FM22: On Swiss Time

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Welcome to this new FM save for FM22, given where we are in the cycle and the level of detail I hope to be able to go into with this save, I felt that forum posts were the most appropriate way of documenting this save. The idea being that I will start in the lower leagues of Switzerland and work my way up, hopefully bringing through a core of academy players at each team I manage and bringing through a golden generation of Swiss players. This is something I intended to do with my save in Austria earlier this year, however, work, uni and life unfortunately got in the way and that save came to a very premature end. I love a long term FM save and haven't had the chance to really get that far into one this time around, hopefully this will change that!



Switzerland, (one of the most beautiful places in the world) is a landlocked European country, it shares borders with France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein meaning it is something of a cultural melting pot. The country has a population of 8.5 million and the three largest cities are Zurich, Basel and Geneva. Linguistically, Switzerland is also very diverse with four recognised languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). The country is divided into 26 cantons as seen below. The cantons are basically the administrative subdivisions and each had its own borders, laws and currency prior to the formation of the Swiss federal state in 1848.

Football wise the pyramid looks like so:

The Super League is the highest tier and most well known consisting of clubs such as FC Basel, Young Boys, St. Gallen etc. Those of you who have done the Vaduz Challenge will also be familiar with Swiss football as they are a club based in the neighbouring country of Liechtenstein but play their football within the Swiss system.
I have loaded up an extended database which contains down to the fifth tier. The idea being that my in game manager will start with my level of coaching badges. for those who don't know I am a football coach IRL (I don't like starting with none as it's so unrealistic - you need at least Level 1 to assist with Sunday League sessions). There will be no attributes in this save and no player search, again for a bit more realism. I want to focus on building a core of Swiss players with a view to 'building a nation' if possible.

My in game manager: Hanna Jonasdottir. Hanna is an Icelandic former professional footballer who was sadly forced to retire early due to a career ending injury. She then moved to Switzerland, the home of FIFA (Zurich) and UEFA (Nyom) to make a start on her coaching badges. (I thought of this save idea whilst watching Euro 2022, Iceland vs Belgium, so if anyone was wondering - that's why Hanna is Icelandic).

I simmed forward until the end of the 21/22 season for two reasons, firstly I thought it would be good to start playing the game in real time so to speak. Secondly, I'm always a bit wary when using extended databases so wanted to check everything was working as it should. Anyway, after applying for a few jobs, we landed on a winner in the fourth tier of Swiss football!

FC Vevey United!

There's not a lot of information about the club readily available online but here is what I have been able to ascertain thus far:

- The club was founded in 1905 as Vevey Sports

- The spent seven seasons in the top flight from 1974-1987

- In 1988 they were then relegated again, to the third tier

- 2005 saw the club declared bankrupt and they were reformed as FC Vevey Sports 05

- In 2018 they merged with Azzurri Riviera and renamed FC Vevey United

- As of 2019 they have been in the fourth tier

- Their home games are played at Stade de Copet (image below) which has a capacity of 4,000.

Where is Vevey?
Located in the canton of Vaud, the town of Vevey sits on the North shore of Lake Geneva. It is part of the French speaking district of Switzerland. The town was the home of Charlie Chaplin from 1952 until his death in 1977. It is also the HQ of Nestle, milk chocolate was actually invented in Vevey in 1875.

Vevey - pretty stunning!

Stade de Copet

Club Vision:

The club is in a real mess, over 200k in the red, over the wage budget and also the president wants promotion by the end of the season. To be completely honest I think he might be being a tad unrealistic with that. Especially with the lack of resources and quality of players we can currently attract. Speaking of which, due to my desire to avoid using the player search tool and my lack of knowledge of players at this level, I have opted to put the DoF in charge of transfers so I will be in more of a head coach role during my time at Vevey.

Above is what the squad looked like on the first day, a lot of youngsters with question marks over their readiness for first team football. Safe to say the DoF had a job on his hands to make sure we actually had a squad able to fulfil the quota of homegrown players in time for the start of the season!
As seen below, there are specific rules about the number of homegrown players in Switzerland, with 11 homegrown players (trained by a club in Switzerland) being required in every 18 player match day squad.

After a frantic few weeks for the DoF, this is the squad that we started the 2022/23 season with:
I was disappointed by the lack of a new goalkeeper at this point as 17 year old Laci is nowhere near the quality needed for this level and I have serious doubts over Zimmermann based on preseason. Alas, we had to make do with what we had.

Tactic-wise, this is what we are starting with, it will likely change over the first few weeks of the season as the two week preseason wasn't really enough time to work out what suits us best. Former Aston Villa man Oscar Borg is the standout signing and I see him being our key player this season. If we can keep him fit then we may well be in with a chance of launching a promotion bid. I'm not going to do into detail on the tactic until we have settled on a system and I've been happy with how it plays out so that will be in a later post.


July 2022:

After a fairly shaky preseason due to the influx of new players the 2022/23 campaign got off to a great start with a 3-0 victory over Meyrin. Borg was fantastic as we dominated possession, he showed great aptitude cutting in from the right wing, onto his favoured left foot. We followed this up with a bag average 1-1 draw with Bulle, a game we really should have won as we dominated possession and had 16 shots. We create a lot of chances, the level of ruthlessness shown by the forward players in their finishing leaves a lot to be desired currently. In the final game of the month against Lancy, we once again dominated possession, shots, xG and general performance, this was a step up from the previous game.

As July rolled into August the DoF remained busy in the transfer window, my favourite acquisition is that of Timo Waldvogel - a goalkeeper! Finally!
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the business he has done for us, I think we have a decent group of players that should certainly be able to be in the top three this season with a view to promotion next season (let's hope the board are flexible on their promotion expectations this year).

I'll be back soon with another update! Hope you enjoyed.