View attachment 135539
Introduction
Hello everyone and welcome to my newest, and hopefully most interesting Story on Football Manager 2016; "Tussle in Turin", a story in which I will be taking over mid-table straddlers Torino FC and attempting to take them to the top of Italian Football while documenting my progress along the way.
As you may or may not know, Torino are based in the Italian City of Turin; a City that is also home to the most successful Italian Football team in terms of the Serie A, Juventus. You can imagine that being located in a City that is dominated by a rival team must be a frustrating experience for any club, think of teams like Espanyol, Paris FC and Sparta Rotterdam to name only a few, these teams have been behind their rivals for many years but look to have no threat of taking back their territory anytime soon.
This is where Torino drew my interest, while Juventus are massively successful and have the finances to bring in player such as Gonzalo Higuain for £76.5m, Torino themselves have some fantastic young talent and a set of foundations that I believe can be built on over the next decade. While it may not ever be able to take back the city of Turin, the challenge is one that I cannot shy away from.
While Juventus have notched up 5 of their 32 Serie A titles in the past 5 years, Torino have battled their way from being marooned in Serie B, to consecutive top half finishes in Serie A. It's not exactly 5 consecutive Scudetto's but it's an impressive rise nonetheless, something that can definitely be used as a springboard to European Football qualification.
The most pleasing thing for me personally is that Torino generally have a low average age in their squad, my guess would be around 25-26 if you removed the aging players, and this age is only going to get lower as the players in the youth squads move into the first-team and for me personally, I find this very important.
The Serie A has often been dubbed as a "Retirement Home" similar to that of the MLS, although this label does possess some accuracy in that a lot of the defences in the Italian league contain players who aren't getting any younger. This means the young, raw talent in the Torino squad can be trained and drilled to play a fast-paced, attacking game which the veteran defences will find difficult to contain, but this could be a process that takes many years itself.
I've never played as Torino myself, nor will I pretend to know much about them, but the likes of Belotti, Ljajic, Acquah, Maksimovic and Benassi look like really talented players, the type of players you build your team around and I feel that keeping hold of these players will be our biggest challenge as we look to put our footprint on the team.
While I don't believe in getting carried away with rules and restrictions, I do feel that developing the young talent is at the top of our agenda. We know we can't compete with the big boys with our finances and so we'll have to look at developing younger players to add the quality to our squad. I've always favoured that approach and I'm glad to have found a team where this can be a reality from the early doors.
As for objectives...Don't get sacked! That's all I'm going to say really, although I guess a trophy or two wouldn't be bad, right?
Introduction
Hello everyone and welcome to my newest, and hopefully most interesting Story on Football Manager 2016; "Tussle in Turin", a story in which I will be taking over mid-table straddlers Torino FC and attempting to take them to the top of Italian Football while documenting my progress along the way.
As you may or may not know, Torino are based in the Italian City of Turin; a City that is also home to the most successful Italian Football team in terms of the Serie A, Juventus. You can imagine that being located in a City that is dominated by a rival team must be a frustrating experience for any club, think of teams like Espanyol, Paris FC and Sparta Rotterdam to name only a few, these teams have been behind their rivals for many years but look to have no threat of taking back their territory anytime soon.
This is where Torino drew my interest, while Juventus are massively successful and have the finances to bring in player such as Gonzalo Higuain for £76.5m, Torino themselves have some fantastic young talent and a set of foundations that I believe can be built on over the next decade. While it may not ever be able to take back the city of Turin, the challenge is one that I cannot shy away from.
While Juventus have notched up 5 of their 32 Serie A titles in the past 5 years, Torino have battled their way from being marooned in Serie B, to consecutive top half finishes in Serie A. It's not exactly 5 consecutive Scudetto's but it's an impressive rise nonetheless, something that can definitely be used as a springboard to European Football qualification.
The most pleasing thing for me personally is that Torino generally have a low average age in their squad, my guess would be around 25-26 if you removed the aging players, and this age is only going to get lower as the players in the youth squads move into the first-team and for me personally, I find this very important.
The Serie A has often been dubbed as a "Retirement Home" similar to that of the MLS, although this label does possess some accuracy in that a lot of the defences in the Italian league contain players who aren't getting any younger. This means the young, raw talent in the Torino squad can be trained and drilled to play a fast-paced, attacking game which the veteran defences will find difficult to contain, but this could be a process that takes many years itself.
I've never played as Torino myself, nor will I pretend to know much about them, but the likes of Belotti, Ljajic, Acquah, Maksimovic and Benassi look like really talented players, the type of players you build your team around and I feel that keeping hold of these players will be our biggest challenge as we look to put our footprint on the team.
While I don't believe in getting carried away with rules and restrictions, I do feel that developing the young talent is at the top of our agenda. We know we can't compete with the big boys with our finances and so we'll have to look at developing younger players to add the quality to our squad. I've always favoured that approach and I'm glad to have found a team where this can be a reality from the early doors.
As for objectives...Don't get sacked! That's all I'm going to say really, although I guess a trophy or two wouldn't be bad, right?
Last edited:
