We started the 2024/25 season as we ended the last one by winning our opening game 4-1 against PSV, with the main-man Maysonnave scoring a hattrick.
Next up for us was Porto in the Champions League 3rd Qualifying Round. Despite having 25 shots, we lost the first leg to them at home.
However, the disappointment of that result was soon forgotten as we overturned the first leg deficit by scoring 3 goals in Portugal.
We’re on a mission to get to the group stage again!
We did come crashing back down to earth though, losing 2-1 to Ajax courtesy of their wonderkid striker Joel Sarpong. He’s already the best striker in the league despite only being 18.
So after 3 matches, the top 5 already has a familiar feel to it, with Utrecht down in 11th position.
Despite getting to the Champions League group stage last season, we’re still financially miles apart from other clubs in Holland. AZ, PSV and Feyenoord are all spending 3x as much on wages as us even though we’ve finished above all of them for 2 successive seasons.
And some of the transfer business going on was ridiculous, with PSV selling defenders for nearly £20m and Ajax breaking their transfer record on Paes from Utrecht, who isn’t even first choice for Holland!
It shows just how incredible we are doing to be in the Champions League, where we will face Rangers in the Playoff Round next.
Once again we are just 2 games away from the group stage!
Going into the Rangers tie, I was pretty confident of progressing to the group stage of the Champions League… especially after a 1-1 draw in the first leg at Ibrox.
All we needed to do was keep a clean sheet and we were through to the group stage. I was expecting a routine win in the second leg... but we had a bit of a surprising result.
The game was even throughout and went to penalties, where Rangers kept their cool and progressed to the group stage at our expense. It was a really underwhelming result and felt like it came out of nowhere.
It meant that we entered the Europa League group stage where we were still seeded 4th anyway.
After knocking out Porto in the Champions League qualifying rounds, we’ll face them again this season! We’ll face them, Young Boys and Genk in the Europa League.
We’ve also passed transfer deadline day. The lack of interest in our players has been a bit strange and a bid from Heerenveen for Mijnans, which we rejected, was the only kind of transfer activity we had.
I mentioned it in the last post, but I was so close to getting Thomas Buitink from Vitesse for around £8m. The scouts really like him but I’d use him as a right winger and it just didn’t feel right to spend our entire budget on him.
It wasn’t just him i was close to buying though. I’m closely watching Nick Bos from Vitesse and Mohammed Koroma from N.A.C as both players have release clauses of £7.75m.
It’s highly likely that we’ll come back in for one of them in January… I have no idea which player to put my faith in though!
But for now we have to concentrate on the Eredivisie and Europa League. Scheduling means we have 4 away games in a row in September.
Hopefully we can do better in the Europa League group stage than we did in the Champions League last season and make it to the knockout rounds.
I haven’t really mentioned the facilities much in the last few seasons but we now have exceptional academy coaching.
And with the youth and training facilities due to be upgraded in December, things are looking very promising off the field.
Back on the pitch, our first ever game in the Europa League group stage was a boring 0-0 away against Genk.
Next up for us was Porto. After outplaying them twice already this season in the Champions League I had a feeling that they were bound to get one over us in the Europa League... Turns out I was wrong.
We were simply awesome and they could not contain hattrick hero Emanuel Emegha.
Our next 2 matches are against Young Boys and I’m hoping we can win both to seal an early qualification to the knockout rounds.
We seem to be hitting our top form already this season and have won 4 in a row in the Eredivisie.
You might’ve noticed that we beat Utrecht 6-2 straight after the Porto game, what are the chances of us winning 6-2 twice in a row?
Dominique Maysonnave got a hat-trick this time and the scoreline was more remarkable given the fact that they actually had more xG than us.
We’re only 8 games into the season but our good form means we are top of the Eredivisie on goal difference!
Maysonnave and Emegha are singlehandedly carrying us this season - both have 9 goals in 8 Eredivisie games.
Emegha is on 93 Eredivisie goals for the club in just 135 matches and has hit the potential he showed as a 17-year-old when we first took over at the club.
And just look how good Maysonnave is becoming!
Things could not be going better for us right now as we head into the October international break...
At the time of writing, I have just updated to the latest version of FM so I am praying that my reliable tactic does not turn to rubbish.
The finest achievement yet of the save was winning the Dutch Cup last year. In our defence of the competition this season, we could’ve been drawn against a number of part-time clubs… instead, we’ll face Utrecht!
Our third Europa League game was a comfortable 3-1 victory against Young Boys thanks to another Emegha hattrick who, even by his standards, is in simply ridiculous form.
We also beat them in the return fixture to all but seal qualification to the knockout rounds.
Things were also going really well in the league but we have drawn our 2 most recent matches against weaker opposition.
It was an especially poor draw at home to Vitesse, which was made worse by the fact that Buitink scored when we were so close to buying him in the summer.
Dilion Hoogewerf also picked up a 6 week injury in the game meaning we are very light on wide players.
Those results mean that Ajax are back on the top of the Eredivisie… but it is so close with just 1 point separating the top 4.
Emegha has 15 goals in his last 8 matches. I’ve never known anything like it!
Yet he still isn't the top scorer in the league because of the ridiculous form of 19 year old Sarpong.
Hopefully, his goals can fire us to the top of our Europa League group and maybe even to the top of the Eredivisie this season.
Despite being well in the title race, the mediocre results just kept on coming with a 0-0 away against N.E.C our 3rd draw in a row.
It looked like it would be 4 draws in a row in all competitions until Emegha popped up in the last minute with a winner versus Genk.
That win sealed top spot and our qualification with a game to go in the Europa League.
But it was doom and gloom in our next two games, as we got an abysmal draw at home to lowly NAC Breda followed by draw number 5 in a row against RKC Waalwijk.
I don’t know what went wrong, but we looked terrible and can’t afford to drop points against inferior opposition if we want to challenge for the league this season.
The only silver lining is that we’re not losing matches and we ironically set a club record of 18 games unbeaten.
The most annoying thing was that we actually weren’t playing too badly and finally put an end to the drawing streak against ADO Den Haag.
The unbeaten run ended when our backup side lost to Porto in the final group stage game where we had nothing to play for. They were actually unlucky to lose considering the Porto goalkeeper was the man of the match.
I did not realise that finishing in 1st place means that we skip the first knockout round and go straight to the second knockout round in the Europa League in February!
So things looked like they were picking up for us after a blip in our form. That was confirmed when we thumped Utrecht 7-1 in the second round of the cup.
Our defence of the cup could not have started any better! It’s crazy how we go from struggling to score against inferior teams to then putting 7 past Utrecht!
However, our reward was an even tougher game in the 3rd round against PSV. Great!
2024 ended with an impressive win over city rivals Feyenoord, which put us right back in title contention.
I mention him nearly every post, but Emanuel Emegha has been world-class for us this season.
He has 30 goals in all competitions. 30! It’s not even Christmas!
He’s joint top scorer in the Eredivisie and leads the Europa League charts with 8 in 5 matches. Utter madness.
The winter break gives us time to look for transfer target. Hopefully, we can find a quality Dutch right-winger I’ve been so desperate to purchase for the last year or so.
The January transfer window has been and gone, and it’s been a bit of a mental one...
Firstly, our very own Emanuel Emegha won the 2024 Golden Boy after an incredible year for us. He scored 39 in 45 appearances so it’s no surprise that he won it and he joins decent company in the past winners.
We’re halfway through the season and he is just 2 goals away from breaking the Sparta record of most goals in a season. I wonder how many he’ll end up with at the end of the season!
Then the transfer weirdness started...
First up a £36m bid came in from China for Maysonnave. We’d never received any kind of bid like it before and it seemed as though the recent update had made Chinese club interested in our players.
Thankfully he wasn’t interested in joining, but when Hebei China Fortune put in a bid for midfielder Sven Mijnans, he did want to go.
And when he wanted me to promise him that we could win the league this season (and I declined) he handed in a transfer request.
What made it worse is that we had a ready made replacement in Xavi Simons… who I’d just agreed to let go back to Juventus because of his lack of playing time!
And so, that was it. Mijnans was off to China for £13m - which was almost £10m more than the previous record sale at the club.
He’s been brilliant since the start of the save but if I’m being honest, he wasn’t a leading player in the Eredivisie which is the type of player that we need in order to topple Ajax.
We needed an instant replacement and I think I’ve found the perfect player for now…
That’s because 31-year-old Davy Klaassen has joined Sparta.
His contract at Ajax was up at the end of the season so we paid £1.8m to bring him to the club early.
Another player whose contract was nearly up at Ajax was Quincy Promes, so he too has joined the club in the weirdest transfer I’ve ever made in FM.
That’s because he comes in as a Player/Director of Football!
I don’t use a DoF so I didn't really care about that. What I do care about is that he is a quality, Dutch winger which we desperately needed.
He was injured for a few weeks initially, meaning that he missed out on the monumental victory over PSV in the cup.
We faced Utrecht at home in Round 2 and PSV away in round 3… the only way we could get a tougher game was to get Ajax in the quarter final. So of course we did.
I suppose if we’re going to defend the cup we’ll have to beat Ajax at some point. They’ll be out for revenge after we beat them in the final of the competition last season.
We have 6 Eredivisie games and that quarter final against Ajax before we even find out who our opponents will be in the Europa League Second Knockout Round.
The league table is also getting interesting as we sit in 3rd with a game in hand of the other teams around us.
A second place finish gets us direct qualification to the group stage of the Champions League, whereas 3rd would see us go into the Champions League Playoff Round.
Our first game of February was a 4-2 victory against PSV which blew the title race open.
Quincy Promes scored on his debut with the assist coming from Klaassen - they’re turning out to be 2 astute signings already!
The two of them were at it again in the next game against Willem, both picking up assists and Promes getting man of the match in a routine win.
Unfortunately we were unable to defend the KNVB Beker this season after losing 6-2 against Ajax in the quarter-final. But that scoreline only tells half of the story!
We equalised in the last minute to send things to extra time, only for 2 players to get injured when we had used all our subs, which led to Ajax scoring 4 goals in extra time!
It’s taken 3 months to find out who we’ll get in the Europa League but finally we found out that we’ll face Rangers in the Second Knockout Round.
They’re the team that knocked us out of the Champions League earlier in the season so it’d be nice to get one over them. There are some decent teams left in the competition including Man Utd, Roma and Arsenal.
We go into that tie in incredible form, having won our last 10 matches in the Eredivisie.
It means we are top of the Eredivisie by one point but still have to face Ajax away from home in March, so I’m still not considering us favourites for the league title... yet.
Emanuel Emegha is now on 40 goals in all competitions, not bad for £11,000 a week! He could quite easily hit 50 goals this year.
Another player to pick out is Million Manhoef who is having a great first season at the club. I genuinely didn't realise he was 6’6” so all corner kicks are aimed at him and he’s picked up 5 goals so far.
And we’ve managed to tie down key player Maysonnave to a new contract that contains a £150m release clause!
So now we enter the business end of the season. We’re in with a serious shout of winning the Eredivisie but I also want to go as far as possible in the Europa League!
PSV beating Ajax meant that we had a chance to go 4 points clear at the top of the Eredivisie if we beat Groningen.
And that’s exactly what we did thanks to 2 goals each from our star players Emegha and Maysonnave.
Even an injury to Promes couldn't dampen our spirits ahead of the first leg of the Europa League 2nd Knockout Round against Rangers.
We went to Ibrox confident of getting a result and for the second time this season, we drew away to Rangers 1-1!
Considering Emegha scored in the first minute, it was actually a bit of a disappointing result but all we needed to get through in the return leg was a clean sheet.
3 days later, Ajax dropped points yet again whilst we recorded a win over Heerenveen.
That meant we were now 6 points clear with 7 games remaining, it was beginning to look like we were about to do the unthinkable and actually win the league!
The next 2 matches were huge - the second leg at home to Rangers and an away match against Ajax in the league.
Joel Ideho decided to take things into his own hands against Rangers.
Who needs Promes anyway? Ideho’s 2 goals ensured that we progressed to the quarter-finals of the Europa League!
And we have a very tasty quarter-final tie against Roma.
However, those celebrations had to be short-lived as our tired squad faced Ajax 3 days later in their biggest game of the season.
A loss would let Ajax back into the title race, whereas a win would be unbelievable...
And we only went and beat them!
I can’t quite believe I’m saying this but our team of Dutch players - none of whom are in the Dutch national squad - are 9 points clear at the top of the Eredivisie with 6 games remaining!
After the euphoria of the Ajax win, we needed to be on it in our next match against Vitesse. In the end, it was a comfortable 2-0 win with Emegha scoring his 44th of the season!
That was our 14th Eredivisie win in a row - there are only 17 teams in the league!
Then we got hit with some potentially season-defining news. Sepp van den Berg, our best defender who has played in 41/45 matches this season, was ruled out for 4 months.
It cruelly ruled him out of our Europa League campaign and end of season run-in after being an integral part of our team all season.
Our reaction to that that potentially damaging news? Beating RKC Waalwijk 5-0!
We’re actually going to win the league, aren’t we?
With confidence sky-high, I decided to keep our positive approach away against Roma in the first leg of our Europa League quarter-final.
It turned out to be the wrong decision, but Emegha’s late goal gave us hope going into the second leg and if this season has taught us anything, it is that we can achieve the impossible.
Our winning streak in the Eredivisie was finally ended by VVV Venlo of all teams in our 31st match of the season.
But by this point, it doesn’t even matter. With goal difference on our side, we need to win 1 of our remaining 3 matches to win the Eredivisie.
We have both PEC Zwolle and ADO Den Haag at home in those matches so surely we’re not bottling it from here.
The only way things could get better would be if we overturned a 2 goal deficit against Roma in the second leg of the quarter-final.
Wow! This team is unbelievable.
A Joel Ideho inspired comeback means that we’ll face Real Sociedad in the Europa League semi-final.
The other semi-final looks rather interesting too...
If you think us on the verge of winning the Eredivisie is good, just imagine a Rotterdam derby in the Europa League final...
With us on the verge of winning the league, first-choice goalkeeper Rody de Boer picked up an injury that ruled him out for the rest of the season.
It meant that my decision to buy Kjell Scherpen for £1.6m at the start of the season was completely justified. He’s been on the bench all season and wants to leave, but first he has to win the Eredivisie and play in the Europa League semi-final for us!
The injury made little difference to the result against PEC Zwolle, as we smashed them 4-0.
With just 2 matches remaining, there was no way PSV were catching our goal difference. If they dropped points against NAC in the late kick-off then that would officially confirm us as champions of Holland.
And that is just what happened.
WE HAVE WON THE EREDIVISIE!
It’s the first time Sparta Rotterdam have won the top division since 1959 and is a simply stunning achievement from our squad that was predicted to finish 6th at the start of the campaign
It was so pleasing to win it with 2 games to spare, as it meant that we could put all our focus into the Europa League semi-final versus Real Sociedad.
The first leg ended in a decent draw for us, but it could’ve been so much more with Emegha missing a penalty in the final minutes.
A rotated side then beat Feyenoord in the league, who were also resting players because of their Europa League semi-final.
It was great preparation for the second leg against Real Sociedad where a clean sheet would take us into the Europa League final.
Both semi-finals were taking place at the same time in Rotterdam, just imagine that actually happening…
After doing all the hard work up until this point in the Europa League, we were undone by 3 Sociedad away goals.
It just wasn’t meant to be - I think I knew that after Emegha’s penalty miss in the first leg and the fact that we failed to convert multiple chances in the second leg.
I can’t be disappointed with that after the season we had. But having seen Feyenoord overturn a 3-1 defeat to Marseille it did leave me thinking what might’ve been.
It’s a bit gutting to miss out on the unique opportunity to play them in the Europa League final but at the same time…
Our 5th season as Sparta Rotterdam manager ended with a very unexpected league title in what was an incredible year for us.
In our final game against ADO Den Haag, Emanuel Emegha got his 50th and 51st goals of the season... I’ve never had a striker with a goalscoring record like his!
He finally won the Eredivisie Golden Boot after finishing 2nd in the previous 4 seasons. What a player!
His partner in crime this season was Dominique Maysonnave, who got 18 league goals as a shadow striker.
It was an incredible effort from our Dutch squad and it’s absolutely crazy that we’ve won the league in Holland yet none of our Dutch squad is in the current national team setup!
Davy Klaasen and Quincy Promes were inspired signings in January, with the former getting 8 assists for us. It’s amazing how they couldn’t get a game at Ajax yet won the league with us!
We astonishingly beat Ajax to the title with the 9th highest salary in the league... We spend £8.4m a year and Ajax spend £68.3m!
But it wasn’t just domestic success, we also made it to the Europa League semi-final and should’ve done better than that!
Our city rivals Feyenoord actually won the competition in the end meaning they qualify for the Champions League next season. It means Holland will have 7 teams in Europe next season!
Emegha got the golden boot in the Europa League too, naturally.
And we got news from the board that a new stadium is being built. It will be completed in two years time and the 25,500 capacity is nearly double the current capacity.
Despite us spending £35m on the new stadium, we still have £20m to spend in the summer.
Even though we’re Dutch champions it’s going to be hard to convince the quality Dutch players to join us so it might be a summer of trying to keep our best players rather than buying new ones!
At the end of the season, Holland manager Frank de Boer came to watch Sparta Rotterdam and apparently had his eye on 8 players.
When the squad for the Nations League Finals was announced, 2 Sparta players were in. Emegha was no surprise but I was not expecting goalkeeper Rody de Boer to be in the squad.
And finally, a Sparta Rotterdam player has played for Holland! All it took was 51 goals in a season for Emegha to get his first cap!
Goalkeeper De Boer then got his first cap for Holland in a friendly against Uruguay - a game in which Emegha scored his first goal for his country!
De Boer has been such a solid keeper for us over the last 2 seasons after being backup at AZ and PSV. He also cost less than £1m and I didn’t really expect him to be good enough to play for Holland.
Our first choice right-back for the last 4 years has been Giovanni Troupee. He cost just £650,000 and is such a crucial player for us but right-back is an area we’re looking to improve in the summer.
Maxim Gullit is another player that cost less than £1m and has been solid for us in the past few years. No doubt his father Ruud would be proud of his success last season!
Abdou Harrouri is our club captain and longest-serving player. He’s been an ever-present in midfield since the start of the save!
In contrast, Davy Klaassen has only been at the club for 6 months but was such a solid signing and ended the season with 8 assists. I’m hoping those physicals don't deteriorate next year!
Joel Ideho is another player who deserves praise after scoring 9 goals last season. I’m in two minds as to whether to extend his loan given the talent we have coming through so he might’ve played his last game for the club.
Bram van den Berg only made a few appearances for the first team last season but I have big hopes for the recently turned 18-year-old.
The same can be said for Murat Kacar and Joeri Bresser who played more of an important part in the first team last season. They were both bought as 16-year-olds for less than £1m and still have plenty of time to improve.
Last but not least is Marcelencio Kastiel. He’s still our record signing at £3.6m and started 33 times in all competitions last year.
I can already confirm that the record transfer has been broken...
The 2025/26 season is upon us and after winning our first Eredivisie title last season with an entirely Dutch squad, we have obliterated our transfer record to sign a top Dutch talent.
That is because we have spent £11m on Aurelio Oehlers from Utrecht.
It’s a lot of money but he’s still only 21 and is only going to get better.
A far more underwhelming signing was Jairo Riedewald on a free from Brighton. In all honesty, I don’t really know why I made this deal as we don’t really need him...
But our two most important signings have both been season-long loans for players from Manchester City.
The first is Nathan Ake.
I have no idea how, but we’ve managed to get him on loan for the year and will be paying an extortionate £54,000 a week for him to be at the club.
Another quality, Dutch player who just so happened to be at Man City was Jayden Braaf... He has also joined us on a season-long loan.
He’s so good that the star ratings for all of our other players have gone down. The uncapped winger was on loan at Dortmund last season and played in the Champions League quarter-final for them.
More importantly though, we haven’t sold any of our best players yet and I am also very tempted to bring 34-year-old Gini Wijnaldum to the club…
Those transfers mean we now have a quality front 4 who I’m really excited to unleash on the Eredivisie this season. Braaf and Oehlers will provide more firepower to Maysonnave and Emegha who scored 73 goals between them last season!
It also means that we are predicted to finish 4th this season, which is still the highest we’ve been predicted to finish despite finishing in the top 3 for the past 4 seasons.
We also won the Johan Cruyff Shield for the first time, defeating Ajax in the final thanks to Maysonnave’s last-minute winner. It shows that we have an interesting season ahead of us as our squad is only going to get better.
Retaining the Eredivisie will be really tough but I’m also intrigued as to how far our team of young Dutch players can go in the Champions League. Let’s get into it!
Those are some amazing signings you've made there which can hopefully only take you forward. Oehlers is class from what I've seen of him on the game and if anything you should be able to sell him for a massive profit.
