Whoa.
I just started managing Nimes Olympique (French Ligue 2) after they sacked their old manager. The club is currently overspending more than twice the wage budget. Seems like all the Ligue 2 clubs are deeply in red.
I just finished my first round of negotiations with the players whose contracts are about to expire. And by finished I mean utterly failed. Couldn't convince anyone to renew their contracts. Many of them are old bogeys who shouldn't even deserve half of what they're currently getting, but are nonetheless demanding massive raises. Everyone does. Even though the club is already massively overspending. Seems like I'll have to replace the whole first team.
Is the French league wage structure this badly broken in real life? I don't know much about those leagues..
French leagues are quite broken in real life indeed.
Nimes was a surprise this year when they got promoted to ligue 2 so basically its one of the most difficult club to play with. Add to this that a lot of clubs in ligue 2 were once greats clubs of l1 (monaco who lost in euro final to mourinho's porto 10 years ago, Auxerre playing the cl 2 years ago) and some who produce the best french players in the last decades (Lens, Nantes, Le Havre, Caen..) and it becomes a very hard ligue to win.
Regarding finances, it is totally a disaster in real life since 3,4 years now. Right now all clubs will sell any player of its squad at the right price (which the amortized price in their accountancy book) and that is how you get an exode of all players from France from the big squads to even the ones in ligue 2 as no club can continue to pay their high wages. Im from Marseille, the most popular club by far with a relatively high budget around 100M. Our last sells were Loic Remy to QPR for 10M bonus included when we bought him 16M made him international and a top scorer, Mbia to QPR as well for 5M after buying him 12M and Azpilicuetta to Chelsea bought 8 sold less than 5 after Deschamps post-trained him for 2 years at high level to get him international for Spain.
The reasons are both the decrease of income and the obligation to have a balanced sheet at the end of the season otherwise they get downgraded to a lower league which generally means the death of the club. It happened last year to Metz who got dropped to National. It happened 3 years ago to Grenoble who was in Ligue 1 a year before, with great players in their squad (fegoulhi, alfred n'dyaye...). Now the club is dead and there is a 30k persons stadium built 4 years ago that is empty 365d/year since then at Grenoble.
Sarkozy's wanted to fix that so he brought in the quataris to PSG and invested a lot of public money in stadiums to copy the german model (such an obsession here at the moment...). But the stadiums are all empty because of both heavy repression and bans of supporters and the disgust the current level of the leagues is compared to what it was a few years ago. If i occur correctly, the stadium in Marseille is costing a fortune to both the club and the city but none of them will be owning it... the builder will, as well as all the surroundings...
So yeah basically, the french leagues are broken in real life and the game, unfortunatly, emulates quite well its current situation.
My favorite type of games in footmanager? Play a french team and only buy people already speeking french which is generally what always happen here. The hardest mode is playing Marseille with 100% recruits from a french speaking african country which is how we roll here in real life !