Going Dutch with Sparta Rotterdam

[Hampus Silverholt]

With big plans to do a save in multiple European leagues, my FM21 story had been decided for months.

However, with the current youth intake bug on advanced databases (https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/539021-youth-intake-broken-just-like-beta/) I'd be unable to play a long-term save in my usual style.

And there’s also no getting away from the fact that my laptop would probably struggle to load 3 or 4 leagues, so my fate was decided…

I’d do a save using players from only one country.

The team I'll be taking charge of? Sparta Rotterdam.

It seems only right to take the oldest professional club in Holland to the top and beyond using Dutch players, in what is my first story on FM Base managing a club outside the British Isles.​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

The one I've been waiting for....looking forward to this as with all your stories! Good luck!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The one I've been waiting for....looking forward to this as with all your stories! Good luck!

cheers mate, thought it was about time I managed somewhere outside of the UK! Looking forward to the challenge of only signing Dutch players as well

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The database for this save is set up solely for Dutch players and for my laptop to be able to handle things. Whether that creates an imbalance of players remains to be seen...

And my manager stats are based on what was recommended for this level with some tweaks to certain relevant stats. I’ve also disabled the first transfer window.

Sparta Rotterdam also have some good youth facilities, which we can hopefully improve even further over time.

And the board vision fits in with exactly I want to do. We have a lot of good young players at the club already who I’m sure I’ll post more about in future updates.

The best player at the club is Abdou Harroui - a Sparta youth graduate who I hope to keep around for a long time.

We have a lot of good young players thanks to the youth facilities and the best of them is 6 foot 5, 17-year-old Emanuel Emegha.

We’re predicted to finish 12th this season. If I’m being honest, the aim is to make sure we don’t get relegated and then get to work in the next summer transfer window.

Our first game of the season will be against Den Haag, who are predicted to finish below us and have Ravel Morrison of all people on their books!

Let’s see what this squad can do this season!​

 

[Gerarddrog]

Can't wait to follow this, hopefully be as successful as your Sligo save two games back.

 

[zacram]

Glad to see you back - Good Luck with this!

I'm really enjoying the challenge of signing players from only one nation and will be interesting to see how it works in the Netherlands

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Can't wait to follow this, hopefully be as successful as your Sligo save two games back.

Europa League final and Champions League quarter-final was the best I could do with Sligo so will be interesting to see if I can do better than that!

Glad to see you back - Good Luck with this!

I'm really enjoying the challenge of signing players from only one nation and will be interesting to see how it works in the Netherlands

Yeah I'm intrigued to see how it goes as I've never done it before... although there's a lot of decent young players at the club already and the youth facilities are very good so that makes things easier

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

A 1-1 draw away from home in our first game against Den Haag was fine, but not when you consider how many chances we had!

Our next two matches were a 1-1 in our first home game against Vitesse and a loss to Fortuna Sittard, which meant the pressure was on against stronger opposition in FC Twente in our next match.

Thankfully we managed to get our first win in charge.

So that makes it 5 points after 4 games, putting us 9th in the table.

20 year old Sven Mijnans has been our star player so far, averaging 7.2 in a box to box role.

Our small squad lacks quality, particularly in attacking areas, so the news that Mario Engels was ruled out for 6 weeks was not welcome at all.

He’s not Dutch so won’t be at the club long-term, but we desperately need his quality this season at least!

We’re actually getting hit hard with injuries already - 7 injuries is a killer with such a small squad and our bench is filled with youth team players who are not ready for first team football.

Still, we’ve made a solid start and I'll take a 9th place finish at the end of the season!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

After some lacklustre matches in October, I decided to switch things up from a generic 4-3-3 to a 5-2-1-2.

The beneficiary of that change was young striker Emanuel Emegha, who proceeded to score 4 goals against bottom club Venlo!

He then got 2 more against Utrecht in a 3-0 for us which came out of nowhere, especially considering that they were 2nd in the table at the time.

But our next game was the ultimate test against Ajax.

We weren’t expected to get anything so I’m just glad we didn’t get battered.

So those results mean that, after 10 matches, we’re still in 9th position.

Centre back Tom Beugelsdijk has 3 goals this season and is our 3rd top scorer behind Emegha and German striker Lennart Thy who has 5 goals.

Thy is one of the few foreigners in the squad and we’re looking to get the most out of him before we go 100% Dutch

We have 5 more matches in December - unless we lose all 5 I already feel pretty confident that we’ll avoid a relegation battle this season!​

 

[leckuno]

Emegha looks a great player. I've tried to sign him and even unsettled him but sadly they wanted 18 million for him

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Emegha looks a great player. I've tried to sign him and even unsettled him but sadly they wanted 18 million for him

Yeah there's a lot of decent young players at the club but he's definitely the best of them. Also got Mijnans, Deroy Duarte and Harroui who all have the potential to become top Eredivisie players

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

6’5” Emanuel Emegha is at it again. This time he scored 4 goals against Willem II in a 5-1 victory.

It was the start of an up and down month for us, as we scraped past lower league opposition in the cup and bottled a 2-0 lead against PSV.

But a 3-1 win against PEC Zwolle ensured that we’d be in 9th position over the winter break.

Emegha now has 12 league goals in just 9 starts for us, and is top of the scoring charts in the Eredivisie. He’s the reason why we’re a middtable team and it’s easy to forget that he is still just 17!

I can’t see us getting relegated so I may look to give some fringe players with high potential some more game time. Those include goalkeeper Maduka Okoye and midfielder Deroy Duarte

We do have a transfer window coming up, but of course have no budget.

I’d rather sort out the long term futures of our talented youngsters than look to overhaul the squad in January. We have 8 youngsters in the B team who will all be good enough to play first team football for us at some point

I wouldn’t expect any major transfers and thankfully no clubs are after our 17-year-old top goalscorer… yet.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

He’s quickly becoming the most important player at the club so getting Emanuel Emegha to sign a new contract had to be done. The only downside is that it contains a £23 million release clause.

He must’ve been questioning his decision after we recorded a 2-0 loss against bottom of the league RKC Waalwijk

January was a bit of an average month for us as we were also battered by rivals Feyernoord and again scraped through in the Dutch Cup.

And those January results included us losing 4-2 to Ajax… despite us going 2-0 in front!

And all that means that I have apparently made an unspectacular start as manager!

We’re in 8th position so it’s a bit harsh to call it unspectacular. However, we’re definitely not going to finish any higher than 8th and are constantly looking over our shoulders at the teams behind us.

We have also made our first ever signing as Sparta Rotterdam manager - Simon van Duivenbooden on loan from PSV.

He comes in just to provide cover up front in what could be possibly the most underwhelming first signing to make at the club...​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Despite the January window only just passing, the only thing that we realistically had left to play for this season was the Dutch Cup where we travelled away to Vitesse in the quarter-final. An uneventful 120 minutes culminated with us losing on penalties

Then in our next match we got absolutely battered by PSV. And I mean battered!

Judging by the XG it was a bit harsh but it does highlight just how much we need to improve.

We’ve got some really average players at the club and it’s amazing that we’re so high up in the table.

For instance, our two right-backs have both been atrocious all season. Thankfully the contracts of Dirk Abels and Jeffry Fortes are up at the campaign.

And Abdou Harroui is playing so bad that, despite being our best player, he’s been dropped.

However, having said all that, with 9 league games remaining we are still in 8th position which would be a very good position to finish in.

The prize money is the same if we finish between 8th and 15th so as long as we finish above our pre-season prediction of 12th I think we can consider it a decent year.

I can’t wait to reshape the squad in the summer... and I’m also looking forward to our first youth intake next month!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our first ever youth intake is upon us and it did not disappoint!

It looks like we have a real quality striker in Dominique Maysonnave and the fact he has 17 determination makes me think he has a big future at the club.

That was about the only positive news we had in the final few months of the season, as we went on to win 1 of our remaining 10 matches.

But amazingly, we still finished in 10th position.

The fact that only 4 players in our best XI averaged over 6.8 sums up the weird nature of this season. 10th is a great finish for us, but it just felt like too many players underperformed all season.

Emanuel Emegha was our only bright spark and was perhaps a bit unlucky to not pick up young player of the year after finishing the second top scorer in the league.

The impact covid has on finances in FM is not for me - I’m very glad this season is out of the way and we can actually start to build Sparta Rotterdam how I want to. A lot of this first-team squad will be gone in the summer.

We also need an overhaul of the backroom staff starting with actually getting staff for the talented under 18 squad. There are literally 0 youth coaches at the club, which was made worse by the fact that we had no budget all season to bring anybody in!

Thankfully, that has now changed for next season.

We have a budget of £2m and £9,000 to spend on wages, which is more than enough to make some worthwhile changes. Let’s get wheeling and dealing!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

2021/22 season is upon us and we have got rid of the deadwood at Sparta Rotterdam.

It doesn't look like it’s been an eventful transfer window but a fair chunk of the squad have gone after their contracts expired and we’ve added some Dutch players into the club to improve us.

They include loan signings Sepp van der Berg from Liverpool and Marouan Azarkan from city rivals Feyenoord.

We spent £650,000 on Giovanni Troupee as we desperately needed a decent right back.

We’ve also signed a few players with the future in mind so our B team is now stacked with potential talent.

As is our under 18 side!

Admittedly, we’ve not vastly improved the starting XI so a 10th place finish is what is predicted of us this year.

However, we’ve completely overhauled the backroom staff so I am hoping that has some kind of impact on how much the players improve this season.

We’ve kept hold of Emanuel Emegha and Abdou Harroui so I’m expecting some big performances from them this season.

The majority of our squad is now Dutch with goalkeeper Maduka Okoye the only non-Dutch player that I’m interested in keeping at the club long term.

It’s going to be interesting to see whether it’ll be more mid-table obscurity for us, or if we can push into the top 7 of the division and the European places this year.​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

The future looks extremely promising with that B team and U18s!!! If only a few of those players reach their full potential, you could be laughing....be interesting to see if any of the big boys of Dutch football try to poach any of your youngsters from you.

 

[Worthy15]

Love your writing style!

That B Team and U18s squads look very promising

I have never personally done a save in Holland before, but will be following this keenly

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The future looks extremely promising with that B team and U18s!!! If only a few of those players reach their full potential, you could be laughing....be interesting to see if any of the big boys of Dutch football try to poach any of your youngsters from you.

I think the star ratings might be a bit misleading but hopefully at least a few of those young players will make it to the first team one day. Weirdly enough none of the big teams have even been interested in them so long may that continue!

Love your writing style!

That B Team and U18s squads look very promising

I have never personally done a save in Holland before, but will be following this keenly

Cheers mate and I've never managed in Holland before either - it's a league I know very little about to be honest. I quite enjoyed playing less than 40 games last season I'm just hoping I'm able to develop players through the u18s and B team over the next few years

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our season started off with a solid 2-0 win over Heerenveen, who finished 5th in the league last season.

And we were not done there with the transfers. Youngster Murat Kacar joins us for £600,000 from ADO Den Haag, which I felt was a no brainer even though he won’t be first-team ready for a few seasons.

We’ve also made Silvester van der Water our record signing at £900,000 from recently relegated Heracles. We needed a winger and he was the best we could get. Plus, he has an incredible name.

He scored on his debut against FC Emmen to make me feel less guilty about breaking our transfer record on a squad player

He also played a part in our 4-3 win over Utrecht. That’s now 2 home wins out of 2 against teams who are expected to finish above us in the table!

So our season has started very promisingly, with us 4th in the table after 4 matches.

Deroy Duarte is finally starting to play to his potential with 2 goals and 2 assists in the opening 4 matches of the season (compared to 1 goals and 2 assists in 31 games last season!)

We have a long break of 3 weeks until the next match, so hopefully we can keep the good form going into the next few league games.​