Road to 1000 goals: Life of a Striker

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[FONT=&quot]Rodrigo Paulista to play in World Cup 2022

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The prolific striker is one of 5 River players called-up by Brazil - he joins veteran goalkeeper Matheus and fellow teenagers Vinicius, Alex Sandro and Tassio - a remarkable accomplishment for our club. Paulista is still uncapped before World Cup, can he have an international breakthrough a la Pelé in 1958?[/FONT]​
 
[FONT=&quot]Rodrigo Paulista still uncapped for Brazil after the Seleçao failed to impress at recent World Cup.

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]A disappointing tournament for Brazil with an early exit in 2nd round against eventual runner-up Italy. Even more disappointing for Paulista as the young striker has not debuted yet for Brazil despite being a regular call-up for a year now. Manager Levir Culpi was sacked at the end of the tournament, so...

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The FA was happy to offer the job to legendary manager Alberto Rossini, the man behind River miracle and a winner of multiple championships and cups including the recent Club World Cup. I'm not doing it for Brazil nor for the money (though the 3,45M per year contract is about 6 times of club contract with River), this is all for Rodrigo Paulista. With a regular 75-80 matches every season with the club I would have gladly passed, but this will give me the chance to control Rodrigo's international call-ups and career - and give him that elusive debut at least! The only international match available for 2022 will be the traditional Superclasico friendly vs Argentina in october: Paulista will NOT be called-up, as he'd miss two league games just to play against a very strong national team - not going to happen! Dignity never an option.[/FONT]​
 
[FONT=&quot]Meanwhile in San Marino...

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]As expected Rodrigo Paulista's challenge suffered a slight delay due to this manager's need of starting a traditional San Marino save. I will surely come back to the 1000 goals challenge soon though I felt like I needed a break from the never ending brazilian season (full season in Italy was a breeze, less than 50 games!). The good thing is I still have Rodrigo on my mind:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Striker Gabriele Moncini pulled a Paulista and scored 62 goals in 45 matches for San Marino between Serie C and cups. After this season I'm once again sold on the 'Shoots with power' PPM and strongly leaning towards training Rodrigo to learn it. My strikers (including Paulista himself) always have the tendency to throw weak garbage into the arms of goalkeepers, well if you're gonna hit the keeper at least do it with fury!

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]I'm not going to lie, had San Marino youth set-up produced the next Alessandro Paolone (my SM god striker from FM12) I'd be probably doing a 1000 goals challenge with him and leave Rodrigo on stand by for months. But it didn't happen so road to 1000 goals should be back soon![/FONT]​
 
Holy **** what a goal machine! Very nice story. Will also be following your San Marino challenge!
 
[FONT=&quot]River accept record breaking offer...

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]... not for Rodrigo of course! Fellow wonderkid and Brazil international Alex Sandro has been sold to PSG for a hefty 30M euros. Sandro was a product of River academy so it's particularly tough to see him leave, the money was good though and most of all other brazilian clubs were also interested and could have activated a release clause of just 9M. 'Luckily' Sandro had a few suitors from abroad due to his EU second nationality (Spain) and a war of bids between PSG and Milan resulted in a very good 30M offer. It's the first signal of big money transfer activity for a River player, hopefully they will leave Paulista alone! Good news is Paulista doesn't have a second nationality despite a somewhat european-ish surname (Rapchan, according to my research deriving from Rapčan, a croatian or romanian surname and yes I've researched this!), which is good for us.

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]A fantastic young player indeed, already a first team player for Brazil at just 18. Of course those 30M gave me the chance to find more than adequate replacements plus the usual amount of cheap wonderkids stockpiling. Main signings were these two midfielders, both from Argentina:[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Patricio Escalante (4,7M)

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Adrian Biasoli (6M)

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]A couple of young, hard working enforcers already described as wonderkids. That's how I like my midfielders!

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]We'll get back to Paulista soon![/FONT]​
 
[FONT=&quot]More glory for Rodrigo Paulista:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Best player and top scorer of the Recopa (continental super cup for South America) as River easily got rid of Copa Sudamericana champions Sport Recife. It's been another great year for Paulista so far as the legendary striker just passed the 300 career goals mark this september thanks to a hot streak of consecutive braces and hat-tricks (it does help that we played about 100 games in september between league and cups; I swear it took me less to play a full season in Italy than the single month of september in Brazil!). Still over two months - which means 20+ more matches - till the end of the season...[/FONT]​
 
[FONT=&quot]Very unlikely to go on with this save (or FM18) anytime soon as frustration easily exceeds fun for me at the moment. While I was fighting my way through a mad NBA-like schedule (dozens of games with only one day of rest plus the occasional back to back!) I suffered a crash that wasted hours of playing - and lots of goals by Paulista
icon_frown.gif
.

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[FONT=&quot]The crash per se wouldn't be enough to break my will to play, unfortunately I just can't enjoy playing this game atm despite a ME that maybe for the first time in 5 years I don't actually hate! Too many issues in this save (aforementioned schedule; registration bugs; U20 team not playing in a division) and generally in this game (regen faces, hairstyles and relative bugs kill the immersion for me; a number of other unsolved issues still persist). The crash (the first one I had in FM18, obviously immediately after 18.2 update) was just the final straw.

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[FONT=&quot]Rodrigo 'retires' with over 300 goals at the age of 18... Thanks for following![/FONT]
 
I had alot of fun reading your story. thanks alot mate
 
PelatihDadakan said:
Sad to hear this. May Rodrigo's name stays in our heart.
Click to expand...

Thanks mate, really tried to enjoy FM18, some nice things here and there but too many issues. Might try and get back to the game after 18.3, as of now it's too much frustration. If FM19 came out tomorrow I'd be very glad NOT to buy it for the first time in years.
 
kandersson said:
Thanks mate, really tried to enjoy FM18, some nice things here and there but too many issues. Might try and get back to the game after 18.3, as of now it's too much frustration. If FM19 came out tomorrow I'd be very glad NOT to buy it for the first time in years.
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gutted, was enjoying the story.
will you likely start another one with a different team at some point?
 
BALDERS said:
gutted, was enjoying the story.
will you likely start another one with a different team at some point?
Click to expand...

Will probably have a look next march when final patch is usually released, and see if I have any desire of playing this game. Right now this game and this company are giving me very strong motivation for NOT giving them my money, for a long time.

How's your striker doing btw? :)
 
kandersson said:
Will probably have a look next march when final patch is usually released, and see if I have any desire of playing this game. Right now this game and this company are giving me very strong motivation for NOT giving them my money, for a long time.

How's your striker doing btw? :)
Click to expand...

alright, stuck with james wilson as the central striker. so far he has 163 goals in 201 appearances.
have a new kid on the block called andrea lucchi (regen) purchased when he was 16 now 19. been training him up. driven personality
ppms so far, shoots with power, knocks ball past opponent. he also came with the dwells on ball ppm which im struggling to get him to un-learn, any way so far he has 50 goals in 76 appearances.
 
Hard luck mate, crashes are a pain in the *******. Weekly autosave is an absolute necessity on any of my saves - I HATE losing progress so I can empathise with your decision.

Hopefully the patches take care of things. I haven't picked up FM18 yet for that exact reason - frustrating though it is in the interim I just don't think the games are worth buying until about March.
 
[FONT=&quot]Didn't like the idea of leaving Paulista's best season unfinished so close to the end, so decided to complete at least year 2022 thanks to a cold winter! Rodrigo still has 'it':

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Finally the elusive Copa Libertadores Golden Boot thanks to 16 goals in 11 matches! Plus another little award I wasn't aware of:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Melhor Jogador - COB (an award assigned by Brazil olympic commitee), ending a four year domination of Neymar! Now we can really say that Paulista has won every possible trophy and individual award at club level for a player based in South America![/FONT][FONT=&quot]The cold numbers:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]That's 128 goals for you in 68 appearances, which is a personal record for my CM/FM career! Numbers are obviously inflated by those 60 goals scored in a weak state championship, though 45 goals in Série A and 16 in Copa Libertadores, well above the average of one goal per game, are absolutely amazing.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]The man himself at the end of a fantastic season:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]All hail Paulista![/FONT]​
 
[FONT=&quot]Right, that's [/FONT][FONT=&quot]331 goals[/FONT][FONT=&quot] at the age of 18 [/FONT]
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331 goals but no international caps yet. Wow!

All hail king Paulista! Or should we call him Goalista?!

Sent from my C2005 using Tapatalk
 
[FONT=&quot]Decided to go for an extra season and see if I could push for a new seasonal record for Paulista, as he's now playing close to his full potential and his teammate have also got much better. First part of the season was very encouraging:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]68 goals in 18 matches, a new record for Campeonato Piauiense as Paulista led an all-River podium as usual. The legendary striker (who now goes just by the name of 'Paulista' - I dropped 'Rodrigo' as it took too much space on the screen!) also scored at unprecedented rate in the group stage of Copa Libertadores:

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]15 goals after the 6 group stage matches (admittedly against weak teams from minor countries like Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia), and Paulista already looks like a lock to win the Top Scorer award!

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]A strong start in Série A...

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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]7 goals in a single match, beating a long standing record set by my personal hero Edmundo! With this type of performances the 100 goals mark for the season became a formality, and breaking last season record of 128 goals also looks very possible at the moment.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]As Brazil manager I still haven't called-up Paulista, I really wanted him to be our front-man for the 2023 Copa America, but the league didn't have a break during the competition so Paulista would have missed over a month (that's a ton of games in Brazil...) while also playing against B teams of Mexico and Honduras that wouldn't count as official caps (or goals). Gabriel Jesus did a good job 'deputizing' for Paulista, as Brazil eventually won the Copa in convincing fashion. He recorded 9 official goals between easy friendlies and Copa America matches, Paulista almost doubled that score at River in the same period though...[/FONT]​
 
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