Going Dutch with Sparta Rotterdam

[Hampus Silverholt]

We’ve made an ideal start in our defence of the Eredivisie, winning all 4 of our opening matches.

Other teams in the league have made strong starts too, meaning that we currently sit in 3rd place. Heerenveen look like world-beaters all of a sudden and have scored 19 goals already!

We’ll also be taking part in the Champions League group stage for the 2nd time in the save and have been drawn in a group with Dortmund, Lille and Sevilla.

There are 4 Dutch teams in the Champions League group stage this year with Ajax qualifying through their league position, Feyenoord because they won the Europa League and PSV getting through the qualifying rounds.

It’s done no harm for the coefficients as Holland is close to overtaking France!

And our striker Dominique Maysonnave was handed his first callup to Holland along with Ake and goalkeeper De Boer.

He became the 3rd Sparta player to play for Holland in this save!

He’s probably our best player and has been incredible for us since coming through our first ever youth intake, scoring the winner in the cup final 2 seasons ago.

In fact, he’s so good that Chelsea came in with a bid of £74m for him...

He wasn’t happy when i rejected it, so I promised to sell him at the end of the season… we’ll worry about that promise next summer!

So now the season truly starts. I want to finish 3rd at a minimum in our Champions League group so it’s going to be interesting to see how we do!​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

The loan signings from City will be massive for you this season I think, and could really see you go further in the Champions League assuming they both stay fit. Not quite sure how you turned down that £74 million!!! I'd have been seriously tempted!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The loan signings from City will be massive for you this season I think, and could really see you go further in the Champions League assuming they both stay fit. Not quite sure how you turned down that £74 million!!! I'd have been seriously tempted!

Didn't even consider the bid, which is not normally the case for me! Our team is based around him and given the fact I'm using Dutch players only he's pretty much priceless as he came through our first youth intake. Having said that, I think I have a ready-made replacement in this guy:

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

During the international break, Emanuel Emegha picked up an injury that would rule him out of our next few matches. It’s the first injury I can remember him having in the save!

Then a few days later Jayden Braaf got injured too.

It obviously impacted us in our next game as we went onto draw against Willem II despite going 2-0 up after 3 minutes.

And to make matters worse Oehlers picked up an injury in that game too! That left us down to the bare bones attacking wise going into our first Champions League group stage game versus Lille.

But it didn’t matter as we put in a brilliant performance in France.

Mohamed Sankoh rose to the challenge of being our main attacking threat with a second half goal to add to Davy Klaassen’s first half strike.

In fact, all 7 Dutch teams in European competition won in the first gameweek, including PSV beating Juventus 5-1, so we’re on course to overtake France in the coefficients table!

Our next group stage game was at home to the strongest team in the group, Borussia Dortmund. It was a game that contained an incredible second-half fight back.

We managed to draw 3-3, with Jayden Braaf scoring in the last minute against the club he was on loan at last season! Incredible!

That means our group is looking evenly poised and our next 2 matches against Sevilla will likely determine if we finish 2nd or 3rd.

As for the Eredivisie, we’ve won our last 3 games without conceding but are still in 3rd position. There’s already a huge gap between the top 5 and the rest of the league with Utrecht and AZ both struggling lower down in the table

Goalkeeper De Boer has 6 clean sheets in 8 matches but to be honest we haven’t really played anybody of note yet.

That changes after the international break, as we face Ajax 3 days before Sevilla in the Champions League.

Our key players have returned from injury so I’m really intrigued to see how we fare against the overwhelming favourites for the Eredivisie.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our toughest match of the season on paper is away against Ajax, so drawing that game 0-0 is a very good result considering the strength of their side.

3 days later we faced Sevilla in the Champions League, where Alfredo Morelos did what Alfredo Morelos does by getting sent off. That allowed us to finally break them down thanks to another late goal from Braaf in the Champions League.

So after 3 group stage games we’re looking good to make the knockout rounds, but it’s not just us... all 4 Dutch clubs are on course to make it to the last 16 of the competition!

The defensive solidity continued for us after that as in our next 3 league games, we conceded no goals.

That string of results included a 0-0 draw against the surprise package of the season Heerenveen, where they literally had 0 shots in the whole match!

We went into the reverse fixture against Sevilla on a run of 6 clean sheets in a row…so of course we conceded 3 goals.

That told half the story though as it was another incredible fightback in the Champions League. Two injury time goals salvaged a 3-3 draw in what was an almost identical game to our first group stage match against Dortmund.

We've scored 5 of our 7 Champions League goals this season in second-half stoppage time which is mental!

Those goals also mean that we need one more win to make it to the last 16 with our entirely Dutch squad. One of those games is at home to Lille, so you would think that we are pretty much there!

Domestically it is incredibly tight at the top and we’ve still not lost yet this season in any competition!

Heerenveen are still performing way above expectations and have scored 38 goals compared to our 24 and all of the top 4 have extremely good defensive records so far.

Inside forward Jayden Braaf is finally starting to hit form and is our top scorer this season with 7 goals whereas captain Harrouri has been solid in midfield and has the highest average rating out of the squad of 7.56.

Once again, we find ourselves looking at another very promising season but it is a season that is going to be defined by our next set of games.

We play the 5 best teams in the league (other than ourselves) in a row. That’s PSV, AZ, Utrecht, Feyenoord and Ajax consecutively. We’ve never had a fixture list like it!

It’s literally the toughest 5 games of the Eredivisie season all in a row so the league table could be looking a lot different by the end of those games!​

 

[Jedd95]

Love it mate. Sparta actually became one of my favourite teams a couple years ago after a career with them on Fm19.

Managed to get them to win 3 champions leagues in a row and when I left Mourinho took over, which felt huge for some reason! Ha ha.

Great read so far and some cracking players - can't believe how good that first season regen is!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Love it mate. Sparta actually became one of my favourite teams a couple years ago after a career with them on Fm19.

Managed to get them to win 3 champions leagues in a row and when I left Mourinho took over, which felt huge for some reason! Ha ha.

Great read so far and some cracking players - can't believe how good that first season regen is!

Yeah there's definitely something about them, just the fact they're the oldest professional club in Holland and I really love their stadium too.

I honestly think winning the Champions League with an all-Dutch squad is possible, especially given the fact we can produce regens like Maysonnave, but it's taken me 3 months just to do 4 seasons so time may not be on my side...

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The dreaded run of fixtures started in the best possible way, with a remarkable 3-2 win over PSV thanks to Maysonnave’s winner in the 89th minute. We just love getting late goals this season!

We followed that with the most disgustingly one-sided 1-1 draw in history.

Thankfully, that point against Lille secured our qualification to the Champions League Knockout Rounds for the first time in our history. Not bad for a bunch of Dutch kids!

The draw also ensured that we broke a new team record of going 21 games unbeaten!

Despite a long term injury to Sankoh hampering us, the results just kept on improving with us beating AZ 2-0 and Utrecht 3-1.

A 2-0 win over Feyenoord made me question why I even worried about the ‘tough’ run of games… we were making things look easy! (Although we did have goalkeeper Rody de Boer to thank for saving a penalty at 0-0 in that game)

The winning streak was finally ended by Ajax, where for once we were undone by a late goal.

And with second place guaranteed in our Champions League group, I played the backups away against Dortmund... even that game went well!

A brilliant 1-1 draw meant that we finished second in Group E with 10 points.

Ajax and Feyenoord joined us in the last 16 of the Champions League as all of us finished 2nd in our groups.

So it didn’t really matter who we got in the draw as whoever we faced would be massive favourites. Our First Knockout Round opponents will be Juventus.

They actually finished 3rd in Serie A last season so there might be a slight, remote chance of us getting through… maybe?

They’ll be dealing with a seriously in-form team as our year ended with another win and another clean sheet. We got 4 wins and a draw from the run of 5 matches which I was dreading!

The only bad thing to happen was that we needed extra time to beat lower league opposition in the cup but we end 2025 on top of the Eredivisie and look on course to retain our title.

We have gone through the entire calendar year without losing a game in the Eredivisie and are now 50 games unbeaten in the competition, which is ridiculous!

What a year it has been and what a team we are building!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The January transfer window is normally a quiet time for us and I only had one deal planned, which was to finally make Dillon Hoogewer a permanent Sparta player.

I wanted to get him on a free when his contract expired in the summer but with other clubs snooping around, I decided to pay Man United £5m.

And that was all the business I planned to do… until Shandong Luneng bid £16m for Maxim Gullit.

He’s been so good for us but I felt £16m was a great price for a player that wasn't first choice and who we signed for less than £1m

The deal made sense because we found an almost identical replacement in Micky van de Ven. He cost just £4.8m after falling out of favour at Ajax and as much as it hurts to see Gullit go, it just made financial sense to do it.

But with some cash to splash, and with Ki-Jana Hoever finally becoming affordable, we went crazy and spent £13m to bring him to the club from Wolves.

That concluded a pretty successful transfer window for us.

I was extremely close to paying the £19.5m release fee for Nik Bos from Vitesse, who is tearing it apart for them this season, but have decided to wait until the summer instead.

Coincidently, Buitink from Vitesse moved to Man United for £22m in January. I had the chance to get him for £8m a few years ago and am very much regretting that choice!

We only played a couple of league games in January but won them all with ease and are also through to the quarter finals of the cup.

Despite having won 18 of our 22 Eredivisie matches, we’re still only 4 points ahead of Ajax whereas PSV and Feyenoord aren’t too far behind either

It’s going to be an interesting second half to the season!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

We’re 7 months into the 2025/26 season and have finally lost a game!

The circumstances behind the loss were alarming though, as we shipped 4 goals to city rivals Feyenoord in the Dutch cup quarter final.

We needed a big response in our next 2 matches but weren’t convincing in a draw against AZ and a nervy win over VVV Venlo

After being defensively solid all season, suddenly we’re a team who concedes loads of goals… which is concerning given the fact that Juventus are our next opponent in the last 16 of the Champions League.

However, we’re still unbeaten in the league, top of the table and hold the Eredivisie record for number of consecutive games without losing.

I’m not expecting to get anything from the Juventus game but if we do, we’re going to need Emmanuel Emegha to show up.

He scored 51 goals in all competitions last season but has been less potent this yaer and is without a goal in his last 4 games

It also feels like the stage is set for Dominique Maysonnave. He wants to leave to go to a bigger club, so the least he can do is prove he is good enough to compete in the Champions League Knockout Round.

Right then, let’s see how good we truly are!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Juventus at home in the first leg of the Champions League 1st Knockout Round - no doubt that this was the biggest game of the save so far

We had a full-strength, 100% Dutch side with van den Berg back from injury to partner on-loan Ake in defence.

And that team only went and won the first leg! Juventus missed countless chances before Emegha popped up with a huge goal with 5 minutes remaining.

We then played an almost perfect 3 league games before the second leg, winning all of the matches with ease

With Juve predicted to play 3-4-1-2, I really was confident that we could get through to the quarter-finals.

So, I must admit, I didn’t expect to be 5-0 down at half time.

It was ridiculous. Juve literally scored with every attack they had and the crazy thing was that we weren’t even bad! We had more xG than them and were down 5-0!

And that’s how the game ended.

It was the most even 5-0 loss in history.

I honestly don’t know what more we could’ve done. We could’ve quite easily drawn that game and be through to the quarter finals!

Instead, we now have just 6 games of our season remaining as we’re also no longer in the Dutch cup.

We have a 5 point advantage over Ajax due to our good league form so look on course to retain the Eredivisie, which would be an incredible achievement for a side predicted to finish in 4th

The upset of the Juventus result would be forgotten if we went an entire season unbeaten!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

With 6 games remaining to win the league and a 5 point cushion over Ajax, I hoped it would be a formality. But of course not.

We started off with a 0-0 draw against relegation threatened RKC Waalwijk.

That rubbish result ironically marked a 60 game unbeaten run in the Eredivise for us.

Both us and Ajax had a tricky run-in with 5 games to go. Our lead was now 3 points but Ajax’s superior goal difference meant that we could afford few slip-ups.

Thankfully we were able to take our chances in our next match versus Heerenveen and 34 year old Quincy Promes scored a vital last-minute winner against Vitesse.

Of course Ajax kept on winning too, so it meant the gap was still 3 points with 3 Eredivisie games remaining.

But then they had a blip which opened things up for us. They drew away against PSV and also unexpectedly lost the cup final against AZ.

A comfortable win over ADO Den Haag for us ensured that we were then 5 points ahead with just 2 games remaining.

The title was in our sights and a win against rivals Feyenoord would seal it with a game to go. But we just can’t seem to be able to beat them

What a time to lose our first Eredivisie match of the season! All of a sudden the pressure was on and we needed to win our last match at home against Utrecht as Ajax were at home to ADO Den Haag

Utrecht had lost 4 of their last 5 league games because of their run in the Europa Conference League, surely we couldn’t bottle it from here?

Phew!

We have won the Eredivisie for the second successive season!

It’s a brilliant achievement to do that with a 100% Dutch squad, especially given the strength of Ajax. The next step now is to do something meaningful in Europe.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

nothing like a nerve wrecking end to a season but another great win and time to get Europe to bend to your will

Yeah hopefully we can get further than the last 16 of the Champions League next season, not going to be easy though!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The 2025/26 season ends with us as Eredivisie champions for the second successive season and our record of Won 27, Drawn 6 and Lost 1 is identical to last season! We’ve lost 2 league games in 2 years!

We have the 5th highest salary in the league, which is amazing considering we’ve won it twice in a row.

Abdou Harrouri was the best player in the Eredivisie and won the confusingly named Golden Boot. He’s been an ever-present in the squad since the start of the save and must be close to the national team

Whereas our goal scoring won us the league last year, this time around it was our defensive work. Goalkeeper Rody de Boer kept 22 clean sheets in 33 games

2 players we’re going to massively miss are Jayden Braaf and Nathan Ake, who will both return to Man City next season as they want to keep them in their first team. Braaf scored 19 goals in all competitions for us.

Our young Dutch squad has now won 2 Eredivisie titles in a row despite only 2 of those players being regulars in the Dutch squad.

3 of those were called up to the squad for the 2026 World Cup, including Maysonnave who recently got his first goal for Holland.

It’s amazing we produced a player like him in our first youth intake and we also had another decent one this year.

Our under 18 squad is very promising with the standout being 16-year-old Rayan Guennoun who I managed to poach from Vitesse last year.

Our facilities are mostly world-class and we move into our new stadium in one years time.

Financially we’re in a good place because of the Champions League money but we have a budget of £15m for next season.

Holland is now 5th in the nation coefficients table and not far behind Germany in 4th

Most Dutch players that will improve our squad are at a minimum £30m so it’s going to be a very tough summer trying to improve our squad!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Over the summer, the 2026 World Cup took place where Sparta player Dominique Maysonnave scored twice in Holland’s first group stage game against Costa Rica.

He then got injured in the next group stage game and was obviously missed by Holland as they were knocked out by Romania of all teams. The tournament was won by Mexico in the end… strange things happen when you only load one league at the start of the save.

Firstly, the transfers out, and the sad news of the departure of club legend Deroy Duarte who we sold to Vitesse for £4m. With his contract up at the end of the season, it made sense to cash in and he leaves having won the Eredivisie twice and the cup once with us.

We also managed to get £7.5m for Jairo Reidewald just one year after signing him for free!

And the final major transfer out of the club was that of Khalid Haddadi. He was once rated a 4-star player when he was 18 but has been sold to AZ for £2.5m to make way for the emerging talent at the club.

In terms of transfers in, this is where the challenge of signing only Dutch players gets difficult.

Gravenbach from Juventus was available but didn’t want to join and various youngsters from Eredivisie clubs are just far too expensive. Our best player last season, Jayden Braaf, joined Dortmund permanently for £37.5m which is money we simply do not have.

So instead, we’ve made some decent loan signings. The first is Donny van de Beek who was out of favour at Man United and has a lot to offer still at the age of 29.

We also managed to get Memphis Depay on loan from Man United as well. He’s not as good as Braaf but still adds quality to the squad.

That’s all our dealings… so far.

So we start the season with relatively the same squad minus Emanuel Emegha, who is injured for the next month or so.

Despite that, we had no trouble in beating AZ in the Johan Cruijff Shield thanks to 2 goals from Mo Sankoh.

Our small squad is predicted to finish 2nd in the league, which is actually the highest ever position we’ve been predicted.

The aim is to improve on last season, which would mean retaining the Eredivisie for the 3rd year in a row and getting further than the last 16 of the Champions League… both of those might prove to be difficult!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

With a squad that was probably weaker than the one we had last season and with money to spend, my sights were set on Nathan Ake after his successful loan spell at the club… he decided to join Fiorentina instead.

And I had a tough decision to make when a £8.5m bid came in for Giovanni Troupee from Al-Shabab. Ultimately, I decided to accept the offer with Ki-Jana Hoever now the first choice right back at the club.

Troupee has honestly been one of the best signings of the save at just £650,000 and leaves Sparta after winning the Eredivisie twice as our first choice right back.

His replacement is Hans Hateboer, who was available for £1.6m, so I thought it made sense to bring him in as right-back cover. It was just 3 years ago that Ajax paid £25m for him and he only wanted a 2-year deal at the club.

Our season has started in familiar fashion despite injuries to strikers Emegha and Sankoh. We’ve won 4 out of 4 including a 6-0 win over Groningen in which Depay scored his first goals for the club.

Joeri Bresser is the man who has replaced Ake as first choice starter at centre back this season and already has two goals. He’s still only 20 years old and might not be too far away from the Dutch squad.

In the Champions League group stage, we have been drawn with Man United, Celtic and Olympiakos. We should be getting through the group and I hope to improve on last season where we were knocked out in the last 16 by Juventus.

After realising that I’m not going to be able to pluck the best Dutch players from other teams, I decided a few seasons ago to go on an extensive hunt for young, Dutch players. This is what our youth team looks like.

As you can see, we’ve got extremely talented youngsters at the club and most of those in the screenshot were signed for less than £1m from other Dutch clubs shortly after they had their youth intake.

It means we have lots of players in the Dutch youth teams, 18 were called up in total in the upcoming international break including 4 to the senior side where Sepp van den Berg has the opportunity to earn his first cap.

After that international break, the season truly starts. I’m looking forward to seeing how we play against Man United in the Champions League.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

After losing just one match in each of the last two seasons, I was quietly hoping that an unbeaten season could be on the cards… until we lost 2-1 away to PSV in September.

Since that result we’ve won all of our games including wins over Olympiakos and Celtic in the Champions League. We beat the Greek side 2-1 but it honestly should’ve been 10-1.

Celtic actually beat Man United so it means that our group is far from over but we should have enough to get through.

And the loss to PSV means we are on the back foot in the league already as Ajax are looking unstoppable and have won 8 out of 8.

We were also hit with the unfortunate news that winger Aurelio Oehlers was ruled out for 3 months.

But Dillion Hoogwerf has deputised for him perfectly so far and has 4 goals and 4 assists in his last 4 matches.

There was also a bit of transfer news too. Davy Klaassen has left for Saudi Arabia in a £2.9m deal.

In his 2 years at the club he won 2 league titles so he more than did his job. Plus we made a profit on a declining 33 year old whose contract was expiring at the end of the season.

There is also the ongoing transfer saga of Dominique Maysonnave, who is being linked with Man City for £92m.

We promised we’d let him go at the end of this season and I have a feeling we’re not going to be able to keep him…

He is our best player by miles and we need him to lead us to the knockout stages of the Champions League for the 2nd successive season.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

After winning the Eredivisie twice in a row with a squad that was predicted to finish 6th, our bubble finally seems to have burst. We’re probably on our worst run of form since the start of the save.

It started when, out of absolutely nowhere, we lost 2-0 at home to PEC Zwolle. It was our first home loss in the Eredivisie for more than 2 years and a freak result that has not happened in the last few years.

We did respond with a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in the Champions League thanks to a goal from ex-United player Hoogwerf

And in the reverse fixture Van de Beek scored against the club that are paying 60% of his wages. But his goal didn’t matter in the end as we lost the match 3-2.

Those results against United mean that the group is delicately poised with 2 games remaining. We should beat Olympiakos so it looks like everything rests on our final game with Celtic.

But, as previously mentioned, our form has not been good and culminated in a 4-1 loss to Ajax in the Eredivisie

They’re an incredibly strong side, with world-class players like striker Joel Sarpoing and recently beat Real Madrid in the Champions League so it’s not really a massive, shock result.

The problem is that it’s the type of result that we have avoided in the past 2 seasons. It also means we are 9 points behind them in the league so it looks very unlikely that we’ll retain our title.

So we have an interesting few months ahead of us... The form needs to improve immediately or we could see ourselves slide down the league table.

My start-of-season optimism has well and truly gone!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

With us level on points with Man United and Celtic, our Champions League group was delicately poised as we headed into our 5th game against group whipping boys Olympiakos.

They had just one point, so the last thing I expected was a 2-1 defeat!

It was ridiculous that we lost the game after having 32 shots, but more ridiculous that only 4 of them were on target!

It meant that our fate rested on our final group stage game against Celtic, but first we had 3 Eredivisie matches before that to try and halt our slump in form.

Underperforming loan signings van de Beek and Depay both scored in a crucial derby win over Feyenoord as we comfortably won those 3 games, keeping 3 clean sheets in the process.

All we needed from the trip to Celtic Park was a draw to put us into the Knockout Round… but we were deservedly beaten.

For some reason, we just can’t win away games in Europe. So despite being top of the group after 4 games, we end up finishing in 3rd and are into the Europa League knockout stages!

I’ll be honest... I am more than happy with being in the Europa League.

We got to the semi-finals a few seasons ago and so I see it as a real opportunity for silverware especially as we will face Union Berlin in the 1st Knockout Round. They’re 7th in the Bundesliga so I expect us to go through.

The irony is that despite the poor showing in Europe, domestically we cannot stop winning and our backup side even beat PSV in the cup.

It means we are firmly in 2nd position in the Eredivisie but I don’t see us beating Ajax to the title.

After a relatively poor season last year, Emanuel Emegha is back to his usual self this campaign. He has 20 goals in all competitions and is averaging a goal every 78 minutes in the Eredivisie.

This will be the first season where we haven’t significantly improved on the previous one, but I am hoping 2027 is a year we can do serious damage in the Europa League!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

For the past year, Man City have reportedly been interested in our star player Dominique Maysonnave but have never put a bid in.

That was until the January transfer window… when they bid £120m for him.

It was a ridiculous bid but I wanted to test how serious they were, so asked for £140m… which they accepted!

I simply couldn’t turn that down, even though we have no replacement lined up.

So that was it. After coming through our first ever youth intake Maysonnave has left the club for £140m and is getting paid a modest £250,000 a week...

We’ve also moved on Aurelio Oehlers for £30m…. His goal and assist return has been poor since he’s joined us so when a bid of £30m came in, I decided to get rid as it was too good to turn down.

It means we have £182m in the bank and £149m to spend on transfers

This January transfer window is going to be crazy…​