Suriname- Making it on their own.

[Reiziger]

Gullit, Rijkaard, Davids, Seedorf, Kluivert, Reiziger, some of the greatest Dutch footballers to have played over the past 25 years. But it could have been so different.

All of these players have links to Suriname, a South American country that belongs to CONCACAF. Imagine if these players and many more had worn the white and green of Suriname instead? That got me thinking...

Due to the Surinamese government relaxing a law dating back to the 1970s regarding the eligibility of national team players, players of Suriname heritage are now able to play for the birth of their parents and grandparents, putting them on level par with rivals Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, who have employed the grandparent rule to much success in recent years.

But that's not all. FIFA have permitted any Dutch players of Surinamese decent who wish to switch to the Caribbean nation a free transfer pass, regardless of how many caps they have previously won for Holland, and to represent Suriname instead.

I have been appointed as head coach succeeding Dean Gorre and will start recruiting new players ahead of the autumn internationals in September and October.

 

[Reiziger]

Great start winning all six of the autumn internationals, including a 2-0 home win against Trinidad & Tobago.

Managed to recruit a very talented squad including Vorm and Vermeer in goal, Bruma, van Dijk and van Aanholt in defence, de Jong, Anita and Wijnaldum in midfield and Emnes and Babel up top.

Friendly against Belize set up in March before the Caribbean Cup in August. Tour of New Zealand and Australia in September before friendlies against Canada, El Salvador, Aruba and Barbados. Aiming to qualify for the Gold Cup in 2017.

 

[ninjaskill]

Wow some great players that you have got playing for you, CONCACAF should be pretty easy given the squad. Good luck in the competitive matches

 

[dani3w]

This could be superb! Good luck

 

[Zlatan Lumic]

I recall seeing something similar in another forum made with the Cuban national team, the author came up with a narrative trick called "law of forgiveness" which pretty much allowed him to call players who fled from Cuban territory to America (like Lester Moré or Osvaldo Alonso (one of CONCACAF's best midfielders hands down)) and foreigners with Cuban descent (like Samuel Armenteros) that are things that the actual Cuban national team would never do...
...and the results were quite satisfactory, Cuba became the best Caribbean national team (way ahead of Jamaica and T&T), proved themeselves better than nations like Panamá, Canada and Guatemala and even made it the Hexagonal reaching a level almost on par with that of Honduras'
However he hit a pretty wall as he found out that since most (if not the complete entirety) of Cuban teams were amateur and have a low reputation if any young player ended up being released they would have a hard time finding a new team and eventually chose to retire from football, which meant that he pretty much lost most of the most promising young talent (which seriously jeopardized his experiment).
____________________

As for your experiment with Suriname, I can picture them pretty much making it all the way to the Hexagonal with relative ease. The sudden level increase should make the Surinamese national team one of the best nations in the CONCACAF hands down (maybe not on par with USA or Mexico... yet, but should be able to put up an even fight with countries like Honduras, Panamá and Costa Rica).
Also I don't think you'll suffer serious blows with the young prospects, as the most promising one will already be playing in the Dutch football leagues and thus will develop properly.

I'll be following this one very closely as it caught my interest and it would be nice to see if they can overtake Mexico's and USA's place as CONCACAF's titans one day and make it all the way to the World Cup.

 

[Reiziger]

View attachment 163282

2016 was a very busy year that ended with Surinam lifting the Caribbean Championship Cup and qualifying for the 2017 Gold Cup after beating Curacao 3-1 in the final. 10 games were played in the competition in all as Surinam successfully navigated their way through three qualifying group stages, winning each group every time, scoring 43 goals in all.

The First round saw us comfortably top the qualifying group with easy wins against St Kitts & Nevis, Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico, while the second round wasn't much more difficult with another three wins coming against Dominican Republic, Curacao and Grenada, although the schedule was tough on the squad with only a game between games in each round.

Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago entered the third round stage which I thought would be a tough test, but after a 3-0 win against Martinique we beat Jamaica 2-0 before topping the group with a 4-1 win over Haiti to qualify for the final.

R1 Won 5-0 vs St Kitts & Nevis
R1 Won 6-0 vs Cayman Islands
R1 Won 8-0 vs Puerto Rico

R2 Won 4-0 vs Domincan Republic
R2 Won 3-0 vs Curacao
R2 Won 5-0 vs Grenada

R3 Won 3-0 vs Martinique
R3 Won 2-0 vs Jamaica
R3 Won 4-1 vs Haiti

Final Won 3-1 vs Curacao

Six international friendlies were also played in 2016 with the aim of getting Surinam into the World top 100 in the FIFA rankings, although we fell just short rising from 165 to 112 by the end of December 2016. Hopefully we can break into the top 100 by June 2017.

Friendlies
12-0 vs Belize (h)
1-0 vs New Zealand (a)
0-1 vs UAE (a)
0-0 vs Canada (h)
3-1 vs El Salvador (h)
9-2 vs Barbados (h)

Striker Quincy Promes has been prolific playing as a poacher up top on his own in a 4-2-3-1 formation, scoring 18 goals in 16 internationals, while Ryan Babel, Georginio Wijnaldum and Urby Emanuelson have been fantastic in the three supporting forward roles. Riechedly Bazoer has broken into the first team after his £13.5m transfer to Sporting Lisbon pushing Vernon Anita and Leroy Fer out of the starting XI, while Kenneth Vermeer (Feyenoord) has claimed the goalkeepers jersey ahead of Michel Vorm and Boy Waterman.

Squad

G Michel Vorm (Tottenham)
G Kenneth Vermeer (Feyenoord)
G Boy Waterman (APOEL)

D Gregory van der Wiel (Paris SG)
D Pele van Arholt (AA Gent)
D Jetro Willems (Juventus)
D Patrick van Aanholt (Sunderland)
D Virgil van Dijk (Southampton)
D Stefano Denswil (Lyon)
D Jeiro Riedeweld (Ajax)
D Jeffrey Bruma (PSV)

M Nigel de Jong (LA Galaxy)
M Riechedly Bazoer (Sporting Lisbon)
M Leroy Fer (QPR)
M Vurnon Anita (Newcastle Utd)
M Georginio Wijnaldum (Newcastle Utd)
M Tjaronn Chery (QPR)

F Ryan Babel (Al-Ain)
F Urby Emanuelson (Verona)
F Quincy Promes (Sevilla)
F Jurgen Locadia (PSV)
F Virgil Misidjan (Udinese)
F Eljero Elia (Feyenoord)

The draw for the Gold Cup Finals is made in a couple of months, and it will be interesting to see how Surinam compare if matched against USA, Mexico or Costa Rica.

Quite a few regens with dual Dutch-Surinamese nationality have already come through, but most have rejected call ups to the Surinam squad. I was hoping to cap a few to tie them to Surinam but that plan hasn't worked yet. I am a little worried that as the current squad ages I won't be able to replace the players with youngsters coming through.

However one regen accepted a call-up, 17-year-old goalkeeper Claudio Tiendalli of NEC in Holland. Shows some promise at a young age and played 45 minutes in the Barbados friendly, hoping he breaks through to their first team in the coming seasons.

Friendlies against Cuba and Panama coming up before a massive international against Holland in Paramaribo. Then the Gold Cup in July before autumn internationals against Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Jordan, Qatar and Venezuela.

 

[Reiziger]

Something else that I've noticed is the improvement in the Curacao national team. As I'm running the Dutch league they have also managed to recruit dual national players and have greatly improved their squad also under the management of Patrick Kluivert.

They reached the final of the Caribbean Cup losing to us 3-1 and I can see them also pushing for a spot in the final 6 hexagonal World Cup qualifying group for Qatar 2022.

 

[Reiziger]

Quick update before a full write up at the weekend...

Lost 6-2 to Mexico in the Gold Cup final after beating Honduras in the SF and Canada in the QF.

Also drew 1-1 with Holland in a friendly international.

 

[Miki4231]

How did you do it?

Hi guys,

Can any of you can help me how to choose to manage Suriname national team?!? Does it require some patch, because I try almost everything in football manager 2016, like loading all players from North America, all players from Suriname, and nothing happens. I can manage Bermuda, Virgin islands, Curacao,... But what to do to select Suriname. I got this idea to play with Suriname, few day ago, and this is only post on Internet about that subject.

Regards,

 

[kandersson]

Hi guys,

Can any of you can help me how to choose to manage Suriname national team?!? Does it require some patch, because I try almost everything in football manager 2016, like loading all players from North America, all players from Suriname, and nothing happens. I can manage Bermuda, Virgin islands, Curacao,... But what to do to select Suriname. I got this idea to play with Suriname, few day ago, and this is only post on Internet about that subject.

Regards,

Pretty sure that if you load 'all players of nationality' from Suriname you'll make the NT available. You could download Suriname league from claassen's league world pack to be extra sure.

 

[Zlatan Lumic]

Hi guys,

Can any of you can help me how to choose to manage Suriname national team?!? Does it require some patch, because I try almost everything in football manager 2016, like loading all players from North America, all players from Suriname, and nothing happens. I can manage Bermuda, Virgin islands, Curacao,... But what to do to select Suriname. I got this idea to play with Suriname, few day ago, and this is only post on Internet about that subject.

Regards,

You loaded the wrong region I'm afraid...
Suriname plays the Concacaf qualifiers, but it's a South American country, choosing to load South American, Caribbean or just Surinamese players (like Kandersson pointed out) should solve the issue.

Also be sure to load the Dutch league if possible, since it will give you quite a potential array of Surinamese regens as game time goes on.

 

[Bullardinho]

Where did you find out each players heritage? Some of them it is relatively easy to find, but players like Leroy Fer, it is well documented his parents/grandparents are of Curacaoan decent but no mention of Suriname?

 

[Miki4231]

Me again

It's probably best for me to destroy my laptop... Nothing, one big nothing again. I told you guys, I already try many combinations in game menu. Did any of you except Reiziger play with Suriname?

 

[Zlatan Lumic]

It's probably best for me to destroy my laptop... Nothing, one big nothing again. I told you guys, I already try many combinations in game menu. Did any of you except Reiziger play with Suriname?

What's the size of the database you choose for your save?
Do you play with the large database? If not maybe you can give it a shot (I play with the large database and I recall seeing it as eligible).

 

[kandersson]

It's probably best for me to destroy my laptop... Nothing, one big nothing again. I told you guys, I already try many combinations in game menu. Did any of you except Reiziger play with Suriname?

ok I just checked and there seems to be a problem, so you might not be crazy! Loaded all players from Suriname, and Curacao showed up instead. I'm sure I had started a save with Suriname some time ago so something must have gone wrong in recent patches. It seems to be a specific issue with Suriname related to Curacao though I did try to load Curacao and Curacao showed up regularly... maybe raise this in SI forums, there is clearly something wrong.

 

[Miki4231]

What's the size of the database you choose for your save?
Do you play with the large database? If not maybe you can give it a shot (I play with the large database and I recall seeing it as eligible).

It's always large database Can you upload me your game file somewhere? It could be 40-50Mb I think. I dont know what else to do. I will try to play with Tibet at the end.

 

[kandersson]

It's always large database Can you upload me your game file somewhere? It could be 40-50Mb I think. I dont know what else to do. I will try to play with Tibet at the end.

try to load Suriname league by claassen, that might be your best chance at this point.

 

[Zlatan Lumic]

It's always large database Can you upload me your game file somewhere? It could be 40-50Mb I think. I dont know what else to do. I will try to play with Tibet at the end.

It's outdated (it's a 16.2 version save) and it weights around 200 Mb by now.
So your best bet could be following kandersson's advice or report the issue on the official forums.