The Kids Are Alright -Season 0

“Copiii sunt în regulă”

I like scouting. I like developing youth players, I like taking a clubs from the lower levels to the highest possible, and having fun on the way.

But what if we took away Scouting? What if we went youth only? In a country with a rich football history, with some interesting teams to compete against? And could we make it slightly harder on ourselves?

Why yes, yes we can!

First and foremost, these are the rules we are using for this save: 

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/578526-the-fm24-youth-academy-challenge/

As you can see, from one of the posts further down a user has kindly generated a spreadsheet about what countries these saves have been done in, and which were successful, and which weren’t.

What I did was load up the Random Spinning Wheel of Doom with all the countries that have been played but haven’t won, and spun.

I got Croatia. The save lasted four years before I was sacked. NK Karlovac 1919 didn’t get promoted the first year, the club went semi professional the next year, and when we did get promoted, the still refused to go semi pro, all the good players left, leaving me a roster full of potential to face the likes of Dinamo, Hajduk Split, Rijeka…It’s four years of FM I will never get back, and frankly I don’t want to. It was horrible. Very Horrible. My Therapists says it will be OK. Someday…

After a short break, I went back to the Random Spinning Wheel of Doom, deleted Croatia, and rolled again. This time it was Romania. I created a manager, vacationed a year, and thought, this will be fun, there are some pretty interesting teams down in Liga III that will make for a fun save and…Liga III isn’t playable?

PBKAC error? Bug? Feature? I am not sure. So I went up to the second Tier or Romanian Football, the Liga 2 Casa Pariurilor, to see what teams had been promoted, and lo and behold:

SSU Politehnica Timişoara, which is short for Societatea Sportivă Universitară Politehnica Timişoara.

Now, Eastern European Football has been…interesting since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the trials and tribulations of the teams in the Liga Profesionistă de Fotbal make for some good reading. The club itself has had a bunch of different names, but its affiliation with one of Romania’s best Technical Schools has never changed, and the Institute remains the teams majority owner. You can read about the history of the club here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSU_Politehnica_Timi%C8%99oara

But the club has a few things going it it’s favor. The coach is not one of them. Meet Marius Țepeș, no direct relation to Vlad:

No Coaching badges, no skills to speak of, but a well worn and highly notated copy of ‘Inverting the Pyramid’ in his messenger bag. In his favor though, the club is pretty well set up for this sort of challenge:

I am pretty sure the Youth Facilities and Recruitment are a byproduct of being affiliated with the school, IE “Valentin, I see you kick ball very well and are top student in Organic Chemistry. Have you thought about your future? Do you like the color purple?”

Now, with regards to the ‘Can we make it slightly harder on ourselves’ part I mentioned earlier, I use the Mustermann Skin. It’s Brilliant, I love it even if it doesn’t have numbers. But, taking a page from GIMN’s book, I’ve disabled the ‘Player Search’ and ‘Staff Search’ buttons on the Staff Page:

Because I am not scouting at all this save (happy thoughts, safe happy thoughts….) that’s not as big a deal as disabling the staff search button. This means I cannot go out and find the best coaches all over the world and bring them to the club, I have to reply on those who arerecommended during the course of the save.

The other thing I have done is change the attribute ranges. This is Milan Precupanu, you’ll meet him in full later:

Not too bad for a 15 year old DM, but when you consider the following attribute spread

• 1-7 is Bad, in RED.
• 8-12 is Average, in ORANGE.
• 13-16 is Good, in BLUE.
• 17-20 is Excellent, in GREEN.

It makes a bit more interesting to work with. This method also means I have to pay a little closer attention to how the improve over the course of the save via the Development -> Attributes section, as opposed to the spreadsheet method I have used in the past.

This is going to be a long save, and the first few seasons are going to go by quickly. I am positive we can get promoted and stay up no problem, the issue is going to be the quality of our intakes, and what we can do to influence that. 

Romania itself is interesting IMO, it’s got a very good game reputation, but it’s Youth Rating isn’t the highest:

And there are 26 other teams with a Facilities Rating at least as good as ours and better:

The club we are trying to emulate is FCV Farul Constanţa, the result of a merger between Gheoghe Hagi’s club Viitorul Constanţa and Ciprian Maricas Farul Constanţa, whose youth development is one of the best in Southeastern Europe. Not only have they been winning Liga 1 titles, they have been developing and selling some very good players, Louis Munteneau and Adrian Mazilu to name a couple. They’ve got money and European appearances to help, and if that wasn’t enough we also have the traditional Romanian powerhouses to face of with as well, FCBS, Craiova, Cluj…

We’ve out work cut out for us, but I feel confident about this one. More confident than I did about the Croatia save, that’s for sure. 

Up next, a look at the first seasons, as we try and build the foundation for future success.

Thanks for reading!