FM24 - King of Promotions

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone!

I decided to start yet another save after the confirmation of FM25 being officially canceled.
This time I'm starting a challenge I've never done before and has been on my mind for a couple of years already.

Welcome to the Vitor Oliveira Challenge.

Challenge Rundown

Many of you probably never heard about Vitor Oliveira, but in Portugal he is a very known former coach and became a legend for what he has done over his career.

He was known as the "Promotion King" due to the number of teams he was able to get promotion with to Portugal's first tier.
In total, Vitor Oliveira had 11 promotions to his name with 10 different teams across the country.

Unfortunately, he left us in 2020 but who he was and what he has done will never be forgotten.
This challenge is basically a tribute and a way of honouring his legacy.

Challenge Objectives
​

• Get promotion with more than 11 teams from the second division to the first division;​
• Get promotion while being champions in at least 50% of them;​
• Win domestic cups.​

I also decided to add a custom objective to the challenge:
​

• Playing one more season with each team we get promoted and try to avoid getting relegation.​

Challenge Rules
​

• We can only manage teams in one country. I decided to choose Portugal for this one;​
• Start with a team that has just been demoted from the top division;​
• We can only change clubs after getting promoted with the previous one (except if we get sacked);​

First Club

I simulated the first season of the save before choosing the first team of the challenge.

As you can see, Estrela da Amadora, Farense and Boavista are the 3 clubs we can pick from this year's list.
I simulated until the 3rd of June so every single competition, including the European ones, and promotion/relegation playoffs were already played.

On that day, there was only one club left with no manager...

I welcome you all to...

Sporting Clube Farense

Farense is a portuguese club that doesn't really have a lot to their name in terms of trophies.
We only won 2nd tier trophies and have no national cups to our name for now.

We will play our games in the Estádio de São Luís situated in Faro, the capital of the Algarve region.

The Staff

After getting to know everyone at the club, I send basically everyone home and told them they would be getting fired with immediate effect.
We'll build our staff from the ground up and get the best people we can.

Very unfortunate that we only have two scouts available to us but it is what it is.

The Squad
In terms of squad, we have 25 players in our first team.
I decided to divide them in 2 different groups:

Here we have the first group. I call it "The Leaving Group". It's easy to understand why.
All of them are ending their contracts with the club at the end of the month.

Ângelo Neto, Paulo Victor and Marco Matias already told the club they don't intend to sign a new deal and will be leaving.
All the others I'll have to evaluate and decide if I want to keep them or not.

Also I have no clue why we have a player loaned in who's costing us 57k in wages every month.
A club like Farense can never have a player on this wages, at least in their current state.

This is the 2nd group of players and this are the ones that have longer contracts with the club.
There are also a couple players coming back from loan though.

And this is the squad we currently have for next season.
I don't think I have to say this but we definitely need to find some players to fill the gaps.

That can be easier said than done. We have a very tight budget to work with and even though we are freeing up a lot of wage budget it can still be though to find some good players.

I'll try my best to get as many good players on a free but if I can't I'll also try to loan in some players.

Our best player is our goalkeeper Ricardo Velho and he actually looks very solid. He gets even better when we think we'll be playing 2nd tier football next season so we should be fine on goal.

In addition to Ricardo we also have Tomás Ribeiro on the center of our defense. He just joined Farense in real life after Vitória SC sold him for free.
Very bad business from Vitória, but we got a very good defender for the future. He is wanted though so we'll see how the summer goes.

Our top 3 closes with Cláudio Falcão, a 30 year old defensive midfielder who also looks solid for this level. He can also play as a CB if needed.

Transfer Plans

With most of the players leaving in July we need to find some replacements.
We'll need a RB, a LB, 3 midfielders and 2 wingers.

This is the minimum, if we sell anyone we'll have to replace them too.
Won't be an easy summer, but let's see how it goes!​

 

[misterioBean]

September 2024
The End of the Transfer Window

Transfers Out

As I predicted, it was a very difficult summer for us.
We lost Álex Bermejo, one of our best players, to Estoril Praia after they paid out his release clause of 475k.
After that we started getting a lot of first team players asking to leave because they wanted to play in a better league, so we ended up losing Lucas Áfrico and Cláudio Falcão as well.

Lucas Áfrico was not a first team player so I'm not too mad about it, but we also got a transfer request from Tomás Ribeiro and if anyone paid good money for him and he ended up leaving us we would have to find someone to replace him as our main defender.

Thankfully we were able to keep the main core of the team and some players who were initially leaving renewed their contracts as well.
Transfers In

The first player to join us during the summer was the LB Kiki who was at the end of his contract with AVS.
Despite being 30 years old, he gives us a lot of quality on the left side of our defense.

We identified our midfield as one of the primary palces to strenghten so I had to look at the free market to find some decent players.
Anselmo was the first to join. At 38 years old he adds a lot of versatility to our team and he's still very decent for a 2nd tier side.

Just a few days after signign Anselmo, we welcomed Juba Oukaci.
The 29 year old comes in as our main playmaker for the season.

We also needed some wingers to fill in the gaps left by previous players so when I saw Gervinho was interested in joining on a 5k/m wage I pulled the trigger and signed him as a backup player.

The only loan player we brought was the 21 year old RB Vinícius Tobias.
He will be our starting RB for the season.

When Cláudio Falcão handed his transfer request I had to look for another DM to replace him.
There's where Cheikhou Kouyaté comes in.
Nothing crazy here but he will be sharing gaming time with Anselmo during the season.

The last midfielder to join us was Larry Bwalya. He comes in mainly to play as a B2B but can also play very well as the playmaker in the miedfield.

And lastly we signed Santiago García to replace Lucas Áfrico as our backup CB.

The Final Squad

With all the players we signed we were able to get to a point where all our tactic roles have enough options.
We won't be playing any European football so we don't really need a lot of depth because our schedule won't be as full.

The signings we brought in seemed to work out to the press as they see us as the main candidates to lift the league title this season.

However, our form at the beginning of the season was not very good.
We only won 2 of the 4 games we played so far and we didn't even face anyone very strong yet.

After 4 games we are 7th in the table and Boavista and Feirense have won every game they played so far.
This won't be an easy challenge, but let's see what we can make out of this poor start.​

 

[misterioBean]

January 2025
Tight Title Challenge

Before showing our progress in the first half of the season, I'll just show this because we signed Giovanni in October on a free to replace Gervinho after him getting multiple injuries back to back.

Our season so far has been solid.
After losing to Firense at the beginning of the season we only lost one more game against Marítimo and drew another two.

Sad to be eliminated from the cup against a lower league side though but I used our 2nd best eleven so I was aware of that possibility.

After 16 games there's a very heated title challenge going on.
Every team from top of the league Feirense all the way until 6th place Penafiel are fighting for a place at the promotion places.

However, it seems like our main rivals for the title will be Feirense and Académico de Viseu even though they weren't considered as one of the promotion favourites.

February 2025
End of the Winter Transfer Window

Transfer Business

As soon as the transfer window opened, Shaktar recalled Vinícius Tobias from his loan spell.
They were not happy that he was not playing as a complete wing back and when their manager spoke with me I told him I wasn't going to change my tactic to accommodate his demands.

That being said, we were forced to look for a replacement and that came as another loanee.
Marco Palestra will take the place left by Vinicius.

I felt like our defensive midfield was not good enough, so we signed Josip Radosevic on a free.
He become's our top earner at the club, but I think it is justified.

Lastly, we brought in another loaned player, this time for the midfield.
I was feeling like Oukaci was performing very well so I wanted a better option for that role.

Kees Smit comes in to fill that purpose.

January ended with a couple of draws and a couple of wins.
Luckily, we didn't lose points to Académico Viseu or Feirense so we kept our title challenge alive.

After beating Feirense, we climbed to 2nd in the league table, only one point behind Académico Viseu.
The race for a promotion spot is still very heated as well.

There's only 14 games left in the season and if we want to win the title we can't slip much more.
The main goal is to get promotion so we just need to finish in the 3 top places but ideally we want automatic promotion.

Let's see how the rest of the season goes.​

 

[misterioBean]

May 2025
Title Challenge

After a good first half of the season, we needed to ensure we kept playing well in the remainer of the season to get back to the Primeira Liga.

However, we dropped quite a bit of points since January, which didn't help us in pursuing the title.

Even though we didn't perform as well as we should, the teams around us also dropped points and we got to the last game of the season on the 1st position, only needing a draw in our last game to be crowned champions and get promoted to Portugal's top flight.

We would have to face Académico Viseu, who were in 2nd just two point behind us.

Despite our efforts, we fell short in the end and were unable to get the win we wanted.

We ended our first season with a promotion but failed to win the league, so we only managed to complete half of the objectives for this season.

Regardless, it was a good season and now we need to prepare ourselves for the new season at Primeira Liga.
Our team will take a bit of a beatdown thoug. We have two players retiring, another two leaving after their loan spells end and we have some others with interest from better clubs.

I expect another harsh summer for our team, but we only need to avoid relegation.
Either way, we will be leaving Farense at the end of next season.​

 

[misterioBean]

July 2025
Start of the Rebuild

Like I showed in the last post, this is the squad we have to go into the next season.
Considering the level we need to avoid relegation from the Primeira Liga, this is nowhere near good enough.

Our finances are not good as well, so we won't be able to go after a lot of good players from other teams in the league.
Once again, we need to look into the free market.

We didn't lose many players for now. The only first team player we lost was Jaiminho, who didn't want to renew his contract and left on a free. All the others were good assets to have in the 2nd division, but not good enough to help us in the next level.

The first thing we did was renewing Kees Smit's loan deal for another season.
Last season he scored 4 goals and provided another 4 in just 15 games for us, getting an average rating of 7.29.
This was enough for me to want him for the upcomign season and he accepted the challenge of helping us achieve a place outside the relegation fight.

We then signed Diogo Travassos from Sporting. He was available on a free transfer and we needed a decent RB.
He may not be the best around, but he's decent enough and still has potential.

We also signed Paulo Eduardo from Santa Clara as we needed more depth in the CB position.
He was happy to take a backup role in the team and didn't ask for a lot of wages so I consider this a solid signing.

The best free signing of the window so far was the LB Adrían Marin from SC Braga.
He instantly improves our starting 11 and will hopefully get a lot of assists with his 14 crossing.

Another backup signing comes in in Juan Munõz who ended his contract with União de Leiria.
Nothing fancy, just offers us another option in the attack.

I'm changing our tactics slightly this season. I'm considering playing with a BWM as a DM and I wanted another option for that role.
Omar Arjoune is that option and even though his wages are a bit high he's good enough to justify them.

We then splashed a bit of our cash to sign Óscar Rivas from Vitória SC. He was transfer listed and is a very decent CB so I was happy to pay the 325k they were asking for.

The last signing we made so far was the Brazilian winger Luiz Fernando.
He's a good player and to be honest he's our best winger right now.

I also went and got Canizares from our 2nd team.
We are fighting with each other since I joined Farense. I wanted to sell him and he got mad so I demoted him and he played the entirity of last season for our U23's.
I'll try to sell him again this summer.

Other than that, the team is starting to take shape. I'm still looking for some more options for the midfield and also for the winger position because that's where we lack quality the most.

Despite being a newly promoted team, the media expect us to finish 11th in the table this season which is a very good sign, but we all know how misleading this previews can be so let's not take any rash conclusions.

I'll be back at the end of the transfer window with more updates.​

 

[misterioBean]

September 2025
Interesting Start

Transfers Out

Like I imagined, there was a big overhaul of the squad this summer.
We started off by losing Marco Moreno, who was an important players for us last year on the CB position.
We already replaced him with Óscar Rivas and we won a lot of money with this sale.

We then sold a lot of squad players like Paulo Victor, Anselmo, Baldé and Oukaci. Made good money with those sales.
I also finally sold Canizares for 300k which was not that bad considering he hasn't played for a year.

A player I wasn't expecting to lose was Luiz Felipe, another GK. After selling him we were left with Ricardo Velho and no one as his backup.

Transfers In

I thought we needed a better, faster striker.
When looking through the free market I found Laura and I liked him for his speed and finishing, even if he doesn't have a lot of composure in front of goal.

We also signed the Portuguese winger João Camacho to improve oru quality on the wing.
Despite being 32 years old he can still help us this season. His physicals are still good too.

Even after signing Óscar Rivas, he came in mainly to replace Raúl Silva who retired last season.
After Marcos Moreno left we needed to sign a backup for Rivas.

Frank Boya was also available on a free and I specially enjoy his physicality but his technicals are also nice.
If we fancy it we may even try a 3 CB formation in the future...

Then we signed Bonke Innocent on a free to be our main B2B in the midfield.
He is an improvement over Bwalya but they will share game time this season.

Another winger joined the club to get our wing quality even higher.
Hélder Ferreira ended his contract in Armenia and his wage demands are way cheaper than most of the new signings.
Solid signing overall.

Another Portuguese who accepted very cheap wages was the playmaker João Novais.
Despite his physicals being atrocious, he makes up with his technicals and mentals.

Sidy Sarr comes in as an emergency backup.
He can play everywhere in the midfield so he's a decent asset to this squad.

The last signing we made was a replacement for Luiz Felipe.
We signed another Portuguese in Dani Figueira for 400k.

He's decent enough to be Ricardo's backup and was also cheap.

Start to the Season

This has been nothing like I expected.
We changed our playstyle to be more of a counter-attacking team and so far it has been working wonders.

We even squeezed in a draw against Braga who should have beaten us easily.

This amazing start sent us to the 4th position after 4 games but obviously this is just the beginning and in January the table will look very different.

Let's see if we can secure maintenance in the Primeira Liga shall we...​

 

[FancyPantsCam]

Bonke Innocent is an essential signing on name alone, if only he'd declared for Norway he'd have a cornerstone of my save.

 

[misterioBean]

Bonke Innocent is an essential signing on name alone, if only he'd declared for Norway he'd have a cornerstone of my save.

Took him a while to start playing well to be completely honest but right now he's finally performing how I expected him to

 

[misterioBean]

January 2025
What's Happening?

We now reached the winter transfer window and I have no idea what's happening.
After that amazing start to the season we had we just kept going and getting valuable points in most of games we played.

Up until now we only lost once for the league and that was against FC Porto which was expected.
However, we are also beating teams we shouldn't like Gil Vicente for instance.

This amazing first half of the season sees us sitting in the 4th position in the league in our first year.
We surely don't have the team to be where we are and it probably helps that teams like Braga and Vitória are underperforming but even that shouldn't be enough to justify our current placement.

February 2026
It Finallyt Happened

There was only one player leaving us in the winter transfer market.

Fran Delgado left for Sporting Espinho for 130k.
Probably more than he was worth so it was a nice sale.

Transfers In
We signed two players in January to try to fill in some gaps in the squad.

The first player we signed was Emre Mor.
He's a well known player around the FM community so nothing much to say about him.

He is very good but he does have one problem: he's always injured.
I mean he joined us in the 8th of January and got a 3 week injury just a week later.

The only other player to join us was the RB Fabien Centonze.
He comes as a backup for Travassos and to replace Fran Delgado but he's way better than him so it was a good signing for the short term.

Despite being on an amazing run of form, we finally lost more points as we face back to back Lisbon powerhouses.
8 goals conceded and 0 scored in two games was not good at all but I didn't expect us to win anyway.
After those games we got back to our good form and even beat Vitória SC.

That means we were able to keep the 4th place despite losing those two games and this can truly be an historical season for the Faro Lions.​

 

[leckuno]

Question is if you manage to hold onto European football with them, are you going to be able to walk away?

 

[misterioBean]

Question is if you manage to hold onto European football with them, are you going to be able to walk away?

I was questioning that myself but I took the decision to start this challenge and I wasn't really thinking about changing it after only two seasons so I announced that I was resigning at the end of the season. That way there was no going back.

 

[misterioBean]

June 2026
What a Season

The 2nd half of the season didn't go as good as the 1st did, but considering who we are it still was a very good showing of what we are capable of and that our tactic really worked wonders.

In case you are woondering since I didn't share it the tactic I used the entire season was this very simple 4-3-3 focused on counter-attacking.

There's nothing special here, no individual instructions.

Against all the odds, we took Farense to the 4th place in the league and European football just 2 seasons after getting promoted.

We also left a pretty decent squad to the next manager.
However, there are some of these players who won't be here for too long.

Ricardo Velho told me he would be exploring his options at the end of hsi current contract and then 2 months later delivered a transfer request, Kees Smit will leave after his 2 year loan spell at the club, Ângelo Neto will retire soon, Bwalya and João Novais didn't sign new deals for the club and will be leaving and there are still players like Sidy Sarr and Juan Munoz who want to leave for more game time.

Despite the historical Eurepean qualification, the club's finances are not good.
The projection, however, is for them to get better since there will be European money coming in.
However, it probably won't be enough to bring in some decent signings anyway.

What Now?
After two very successful years at Farense, we now leave the club seeking for a new challenge.
There are some good clubs available to us.

We have three 2nd tier sides looking for a new manager and also newly relegated side Académico de Viseu, who beat us to the 2nd league title last season.

We already applied to all these jobs, so now we just need to see where we'll end up.​

 

[MT55]

Great achievement to get Farense into Europe. Will you be keeping an eye on them next year to see how they get on?

Any preference on what club you would prefer to join? (if all offer you a job) Boavista would be an interesting choice.

 

[misterioBean]

Great achievement to get Farense into Europe. Will you be keeping an eye on them next year to see how they get on?

Any preference on what club you would prefer to join? (if all offer you a job) Boavista would be an interesting choice.

Thanks!

The answer for the first question is simple: yes I will. In fact I intend to keep an eye on every tem I end up managing throughout this save.

The answer for the second question is a bit more complicated though, teh reason being you can make strong points in favor of any of the teams available.

1. Académico de Viseu just got relegated so they will most likely be favourites to get promotion yet again. If I want to end this challenge as fast as I can, they are the obvious choice;

2. Leixões is a team with a good history in the Primeira Liga but ever since they got relegated in 2010 they never got back to Portugal's top flight, so gettign them there can be an interesting challenge.

3. Boavista is one of the only 2 teams who were able to win the Primeira Liga outside from the Big 3. However, this was in 2021 and 25 years later they find themselves struggling to get back to the top flight and their best finnish ever since they were crowned champions was a 6th place.

4. Alverca has never reached the top of the Portuguese football piramid. They are also a club based in Lisbon, a region full of other teams which can easily beat them. It's always a good challenge to get a team like this to the top flight.

Even though all of them present us good challenges, I already signed for a new club, but won't be updating anything until tomorrow. I can leave you with a hint though: this team got relegated to the regional divisions after a fraud scandal some years ago...

 

[misterioBean]

July 2026
New Season, New Club

The search for a new club was hard.
The applications we sent to the clubs were all accepted and I got interviewed by every team I applied to and also another one.

If you know me you probably know how much I was tempted to accept this.
However, with the challenge in mind, I rejected the interview.

One I didn't reject though, was the opportunity to manage Boavista FC.
After almost a month after the initial application, we were announced as their new manager.
I welcome you, to Boavista FC.

Boavista FC is a club with a lot of history in Portugal.
For starters, it is one of the only two clubs to ever win the Primeira Liga title outside the big 3. This title was in 2001, and 25 years later they find themelves in the 2nd tier struggling to get back to Portugal's top flight.

They also have 5 Taça de Portugal titles in their cabin, which is always an amazing accomplishment.
We play our home games at the Estádio do Bessa. which is a decent sized stadium in Portugal.

The Squad

Well, this doesn't look good does it?
We need to basically rebuild the entire squad as tehre's very few players that we can actually use if we want to fight for promotion this season.

The best player in our squad is the 33 year old CB Rodrigo Abascal.
To be fair is pretty decent and should give us good defensive stability.

According to our staff, Sabino is the 2nd best player and is another CB.
He doesn't look as good though.

Our main offensive reference is the winger Costinha.
He does look good for this level and should be a good option for the wing.

The club's finances are what you expect from a 2nd tier side.
We do have a good transfer budget though, but I probably won't be using much of it.

I'm expecting a very busy transfer window at Bessa, lots of gaps to fill and lots of players who need to be replaced, so let's see what we can do.​

 

[MT55]

Good luck with Boavista! They were the most interested choice for me. Looking forward to seeing how you do.

 

[misterioBean]

September 2026
Extensive Team Building

We reached the end of the transfer window and let me just tell you... it was absolutely chaotic.
Just to show how big the rebuild was, I'll just say 13 players left the club this summer... and 15 others joined.
Buckle up, this will be a big one.

Transfers Out

As you can see, there was an extensive cleaning job at our club.
If you remember the squad overview I showed in the last post you already know we were very lackluster in terms of quality.

Well, if we want to fight for promotion that can't be the case.
I tried to sell everyone but some of them had to go on loan because no teams came in with bids.

Transfers In

Now for the fun part, let's see the players who joined the club shall we?

First player to join was Chiheb Abidi from Nacional. He was loaned at the club last season and we decided to make the deal permanent after a decent his decent season.

We then signed another playmaker. Raúl Blanco was also loaned at the club last season and also had a very good season, or half season since he joined in January. Anyway, he's now a Boavista player and now we have two very good looking playmakers at the club.

One of the positions I was very concerned about was the GK.
So when I saw Samuel Soares was available and willing to join, I was very happy.
We should be okay on goal now.

We keep improving our midfield with the signing of Samuel Justo.
I tried to sign him for Farense back in the first season but Sporting weren't willing to loan him out again.
Noe he's joined Boavista on a permanent deal.

As you can probably tell, the midfield was a fulcral point in our agenda this transfer window.
Dudu joined us to for the DM role.

We also signed another GK just so we have a good backup for Soares in case he gets injured or gets himself a red card.
Mateusão looks very good and he's happy to be his backup.

We were lacking fire power at front, so we signed 28 year old striker Kikas, who was available on a free.
I'm hoping he's good enough to tear this league apart.

We also signed a better looking backup for him in Ricardo Rodrigues.
Despite not being as good he should give us a good option when we need to rest Kikas.

Our best RB, Tiago Manso, came to us saying he wanted to leave.
He left and we needed to sign a replacement. That replacement is Tobias Fernandez.
He cost us 40k to sign but he's better than our other option so I was happy paying this.

For the other side of the defense, we signed Martim Marques, a young LB willing to prove himself in Portugal after 3 years in Switzerland.

We went on the loan market to sign another option for our midfield.
Rodrigo Duarte looks very interesting and should give us coverage for the midfield positions.

We then went back to our last team to rescue a player who we didn't really use much over there.
Sidy Sarr joins us for 54k and will most likely be our main DM.

Datro Fofana joins us on a free after being a whole year without a club. I wanted to sign him for Farense but we didn't have the money. Since we have a little more here at Boavista and we needed a better winger, I decided to bring him in.

We are almost at the end, but not yet.
Tiago Dias is a very versatile player who can play everywhere at the left side of the field.
However, he'll be mostly playing from the right wing as an inverted winger.

The last player to join us (thank god) was Tiago Chico Lamba
He's a good young CB who adds a lot of quality to our back 4.

Final Squad

After everything that went down in the summer, this is our final team.
It's looking miles better than before, but the question remains:

Is it good enough to take us to the Primeira Liga?

Schedule and League Table

Well, so far so good I guess.
4 in 4 is a very good record and just keep in mind we scored 16 goals in 4 games and only conceded 2.

It's looking good for now as we top the table after 4 games.
Can we keep the good form going until January?

Let's find out!​

 

[MT55]

Great start to the season. 16 goals after 4 games is impressive.