn't even on the League Phase.

Right now we sit in 2nd only behind Freiburg and already secured a playoff spot with only 2 games to go.

Season Recap

After only 1 and a half season agead of BK Hacken, we already dethroned Malmo and won both the Sweddish League and Cup.
However, I really don't want to leave yet.

Here's why:

In just 2 months, we will have the last 2 UEL League Phase fixtures and the cup Group Stage once again.
With the European campaign we made so far, I'm very curious to see how far we can get with this team on an European level and we only have one year left on our contract with BK Hacken anyway.

Oh and also we have the rule of only being able to change clubs in the summer and we are currently in December so that's not going to happen.

With that said, I think we will stay one more year in Sweden just to see how we do in Europe. When we get to the summer I'll check for available jobs on a different country and continue our European Journeyman challenge.

Managerial Record:​

Slovenia:
- 2 PrvaLiga Telemach;
- 2 Pokal Pivovarna Union.

Bulgaria:
- Efbet League;
- Sesame Kupa na Bylgarija.

Slovakia:
- 2 Fortuna Liga;
- Slovnaft Cup.

Sweden:
- Allsvenskan;
- Svenska Cupen.

 

[misterioBean]

Season 7 and a Half
European Campaign

Transfers Out

After the amazing season we had I lookrf at our team and started looking where we could upgrade some of our players.
We started selling some older players like Christian Cappis, who was loaned out on the first season but was a very important piece in our midfielder last time around.

Another first team player who left was our striker Sivertsen ater Shangai agreed to pay his release clause.
Valgeir Frioriksson, our main right back also left the club to join our division rivals Hammarby.

And then we sold some of our backup players, some due to age, like Isherwood, and others for finding better options.

Transfers In
​

Gonçalo Esteves - Free

The first replacement we signed this season was for our right back position- The 25 year old Portuguese Gonçalo Esteves was available on a free after getting released from Malmo and he is a slight upgrade to our former starter and 5 years younger.
​

Abdihakin Ali - 1.1m

After that, we spent some money to bring in a new B2B midfielder, bonus points for being trained in Sweden, playing well with both feet and also playing in every role we may need ihim to.
​

Axel Rask - 925k

​

Another 925k spent on another midfielder, this time for the DLP role. Looks very good at doing what he's needed to but can't really do much more than that. Still a good signing in my opinion.
​

Dylan Mineur - 2.4m

The last signing we made was a new LB and he looks absolutely amazing. I'm sure he will do the job just fine.

European Schedule

We were able to secure an automatic spot on the Round of 16's after defeating Nice and losing to Ajax on the League Phase.
Unfortunately, our campaign was cut short when we lost away to AS Roma and were unable to find the net playing in Sweden.

At least we qualified the club to the cup Semi Final so they have a chance at winning it once again.

Recap

This was a small update just to post our European journey with BK Hacken which was the only reason we stayed here for an extra few months in the first place.

Now we are in March but can't join a new club until the summer window so now we'll wait until June/July to see if there's any Romanian club looking for a new manager since that's the last nation we need to complete the first tier of this challenge.​

 

[misterioBean]

Season 8
Better Late Than Never

Romania proved to be a rock in my shoe. It wasn't until the end of Setpember until a job finally came up and when it did there were 3 options to choose from.

In the end, we chose FC U Craiova to be our new home for the near future.

The Club

The club was founded in 1948 as FC Universitatea Craiova and was later rebranded in 2017 as FC U Craiova 1948 SA after being dissolved in 2012 following some political processes.
The club has 4 Romanian league titles to their name, the last won in 1991, and also 6 Romanian Cups which they haven't won since 1993.

We play our home fixtures in the Ion Oblemenco Stadium which has a capacity of 30k people and have decent facilities.

We come into the club following a very poor start to the season with only 2 wins, 3 draws and 6 defeats in the first 11 games.

At the time of our arrival, the team was sitting in the 14th position with the same points as the 15th place which in theory would be relegation spots but the Romanian league system has a little twist.

After the first 30 games of the season, the first 6 teams qualify for the Champions Playoff and all the others go through a Relegation Group. The last 2 placed teams are relegated to the 2nd division.

The national cup starts with a Playoff, which we already won, and then follows with a group stage with the top 2 teams qualifying for the next round.

Our finances are not looking good. We are 1.5m in debt and the projections show even bigger declines.
We also don't have any budget to play with other than around 17k in wages.

The Squad

According to our staff, the winger Juan José Córdoba is our best player.
He's not crazy but he is decent.

They also singled out Catalin Slabu, a playmaker who can also play in the wing if needed and this one looks better.

The third player they sent to me was Sorin Nae, a 21 year old left back who has good mentals and physicals but not so good technicals but still has some potential in him.

I forgot to take a screenshot of the squad at the time but there were 2 positions I really thought we were lacking in depth which were the RB and DM positions.

Tactic wise we are sticking with the 4-3-3 DM we have been using because we don't really have a team to try anything different.

We also had 5 unregistered players for some reason which also isn't ideal.
In addition to that, the best alternative to Córdoba to play on the opposite side of the wings was injured for 3 months.

We also have 7 players with their contracts expiring this season, one of them being Córdoba's deal.

October - December

As we took over, the team changed drastically.
The firt two games were not very good in terms of goals scored but we also didn't concede, specially against CFR Cluj who were champions last season. After our first win we then went into another bad run of 3 games but eventually things started to change and we even beat Rapid Bucuresti in a 3-0 away game.

Transfers Out

When January came, we went into a bit of a rebuild.
We sold some squad players who didn't fit into our system and some of the players whose contracts were expiring and didn't want to sign a new deal, like Matteo di Giusto, or were asking for more money than what we could offer, which was the unfortunate case of Juan José Córdoba.

At least we made around 2m solding players which was amazing for the club's finances.

Transfers In

All the players we signed were free deals due to our lack of financial power but I'm very happy with the quality of players we were abel to bring in.

The first player to join us was Abdoul Ba, a 24 year old Senegalese wing back who can play anywhere on the right side of the pitch on a good level. Since we were needing a new RB, I found this to be a good and useful signing for our team.

After Córdoba left to his new team we needed to find a decent replacement. We found it in Baker-Boaitey who doesn't really look as good but also not much worse than Córdoba.

We also sold our backup LB, Mascarenhas, so we needed a new one and we found the German Seedy Jarju available.
He should give us good coverage for when Sorin Nae needs a rest.

The last player we signed was the Sweddish midfielder Adam Wikman who can play in every role we use in our midfield and looks very complete so, again, I was very happy with this signing.

January - June

The 2nd half of the season went better than what I could ever expect.
Yes we lost 3 in a row but we went into a 3 month lossless streak from March to June.

We finished top of the Relegation Group, and very comfortably I should say.

We also qualified for the Liga I European Places Playoff and went to the Finals where we lost to Rapid Bucuresti.
I don't really understand why we qualify over the other teams in the Champions Playoff.
I thought it could be due to us finishing with more points than them but we played the first Playoff against Slobozia so I'm guessing it's the 3rd and 4th places of the Champions Group and the 1st and 2nd of the Relegation Group?

Anyway we didn't qualify so no European competitions for us next season but that could be a blessing in disguise because it means we can focus on the league and the cup next season.

Our budget isn't anything crazy but I'm hoping we can find some free hidden gems available on the summer market.

Season Recap

We are now 8 seasons into this challenge about to start the 9th and, as things stand, I think we may be able to complete the first tier in the next two seasons and finally go up into the 2nd tier.

The leagues are already loaded just for safety in the case we end up winning everything next season like we did with Backen in Sweden.​

 

[banger93]

Just caught up with this and loving the challenge! Have you stopped it?