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Hello, my fellow Football Manager players, my name is Dylan Campbell and I want to tell you of the amazing tale that I am having managing different clubs across the world on Football Manager 2014. If you want to follow this story more closely, please continue checking this post as there will be daily updates! Thank you and let us begin.
 
Chapter One

The plane had just touched down at Athens Airport. The wheels scratched the surface of the tarmac surface as the plane began to slow from 300 kilometres an hour. Once the plane had parked at the terminal and once the refuelling rig was attached to the aircraft. The plane's doors opened as passengers began to filter out of the aircraft. Once I stepped out, the heat of the Athens sun was roasting. Once my shoes touched the tarmac, I could smell the burning of the leather on my shoes.

Welcome to Greece. My name is Dylan Campbell and I was beginning my career as a football coach. This was a new start for me from coaching in my homeland in Northern Ireland. I had completed a distinguished career for my country. Collecting 77 caps between 1994 and 1999 and playing for clubs such as Coventry, Peterborough and Linfield. Once my playing career ended in the British Isles, I moved to Greece to play for Olympiakos.

The experience was incredible. I had joined during the prime of one of the biggest rivalries in European football. Olympiakos vs. Panathinaikos. It made your heart pump faster, and the adrenaline build up in your body. It is a feeling that any footballer in the world will describe as simply heart-stopping.

After I retired, I visited countries such as Serbia, Russia and Romania to learn the trade of Eastern European football. It was a great experience and I then went back to Britain to study at the University of Ulster and learnt all I could about Eastern European football. I then began to coach for the IFA, the Northern Irish national football association and eventually got my coaching badge.

I contemplated going into football management. It was a great opportunity to travel and to earn money. Back in Northern Ireland, I was unemployed and was not getting paid as much as I wanted to by the IFA. So I decided to apply for five jobs. Three were from teams in Serbia, Shrewsbury Town in England and an unknown team in Greece.

A week later, all five teams replied responding to say that I was the right man for the job. The three teams in Serbia were mid-table and were not really in any chance of winning any cups or competition. Shrewsbury was a good opportunity to prove myself as they had a good young developing squad but I didn't see Shrewsbury progressing to the Premier League under my leadership.

So I decided to go for the unknown Greek team. It was called Asteras Tripoli F.C and was a top half team in the Greek SuperLeague. It had continental qualification in the Europa League, and had an influx of young and developing stars, many of which were foreign. Some of which came from Argentina and Spain.

I researched into the history of this club and I was intrigued. When Tripoli was formed in 1931, its future didn't look bright. Within a year, all football clubs in Tripoli had dissolved. Another club called Keramikos transferred all of his players to Tripoli and began the revival of the club. However, within a year, the Nazis had invaded Greece and the club had dissolved once again.

After a long 40-year spell, in 1978, Tripoli was formed and in 2001 began an unbeaten streak at home that lasted for five years. In its first ever appearance in the SuperLeague, it defeated PAOK, AEK Athens, Olympiakos and Panathinaikos all in the same year rewriting the record books.

Its rapid growth in the Greek football leagues led to Asteras Tripoli having its best ever season in the club's history in the 2012-13 season. It finished third in the SuperLeague and qualified for the Europa League and reached the final of the Greek Cup, which they lost 3-1 to Panathinaikos.

However, their manager quit for undisclosed reasons and I was now given the task to help continue the success of this ambitious club. The club was managed by an ambitious chairman too called Giorgios Borovilos. When we met inside his office in Tripoli, we spoke for three hours and the enthuastic response that he gave to each of my queries was simply incredible. He had high hopes for his club and so did I.

Once I had met with the players and the staff, I decided to focus on the tasks of the pre-season friendlies and the transfers for the upcoming season. My top player was Mauricio Carrasco, who was on loan from Estudiantes in Argentina. Also the former Rangers centre-back from Romania, Doran Goian was my top centre-back.

I was ready to show everyone who was boss. I was ready to conquer the world.
 
P.S. Due to losing my save with Tripoli, I have decided to do a new save with San Marino. Sorry if any inconvenience has been caused by this announcement. However keep watching as it follows the exact same guidelines.
 
San Marino, how could I put this, is the worst footballing nation on the planet. It has never won a major qualifier, only one one friendly against Liechtenstien and their top scorer has netted 8 goals in well over a decade. How can I change this unfortunate nation into a global powerhouse? Welcome to the Dylan Campbell Era of Sanmarinese football.
 
After my first year in charge of the Sanmarinese football team, I had achieved some respectable results. The potential was there from the off. We scored at least eight goals that year and we had taken only our second ever international victory over Gibraltar in a 2-1 victory at home.

The victory however was followed by an 8-0 drubbing to Iceland, our worst result in my managerial reign so far. But there are still plenty of good opportunities to come in 2015. I have matches against Liechtenstien and Canada in March and I may look to set up more friendlies in the summer in order to test the team's ability against teams such as Pakistan and India.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for the Old San Marino, and we hope that the new crop of stars such as Stefanelli and Palazzi can give San Marino some success to be good about this year. Let us hope for the best. Keep commenting and feel free to ask any queries about my team selection, players, your own progress with San Marino and keep watching because this will be exciting to watch.
 
The games between Liechtenstien and Canada both demonstrated the growth of San Marino. We went into the match against
Liechtenstien in August expecting a goalless draw or worse still, a loss however a top-class counter-attacking display gave us three goals in order to defeat the team and gain our second win under my reign. In June, we faced Canada and we went 1-0 up at half-time, but Canada recovered to win 4-2, however we gave the Canadians a run for their money which gave us extra confidence. We're now 203rd in the world, five ahead of our default ranking at the start of the game. Let's hope for our match against Singapore and the European qualifiers.

P.S. In the last post I made, I said that the San Marino-Canada match was in March. In fact, it was in June. Apologies to any inconveniences caused.
 
UPDATE FOR SAN MARINO SUMMER 2014


San Marino was still improving and our youth intake was shining; Stefanelli bagged a brace against Swaziland and then we played a brilliant defensive performance to only lose 3-0 to Turkey in a match they had been dominating, what made this loss so good as that it felt like a victory. However, once I faced Estonia, we were batted 8-1, despiting taking the lead during the first 10 minutes. Matches against Azerbaijan and Andorra coming up. Keep watching as this is something to watch
 
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