Football At The Coliseum

[FM_TNSSO]

Football At The Coliseum

Most of you opening this story are fully expecting to see some sort of football career in Rome, going by the title, but that's not the case. In fact, this is a career story involving Getafe Club de Futbol - a Spanish professional football club based in Getafe which is a city in the community of Madrid.

The club currently plays it's football in La Liga, the top tier in Spain, and the 16,500 capacity Estadio Coliseum is their home. It's an open air stadium which was inaugrated in 1998 and seats 14,400 with the remaining capacity made up from standing. It's frequently a sell out for their local games against giants of Spanish football Real and Atletico Madrid, but attendances can vary outside of these games. So that is task number 1 of this save - bring an entertaining brand of football to Getafe that the fans want to see, in order to steal some of those fans away from the 'bigger' local clubs.

In terms of the history of Getafe FC, they were founded in 1946 and then refounded in 1983, with the club playing in the top tier for the first time in 2004. They've played only one season outside of La Liga since (in 2016/17), so have firmly cemented themselves amongst Spain's best. Despite that, it's fair to say they mainly make up the numbers in the highest division, finishing in the bottom half for 11 of those seasons and only finishing in the top 8 on three occasions, never above 5th. Task number 2 - Break into the top 4 in La Liga.

Getafe have a very dusty old trophy cabinet with no major trophies in it at all, although they have reached the Copa del Rey final back in 2007 and 2008 losing to Sevilla and Valencia on those occasions. Task number 3 - win the Copa del Rey.

As well as choosing Getafe for my career mode for their stadium name, I did have another motive. I really like their home shirt, whilst their 2nd and 3rd kits are also decent looking kits. I mean, you have to look good when you're playing good football right!

And the facilities I'll be kicking things off with are not too shabby either, but there is room to improve them over time. Task number 4 - improve facilities to world class level to compete with elite clubs.

Now Getafe's owner is actually listed as a legend at the club and his story is inspiring. Angel Torres Sanchez is a Spanish businessman who lost his father to a road accident at the age of 14, and he was orphaned at 18. He initially worked as a mechanic in Getafe, when he lost his job whilst striking. He was then fired from a factory in Fuenlabrada in solidarity with another employee whose service was also terminated. In the 1980's, he made his name in the construction industry during a boom in the expansion of Madrid's commuter towns and sold off his interests in order to invest in bars, bingo halls and nightclubs across Getafe. It was in 2002 that he convinced by the town's mayor to purchase the football club. Task number 5 - become a club legend like Torres.

The longer term task 6 of this career is to overthrow the dominance of Barcelona and Real Madrid, two powerhouses of world football. They've won 20 of the last 25 La Liga titles between them, but before I can even lay a glove on them I'll have to better the likes of Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao, Villarreal, Sevilla and Valencia...no easy task in itself!

The other thing that is going to make it incredibly hard to overcome the top teams in the country is the La Liga salary cap. Ours currently sits at £500k per week and each team's is calculated by their turnover/income year on year. So the likes of Barca and Real Madrid who bring in so much more money than all the other teams in the league are well positioned to stay at the top of Spanish football as their massive wage budgets give them the opportunities to sign much better players than everyone else. However, I don't see this as a negative...I see it as all part of the challenge, so let's get on our way.

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[FM_TNSSO]

Chapter 1
The Squad

As I meet my squad, I am pleased to see an abundance of Spanish talent in the ranks and only 7 players across the first team are not of the home nationality. This is something I'd love to continue through my career and although I won't exclusively sign Spanish players, I will look to bring through Spanish youth. I am quick to notice that I do have a bunch of players at mixed stages of their careers, with six players under 21 and six over 30 years old. Going by my assistant manager's initial star ratings, we seem to be pretty strong across the defensive half of the pitch but could be lacking talent particularly in attacking midfield.

We might be struggling for creativity, but what we do have is a decent striker in Borja Mayoral. In fact, my assistant rates the ex Real Madrid forward as the best player in the squad. He did only bag 8 goals in 35 league games last season though and I'll be trying to get a better return out of him than that, assuming I can hold on to him as Saudi club Al-Nassr are sniffing around him.

Now I might have a lack of creative options out wide in midfield, but through the middle, we do have Luis Milla. The 29 year old Spaniard is a player to build a team around for the first couple of seasons at least.

We've got a quality left back in Diego Rico as well, who will be bombing on from the back to offer threat down the left side. With an excellent work rate and determination, combined with the ability to whip in a decent cross, I'll be expecting a fair amount of assists from him.

I'm also pretty well covered between the sticks with David Soria as my number 1 keeper. He's been at the club for a few seasons now and is a commanding presence in the team who can give our defence plenty of confidence in the man backing them up.

Talking of the defence, at the heart of it will be Omar Alderete. The Paraguayan international is without doubt my best current option at the club at centre back and I'm hoping with his height, heading and jumping ability he will offer me a threat from set pieces in attack as well.

I do have £4 million to improve the squad, although I'm not sure how good a player that buys you in La Liga if I'm honest and the loan market might be a better bet for me in my first season in charge. However, I might have to skim a bit off that wage bill first as we are currently overspending by more than £10k per week.

There is a possibility I may clash with the fans initially as they want to see a direct style of football and that's not in line with what I've created. Hopefully we can get some results under our belts early on and win them over.

This is the tactic I have come up with, which is solely focused on keeping the ball with a patient approach, keeping the ball and carving out opportunities as we defend as a solid unit and then move forward up the pitch together as one.

My targets as far as the board are concerned are to have Getafe competing in European competition within the next 4-5 years. I love their ambition.

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[FM_TNSSO]

Chapter 2
A Solid Start & Transfer Deadline Day Sees Two Arrive
Saturday 2nd September 2023

Pre season saw us go unbeaten through 6 friendlies and was capped off with a huge 8-0 win against lower league Spanish opposition in La Nurcia. The tactic seems to be working well and the lads have adapted to my style pretty quickly, although the proof will be in the pudding when we start playing competitive games.

Through watching the tactic and trying different tweaks in pre season, I have adapted the tactic ever so slightly. We have changed to an attacking style, focused the play through the middle of the pitch and added counter attack.

My first competitive game of the season will see us host Real Valladolid, a game which we will be slight favourites to win.

And that's probably because they are tipped by the bookies to get relegated this year. As far as we go, mid table obscurity is what is expected and if we can break into the top half it will be an achievement. There is no surprise to see a media dream 11 entirely made up of Real Madrid and Barcelona players....and Samuel Lino (Atletico).

It was a simple case of pure domination in the opening game, winning 3-1 and having over 70% of the possession. I can't quite tell if we were really good, Valladolid were really bad, or a combination of both. Great to see Borja kicking off his season with 2 goals, which means after 1 game he already has 25% of the amount of goals he scored last season!

I've made my first signing of the window as well. My scouting team have been on the lookout for a new centre back for me, not because I am unhappy with my first choice starters, but because I just felt I needed additional cover as I play three at the back. Malang Sarr is the player in amongst all their recommendations that caught my eye as he has some solid enough all round attributes and was available from Lens at a bargain price of just £550k.

Sarr made his debut from the bench in our next game at Valencia and helped us on the way to a very impressive victory. I felt like we could definitely give them a game, but I didn't expect to walk all over them the way we did! An incredible performance!

After demolishing Valencia, I didn't expect us to have any trouble beating Leganes, but this was a local derby and we all know what strange affects that can have on games. Despite the tension of the magnitude of the rivalry, we just about came through it with the 3 points to make it 3 wins from 3.

It's been a great start to the season for Borja Mayoral, with 4 goals in his opening 3 appearances, and that's enough to bag him the first Player Of The Month award.

He does need some competition for his place up front though and that is why I have turned to Atalanta's Malian striker, El Bilal Toure, who joins us on loan for the season. The 22 year old forward signed for Atalanta from Almeria where he scored 7 goals in 21 appearances and the fact he knows La Liga is a plus point and factored in my decision to bring him in. We'll pay 60% of his wages, plus a £40k per month loan fee for the season, with an optional buy clause of £25 million.

Another loan signing that came in on transfer deadline day was Ramon Terrats who will bolster my options in central midfield. We will pay all of his wages throughout the loan period along with a £20k per month loan fee. He joins from Villarreal with a point to prove that he can be a regular player in their lineup.

To make the deals happen, I had to adjust the budgets moving most of our transfer kitty into the wage budget. We also allowed some of our wingers to go out on loan to get them off the wage bill (as I don't use wide midfielders in my formation).

Despite upping our wage budget, we are still miles off the top three wage spenders in the league, with Barcelona and Real Madrid both spending at least 6 times what we spend!!

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[FM_TNSSO]

Chapter 3
Real and Barca's League And We're All Just Playing In It
Sunday 22nd October 2023

Real Sociedad were definitely going to provide our biggest test in the league so far this year. However, the game did result in another 3 points for us! Our first goal came with a stroke of luck as Diego Rico crossed in from the left side and the ball ricocheted off Elustondo and into the back of his own net. This left Sociedad chasing the game and as they threw men forward, we were able to catch them on the counter attack for Juanmi to seal the win in stoppage time with his 3rd goal of the season.

That leaves only two teams in La Liga with 100% records after the opening four games, us and Real Madrid. And we go to the Bernabeau next!

Well there is a massive gulf in class between the two sides at this stage and we were ripped apart by a certain Kylian Mbappe who we simply couldn't deal with. Ouch, this result will hurt, but will now be a test of character to see how my lads react for me.

What a way to bounce back from our first defeat! We absolutely batter Real Betis, making full use of our set pieces scoring three times from corners. Great result!

Unfortunately, we couldn't back it up with a win at Villarreal. However, we didn't do ourselves an injustice here and arguably deserved something from the game. We can take the positives from this and move on.

We are a very different proposition at home than we are away, and we proved that by smashing 6 goals past Espanyol in our next match. An unbelievable effort from the lads and again a great way to bounce back immediately from defeat. Borja picked up his first hat trick of the season as he was unstoppable up top!

After a performance like that, it's no surprise that five of our players made the team of the week!

We hadn't yet drawn a game this season, but that has now changed as we finish up 2-2 at Alaves. Twice, our right back Allan Nyom gave us the lead, but both times we let is slip and have to settle for a single point.

The squad disappeared off for the October international break (well 5 of them did anyway), with the highlight being Borja getting his first cap for Spain at the age of 27!

Scoring 7 goals in 6 appearances so far this season and appearing on the international stage is raising Borja's stock across Europe and I might just have to fend off some interest in the January transfer window as Newcastle, Liverpool and Al-Nassr have all been scouting our front man.

He couldn't do the business for us against Las Palmas though as we record our worst result of the season so far. This is absolutely a game I'd have expected us to win and to not even really compete throughout was bitterly disappointing.

Despite that defeat, we do remain 3rd in the league though and things are still pretty positive, assuming we can rebound from that defeat OK. But already looking at the points tallys, it would seem this is Real Madrid and Barcelona's league and we're all just playing in it.

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