Travelling The World In Football Manager

[olliewebb]

In this series i am going to try to visit (and hopefully conquer) as many countries as i possibly can. I will be using a large amounts of mods to allow me to play in more obscure leagues as well as the main ones provided by the game base.

I will try to keep some of the preliminary seasons short so that i can quickly get to top flight management at a major league and not just manage lower league sides.

Some of these leagues may be incorrect as the mods i am using just put lots of real teams in one league instead of using championship phases or two groups as it is found in some leagues. I apologise for this but i doubt it will affect the series too much.

If you have any suggestions for fun teams that i should try to manage leave them down below and i look forward to getting this series started.

 

[olliewebb]

New manager joins Rezeknes FA

View attachment 47905
So, it looks like this is going to be my first position. There were a variety of jobs such as lower league roles in England but i chose a far more interesting and exciting job in the Latvian First League, This gives me a chance of getting some silverware very early on in my career as this league is extremely even and we are expected to gain promotion into the premiership. Despite being extremely low ranked which allows me to step right into it, this club does contain some players from other countries than Latvia.​

 

[olliewebb]

How this series will be set out

So i was trying to take some screenshots and it seems i have a problem. Whenever i take a screenshot it just takes an image of whatveer is behind the FM game, and not Fm. Alongside this, i can't seem to be able to take good quality photos of the screen as my phone isn't the best. This means that this series will have no screenshots.

For the first few seasons, i will just do season reviews because i dont have the time to write up every match, however i will write up key games. I will continue with this if all goes well, but if i get some people wanting more detailed season reviews, then i will try and fit them in, potentially after season 5 or so, enjoy.

 

[olliewebb]

Alongside this, i will be creating a spreadsheet with all my results on and i will attempt to link this to this series. This saves space and also shows you all my results, thus meaning i don't lose any over the course of this playthrough.

Any help in setting this up would be very much appreciated

 

[olliewebb]

Season 1

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As previously stated, i cannot screenshot however i have made a spreadsheet of my results which you can see. We finished 4th in the league which i was rather dissapointed with, especially due to us only being 6 points of the title. Our run in the cup was solid, with us brushing aside easy to beat teams before being destroyed by Ventspils, the second best team in the country. Overall the season was underwhelming and i have decided that a move to another nation would help to speed up this career as well as making it more interesting, as i don't want to spend too long in unknown leagues or lower leagues.

Season highlights included a couple of 3-0 wins against the likes of Smiltene however there weren't many apart from that.

 

[danjames101]

So i was trying to take some screenshots and it seems i have a problem. Whenever i take a screenshot it just takes an image of whatveer is behind the FM game, and not Fm. Alongside this, i can't seem to be able to take good quality photos of the screen as my phone isn't the best. This means that this series will have no screenshots.

If you can't printscreen, have you tried running FM in windowed mode, then using the snipping tool to create your screenshots?

 

[olliewebb]

New Club


As previously stated, I have included lots of mods for this series, and this includes the San Marino league. Although this seems like a step up, to the first league of a nation, this role means I drop down 15 leagues on the coefficient rankings. FC Fiorentino have no national team players, however, due to the league being weak, a good managerial spell could easily lead to silverware and European football by my third season. The league consists of two groups, we are in group B, and a championship playoff. This means we will play 20 games in the league, if we do well, and we can also achieve Europa League football by winning the cup.

Season 2 review should be up very soon as I have already played it but haven't had time to write it up.

 

[olliewebb]

Season 2

View attachment 47067So, this season was far better than the last with our team being extremely competitive in the league, so much so that we finished second in Gruppo B and reached the playoffs, primarily due to a 4 win streak at the end of the campaign. However, upon reaching the playoffs, I decided to prioritise the upcoming Coppa Titano final as this grants us 1st qualifying round Europa League football next season. Luckily for me, the La Fiorita manger pushed on in the league, eventually coming second, thus allowing our team to scrape a win against their tired team.

Obviously, I will be continuing at the club next season due to the draw of the Supercoppa and European football. Hopefully, another trophy and European exposure can help to get me to a larger club.

 

[olliewebb]

Season 3 - Conquering San Marino and Europe (a bit)

View attachment 46663
Well, i think we can say that this season was a stunning success.

We started foo the season with a victory in the Super Coppa and never looked back, winning first our group and then the whole league. Along with this, masterminded by a stunning end to the season, we were knocked out in the quarters of the cup, sadly not defending our title but then we can't have everything. Our two titles this season means i have now won everything i can in San Marino and thus my time at Fiorentino will end having added a super cup, cup and league to both their trophy cabinet and my CV.

Along with that, i qualified through the preliminary rounds of the Europa League, a huge success, following back to back victories against the side from the Faroe Islands. After this however, i fell, but only just, to the far superior Estonian side. This was probably the highlight of the season as very dew Sanmarise sides have ever got through the first round (although this was one of the first years the preliminary round was set up, but still).

 

[olliewebb]

Moving On

After conquering San Marino I received a few offers from around Europe and one of these caught my eye more than the rest. This offer was from FK Shkëndija.

FK Shkëndija are a football team currently operating in the Macedonian top flight and have a fairly large pedigree. The side reached the Europa league playoffs in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 season but have failed to win the league due to the dominance of Vardar, a side that finish the league about 20 points clear of anyone else.​

Coming into this role i have one real ambition, to take the side as far into the Europa league as I can as well as competing with the stranglers for points in the league, hopefully coming in 2nd, 3rd or 4th. As well as this i aim to compete in the cup however Vardar have also asserted their dominance there, winning the last 4 due to the riches they gain from champions league football, something my new team can only dream of.

As with the last couple of teams, i will use this club as a stepping stone, probably moving on at the end of next season as to further my career and keep me interested

 

[olliewebb]

Season 4 - Advancing in Europe

View attachment 46382This season went pretty much as expected for me, a 3rd place finish in the league was solid however we were 15 points behind Vardar and only 4 points clear of 6th. Europe went excellently however, with us dispatching of teams from Luxembourg, Iceland and Azerbaijan before falling to the Austrian champions, who had entered the competition after losing in the Champions league qualifiers. After this season, I have ambitions of hopefully winning the cup next season as I think the league and Europa league group stage football are just out of reach and I don't really want to spend too long in this league.

In other news I passed my 100th career game. I will do a career round-up every 5 seasons so you can see my stats and league positions but I have a pretty good record so far, mainly due to my time in San Marino.

As for the league, Renova and Sileks were relegated automatically and Pobeda survived the playoffs, with Belsalica and Pandev being promoted.

If any of you are wondering what the format of this league is, as I haven't made it very clear with the last couple, and the Sanmarise one was pretty complicated, every team in the league plays all of the others 4 times, twice home and twice away. This amounts to 36 games due to their being 10 teams in the league. The bottom two are relegated, 8th goes to a playoff with 3rd in the 2.MFl, 1st qualifies to the Champions league 1st qualifying round and 2nd and 3rd enter the Europa league first qualifying round (one round above where I started last season in the preliminary rounds)

 

[olliewebb]

View attachment 46059The final season of my Macedonian adventure was mixed for me. On one hand we improved on our cup run from last year, coming runner up this season however we did do this at the expense of less wins in the league (I think) and also failure to reach the playoffs of the Europa League qualifying which was disappointing. Personally I found this league rather annoying, with us getting a fourth place finish which sounds Ok but it is the same as an 8th place finish in a league such as the Premier League. As well as this, all the top teams only manage about 16-18 wins as the league is very even and the differences are extremely slight, thus making it hard to improve, unlike the Sanmarise league in which good formations and a couple of golden oldies could win you pretty much everything, as I found out.

The next instalment of this series will be a career review thus far with all the stats from my first 5 seasons in the game. As well as this I would like to ask if anyone has a preference to the next job that I take as I have a few options which are (I'll keep the actual side hidden):
- Ligue 2 team
- Categoria Primera A team (Colombian first division)
- Romanian First division side

Along with this I woul just like to say thanks for the support on this series as I have received a few likes and comments as well as over 2000 views, which equates to roughly 200 views per post, which is fantastic.

 

[olliewebb]

Career thus far review

Club	Games	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goals For	Goals Against	Goal Difference
Rezeknes FA	25	14	2	9	42	32	10
FC Fiorentino	26	17	3	6	45	26	19
FC Fiorentino	31	21	5	5	49	28	21
FK Shkëndija​	46	23	11	12	71	51	20
FK Shkëndija​	47	22	12	13	71	55	16

Trophies won - Campionatio Sammarinese Di Calcio, Coppa Titano and Super Coppa Sammarinese

 

[olliewebb]

Travelling to a new continent


So, as many of you may have noticed, this career is called thravelling the world and not just Europe and i decided to stay true to my word and thus i have decided to take the role of Deportes Tolima manager in Colombia. I'm going to be honest with you, these South American leagues are crazy with all their averages and summer and winter leagues and to work out how this league works I simulated a year on another save so I knew what was going on and the games to prioritise. I think that there are 2 leagues one after each other, and the top 8 go into a play-off. In these leagues there are 20 teams who each play 20 games (you play one team twice).

In conclusion, this new adventure is going to be both confusing but also pretty fun and I hope you enjoy.

 

[olliewebb]

Targets for the series

So I was looking back upon this series thus far and I am currently just breezing through league after league without any real aim so I have decided to set myself some achievements or goals that I will try to achieve, these are:

1. Worldwide Conqueror - win the top league in 10 different nations. This achievement is self explanatory and will encourage me to move through the nations
2. Loyal Legend - stay at a club for 10 seasons. I want to do this because at the moment I am moving through all the clubs and I want to try and set down a precedent and become a legend at one club (don't worry I'll make sure its a top club so I can compete for the league and continental football at this club)
3. Continental Master - win a continental trophy in two nations.
4. International Hero - manage in two different continents' international competition eg. Copa America and African Cup of Nations.

As you can see, these 4 challenges are tough and will take some effort to achieve however they are achievable and I can probably take out challenge 2 and 4 at the same time.

 

[olliewebb]

Season 6 - crazy Colombia and a new club

View attachment 45849
so my first season in Colombia was far more interesting than i could have imagined. We started the season extremely brightly, coming 5th in the first phase which allowed us to move into the playoffs, a shock due to us being predicted a mid table finish. However, soon after thsi success many of our players were pinched by larger clubs such as millionarios, who our top scorer left to after netting 14 in 24 for us. As well as this, the good old injury crisis hit and sent us tumbling all the wasy down the league to 19th place in the second phase, a mistake i can hopefully change next season by planning for the long term and not just the short. This meant that we finished a respectable 12th overall in the league which helped us achieve our 'mid table finish' goal.

Along with this, we managed to escape our group in the cup which was my ambition going into the season. As for the league, Patriotas and Boyacá went down with Real Cartagena and Union Magdalena getting promoted.

Now, as you would have seen in the title, I have a new club which I decided to take the helm of due to my current team being slightly frosty due to my exceedingly poor second half of the season. Usually I would do a separate post but this is just a move between clubs in the same league so I'll do it here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Escudo-deportivo-cali-2012.png
My new club is Envigado, due to last season I concluded they were better than my current side. As well as this, the money is slightly better and they finished 9th last season with a more well rounded season than us. Hopefully I can finish top 10 this season, if I do I will probably move on from Colombia however I may stay if we do extremely well.

 

[olliewebb]

Next few seasons delayed

So yesterday my computer broke leaving me with no way of uploading the next seasons well as all of the details are on there. I have played up to season 10 and written up the results for 2 more seasons however I cannot post them.

I am currently trying to fix my vomputer however I have no idea how long this may take, just expect a day soon where I post about 10 replies.

 

[olliewebb]

If you can't printscreen, have you tried running FM in windowed mode, then using the snipping tool to create your screenshots?

Thanks for the advice, I only just got round to seeing this. Ill try next time I finish the league to help show the league table as this will help save some time. Cheers again^^)

 

[olliewebb]

ETA for next few seasons

Okay, so my computer is still kaput however I have been able to play more seasons by using the fm editor on a friends (quite a lot). In all honesty I am now on season 23, having completed one of my challenges as I have spent 10 seasons at one club. What I am going to do is carry on with my season reviews as they are going for the next few seasons (when I get my computer back) and once I have caught up, I won't be doing any more whilst catching up, I may change the style

 

[olliewebb]

Season 7 - Guess who's back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so after a long break out (let’s put it down to a ton ACL or something) I have finally returned and have completed the next season of my career. As well as this, i have made a technological advancment and have managed to put the fixtures in some sort of special box which is pretty tasty.

As seasons go, his one’s nothing special. An early group stage exit was followed by a mundane campaign in why e finished a respectable 7th overall due to a consistent vein of good from which we missed at our previous cub. Sadly however we didn’t go as far into the playoffs as last season due to us facing the over-powered Atletico Nacional.


Also, as to save time I have decided to show you my newest club in this update and am pleased to say that I will be joining Melbourne City FC in the A-League. The team are currently in the AFC Champions league after coming 2nd​ in the league last season, so there is a large chance of silverware. As well as this, the league in calendar based and thus I won’t have to wait 6 months for it to start like I did when I moved to Colombia from Macedonia.

P.S. the main reason for this choice is the badge, like how sexy is that, like that cow is better quality than this series, beautiful.