San Marino- Attempting the Impossible

[flez85]

January-May 2025

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Only 1 loss in the final half of the season means we dominated the league once again.

League Table

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We ran away with the league again for our 5th title, now we only need to win it 30 times more to match Juventus. The top 5 finished the same as last year with the exception of Juventus and Napoli swapping spots.

Italian Cup and Champions League

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The Champions League draw threw England's best at us and we beat them back to advance to the final for the 4th time in 6 years. Manchester City gave us the biggest scare, beating us 2-0 at home but we were motivated during their trip to Italy and absolutely smashed them at Flesner Stadium, setting up a final clash against Barcelona at Wembley. We also won the Italian Cup for the 5th time with a nervy win in extra time against AC Milan in a match where I rested some key players due to the two finals being only 3 days apart.

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This win gives us our second Champions Cup in 3 years! We've shown ourselves to be one of the best clubs in the world and hopefully we should be able to continue that.

Squad

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Ogaga and Sotomayor have to be two of the best players in the world, if not overall then at least at their respective positions. Benvenuti did well in the few games I played him, and since he is one of the few decent players with soley Sammarinese nationality I'll be looking to get him more game time over the next couple of years.

Also, in the January window, Luis Mena was brought in by my head of youth development, I think the only player I've actually liked him bringing in. With the recent departures of Zmajla and Livaja I thought it was a good time to bring another striker in for cover anyway and he fits the bill:
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Youth Intake

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Granese is the most promising of this year's youth signings, unfortunately he doesn't have San Marino nationality. Battastini also looks to be a potential superstar and he does have dual nationality along with Bindi. Bugli and Giordani don't have Italy as a nationality so they'll probably feature in the national team before any of the others do.

With that, thought I'd post a screen of my current youth squad (minus some who are in the first team seen in the squad screenies above).
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This year's intake really boosted the squad but as you can see not a lot of highly rated Sammarinese youngsters. Still, with a youth team like this I should be able to minimize the incoming transfers and look to develop players at the club. Hopefully in time I'll be able to field a squad made up entirely of players coming through our youth system.​

 

[flez85]

July-December 2025 League Results

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Normally I would be disappointed to lose to teams like Taranto and Genoa, however I'm delighted with the way we've performed in the league overall considering the injury crisis we've had this year. You'll see in the squad screen just how bad it still is, but it hasn't been an uncommon occurence to have up to 9 players I would have in my ideal first team unavailable due to injury.

League Table

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It's really amazing to me how we're still topping the league considering the circumstances. I believe that with a fully healthy squad it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to win every game on the cards.

Cup Results

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I've been using an U21 squad for the Competzione Amichevole and it's still too easy. Next year I'll start using U18. It was disappointing not to win the Italy super cup but we had Sukhov sent off in the 13th minute so it's not really a case of losing to a better team, just a lucky result for them. Juventus won last year's Europa League making it an all-Italy European Super Cup this year where we showed up and thrashed them before the injury plague hit later in the season. In the Champions League At. Madrid topped the group, winning all of their games except the one against us, though we did come second to make it to the KO round. The Club World Championship was a cake walk for us, winning it for the second time in club history.

Champions League KO Draw

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Depending on how the injury situation pans out we should be aiming to defend our champions status. Also of note here is that all 4 Italian clubs made it past their groups, a joint first with England.

Squad

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If you think the injury and suspension situation looks bad now, should have seen it before. The good news is that the young players have really stepped up and performed well, most notable Boschetti, Sanchi, and Benvenuti who all have Sammarinese nationality, though Benvenuti is the only one that doesn't also have dual nationality so hasn't played for Italy's youth teams. On that subject, Boschetti has made 25 U21 appearances for Italy and racked up an impressive 25 goals. Having just turned 22 that should wrap up his time with Italy (fingers crossed) and hopefully he'll be accepting a San Marino call up in a couple of years.

Transfer In

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When the injury bug hit the wingers hard in October I panicked and agreed to buy this kid from Chelsea for $20M. I had my eye on a different winger to bring in for even more but ironically Chelsea were able to sign him. I've made up my mind that this will be my last transfer of this type. From now on I'm going to make the rule for myself that any players I bring in through the transfer market have to be 18 or under if they're not Italian or Sammarinese.

Notable Awards

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Ogaga and Sotomayor took 2nd and 3rd respectively for the World Golden Ball. Would have been nice to have one of them win it, but 2 players in the top 3 is quite an accomplishment in my eyes.

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Mulder gets the Golden ball but Sotomayor beats him out for World Player of the Year. Not bad for a player that we paid a mere $1.1M for in 2017, may have been a bit expensive for us back then but that's mere pocket change to us now.

National Team 2025 Results

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Finished bottom of the group for WCQ but I feel progress has been made, evident in our friendly domination of Chinese Taipei and Andorra along with the draws against Montenegro and Saudi Arabia. I feel that over the next few years as some of the players with dual nationality at the club start to accept my call ups we can really start to compete for qualification.
​

 

[PhoenixFiress]

Started this myself (first thing I tried after buying the game really, first time I've ever joined this forum as well actually) and my oh my is the national side terrible, it didn't even matter that I was favourites to win my friendly Vs Bhutan, they beat me 3-0

That having been said I'm still in my first season and the club side of things is going well, top of the league and such. The main point of my post is I wanted to know how I can show you one of my Sammarinese regens from the first youth intake. He has no joint nationality and potential ability to be a 'Good Serie A Striker' apparently. From your posts I can see you've struggled to get any really good youth, I wanted to show this guy just to see whether he's actually as good as my Assistant is saying. Got absolutely no idea how to show his stats though, didn't want to just write them all out to be honest.

I just wanted to apologise in advance if I've posted this in completely the wrong place, being your story an all, just because it was the same challenge and such. If there's a better place for me to have posted this then I apologise. Love the story by the way, really convinced me to actually buy the game, hope you take them to World Cup

 

[flez85]

Started this myself (first thing I tried after buying the game really, first time I've ever joined this forum as well actually) and my oh my is the national side terrible, it didn't even matter that I was favourites to win my friendly Vs Bhutan, they beat me 3-0

That having been said I'm still in my first season and the club side of things is going well, top of the league and such. The main point of my post is I wanted to know how I can show you one of my Sammarinese regens from the first youth intake. He has no joint nationality and potential ability to be a 'Good Serie A Striker' apparently. From your posts I can see you've struggled to get any really good youth, I wanted to show this guy just to see whether he's actually as good as my Assistant is saying. Got absolutely no idea how to show his stats though, didn't want to just write them all out to be honest.

I just wanted to apologise in advance if I've posted this in completely the wrong place, being your story an all, just because it was the same challenge and such. If there's a better place for me to have posted this then I apologise. Love the story by the way, really convinced me to actually buy the game, hope you take them to World Cup

No worries about posting here, glad to see someone still following the story! This is a tough challenge to take on for your first game, good luck to you. For the screens, I use the default hotkey which is alt+f9 in game, it will create a picture of the screen your on in the screenshots folder (documents/sports interactive/football manager 2013/screenshots). From there you can use the "Insert Image" function in the top tool bar here on the forum and upload. I think there's other ways to do it but that's what is easiest for me.

The national team really is terrible starting out and that's something I have to keep reminding myself of when it seems like I'm not making much progress with them. Really just moving the ball around and having a couple of chances in a game is better than starting out where you could easily lose by 9 or 10 against some of the better teams.

Feel free to post your regen, I'm interested to see what you've come up with. I wouldn't say that my youth intake has been all that bad, just that the majority of the players I think could really make a difference for the national team have dual nationality with Italy and of course will opt to play for them given the opportunity.

 

[PhoenixFiress]

Yeah I realised just how tough it was going to be not long after I took it on, but I didn't want to do something boring like a prem team, and it was different to the usual Blue Square South undertaking.

Yeah I guess that's something I can hold onto, Montenegro beat me 5-0 and that's the biggest loss I've suffered so far, England only beat me by 4. So far the only international goal I've scored was Mattia Stefenelli who starts out on loan at San Marino, and the 3-0 loss to Bhutan was just ridiculous

Yeah that's what I meant really, I was surprised from reading this thread that my regen (Florini) wasn't dual Italian, I saw him, saw the PA and thought, definitely going to be Italian as well. As for that method, I cannot seem to get it to work, whenever I clicked Alt+f9 nothing seemed to happen, so I changed the shortcut to Alt+Insert, and still it seemed like nothing was happening. So I checked the folders, and there doesn't seem to be one called screenshots, on top of that after I created one, nothing happened even still, really annoying. Wish I was better with computers lol

 

[flez85]

January-May 2026

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As the squad started to become healthy again we performed well in the league yet again and had it wrapped up with 5 games to spare. Against Juventus I think I got a little too cocky fielding a mostly youth team and suffered the consequences, still not disappointed in the slightest with how the season went.

Italian Cup and Champions League

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So in the Champions League we were schooled by Real Madrid in the Quarter Finals. We really should have beat them handily at home and done better on the road but it wasn't meant to be this year. Barcelona, under new head coach and former Juventus man Antonio Conte, won the whole thing this time around. The Italian Cup is ours for the 5th time in a row and 6th time overall. In other news, English Premier Division winners Southampton won the Europa League, really surprised with how good they've become.

League Table

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Not as dominant as we've been the past couple of years but still miles away from the other clubs. The real surprise here is Juventus missing out on Champions League football next season, letting AC Milan, Atalanta, and Napoli grab the qualification spots behind us.

Squad

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Ogaga and Sotomayor are world beaters and it's going to be hard to replace them when the time comes. We have good news and bad news on the national front with the bad news first being Sanchi getting called up by Italy for the world cup. He's played in two friendlies for them so far so is still eligible for San Marino but it's looking less and less likely that he'll be in my future plans for the national team, though he did struggle in a defeat against Brazil with his mistake leading to the only goal of the game. The good news is that Federico Ceccoli becomes the first highly rated player with dual nationality accepting a call up for San Marino not a day before he turned 24.

Youth Intake

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These two are the only youngsters in this year's intake worth mentioning. Both have dual nationality with Italy so probably won't be seen in the SMNT squad for quite some time, if at all. Adailton says that Carlini is ready to play for a Serie B side already and gives him the nod to become one of the best right wingers in Serie A, that's a position I could really use in the national team so I'll keep my fingers crossed. Dolcini also has bags of potential and is the more likely of the two to be overlooked by Italy.
​

 

[flez85]

Yeah I realised just how tough it was going to be not long after I took it on, but I didn't want to do something boring like a prem team, and it was different to the usual Blue Square South undertaking.

Yeah I guess that's something I can hold onto, Montenegro beat me 5-0 and that's the biggest loss I've suffered so far, England only beat me by 4. So far the only international goal I've scored was Mattia Stefenelli who starts out on loan at San Marino, and the 3-0 loss to Bhutan was just ridiculous

Yeah that's what I meant really, I was surprised from reading this thread that my regen (Florini) wasn't dual Italian, I saw him, saw the PA and thought, definitely going to be Italian as well. As for that method, I cannot seem to get it to work, whenever I clicked Alt+f9 nothing seemed to happen, so I changed the shortcut to Alt+Insert, and still it seemed like nothing was happening. So I checked the folders, and there doesn't seem to be one called screenshots, on top of that after I created one, nothing happened even still, really annoying. Wish I was better with computers lol

Yeah, I hear you there, this save is the first time I've managed in a top league for more than a year or two, just tends to get too easy/boring managing in the top leagues. This is a good way to go though because even being one of the best in Europe there's still a lot left to the challenge to keep you interested.

That's strange the problems you're having with the screenshots. You could try print screen and paste it in Paint then save it where you'd like.

 

[PhoenixFiress]

Yeah I might try that, we'll see how it goes and hopefully a screenshot will be forthcoming. In terms of my player he's pretty similar to Dolcini there, except he's 15 not 14 and his physical stats are slightly worse I'd say. Better Finishing and Composure than Dolcini, so I've been training him in the Poacher role. And like I said, pure Sammarinese, so I have high hopes. He did score on his debut, but then my game crashed and I had to replay, only drew and he didn't score.

Nice update anyhow, can't wait till I'm competing in the Champions League, long way off just yet. Hoping I get my own Sotomayor, absolute beast

 

[kingymcfc]

Hi, I've just read this story from the beginning over the last couple of days and thought I would sign up to post a comment. I've got to say you've done a great job with the club, I hope you manage to convince Boschetti and the others to play for San Marino National Team. I'm interested to see how you get on and I will definitely be following your progress.

KUTGW!

 

[flez85]

Hi, I've just read this story from the beginning over the last couple of days and thought I would sign up to post a comment. I've got to say you've done a great job with the club, I hope you manage to convince Boschetti and the others to play for San Marino National Team. I'm interested to see how you get on and I will definitely be following your progress.

KUTGW!

Thanks for the comment! I just started 2 new real life jobs so haven't been playing as much as I was but still planning on continuing this as time permits. I'm really glad that Ceccoli finally was capped for San Marino, and Boschetti only has a little over a year to go before turning 24 in which he'll hopefully not get called up by Italy.

 

[MojoDex]

Looking good so far! Any players from San Marino looking like becoming regulars for the club yet?

 

[flez85]

Looking good so far! Any players from San Marino looking like becoming regulars for the club yet?

There are a few that have already and a few more that are right on the fringe. Here's some screens of the top players from San Marino that have come through the youth system as they are currently:

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Sanchi and Boschetti have been the most regular in the first team with 53 appearances last year between them. Crescentini and Benvenuti each played around a dozen times. Ceccoli is going to be my main backup GK this year, he's third best at the club but with playing for the national team now I'm going to give him more time at the club. The others I'm going to try and loan out to a Serie B club where they can hopefully develop without garnering too much attention from Italy. Battistini and Carlini are two that I'm very excited about.

Unfortunately as I mentioned in the last update Sanchi won't ever pull on a San Marino shirt, opting to play for Italy instead, though he'll continue to play for the club at least for the time being.

 

[MojoDex]

Boschetti looks brillian, be a real shame if Italy stole him.