San Marino- Attempting the Impossible

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You may hate that he is retiring, but you still have those 5 star PA Youngsters.

So, with Adaltion's couching we could have some great players.
 
March-End of Season

This series of matches was no doubt the most important in the club's history. The goal was promotion, to reach Serie B for the first time ever. With some tough matches coming up, could we avoid a repeat performance of a playoff this year?
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A great run of results in the league, winning 6 of our last 9 games and avoiding a loss in the other three was exactly the sort of performance I was after. We also managed to win the Serie C cup but, did we do enough to win the league?
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YES!!! We even managed to win it before the final game against Cittadella so we knew whatever the result there it didn't really matter. The C1 Super Cup was a disappointment where we played Bari who ran away with Serie C1/B. I was without Adailton, who signed as my Assistant before I realized we were even playing two more games on the season. Hopefully the performances against them aren't a crystal ball into our Serie B future.

League Table
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Cittadella had a less than stellar run at the end of the season but bucked up when it counted in the playoffs gaining the second promotion spot and returning to Serie B at the first time of asking. The league wasn't nearly as tight as it was last year, with the top three teams all earning more points than Carpi who won it with 59 points last season.

Here are how the rest of the leagues that matter played out:
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Bari dominated C1/B and return to Serie B also at the first time of asking in a league that was extremely tight from 2nd on down. Nocerina joins them after just two years out of B. In Serie B the top dogs thankfully return to A and will make the competition a bit easier for us. It's also a good sign that both clubs that were promoted from C1A last season managed to stay afloat. Serie A saw all three clubs promoted last season dropped straight back down, though Spezia made a fight of it and almost managed to stay up after back to back promotions. Juventus were champions for the third time in a row with a stellar 91 points, a massive 24 points over second placed Napoli.

Squad
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I forgot to take this screen before Adailton moved into his new role so he's not listed, but this really shows why we had the best defense in the league with excellent performances from Olivieri, Ferri, Luciani, and Kirev. The fullbacks weren't as impressive but got the job done.
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Adailton ends his playing career as probably the best player yet to wear the shirt. I only wish I had one or two more years out of him but I'm hopeful that I can find a replacement.​
 
2013/14 Best Eleven
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Once again we'll be losing the majority of our top performers. There's the obvious retirement of Adailton, then Lunardini decided that he wants more than 1/10th of our wage budget and honestly I think I have players that can fill in for him and could probably sign one or two that will hopefully be better or just as good at a lower cost. Ceccarelli, Bouy, Luciani, and Bandini were all on loan so are leaving the club. All but Bouy are now available on a free transfer so I might look into adding them to the squad permanently but I'll wait and evaluate my options for a week or two.

Overall Best Eleven
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Kirev, after over 4 years in Italian speaking countries, can finally speak basic Italian. Hopefully his performances will get even better. Of these players, we still have Kirev, Olivieri, Camara, Pacciardi, Del Sole (though he was mostly a bench warmer last season), and Coda. Lunati is also still with us and may have to step into the first team if we can't either sign Bandini or a decent replacement.

Who's the Boss?
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I am.

Preseason Squad Report
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With an extremely depleted squad I'll be looking for a few Adailton-esque miracle signings in the off season to get the squad up to par with the competition. I'm really hoping I can sign the former loans that are now OOC so I don't lose too much team cohesion. We're definitely going to need an upgrade in the striker and midfielder department after Adailton's retirement and other players lost, but despite the low star ratings I'm pretty content with my defense and will only sign players there if they're just too good not to.

2014 Budgets
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As you can see, not a ton of improvement in the wages allowed department over last season, but with the players that left we should have plenty to work with. We also announced 7 new sponsors that will bring in over double what we did in the previous season.



​
 
At the end of the season I sat down with Adailton and discussed his plans for the off season. He told me he wanted to take a vacation to Brazil to visit his old home so I said, "That's fine, Adailton, but I've got one condition. While you're there, find me someone as good as you to take your place."

A few days later I get a call, it's Adailton who states, "I've found someone."

"Oh yeah? Is he as good as you?"

"Not quite, but he's got an awesome name."

"Fair enough."

Introducing THE ONE, THE ONLY...
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CULO!!!
 
Preseason 2014 Transfers
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Last year I focused on getting in loan players to strengthen the squad, mainly because few of any real quality wanted to join. This year, with the reputation boost from winning the league and C cup, we were able to do much better getting good players in. Here's a look at the new signings:
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Gabriel is the pick of the players, who we got on a free off of Serie A champions Juventus. He comes in touted as a good Serie B player with the potential of being good in Serie A. Gerardi and Pitbull will team up up front and can hopefully together lessen the impact of losing Adailton. Bandini's Inter contract finally expired after two years on loan with us and I'm pleased to have signed him. Hopefully he can continue to build on the success he's had with us in the past.

I was a little disappointed with Pacciardi and Del Sole, both central mids, leaving due to contract expiry. I don't think they were listed on the news item showing my players who's contracts were expiring, I'll have to pay closer attention to that in the future.

Team Depth Chart
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Overall, I think we have a team capable of surviving the league but probably won't cause too many surprises. The defense looks weak, but the same players that led the league last year in fewest goals conceded are mostly back so I'm hoping they can continue to perform, with Galuppo (who was with us on loan 2 years ago) and Mitrovic adding depth. I'm keeping my eye open for a left back to come in and replace Habarigura as he went out on loan along with Crivello.

Friendlies and Cups
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Some poor results in the friendlies, although to be fair we faced some tough opposition. We won the Competzione Amichevole again but those games are little more than glorified friendlies. In the Italian Cup we had to take it to extra time against Trapani to make it through, only to lose the next round to Verona in a Serie B match up. The scoreline was friendlier to us than we deserved as they completely dominated us and Coda's 17th minute goal was the only shot on target we had. Hopefully we can perform better than that in the league, however they've got to be one of the favorites for promotion this year.

World Cup

This was a strange one.
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And who wins?
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Japan won? Well, I was wanting them to get somewhere since I am a big fan of Keisuke Honda and of the Japanese National team plus I 1/4 japanese so for me.

This is great, through sadly its a game.
 
Quakes said:
Japan won? Well, I was wanting them to get somewhere since I am a big fan of Keisuke Honda and of the Japanese National team plus I 1/4 japanese so for me.

This is great, through sadly its a game.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's crazy because all of their players are greyed out, just players that the game generated. They don't have a single real life player on their team.
 
August-September 2014
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We started our Serie B campaign well with a 2-0 win over Juve Stabia that had me thinking this might be easier than I was expecting. Unfortunately Cittadella brought me back down to earth with a dominating 3-0 win on their grounds. We then lost the next two to Verona and Spezia, both teams that should be towards the top of the table this year. Then we had back to back all-important wins over fellow relegation candidates Bari and Nocerina before falling at home to Ternana. I accidentally played the first game in October without realizing it, but it was our best performance so far, coming from behind to win against Modena, who found themselves in 4th at the time despite being predicted to finish 18th.

Transfers
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I wasn't planning on signing another striker, but when my scouts found Comi, I couldn't pass him up. He's had Serie B experience being loaned from AC Milan to Reggina and my scouts tell me he'll be good in Serie A in the future. Liviero comes in on loan from parent club Juventus to provide cover for Camara at left back. Sturaro is another one who I'm hoping will develop into a quality player.

League Table
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After 8 games played, if we can remain around this position for the rest of the season I'll be happy. I'm aiming for 50 points on the year as that should keep us safe from relegation if the trend from the last two years is telling. Cesena, Spezia, and Cittadella are the top 3 with 21, 19, 16 points respectively.

Squad
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Looks like it's Gerardi, not Pitbull, who's stepping up to ease the loss of Adailton. Now I just need one of the other strikers to prove they deserve to partner him. Bandini has been excellent and Mitrovic has really picked up his performances after a poor start. Unfortunately the next few games are going to be tough, with 5 of my starters injured, one suspended, and one away on international duty all for at least the next 2 games.​
 
October-November 2014
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We lost to the teams that we probably should have and picked up some good wins over teams we probably wouldn't beat on paper, but that's why the game is played on the pitch. The 3-1 win over Vicenza at home was the most satisfying result as they're a team that have put themselves in position to challenge for promotion. The only real disappointing result was against Empoli as we got hammered and probably should have lost by more than the 2 goal margin it was in the end.

League Table
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17 games in and we're sitting comfortably at mid table and are actually closer to the promotion race points-wise than we are to relegation. If we can somehow knock off some of the teams above us and continue to win against the teams below us, who knows what can happen. I don't think we're anywhere near ready for the move up to Serie A, but a move up would really help our finances. It's probably just wishful thinking anyway and I'll be glad if we can maintain the spot we have now.

Squad
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Gerardi! He's quick, crafty, and has no problem slotting the ball home when given the opportunity. So far the only thing keeping him from performing as well as Adailton is his lack of assists, but that may just be because the other strikers aren't performing as well as I had hoped. If only we can have one more striker step up we can really become a threat offensively. Defensively, we're just as sound as last year and Galuppo has been proving that my nervousness over spending money on him wasn't justified. The midfield hasn't been horrible, but they can definitely improve their performances.​
 
I was looking through my inbox item of contracts expiring and under staff I found this gal:
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I don't remember ever seeing a "soccer expert" on staff. If I go to renew her contract, it doesn't let me choose soccer expert as a position. Anyone have any idea what she does at the club?
 
Thought I'd do a quick update here for the midway point of the season.

December 2014
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A great month other than the Padova result. I changed the match prep to defensive position for every match and play attacking at home and counter away. It seems to really be paying off so far. We've finally managed to win 3 in a row for the first time in the league and hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

League Table
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A great first half of the season sees us sitting in the top half of the table and within reach of a promotion spot. There are some teams below us that are probably capable of performing a lot better than they have been though, so I'm more likely to drop a couple positions than to move up. Still, I'm very happy with 8th at this point and barring a complete second half collapse we should be back in Serie B next year. I said my goal was 50 points, which would have most likely put us 15th-18th, but now I'm aiming a lot higher.

Squad
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Gerardi continues to impress, and I continue to search for someone that can partner him effectively. Coda has done decent but I'm afraid that when/if Gerardi goes cold there won't be anyone to step up and score goals. Ciaramitaro must have heard me complaining about the lack of quality in midfield because he has really turned it up lately. I'd really like to get Barbuzzi some more playing time, but with 4 center backs performing well I just can't justify putting him in.​
 
Mid Season Review

I realized I haven't really updated some of the behind the scenes stuff so figured I'd do that here. First, I want to show how Adailton is progressing as a coach:
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He seems to be coming along pretty well and will hopefully be my assistant for years to come. I've also decided to finally give in and hire a director of football as I seem to have little luck getting rid of deadwood and have heard that they can help with that as well as finding some good youth. Here's who I hired:
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I'm really not sure if he'll make a good DoF or not, but thought I'd give it a shot as I'm curious as to how the new position works in the game. I've set him to finding loans for my players, hiring youth team staff members, and negotiating transfers out. I've got Adailton finding and signing youth players. I also signed a good San Marino scout, just offered him the chief scout position and think he'll probably sign:
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Pitbull has been a disappointing signing as a player and has been plagued by injuries. I don't think he'll turn out to be the second coming of Adailton after all. He's a good coach, though for the salary he's on I don't think he's great. I didn't post his staff attributes previously so here they are now:
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Finances

I really struggled with finances the first two years, but they received a boost last year from joining Serie B. For a bit we were actually in the black but after putting most of my wage budget to use here's where we stand:
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Not extremely poor, but at this rate I won't be upgrading my youth facilities any time soon which is something I'll need to do eventually to get the national team competitive. The biggest contributor to the financial situation is the lack of fans attending games. It's gotten a lot better over last year when we only had about 500 fans on average but still bottom of the league:
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The board also gave me the option of changing the expectations for the year and increasing the budget, but even though a mid table finish isn't much to ask for I feel like we're spending too much on wages as it is. I know that if I increased the budget I wouldn't be able to resist using it up.


National Team

Haven't updated this in a while, so here's how 2014 went:
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Not horrific but we're still searching for our first competitive win. Our best chance will be at home to Malta in a September ECQ clash. We're now ranked 183rd in the world and have seen as high as 172nd:
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There's really not been any regens yet that look even close to promising. I'm actually considering adding another head coach to take over a team in San Marino but feel for one that might be a little cheap (although it is allowed within the rules of the challenge) and secondly might considerably slow down the time it takes to play. If anyone has any thoughts on this I would more than welcome them. The way I see it, if I do create another coach, I'd have two options. I could just play it in game and give updates here only at the end of each season or I could do full updates along with San Marino.​
 
Last edited:
January-February 2015
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Our fantastic run continues! I was really hoping after Comi scored a brace against Reggina that a striker other than Gerardi was finally breaking through, but it wasn't to be. Instead it was as if Gerardi thought someone else at the club might begin to outperform him and went on a rampage. The Verona result was a disappointment as we played at home and they're a bottom-mid table team, but other than that I can't complain.

League Table
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We're just 1 point off of my goal for the season and we still have 13 matches to play. The best part is we're only 2 points off of second and possibly the last promotion spot. Promotion from Serie B had me confused as I noticed sometimes there were three teams in the green and other times just two. I guess it depends on how many points separate 3rd and 4th, if it's 10 or more then the 3rd placed team gets promoted, 9 or less and only the top 2 get promoted. With as tight as the league is from 2nd on down I can't see more than 2 teams being promoted.

Squad
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Gerardi is a superstar. He now leads Serie B in scoring with 26 league goals, two up from second place. I'm still searching for someone else to get on a hot streak as far as scoring goals. I know I keep repeating myself but if Gerardi goes cold or gets injured things could get tough. Coda is second on the team in league goals with a measly 4. The defense has remained strong though, only giving up the 2nd most at 29.

There was some bad news on the injury front. Right after I let my backup right back Lunati go on loan my first choice, Bandini, gets injured and looks to be out for the rest of the season. Camara has been filling in from left back, with Liviero taking his spot. I panicked and signed this guy, who hopefully can do the job for the rest of the season:
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He's only played in three league games so far in his career.​
 
March-April 2015
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We couldn't quite keep the results going like we had the last couple of months and haven't scored a single goal in the last three games. The losses against Livorno and Padova hurt the most, Livorno because we were at home against a team I think is weaker and Padova because it led to them passing us in the table.

League Table
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With three games left, we're sitting in 6th and looking at the possibility of promotion playoffs. I was only half right on the promotion rules, if 10+ points separate 3rd from 4th then 3rd place is promoted, but if 9 points or less separate them then 3rd-6th have a playoff. At this point I just want to finish as high up as possible, if we manage promotion I'll be happy but I think it might be premature.

Squad
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Gerardi has finally had the poor run of form I've been worrying about and it's proven to be as detrimental as I thought. Hopefully he can start banging them again. With three winnable but not easy matches remaining somebody needs to.​
 
May 2015
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Going into the final three games I knew we could at least make the playoffs if we could manage to win all three, and win them we did. This put us in an astounding 4th place in the league, only 2 points off of 2nd and automatic promotion. The final 2 games were both nervy as we left it somewhat late to score the winners, but the fact that encouraged me most was that Gerardi wasn't are only striker to successfully find the net. Next up was an away then home series against Pescara in the promotion playoff semi final.

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Once again, in the first game we left it late with Coda coming off the bench to score an 87th minute equalizer to give us the edge heading into the home match. Coda got us started nicely on the return leg with a 6th minute goal but they answered straight away in the 8th minute. Then in the 14th Gerardi was in the right spot at the right time to put away a rebound that Pescara's keeper couldn't punch clear. After that the scoring stopped and I thought we would hold on for the win until Bandini put the ball past Kirev into his own net. I was thinking it would go to penalties after that but somehow when the final whistle blew it was over and we were through to the final because we made the tie breaker by having the better league record.

Next up was Empoli in the final with the first match played at our stadium. The media felt it was worth noting that we hadn't been able to win against them in our first two tries during the season.

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This match was frustrating in more than one way. They dominated possession and looked more lively getting shots on goal but none that really tested Kirev. Then we struck first in the 41st minute with a great effort from Comi from just outside the 18 and a defender marking him tightly. However they answered back right after the break in the 47th with a ball that looked to go out behind our goal but was supposedly crossed in the nick of time back to one of their players that couldn't miss the open net. For the remainder of the game we played well and had 2 chances that should have been taken but both Gerardi and Coda fired wide. This meant a must win in the away leg as Empoli had the better league record.

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Heartbreak. I don't even want to talk about this one. I'll just say that our performance was **** poor and we deserved to lose by more.​
 
2014/15 End of Season Review

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Finishing 4th in the first year at this level is superb, especially when I thought I might struggle to stay up. In the end, we made the playoffs and lost which was disappointing at the time but now that it's in the past I really think I'm better off for it. My goal was Serie A in 5 years for a reason, and that's because I want to go up with a team that can compete immediately for a mid table position and there's no way this team would have done that.

2014/15 Best Eleven

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Gerardi was obviously invaluable for us this season, bagging the Serie B top goal scorer award. Looking at the best eleven, I'm really happy with how the new signings came in and performed and hopefully we can build on that in the future. We're still looking for that striker to step up and become Gerardi's main partner. The only player leaving from this setup is Mitrovic, who returns to Bologna, but I'm hoping to loan him again and possibly pick him up if his contract expires next year. Of the subs, Olivieri is leaving on a free and Pitbull has retired after having failed to make an impact. Pitbull wouldn't listen to my offer of a coaching position so good riddance to him.

Overall Best Eleven

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Of the overall best eleven, 7 are still with us as players and of course Adailton is the assistant coach. Pacciardi has retired from playing and is now a coach, but judging from his attributes not a very good one. Lunardini is the most disappointing loss, as he is now playing for recently promoted Pisa for a third of what he wanted when I tried to renew his contract. We'll see who made the mistake on the pitch. Gerardi, in one season, dethrones Adailton as the best San Marino player ever and can really distance himself in the coming years at the relatively young age of 27.

Team Depth Chart

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The only area that really needs strengthening is the defense. I may also look for another playmaking AMC as I played the majority of last season with a couple of different versions of a 4-1-3-2 formation but would like to get back to a more attacking 4-1-2-1-2 now that we've been at this level for a year and should be one of the better teams returning.


Serie A Table

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We have some tough competition coming down to face us in Udinese, Siena, and Crotone. Our results against those three will surely determine whether we can repeat the run we had last year. Roma finally knocks off Juventus as both league champions and Italian Cup winners. Just looking at the quality of teams here makes me cringe knowing that I'm eventually going to have to try and beat them.

Serie C1/A & C1/B

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Somehow C1/B got all four relegated teams from Serie B last season and two of them, Pisa and Ascoli come right back up. Cremonese and AlbinoLeffe follow from C1/A.

English Premier League

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After winning the league three years in a row and forcing Ferguson into retirement, Man City finally give up the title to Arsenal on goal difference. Most impressive however is the fact that Burnley, in their second year up, have placed 3rd and will be playing in the Champions League. Guardiola is now the manager of Man U and Bielsa replaces Wenger as he retires on a high note after winning the league.​
 
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