Gibraltar: Taking a Pub Team To The Top With Bruno’s Magpies

[Hampus Silverholt]

We’ve defied expectations by getting to the Europa Conference League 3rd Qualifying Round and heading into the first leg against Rijeka we were given 25% chance of winning, which was far more than I thought it’d be!

The plan was to sit back and hit them on the counter. We had just 33% possession in the match but the plan worked perfectly.

Again, we were fortunate to win but I could not care less!

So a draw in the second leg was all we needed to pull off the most unlikeliest of victories and send us to the 4th qualifying round, something that was beyond our wildest dreams at the start of the season.

Instead of a draw, we went one better.

Utterly remarkable.

On-loan Leicester striker Kian Pennant is already a Magpies hero and has played in just 6 games for the club!

His first-half hattrick put us into the 4th Qualifying Round where Georgians Dinamo Tbilisi await us.

Their star players aren’t anything special and the way we’re playing I honestly think we can beat them. If we can beat Molde and Rijeka then I’m certainly not afraid of them.

Lincoln Red Imps are also at the same stage of the Conference League after dropping down from the Champions League and Europa League qualifying rounds.

So we could have 2 Gibraltarian teams in a European group stage if all goes well.

Can we achieve the unthinkable and get into the Europa Conference League group stage? Just 2 games against Dinamo Tbilisi stand in our way.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

I never would’ve thought that we’d make it to the 4th qualifying round of the Conference League just 3 seasons into the save.

But here we are and incredibly we were favourites for the 1st leg!

It was a whirlwind first leg in Gibraltar, in what was a tale of the 2 penalties.

Tbilisi scored theirs but Nya Kirby missed an opportunity to put us 2 up from the spot in the first half, and we had to rely on substitute Kelvin Morgan to salvage a draw for us.

That result just made the second leg even more huge.

Getting to the group stage would transform the club financially and we travelled to the 54,000-seater national stadium in Georgia hoping for one more victory.

But unfortunately, it just was not meant to be.

I suppose getting to the group stage of the Conference League before winning Gibraltar Football League was too much to ask.

Red Imps ended up making it to the group stage in the end. I’m extremely envious but it will also do Gibraltar no harm when it comes to coefficient points.

It was gutting to go out after victories against superior sides Molde and Rijeka in the previous rounds, but the pain was quickly forgotten when I saw how much money we made by getting to the 4th qualifying round.

£700k is game-changing for the level we’re at and for a brief period we had a £1m in the bank.

Which we then immediately spent on upgrading the training facilities at the club as we try and build the foundations for future years of success.

There were plenty of yellow cards in the 2nd leg against Tbilisi meaning that there will be lots of players suspended for the next match in Europe, something which could come back to bite us next season.

That was it in terms of European exploits for one more year, so attention turned to the ever-elusive Gibraltar Football League title.

We managed to make one more signing, goalkeeper Dayle Coleing on loan from Red Imps, who helps massively with squad registration rules this season.

Remember no matter how good a squad we build, we’ve got to have 5 Gibraltar-trained players in the playing XI at all times.

We’ve also played in the Pepe Reyes Cup - the Gibraltar equivalent of the Community Shield in England - during an international break where most of our Gibraltarian players were unavailable.

That made the game a bit of a farce as we still had to have 5 Gibraltar trained players in the playing team, meaning that we had to give debuts to 4 players who will very likely never play for the club again.

We still managed to win though to claim our first trophy in charge of Magpies - it was even enough for us to get into the Gibraltar Hall of Fame!

Despite beating them in the Pepe Reyes Cup, we’re still not favourites to beat Lincoln Red Imps to the title this season.

I hope that win is a sign of things to come this season. Nothing else will do other than a first Gibraltar Football League title.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Despite the impressive run in Europe at the start of the season, we’re still a semi-pro side and the board aren’t going to agree to us going professional anytime soon.

Our wage budget is still only the 3rd highest in the league, with Lincoln Red Imps spending 3x as much as us.

We’re also now getting to the point where the players who have been at the club for a few years are gaining Gibraltrian citizenship.

First up was Nya Kirby, who has been with the club for 2 years and can apparently be called up for the national team straight away.

Whereas Argentinian Aaron Reartes has gained citizenship but still has over 200 days to go until he is eligible for Gibraltar so I’m not sure how the whole thing works.

We have to wait until the next set of international fixtures in March to find out.

The form in the Conference League carried over to the league as we’ve broken the consecutive wins record at the club.

In fact, such is our dominance, we’ve played every team once in the league and won all 10 games.

That included a crucial win over Red Imps to put us on the front foot for the season. They’re still only 3 points behind though and we have to play them twice so it could all change still.

Gibraltarian striker Kevin Morgan has been phenomenal for us so far and had as many goals in 4 matches this season as he did in 17 last season!

He continued that form throughout the first half of the campaign, totalling 19 goals in 10 games.

The fact he was trained in Gibraltar makes him doubly important and means that loan striker Kian Pennant has returned to his parent club Leicester.

He played less than 15 games for the club but his 6 goals in the Europa Conference League make him a Magpies icon in my eyes.

We have still boosted the striker department though with one eye on next season. Free agent Ruben Enri has joined the club and will likely be first choice ahead of Morgan in the European games next season.

Another signing I am really excited about is Joe Anderson, a big upgrade on the other defenders we have at the club.

Starting right back Darnell Fisher on the other hand will be leaving in the summer. He was not going to turn down Mansfield trebling his current wage so we need to be on the lookout for a right back in the next few months.

Now we’re halfway through the season, the Gibraltar Football League splits into 2 groups as we face the top 5 sides twice in our remaining 10 matches.

We have 2 crucial games against Red Imps which will almost certainly determine if we can win the league title for the very first time.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

This save is about how far we can take Magpies but also how much we can improve Gibraltar as a footballing nation too.

We currently have 6 players in the Gibraltar national squad but there is still no place for new Gibraltarian citizen Kirby, who has yet to fully commit to the national team.

Gibraltar are now up to 180th in the world rankings, still being outranked by sides such as Nepal, Puerto Rico, Guam and Bangladesh - but now ahead of the impressive Seychelles and Samoa…

Our main rivals Lincoln Red imps finished 30th out of 36 in the new Europa Conference League group stage format, which was above Dinamo Tbilisi who knocked us out of the competition.

And it was Red Imps who faced next up in the Gibraltar Football League, where a 1-1 draw was more than acceptable as it kept us 3 points ahead of them.

We’re far superior to other teams in the league now, so much so that we’re smashing teams 5 or 6 nil most games.

So you just knew there would be one game where we messed up.

That was at home to Manchester 64 in a ridiculous 4-4 draw, with Kelvin Morgan bailing us out yet again wtht a hat trick.

His form has been unbelievable this campaign. 29 goals in just 15 games smashed the current record in the league and there are still 5 games to go!

He’s also up there in terms of number of assists, which is being dominated by Ateef Konate arguably the best player in the Gibraltarian league.

The unexpected draw means we dropped points, but we’re still one point clear at the top of the table ahead of Red Imps.

It’s a 20-game season and we have just 5 games remaining, so our next one against Red Imps will almost certainly decides who wins the league.

Can we claim our first league title with Magpies?​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The biggest game of the league campaign was upon as we faced Lincoln Red Imps in a title decider.

A draw would do, but instead we went one better with a 1-0 victory.

Their ex-player Morgan scored the solitary goal for us to get his 30th league goal in what has been an unbelievable season for him.

That was surely that in terms of the Gibraltar Football League, all we needed was 5 points from our remaining 3 games against inferior opposition.

So it came to an away game against St Josephs where a win would seal our first league title.

And we cruised to a victory against them.

It’s our first title as manager and Magpies’ first ever league title in their short history, hopefully there are many more to come!

That also means that we qualify for the Champions League next season, where we enter in the 1st Qualfying Round stage.

All that was left for us was to play in what was becoming the annual tradition of the Rock Cup final against Lincoln Red Imps.

And we were absolutely ruthless, scoring 4 goals in the first half to win the Rock Cup for the second season in a row.

So it ended up being an unbeaten season for us as well as a clean sweep of all the domestic trophies available, not bad for a side that’s still semi-pro!

Our young squad have performed exceptionally well this season and it will be interesting to see how well they can do in the Champions League qualifying rounds next season.

Kelvin Morgan smashed all the goalscoring records this season, with 35 in the league and 40 goals in total.

He was rightfully awarded Player of the Year in Gibraltar and it’s easy to gloss over the fact he got 7 assists too!

Jarell Quansah has been a rock at the back for us and Juan Aguero also impressed with 11 goals and 10 assists in total.

We have a slightly expanded wage budget next year, but in all honesty I probably made a mistake in investing £700,000 on training facilities at the start of the season when the money could’ve been put to better use elsewhere.

I’m hoping to get lots of prize money from Europe next season and see if we can make the club fully professional which will really allow us to kick on.

After getting to the 4th qualifying round last year, making the group stage of the Europa Conference League is the minimum aim.

It might be difficult though as we’ll face the Champions from other countries in the Champions League Qualfying Rounds… and we’re still a semi-pro team!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s July 2025 and it’s now our 4th season in charge of Bruno’s Magpies. We’re aiming to win the league again after going unbeaten throughout the whole of last season and also hoping to make the group stage of a European competition for the very first time.

However this summer it has been really difficult trying to upgrade the squad. The players that do want to join simply want too much money and it’s really not helping that we’re still a semi-pro side.

David Celic from Sweden was willing to be on less than £400 per week so will be our starting goalkeeper in Europe this season.

We also needed a new right back after the departure of Darnell Fisher in the summer, so signed Sammy Robinson after his contract at Port Vale expired.

But that’s it. Aside from those 2 players, we have not made any additions to the first-team squad.

After gaining Gibraltarian citizenship earlier in the year, central midfielder Nya Kirby finally committed to the national team and picked up his first cap in the off-season.

I’m hoping there are plenty more players who we can sign from English clubs who will then qualify for Gibraltar citizenship during the course of the save.

After a decent run in the Europa Conference League qualifying rounds last season, we’re now up to 415th in the European team rankings.

And this year we will face Zalgiris Vilnius, the champions of Lithuania, in the first qualifying round of the Champions League.

They’re a fully professional and their key player is decent, but I still feel like we have enough to beat them.

Having said that, we are without starting centre back Bjorn Hardley who is on Gold Cup duty with Suriname for the next few weeks - something I had no idea about until the day before the match!

It means our starting XI is not too different from the team that we had this time last year in the Conference League, although it’s still a decent enough side that is capable of beating the lesser-known European sides.

Even if we lose we’ll drop down to the Europa League (or Conference League) qualifying rounds so it won’t be the end of the world, but it would be nice to go on a bit of a run in the Champions League this season.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our starting lineup against Zalgiris Vilnius in the Champions League 1st Qualifying Round was strong, but they needed to get the job done because of the lack of depth we had on the bench.

The first leg was an even game that was decided on moments. Thankfully those moments went our way, with Nya Kirby’s penalty and Kelvin Morgan’s last gasp winner doing the job.

The second leg in Gibraltar went even better than I thought it would.

Ateef Konate blew them away with a hattrick - he was signed just over a year ago after his Nottingham Forest contract expired and is probably the best player at the club.

Azerbaijan champions Qarabag were up next in the 2nd Qualifying Round - they made it to the Europa League last 16 last season, so were a daunting opponent.

In the meantime, we had signed midfielder Ryan Stirk, who became our highest-paid player on £425 a week.

We spend £6,400 per week on wages for all players, whereas in comparison Qarabag had 5 players on more than that per week.

So the financial disparity was huge, but we were by far the better team in the first leg and did everything but score.

It was inevitable that Qarabag would ease to victory in the second leg in Azerbaijan.

Or so I thought…

It was an unbelievable result in the second leg but one that you have to say was deserved!

It’s an amazing achievement for a team of our stature reaching the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round, where we will play the champions of Israel Hapoel Be'er-Sheva.

It also means we’re guaranteed European group stage football for the first time. Even if lose to Be’er-Sheva, we’ll go into the Europa League playoff.

And if we lost that Europa League playoff, we’ll go into the Europa Conference League group stage. And that’s the worst-case scenario!

The only downside is that key centre-back Quansah is injured for both games, although we do have Bjorn Hardley back from international duty after Suriname lost in the Gold Cup quarter-finals.

We also have Mungo Bridge (another defender) and David Gonzalez suspended for the first leg, so we really are down to the barebones.

At this point I’m just buzzing we’re guaranteed European group-stage football, but let’s see what we can do against Hapoel!
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

In the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round against Hapoel Be'er-Sheva we were coming up against Kosovan Astrit Selmani, a player far better than anyone at Magpies.

I went into the match thinking that anything aside from getting battered would do.

Yet somehow, we just keep on producing unbelievable performances against bigger teams in Europe.

Suddenly all we had to do was not bottle a 4-0 lead and we’d be into the Champions League playoff - just 2 games away from the group stage.

Never have I ever been so happy with a 3-1 loss…

Somehow we were into the Champions League playoff stage!

Besiktas the Turkish champions were our opponents.

No matter what happened from here, we could not lose.

That was because even if Beskitas beat us 20-0 on aggregate - which was plausible - we would still make the Europa League group stage and get £4m in loser prize money.

The prize money from this European run will change the whole complexion of the save. We’ll surely go fully professional and will have a much larger wage budget to attract better players to the club.

Our highest-paid player is recent signing Stirk on £425 a week, with the next highest earner being Ryan Trevitt on £375.

In contrast, Besiktas had Nathan Redomand on £63,000 a week - I make that a salary 17,000% higher than Trevitts.

So, obviously, Besiktas were big favourites to progress to the group stage.

But I couldn’t help but notice that their morale was terrible, whereas our morale was sky-high after our Champions League exploits.

Besiktas were also playing a really peculiar formation, which looked like it would be quite easy to exploit.

We also decided to put in a borderline world-class performance.

So this was the result.

There is just no way we should be beating Besiktas 3-0 away from home, but we did.

I still don’t know how it was so easy either. So we didn't change anything for the second leg.

Neither did they.

So it was the same result.

And so we pulled off the greatest upset in Champions League history

Bruno’s Magpies, the semi-professional champions of Gibraltar, will be in the 2025/26 Champions League group stage!​

 

[StormToChampion]

Massive to see the Magpies in the Champion League Group stages. The money will be very useful

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Absolutely incredible stuff!! History made, Silverholt going down as a legend once again! Bruno’s Magpies could be playing Real Madrid at the Bernabeau!!!!!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a result and now you can sit back and count the money as it’s going to make an even bigger difference for seasons to come

Massive to see the Magpies in the Champion League Group stages. The money will be very useful

Absolutely incredible stuff!! History made, Silverholt going down as a legend once again! Bruno’s Magpies could be playing Real Madrid at the Bernabeau!!!!!

Still don't know what to do with all this money!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a whirlwind those Champions League qualifying rounds were!

I’ve not mentioned him much but striker Ruben Enri scored 6 goals and got 5 assists in those matches to fire us to the group stage. After being released by Cornella in the 3rd tier of Spain, he will now will be spearheading a team in the Champions League group stage!

It’s a ‘League Phase’ rather than a ‘Group Stage’ now where we will face 7 other teams including Real Madrid, Liverpool and Inter.

We’re probably going to get smashed every single game and I could not care less!

That’s because £12m in prize money sets us up to turn Magpies into a force to be reckoned with.

So we went wild with the board requests. The club will be going professional next season whilst the training and youth recruitment have also been improved.

Unsurprisingly, we’re 10,000-1 to win the Champions League with our semi-pro side.

The results aren’t going to be pretty, but I almost don’t mind.

Our next match won’t be against another part-time Gibraltarian team, it will against Real Madrid in the biggest club competition of them all!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The gulf in quality between our Magpies side and Real Madrid was truly incomprehensible.

Thibault Courtouis is on £450,000 a week, which is about 70x our entire wage budget.

Our starting lineup contained a bunch of players signed on free transfers from u21 English sides and 3rd tier Spanish teams. It’s absolutely crazy that this team has made it to the actual Champions League group stage.

But we only lost 2-1 against Real!

Joe Anderson, released from Everton under 21s just over a year ago, now has a Champions League group stage goal to add to his CV.

The memorable tie was still the lowest ever attendance in the Champions League, as Gibraltar’s sole stadium only has a capacity of 2,226.

Next up for us was Shakhtar Donetsk, who we also only lost by one goal to. Weirdly, we’re not getting battered like I thought we would… yet.

So much has happened this season and we’ve not even played a single league game!

Something that brought me back down to earth was having to deal with a David Gonzalez transfer saga.

When Championship clubs were interested, it was only natural he wanted to speak to them, but it’s so frustrating that he’s only valued at £12k.

I managed to stall the move and make an empty promise to sell him if a club comes in with £28k.

He’s a key player and literally going to be playing Champions League group stage football but wants to join Huddersfield instead!

I also couldn’t find any more last minute transfers, so we’re going into the rest of the Champions League campaign surely with one of the weakest sides to have ever graced this stage of the competition.

We’ve actually made very few changes to the squad from last season, but we’re just about favourites to retain our Gibraltar Football League title over Lincoln Red Imps

Now we have the task of balancing European group stage football with domestic football for the very first time as Magpies’ boss.

I have a feeling we could be breaking more Champions League records, but for all the wrong reasons.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our 3rd Champions League ‘League Phase’ game at home against Hannover was one of the few games where I thought we could maybe steal a point.

Instead, conceding from a free kick 3 minutes into the game doomed us to defeat despite 2 second-half goals from Ruben Enri.

The San Siro was next where we faced Inter Milan.

This one was more of a battering with Joe Anderson, the goalscorer against Madrid, getting sent off in first-half stoppage time.

With that we were already knocked out after just 4 games, not that I can say it was unexpected.

We also lost 3-1 to Rapid Vienna and 3-0 to FC Copenhagen showing just how out of our depth we are. I blame Besiktas for letting us beat them so easily in the playoff round!

We’re still not completely bottom of the league phase table with 6 out of 8 games played though and it looks like we’ll be battling it out with Dynamo Kiev as to who’s the worst team in the competition.

Those Champions League games have been taking place alongside our domestic games, where it is very much business as usual.

We managed to beat Lincoln Red Imps to establish ourselves at the top for the winter break and have won 9 from 9.

In fact our dominance has been a bit ridiculous in that we have not conceded any league goals this season.

Lastly, our centre back Mungo Bridge has finally committed his international future to Gibraltar, winning his first cap in the same match where Nya Kirby (another recently converted Gibraltarian at Magpies) scored his first goal.

I love that we’ve signed 2 players who have been at the club long enough to commit to the Gibraltar national team and want many more to follow their footsteps.

It seems like players from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can play for Gibraltar after just 2 years in the country, so I’ll be extra keen to sign Britsh players in the upcoming January transfer window.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

After our exploits in the Champions League this season, it seemed more than fair to ask for an increase in wage budget since we had £10m in the bank.

The board did not disappoint, giving us 7x as much as our original wage budget at the start of the season.

We still only have the 3rd highest salary in Gibraltar but that’s about to change with the huge increase in prize money and professional status at the end of the season.

The only downside to the new budget was that suddenly everyone wanted a ridiculous wage.

The only player we could give a modest wage to was Alberto González, an experienced centre half formerly of Real Murcia.

Next in was Daniel Adshead, recently of Cheltenham, to be the first player to earn £1,000 a week at Magpies. At 24 years old I’m hoping he’ll convert to Gibraltarian citizenship in the next few years.

Juan Cruz was also snapped up, this time on £1,600 a week. His last club was Antequera C.F. in the Spanish 3rd tier but he adds quality to our side.

Finally the versatile Ismaïla Coulibaly, released by Sheffield United in the summer, joins his Mali compatriot Konate at the club.

That’s plenty of signings for the January window, but I’m anticipating that a lot of players will be leaving in the summer so I wanted to plan ahead for the European qualifying rounds next season.

Talking of Europe, we had 2 Champions League games remaining and were playing for pride. The daunting task of Liverpool at Anfield was not helped by Jurgen Klopp trash-talking us before the game either!

In fairness, he was probably justified as they absolutely battered us…at least we had a shot!

This has been the season of breaking records, but unfortunately the latest one was unintended as we have now conceded the most goals ever in the Champions League.

And we conceded 3 more in our final League Phase match against RB Leipzig… but also scored 4!

Ateef Konate has a Champions League hattrick to his name in what was a brilliant final match for us. It also earned us £2m just for that one win!

So our Champions league run is finally over after 16 games in total starting at the 1st qualifying round. We didn’t finish bottom of the League Phase, which is genuinely a huge success.

Most importantly of all we’ve gone from having £200k at the start of the season to now having £14m in the bank.

Lincoln Red Imps are also unexpectedly dropping points, so the league title is now a formality.

We did finally concede our first league goal of the season in our 12th game - the irony of conceding 8 to Liverpool in one game just 2 weeks before was not lost on us!

So there are 8 league games remaining and we should in all honesty win all 8 to have a 100% record this season.

We still have Lincoln Red Imps to play twice but even if we do lose those games we should easily retain our league title.​

 

[FM-Oz]

This is an unbelievable save mate! Absolutely smashing it! Can't wait to see how that money and going pro can push the lads even further!

FWIW, I've signed Kirby, Trevitt and Bridge in a couple of LLM saves in England over the past couple of editions.

 

[MatthewElphinstone]

Loving the save chief KIU

 

[Zlatan Lumic]

Juan Cruz is one our best youth prospects (Betis) in real life, it's kinda a shame that FM hasn't managed to portray that potential ingame so far, so MASSIVE signing here... Specially if you manage to keep him long enough for him to gain Gibraltarian nationality (as he could become one heck of a core for the national team).

Despite the final results, you definitely overperformed in Europe big time: You managed to get Champions League "group" (or should say "League"?) stage football in a record time for a Gibraltarian team and trampling way stronger opposition along the way, getting some surreally close results and even getting a win against a vastly superior team like RB Leipzig (and I've got the feeling that you could've possibly been able to beat teams like Dynamo Kiev, Feyenoord, Celtic or Lugano).

Keep up the fantastic work ^^

.P.S.: Shame that Newcastle wasn't in this season's Champions League... I really wanted to see a Magpie's mirror match xD

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

This is an unbelievable save mate! Absolutely smashing it! Can't wait to see how that money and going pro can push the lads even further!

FWIW, I've signed Kirby, Trevitt and Bridge in a couple of LLM saves in England over the past couple of editions.

Loving the save chief KIU

Cheers both! All 3 have been key for me @FM-Oz although Bridge is getting released at the end of the season.

Signing players recently released from Premier League clubs is always the way I go in lower league saves too, it’s even better in this save though cause it only takes 2 years before English players get Gibraltar citizenship (hoping Trevitt commits soon too)

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Juan Cruz is one our best youth prospects (Betis) in real life, it's kinda a shame that FM hasn't managed to portray that potential ingame so far, so MASSIVE signing here... Specially if you manage to keep him long enough for him to gain Gibraltarian nationality (as he could become one heck of a core for the national team).

Despite the final results, you definitely overperformed in Europe big time: You managed to get Champions League "group" (or should say "League"?) stage football in a record time for a Gibraltarian team and trampling way stronger opposition along the way, getting some surreally close results and even getting a win against a vastly superior team like RB Leipzig (and I've got the feeling that you could've possibly been able to beat teams like Dynamo Kiev, Feyenoord, Celtic or Lugano).

Keep up the fantastic work ^^

.P.S.: Shame that Newcastle wasn't in this season's Champions League... I really wanted to see a Magpie's mirror match xD

That’s really interesting about Juan Cruz, he looks ok but might be a squad player for me this season. Obviously FM haven’t rated him very well if he’s one of the best prospects at Betis!

It's funny you mention Newcastle as I've secretly hoped we can play them at some point in the save, still a lot of time for it to happen!