Going Dutch with Sparta Rotterdam

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our 11th season in charge of Sparta saw us win our 6th Eredivisie with 92 points, which is the most we’ve ever had, and we were 1 minute away from taking Real Madrid to extra time in the Champions League.

Real Madrid eventually went on to win the Champions League, showing how close we are to the best teams in Europe.

It’s frustrating to get knocked out in the quarter finals 3 seasons in a row but we are still a work in progress. Our squad is extremely young and we only have 6 first team players over the age of 25.

In 2 or 3 years we’re going to have a number of world class players, which is the main reason why I’m continuing with the save (plus I started this save back in December 2020 and have not had another save, so I feel I have a mission to complete)

Romanian striker Grajdan was one of the highest scorers in the Champions League this season but could hardly get a goal in the Eredivisie. He also broke his ankle in our last game of the season so will be out for a number of months.

Marcio Ginatto similarly performed well in the Champions League with 6 assists but, just like Grajdan, was poor in the league for us.

A player of his class should not be averaging 6.91 in 29 Eredivisie matches, especially as we’re expected to win the vast majority of them.

Then we have the 2 Uruguayans Crossa and Martinez, both of whom might push for a move in the summer given their quality.

Holland is still comfortably 3rd in the coefficients table, meaning that we get 4 clubs that go straight into the Champions League group stage every season.

And despite our dominance, we’re still spending less on wages than Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV Eindhoven.

I feel like I’ve invested too much time in the save to give up now so will be carrying on for next season as we desperately try to get further than the Champions League quarter-finals!

The updates might slow down but we shall see where the next season takes us!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s been a relatively quiet summer for us - We’ve made 2 first team additions but, more importantly, have kept hold of all of our wonderkids.

Our biggest transfer was that of Frederik Samyn for £42m from Club Brugge. He was wanted by Man United and Juventus and I decided to spend big so that we have depth in attacking positions

João Vítor has also joined for £15m to be our back up left back but will surely soon be too good to leave out of the starting lineup

After playing the same formation year after year, I have decided to go with a different tactic this season... with 2 strikers.

It worked well in our first competitive game against Ajax in the Johan Cruijff Schaal - let’s just hope it wasn’t a fluke result!

Ginatto scored twice in that game and after 18 relatively mediocre months at Sparta, I’m expecting big things from him this season.

Interestingly, Ajax are slight favourites to win the league which shows just how strong the Eredivisie is.

We should also be getting through our Champions League group with ease and it will be between us and Man United as to who wins the group.

I’m hoping for lots of goals this season… and we’ll worry about making it past the quarter finals of the Champions League once we get there!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s been an action-packed start to the season for us and results like the 3-1 win over Ajax mean that we’re dominant in the league already.

Feyenoord have not finished above 3rd in 10 seasons, so I expect us to win Eredivisie number 7 this season even at this early stage.

It’s looking equally promising in the Champions League too at the halfway mark in the group stage thanks to a 2-1 win over Man United

But the most ridiculous win came over Krasnodar in the Champions League, where we thumped them 10-1!

They were shocking but everything just went right for us in the game and it shows just how capable we are when our players on form

I thought it’d be our record win but turns out that Sparta won 12-1 back in 2010!

In true Sparta style though, we still managed to concede in that match and our defensive record has been the only downside to the start of the season.

But that is more than made up by us scoring plenty of goals! Roland Leidelmeijer leads the way with 12 in all competitions but others are not far behind.

I have to be honest, I really don’t mind us conceding goals - I’d rather us win 4-1 than 1-0.

So, providing a drastic change in form, we look to be heading to the last 16 of the Champions League which is when the season really gets into action!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

A rather undeserved 2-2 draw with Man United was enough to ensure that we finished top of our Champions League group this season

We ended up comfortably on top of Group E where we scored an incredible 27 goals in 6 matches!

So that meant we were seeded 1st in the knockout draw and would face a team that finished 2nd in their group. There was only one team I did not want to be drawn against...

You have got to be kidding me!

We could’ve got Club Brugges but instead we get Man City!

How do we always get drawn against the strongest team at the First Knockout Round stage?! It really does look like we’ve used up all our luck before the knockout rounds

The misery was compounded by our first loss of the season against local rivals Feyenoord. An unbeatable Eredivisie season still eludes us!

However that loss makes little difference in the grand scheme of things as the Eredivisie is looking like a formality this season.

Various Sparta players have also won individual awards. Mourad Soufiani was named Golden Boy and Damian Crossa best u21 player.

I’m not really sure what the difference in the awards is but it shows just how good our young players are. Soufiani was produced in our academy too!

A few players are wanted by the big clubs with the January transfer window looming, but we have managed to tie down our player of the season Ginatto to a long term contract on £88,000 a week!

I don't want to sell anybody so we may have some unhappy players by the end of the January transfer window!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The January transfer window has been and gone and the only sale was Rick van Drongelen to Sevilla for £9.75m. I could not turn down that fee for our 5th choice centre back and it was also handy to get his big wage off the books

We’ve kept our best players at the club despite Chelsea bidding £80m for Ricardo Martínez...

And Man United bidding £60m for Giuliano Concina

So it was full strength for the first leg against Man City.

Throughout the season we’ve gone with an attacking 4-4-2 but it made no sense to do that at the Etihad. So for the first leg we went with a 3 man midfield, deploying Diaz as an anchorman for the very first time.

It had the desired impact of making the game hugely uneventful and we were undone by a first-half penalty

Our star player Marcio Ginatto, who cannot stop scoring and assisting this season, dropped a 5.8 in the game. When the premise of the save is to do well in the Champions League, the fact that our star player performs like that in such a big match is infuriating.

Things got worse 4 days later as we lost to city rivals Feyenoord in the Dutch cup semi final, meaning that we have still only won the competition twice in 11 seasons!

That result also made it 3 losses in a row in all competitions.

And to top it all off, key midfielder Padilla was ruled out of the second leg against City

Our season was beginning to have a familiar feel - we’re invincible until about February when it gets to the crucial games, then we just crumble away and get injuries to key players.

So, for the second leg against City, I decided to go for it. If we were going to lose, we were going to lose in style.

But instead, a strange thing happened...

Have some of that! We somehow overturned a first leg deficit against one of the strongest teams in Europe and demolished Man City 4-0 in the second leg!

We’ll face another English opponent in the quarter finals as the draw paired us with Chelsea, who we have never faced before.

They’re one point ahead of City in the league so it is as tough an opponent as we could’ve got.. Again!

After undoubtedly our greatest result of the save, surely we won’t get knocked out of the quarter-finals for the 4th successive season?​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Before our fourth consecutive Champions League quarter final we sealed our fifth Eredivisie win in a row with five games to go. Despite the strength of Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, the league has become far too easy in the last few years.

Just before the first leg against Chelsea, centre back Ignacio Flores failed his fitness test meaning our team was missing 2 key players for our biggest game of the season.

It was a horrible first leg where we deserved to win.

But instead, two wonder goals from Pedri (who is still only 29) meant that we needed a miracle at Stamford Bridge in the second leg.

We travelled to the leaders of the Premier League knowing that 2 goals were needed.

And, once again, our performance was not reflected in the result.

We crash out of the Champions League at the quarter final stage AGAIN! It was a miserable second leg where Chelsea only had 7 shots but - naturally - scored 4 goals!

It was Pedri in the first leg and Adama Cisse in the second leg who were both just too good for us. Cisse has 46 goals in all competitions this season.

But, whichever way you look at it, we lost by 7-3 on aggregate to probably the favourites to go on and win the competition.

I can’t believe we have been knocked out at the quarter-final stage 4 seasons in a row! This time it hurts even more because we were probably the better team in both legs!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

We’re at the end of the 12th season at Sparta and seem to have a curse on us which means we can’t get to the semi finals of the Champions League.

So, for this reason, I’ve decided to call it a day. There’s just no way I could spend time playing another season where we’d dominate the Eredivisie, only to get knocked out in the quarter finals of the Champions League again!

Chelsea went on to win the Champions League this season meaning that’s twice in a row we’ve been knocked out by the eventual winners.

Dutch striker Roland Leidelmeijer, who we signed from PSV for £55m four years ago, was top scorer in the Champions League this season with 12 goals.

We ended up 19 points clear of 2nd place in the Eredivisie in what was our 5th league title in a row. That’s the biggest margin since the start of the save, showing just how dominant we’ve become.

We have an incredibly gifted, young squad but I just don’t have the appetite for another season. It’s a similar scenario to my Berwick story on FM18 where the league was too easy but Europe was too difficult.

Our key players are Uruguayan pair Martinez and Crossa, who we would’ve struggled to keep hold of if we carried on the save anyway.

Another player who was likely to move for big money in the summer was Marcio Ginatto, who is easily the best player at the club.

There will still be a few more posts on this story where I’ll take a look back at what we have built at Sparta as well as some of the players who have been crucial to our journey.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Initially, this save started with us only using Dutch players and 4 seasons ago we managed to get to the quarter finals of the Champions League.

That side was poor compared to the team we have now, yet we still haven’t got further than the quarter finals in the last 4 years!

I sometimes forget that we made it to the Europa League final back in 2027 with our 100% Dutch squad and I still don’t know how we lost that match against Sassuolo.

Our youth team has been a success though and again won the UEFA Youth league this season. That’s 3 times our youngsters have been the best in Europe in this save.

We end our career with Sparta after 562 games, most of which I watched on extended highlights, and a 67% win percentage.

7 Eredivisie titles means that we’re the second most successful manager in Dutch football history, but nowhere near the European and Global Halls of Fame.

There was a period in 2028 where I thought I was going to liquidate the club, but for the last 4 years Sparta have had at least £120m in the bank.

We also have some of the best facilities in Europe and had a new 27,000 capacity stadium built in 2027.

One surprising thing in the save has been the performance of the other Dutch teams. The Eredivisie is now regarded as one of the strongest in Europe and for the past 5 seasons there have been 4 Dutch teams in the Champions League group stages.

Both PSV and Feyenoord have won the Europa League and Europa Conference League, whereas Groningen and Utrecht have won the Conference League during the save.

So, that’s what Sparta Rotterdam and Dutch football look like in 2032. The next and final post will cover the individual players that have helped us turn Sparta into Champions League quarter-final specialists…​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

As always my friend, I have thoroughly enjoyed this save from start to finish!

What we thinking for FM22?

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

As always my friend, I have thoroughly enjoyed this save from start to finish!

What we thinking for FM22?

Cheers mate, shame it fizzled out towards the end but at least it kept me occupied for 8 months... Not sure on FM22 plans at the moment but I should probably do a save where I manage more than one team at some point!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

I’m never one to take the ‘Best Eleven’ seriously in FM, but in this case it is pretty spot on.

The best player in this save in terms of pure ability was Dominique Maysonnave.

He came through our first youth intake, scored 74 in 193 appearances and then was sold to Man City for £140m where he has won 3 Premier Leagues, 2 FA Cups and the Champions League once.

Another player we sold for £140m was Rody van der Steen, who we initially bought for £80m from Groningen

There are so many players to pick out from the early days so I’ve singled out 4 who were with us during the 2021/22 season where we surprised the odds to finish 3rd.

First is Maxim Gullit (Ruud Gullit’s son) who we had on loan, signed permanently for under £1m then sold on for £15m

Next up was Giovanni Troupée who we signed for cheap in our second season. He played a pivotal role for us for 5 years before moving onto Saudi Arabia

Sven Mijnans was with us from the start and now plays for AEK in Greece.

Likewise, Deroy Duarte was a player we inherited at the start. His 10 goals in 2021/22 fired us up to 3rd place and he was sold to Vitesse who decided to chronically underuse him.

The 2 van den Berg’s were also crucial to our rise in Holland. First up, Bram was signed on the cheap as a 16-year-old and made over 200 appearances for us, scoring our first ever goal in the Champions League knockout stage.

Sepp van den Berg made 298 appearances for us across 9 years after joining us from Liverpool and was our captain for a large part of his period at the club.

Another bargain free transfer was Mo Sankoh who scored 99 goals in 242 games for us and is now at Arsenal.

The penultimate player I want to mention is Abdou Harroui who was a key player for us over a number of years and made 316 appearances overall. (He’s just signed for Sassuolo in real life too!).

Finally, there can only be one player of the save.

Emanuel Emegha has spent all 12 seasons at Sparta. He started as a promising 17-year-old and ends as the highest goalscorer in the club’s history.

He was truly unstoppable for us at times and I will never forget when he got 51 goals in the 2024/25 season. With 2 Eredivisie golden boots and 7 Eredivisie titles, he has simply been an unbelievable player for us throughout the whole save.

And so that is it.

It’s a shame we couldn’t get further than the quarter-finals of the Champions League but it was not meant to be.

I hope you enjoyed reading another one of my FM journeys and for anybody that's interested, here is a link to the save in June 2032:

Hampus Silverholt - Sparta Rotterdam

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