Note: A lot of the names and all personalities in the conversations are made up. Any resemblance to an actual person is a stroke of genius and luck on my part, and means I should throw away this Lotto ticket…
The house was cozy, tastefully decorated, and usually quiet, but with seven full grown men in it, the noise was finally getting to be too much.
“It’s not like you all have to watch it at from the same location,” Sommers wife said as she brought in another platter of food. “Spread out. Sit, eat, Kevin will move out of the way when it’s on,” she said, pulling one of the men back to the chair by his arm. A few of the others drifted back over as well, reaching for the sandwiches she had made.
At the desk, Kevin Sommers sat, hitting the refresh button on his keyboard every so often, waiting for the online press conference to start. Benbennek had been a solid coach, but his falling out with ownership and a run of poor results had sealed his fate in April, and the club had been quiet ever since. Rumors popped up every once and awhile, but the board, and most of the supporters club for a change, had been quiet.
“It’s going to be Backhaus,” said Siebeck around a mouthful of food. “Friend told me he interviewed really well.”
“He did a decent job at Rot-Weiß Koblenz,” Sommer said, still absentmindedly hitting the refresh button. A phone buzzed with an incoming text, and Andreas Pollasch pulled his out. He looked at it quietly for a few seconds, not noticing everyone else around him had stopped what they were doing, even chewing.
Putting his phone back in his pocket, he took a bite of his own sandwich.
“Refresh in about a minute, Kevin,” he said, and the keeper nodded to him in reply. Pollasch looked at the faces of them men who were still looking at him.
“It’s not Backhaus,” he said, taking a bite of his own sandwich.
The screen refreshed, and the video feed started. Herr Vier, the General Manager, stepped up to the podium, and started to read.
“Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, and I thank you for attending, watching, or listening to this evenings announcement. When the board and I started looking for a new head coach, we decided that we did not want to go the usual route as it were, instead we wanted someone not only with a passion to win, but a passion for the game, for the town, and for the club. Although we started with quite a list of very qualified candidates, as we conducted our initial interviews, and then follow-up interviews, myself and other members of the board were continually impressed by one young man in particular. His passion for the sport, his passion for the club, the fact he was born and raised not too far from here were all positives, but in meeting with him and talking with him, it was apparent to all that his vision for the club meshed with ours very well. Please allow me to introduce the new coach of BFC Dynamo, Herr Nicolas Schmidt.”
The Zur Insel was the clubs bar, a stones throw away from the stadium. It walls were adorned with old shirts, old photo’s, old banners of the clubs heyday back in the 80’s when it was dominating East German football. Tonight was a quiet night, but there were about fifteen hardcore fans watching the TV.
“Who the fuck is Nicholas Schmidt?” Hans was drunk, but no so drunk that he could point at the TV with his beer and not spill a drop.
“He’s young,” remarked Phillipe, still sipping on his first beer.
“Does he even has coaching experience?” asked Klaus.
“If you’d all shut the hell up so we could hear, maybe we can find out!” Sasha’s voice was loud and hard enough that the others quieted down.
“But seriously,” Hans said, waving his beer around some more. “Who the Fuck is he?”
“Who?” Sommers turned around and looked at the others in the room.
“Nikki,” replied Pollasch after swallowing the last bite. “Except he’s “Coach” now.”
“You know him?”
Pollasch nodded. “He was in Hertha’s Youth System, midfielder,” he said, gesturing at Alexander. “I once watched him run Goezte into the ground during a U19 friendly in 2012. Stayed in the mans hip pocket the entire game, nutmegged him on the way to the winning assist. And I mean ran him into the ground, Goetze was begging to come off after sixty.”
“What happened?”
“His mom got sick, he stopped playing. Club was willing to help him apparently, but his dad had been hurt on the job, so he went and got a job to help. Mom passed away in ’13, his dad a year later I think?”
Sommers was looking at his laptops screen again.
“Joined Hertha as a Youth Coach in ‘18. Went to Kaiserslautern as a coach for the II Team in 20.”
“And know he’s here,” Siebeck said.
“Must be,” replied Sommer, refreshing the page. “His Wikipedia page says he’s the head coach, so it must be true.”
“HA!” yelled Phillipe, thrusting his phone into the air.
“What?” asked Sasha.
“I beat Gregor to the punch, and updated his wiki page before club did!”
“I find it interesting you think thats something to be proud of,” Sasha replied, rolling her eyes.
“Great,” Hans said, looking up at the screen as Herr Vier stepped aside to introduce him. “He’s young. Probably never coached a day in his life. How much you want to bet he just some FM player and this is all a PR stunt.”
“If that were the case they would have hired me,” said Klaus.
“What?” the others asked together.
“Look, anyone who can take Energetik-BGU from the bottom of the Belorussian Premier League to winning the Champions League in seven years deserves at least one interview, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I swear to God you mention Energetik one more time my beer stein is going to get all Energetik upside your head!” Hans did menacing quite well sober, drunk was when he meant it. Klaus hunched down and ordered another beer.
“Well, he said all the right things,” Sommer said, shutting the laptop down.
“They all do,” Siebeck said, standing up.
“When do you think he’ll announce the team meeting?”
Pollasch phone rang, and he looked at it.
“Guess we will find out in a few,” he said, swiping as he held it up to his ear.
“Yes Coach?”
This is going to be an interesting save. It’s been awhile since I started at a club that was Semi-Professional, and that means adjusting the first year (if not more) of my playing style. I’m sure I’ll go over this again in the next post, where we introduce the team, the plans for the season and so on, and then the third post will be the first season, but the facts are this:
- We are a Semi-Pro Team
- We have next to no transfer budget
- We have next to no payroll budget
- We have next to no staff payroll
- Our stadium is old.
- We have no affiliates
- Our facilities are not the best.
- Winning the League is not enough to get promoted, you have to win the playoff afterwards as well
- The club could be doing better financially. We aren’t at the point where we are raiding the furniture for loose change, but any immediate success I have is going to be off trials, youth players, and or loan players.
- We are going to have so much fun with this save…
I plan on going into a bit more details in this save, how I approach certain things, how I look at certain things, maybe some spreadsheets even.
And there will be some more stories every once and awhile as well. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
FM_Jellico
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 
Good start this, nice to see a FM blog with narrative and not just screen shots and match reviews. Def following.
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