Quim Tropedo Around The World - A Journeyman Story

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone.

I decided it was a good time to finally start a journeyman challenge on FM23.
I only did this challenge in one other occasion and it was in FM18, so a long time ago. Last year I tried to but I couldn't even finish the 1st season.

I intend to be able to balance this save with my Youth to Gold challenge and play both of them at the same time.

For this new save, I loaded 116 leagues and 461k players with a custom database setup. I also checked the option to add players to playable teams so we don't end up signing for a team with no players. It was a painful database to create, took almost 30 minutes to set everything and each day takes forever to go by but it's worth it for the experience.

I also intend to keep this as realistic as possible for the most part. That's why I decided not to start this challenge with the National C LIcense. I know some managers were hired with no credentials but that's is just not that realistic so I started with the lowest badge possible along with the lowest reputation.

The rules for this challenge are the following:

- Start unemployed with the lowest badges and reputation;
- We can't stay at the same club more than 2 seasons;
- Don't use the in-game editor (I don't even own it but I still checked the option to prevent it's use).


Who is Quim Tropedo?

Quim Tropedo is a 49 years old portuguese manager who lived his entire life on a small village in the north of Portugal.
Being raised in this environment he quickly accepted the traditions of his city and became a true "bairrista" who loves to support his home team, at least when it involves a couple of beers.
However, he got tired of how bad the managers have been in recent years, thinking to himself "I would do so much better than this clowns", so he registered himself to take the Nacional C Coaching license.

He was able to get the license in the beginning of September and immediatelly sent his curriculum to every team he could. This ended up being quite a boring task since he had to email around 170 clubs. He really wanted to start off in Portugal as his first job but he knew it wouldn't be easy. But he wasn't worried though, since he was fluent in English he assumed he would be fit anywhere he was needed, as long as he could speak English.

Hopefully he wouldn't wait for too long before getting his first job.

Tropedo's First Adventure

Having sent applications to many clubs, Quim was getting a lot of emails back. Some rejecting him, others asking for his presence on an interview and some offering him a job straight ahead.

After careful deliberation, he decided to accept the job at Indonesia U19's. This because they offered him the chance to have immediate football in order to try to grow some reputation.

Currently playing at the U20's Asian Cup Qualififying Groups, they sit 2nd in their group with the same points as Guam.
The favourites of the group are Australia who haven't played any game yet and only one team goes through so it wasn't going to be easy to overtake them.
Additionally, Quim only had 1 day to prepare the team before his 1st match against top of the group Guam.

That didn't seem to be a problem for Quim, who battered Guam 7-1 on his debut as a manager.
However, the real test would coem 2 days later, against the favourites Australia in a game that could very well decide who will and who won't be going to the next phase...

Apparently, Quim broke the record for the Indonesian U19's biggest win oh his first game as a manager. Could this be a sign of a special career for the portuguese?

Well, if Quim thought he was on top of the world he really got humbled against Australia who completely dominated the entire game. With this loss the group's faith was basically set. All Quim could dream now was to win the last game and see Australia losing points in 2 of their games in order to go through.

Even though Quim won his last match, Australia also did their job and qualified for the next phase. The hopes for Indonesia have been destroyed. However, Quim's journey was just starting and he was still in talks with a lot of other teams...

 

[misterioBean]

After a very harsh month of September, Quim started to doubt his speaking capabilities since no team was hiring him after the initial interview.
As it happens often, he kept drinking his beers hoping that someday one team would trust him to lead them.

October started as September ended, with a lot of emails rejecting Quim's services. He needed to find a job quickly because he was getting out of money to buy the beers he so badly desires.
But from out of nowhere, he got a proposal...

That's right, Tropedo got a one way ticket to Latvia and will start his "official" manager career in FK Tukums, a club that was founded in 2007 and currently plays in Latvia's 1st division.
The only trophy they have on their name is a Komanda.Iv 1.liga trophie, which is the 2nd division.

They are currently in the 10th place 5 points off the 9th spot with very difficult games still to be played against the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th place.

The board asked Quim to fight against relegation and that seems a bit unrealistic at this point of the season. In fact, to avoid relegation Quim would need to win all 4 games and both METTA and Super Nova would need to lose all their games.
However, a 9th spot would send Quim and Tukums to the relegation/promotion playoffs, which could be a more realistic goal.

Financially, the club seems to be fine so at least Quim won't have to worry too much about this part of the job.

The squad Quim inherited has one crucial fault in the defense with every player being as bad as a legged potato.
In addition to this, one of their key players is currently injured and may not be totally fit for the next game.

When Quim was studying he heard that the 4-3-3 was a very balanced tactic that any team could quickly get used to, so he decided to try it as his first tactic. However, he didn't come to play. He wants his team to play offensive agressive football with focus on getting the money to the front mans as fast as humanly possible.

This can go in one of two ways: Quim nails it and saves Tukums from relegation surprising everyone in Latvia; or completelly wiffs it and sends them on a trip to the 2nd division.

Either way it will be a blast.

 

[misterioBean]

Tropedo's Managing "Debut"

As you know, Quim's debut was actually at the international scene with Indonesia U19's but he didn't think of it as his official debut as a manager.
The fact that he took the job at Tukums with the mission of saving them from relegation made Quim really anxious about his first games as a manager. He knew he was still going against better teams with 2 of them being in the league's top 3.

In fact, his first game was against Valmiera who was 3rd in the league. In the pre-game conference meeting Tropedo said "Yes they are in 3rd, yes they recently won the cup and yes they beat us all 3 times we played against eachother, but that doesn't mean we will lose the game on Sunday". He clearly didn't come to make friends over in Latvia, he came to win...

Surprinsingly, FK Tukums came victorious in a game with 3 late goals and after going 2-1 down after being ahead.
There were also 2 goals at the same minute which is absolutely insane. Valmiera equalized from the penanlty spot and Tukums just sent it and scored right after to take the win.

So Quim's first game was already past and he was ready for his next ones. The next couple of matches were against the 6th and 2th of the league, respectively Liepaja and Riga.

So 3 games, 1 win and 2 draws for Quim. Riga's game was very unfortunate for his team who dominated the game but saw Riga scoring very early in the game, being only able to score 1 to leave our stadium with 1 point. At this point, the 9th places was 3 points too far from us and with only one game left METTA would have to lose.

Quim was into the final game of the season against Spartak Jurmala, who were 6th after taking over Liepaja's place, listening to METTA's game on his newly bought Latvian radio.

Tukums did it!!! They beat Spartaks and were dreaming about staying in Latvian's topflight in the final day of the season! Now METTA just needed to lose their game against the 8th place Super Nova, who could drop into 9th place if METTA beat them...

What a game this was. None of the teams wanted to be in the relegation playoffs and fought with all their strenghts but in the final Super Nova emerged as the winners...

What did this mean for Quim and Tukums?

Nothing... FK Tukums were still relegated because of the goal difference.
Even though Quim didn't lose any game he still wasn't able to get Tukums to avoid the relegation they were already predicting for a while.
Quim's ambitions changed with this and now he was ready to win the 2nd division and bring them into the OPTIVET again.

The board however was not and decided to fire Quim only ONE month of him being in charge. He didn't lose any of his games and was able to beat far better teams with an innovative playstyle for this league and still got sacked even though Tukum's chances of avoiding relegation were very slim.

Oh well, it was time to go back to sending emails and drinking beer. He wasn't too mad about being fired, he didn't like Latvian beer after all and got a very decent compensation for leaving so early so he will be alright.

He also got some news from the Indonesian Football Federation about his next international duties.

For some weird reason beyond his understanding, Indonesia U19's went through their group and qualified to the U20's Asian Nations Cup Group Stage... That was very unexpected indeed. They also knew who they were goiung against...

Looking at the group, Quim has absolutely no clew what's going to happen. He doesn't really know any of the players going against him. He barely knows his own players so he can't make any predictions. The media, however, said the group was a very rough one for Indonesia so Quim assumed they weren't favourites to win it.

Guess we will find out in March now.