FM26 – In the Year 2325

Having looked a bit at the data base before posting, I will say that in a couple of countries, were are starting to see a “New Normal” Develop, in that while some teams have fallen, in many case other teams have stepped up and replaced them, and even in competitions such as the Champions League, there is rarely a surprise. I am not sure if this is “Something under the hood” that hasn’t changed, but I am still quit interested to see what this Universe of FM looks like down the road.
As always, we check Crystal Palace first:

They’ve been in the EFL Championship for awhile now, and were promoted to the Prem at the end of the 2297/98 season, but came right back down the next season…one of these days….

The English Premier League

The “Big Six” as we know it no longer exists by 2325, but this screenshot is also a look into how fast a team can rise, or fall. Crewe, Colchester, Bolton and Lincoln are not unexpected really, there’s always teams from the lower leagues that rise up and have success (Wrexham as an earlier example), but how long they can maintain iot has always been an issue. In previous versions of this sort of save, the English Prem has always had a lot of teams moving up and down the pyramid, but it’s rare for any of those teams to “stick” at the top for an extended amount of time. Could this version be different?

From the 2225/2226 to 2239/2240 season, in all but one year Tottenham won the League. Wrexham came back to win it in 2242/43, and the Bolton had a very good run, winning in five of the next seven years. But the “New Team on the Block” to make a splash was Crewe, who first won the league in the 45/46 season, then from 51/52 to 59/60 won every year save 52/53, when Bolton pipped them. Tottenham, Preston, Chelsea and Wolves all won again, but starting in 2270/71, Arsenal won 8 of then next 9 seasons. Bournemouth won three in a row starting in 2284, then Crewe again won 7 out of 10 seasons, with Presont and Bournemouth breaking their streak. Preston then went on a mini run, winning 7 of 8 seasons, the Chelsea and Wolves spent the next decade trading the spot at the top, the Bournemouth and Chelsea were fighting each other, and then to close this last 100 years out, Chelsea and Wolves.

But 20 years ago Preston was the class of the Prem, and now they are not exactly struggling in 10th place, but it’s still a bit off from where they used to be. Unless I missed something (not improbable) there has yet to be a team from this years (2025) Prem fall all the way to the National League. Leicester fell down to the National in the 2150’s, that’s the biggest drop I have seen thus far.

Ligue 1, France

Some things take a little while longer to change, if and when the do:

What I will say from past experience is that while Ligue 1 does have a decent amount of churn when it comes to teams moving up and down, it’s also not uncommon for PSG to stay is the top spot for a long time. The big takeaway for me on this is that France has really fallen off Internationally/Continentally in competitions, and holy heck:

22nd, behind Moldova?

Ligue winner wise, Marseille won nearly every year from 2225 to 2240, the exception being 2228/29 when Rennes beat them. From 2240 to 2266 It was Marseill or Lyon winning, with the occasional Rennes win, then in 2266/67 Lens, which the past decade had been on the outside looking in won the Ligue. And until the 2289/90 season the top 2 spots were either them or Marseilles. PSG came roaring back to the top in 2292 after a decade of trying, traded with Lens for a few years, then starting in 2298/99 won the next 12 seasons until knocked off by Monaco, who had a decent 5 year run until PSG retook the top spot.

The Bundesliga, Germany

This is another League where the top teams have changed somewhat, but until recently(ish), one team still dominated.

From 2230 to 2250 Bayern took the crown. Then from 2251 to 2257, Hertha and Bayern fought back and forth, until Hertha went on its own run from 2257 to 2265. Then it was Bayern until 2283, a streak marred by two BVB wins. Koln and BVB fought the nbext decade or so, the it was BVB and Bayern, with a 2303 Hannover win. Since then, with the exception of a lone Bayern and RB Leipzig win, BVB and Hannover have been trading off. If you want a variety of result, the Pokal is where it’s at, as teams like Kaiserslautern, Schalke and Armenia Bielfeld have all won recently. In past version of this type of save, Bayern has fallen off. I don’t think that’s going to happen here though.

Serie A, Italy

Another Ligue where change is gradual at the top, but there is a decent amount of movement at the bottom. I *think* I know why, I’ll have to do some investigating in previous versions of the save before coming to a conclusion though, which I will do at the end of this post.
Palermo started to fall of in 2232 after winning the league three times in a row and finishing Top 3 back to 2225. The Inter went on a run that saw them winning it all until 2249, excpet for the one year they fell of and Palermo reclaimed the top spot, 2241/42. Bologna, which was a top 6 team, finally won it all in the 2249/2250 season, then it was Inter, Juve and AC Milan all trading off Inter won the League in 2261/62, and kept winning until 2283/84, when Juve knocked them off and went on their own 5 year streak. Then it was Inter, Milan, Juve, and finally Lecce, which had been crawling up the League, made a huge leap. Having Finished 3rd in 2275, they remained in the top half until they put it all together, and won back to back Scudetto’s in 03 and 04 seasons. Then it was back to the Inter/Juve/Milan rotation, with Lecce interrupting another Inter decade run. Roma, after decades of top half finishes, and more than a few seasons where they finished 3rd, then 2nd, finally won a Scudetto in 2321, then Inter and Lecce finished this century out.

LaLiga, Spain

I think La Liga is a good example of what to expect from Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga, I am just not sure when (if) those leagues might see a similar change.

What you have is essentially a very established League, with established teams at the top. The Prem to an extent also follows this model, where you have 3 teams usually dominating the top spot, the next 7-10 teams are League regulars, and the remaining teams are fighting relegation, falling out eventually, and maybe making their way back in.
How do the top teams fall? They lose their rich tycoon, or if not tycoon owned start making bad business decisions, usually related to bad player moves, and while that’s happening, other teams are doing the opposite, spending money and making good player moves. In some leagues, IE Not the Bundesliga, money is a big factor, as several small bad decisions, or a few big ones, can mean a slow spiral into mediocrity, or a fast spiral into relegation. While the Bundesliga does have money, they team ownership structure makes it harder for bad decisions to have an immediate impact on them as teams in other leagues. Not that it doesn’t happen, it’s just not as common.

La Liga is a great example of this at the moment. Barcelona has continued to make good decisions for the most part, and speniond money wisely. Any bad decisions it has made have been few and far between. Athletico on the other hand, has made a series of smaller, bad decisions related to players that saw them go into administration more than once, the last time being 2138, then every once and awhile a tycoon comes in, spends a lot of money for a couple of years, fails to get the return they expected, and cuts funding. Girona on the other hand, started this save midtable, spent wisely, climbed the league until it won it all for the first time in 2050, and since then they’ve won La Liga over 100 times, the Champions League 26 times, and while they have spent big, they have also sold big. Other squads, such as Real Betis and Mallorca, are doing the same thing.
Do I expect Real or Barca to fall off? No, but then I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.

In La Liga, from 2225 to the current year, there weren’t any very long runs of 1st place finishes. Giron won the league 11 out of 12 years for a stretch starting in 2250, but more often than not, it’s been Barca winning it a few times, Real winning it a few times, with to occasional Villareal win. Levante has become a perennial top 5 team, I suspect we will see them win the La Liga in the short term as well.

The Liga, Portugal

Liga Portugal has fallen off a bit as well, down to 18th place, which is why only the top 3 teams are getting any sort of European Football. But they are also a great illustration of what I outlined above with Spain, some teams have kept making good decisions (Sporting) while others have fallen off as a result of them making bad decisions (Porto, Boavista, Benfica) while other teams have made better decisions and climbed the table (Gil Vicente, Braga, Alverca).
From 2225 to 2237, with one exception (the 33/34 season), Gil Vicente won the League. The from 2237 to 2260, with three exception when Benfica won, the last being in 2265, Porto won the league. Since then the highest Benfica has finished has been 3rd, in 2295 . But starting in 2266, more teams started finding their way to the top. Yes, Ports was still winning, but Alverca’s first win took place in 2270, Belenenses won a few times, then in 2282, Alverca started a run that saw them finish 1st or 2nd until 2298, and when they weren’t 1st or 2nd, Braga was. Since 2300, it’s been Alverca or Braga winning the League, with the Sporting breaking into the top spot twice, and Gil Vicente once.

BRAZIL & JAPAN

Teams have moved up, teams have fallen off. In Brazil, Fluminese, San Paolo, and Botafogo have given way to Palmerias, Avai and Guarani. In Japan, there has been a variety of teams winning the top spot, Hiroshima, Niigata, Yokohama until the 2100’s, when Shonan and Niigata were winning quite a bit, then you had some one off winners like Sendai and Fujieda. Then in 2187 Matsumoto Yamaga won, Omiya won a few times in the early 2200’s, Ryuku had a 5 year run, then starting in the 2254 season Matsumoto Yamaga started to dominate. Until the 2293 they won the league all but 4 times, then starting in 2297 it was either Matsumoto or Okayama winning the League, with the occasional Kagoshima win.
Japan looks like a fun place to play…I may have to do a save there once the game gets settled down, so probably FM27…

CONTINENTAL COMPETITIONS

EUROPE

The Conference League

The Competition where you see the most diversity in winners, and 2nd place teams if we’re being honest. I am not going to list them all, but will point out a few of the highlights:
Dundee beating Levadeiakos in Dublin, 2314.
Başakşehir F.K beating Man U in Istanbul, 2296.
FC Botoşani beating Universitatea Craiova in 2293
Universitatea Craiova beating Linfield in 2265
Breiðablik winning again in 2245 and 2248
Dinamo Minsk Back to Back wins in 2240 and 41

The Europa League

Here, at least as far as I am concerned, it’s not about the “Usual Big Six” teams winning, it, but teams from countries you don’t have loaded winning it.
ML from Belarus winning in 2245, Zalgiris from Lithuania winning it in 2265, Winterthur beating Korona in 2289, KR from Iceland in 2292, Liepaja from Latvia beating Koln in 2305. There haven’t been any teams who have won it in back to back years, but several teams (SJK, Crewe, Malmo) have won one year, goen to the Champions League and lost out, then won the Europa league again in the 3rd year…

European Football Championship

No new surprises here, Wales beating Spain in 2280, Slovakia beating Norway in 2256 and Finland beating Germany in 2252 are the only outliers of the Big Six I have loaded not winning

The Champions League

This is around the time when teams from nations you don’t have loaded start making more appearances. Maybe not regular, but more than expected.
KAA Gent beat Girona in 2261, then the next year Molde beat Galatasaray.
Sparta Praha beat Inter in 2267, the KAA Gent won again the next season, beating Villareal.
In 2271, KAA Gent beat Bayern, then the next year Sparha Praha beat Real Madrid, then Sparta won again, beating Inter. In 2296 Sparta won again, beating Barca. Then they won a fifth time in 2317, again beating Inter. They’ve also finished 2nd 3 times as well. Last but noit least, in 2321 Galatasaray beat Chelsea.
On a tangent, Sparta Praha is currently the 16th ranked team in the world, they have won the League 160 times, and while their finances are pretty opaque, they have the ability to buy this Striker from Alverca for €210M, and then sell him 5 years later for €166M:

Sparta Praha is definitely a case of the game doing things “Under the Hood” to help them, as these are their facilities:

And this is the 20 year old, greyed out Striker:

I’ve never had that sort of luck in any of my saves. Their Youth intakes have to be massively goo year after year…and looking out their greyed out players…they are. Although I will say Agg 3, Det 3 and Fit 3 seems to be the default for all of them…

The World Cup

Nothing again out of the ordinary, until 2262, when Uruguay beat Japan; then again in 2266 when Croatia beat Japan. Japan then beat Argentina in 2294, and Tunisia in 2306, but the biggest surprise so far is Israel beating France in 2318.

The Ballon d’Or Winner

There hasn’t been a standout players this last 100 years, in that only a couple have won the Ballon three times. Le, a Brazilian striker for BVB won it in 2281, 2283 and again in 2289; Roman Fabry won it 3 years in a row starting in 2254, Eduardo Pena won it 3 times in 4 years, but that is not who I am going to highlight.
In 2325, Hull was a Top 6 team in the Prem, re-entering the League in 2216, fighting relegation the next few seasons (17th, 16th, 17th) before starting a climb that saw them fight midtable for 15 years, before finishing 2nd in 2231. In 2232 they fell down to 6th, back to 2nd in 2333, then a series of 5th and 4th Place finishes until 2239, when they finished 10th. Two more 3rd Place finishes followed, then it was a midtable fight until 2255, when they were relegated to the Championship. They came up again a few years later, and were lower table until from 11th, to 4th, to finishing 2nd in 2272, then dropped off, quite fast, getting relegated again in 2278. They came back in the 2290’s, again as high as 6th, were relegated in 2394, had a brief stay in the Prem at the turn of the century, and since then, any promotion has seen them relegated the following year, the last being 2319.
In 2235/36, they made it to the Quarterfinals of the Champions League, beating Tottenham and Real Madrid on the way, before losing to Girona; lost to West Brom in the 5th Round of the FA Cup, and lost to Tottenham in the Semi Final of the Carabao.

Sohei Sata was a Japanese International who played Striker for Hull. After helping FC Machida get promoted to the J1 League, Hull paid €2.8M for him in 2221. In the 2230 season he had 30 goals, 6 assists, and a 7.42 rating, which saw him finish 2nd in the Ballon voting. In 2236, in an injury filled season that only saw him play 29 games for Hull, he had 24 goals, 4 assists, and 3 POM’s in the Prem, and 6 goals, 2 assists, and a PoM in Continental competition. Having looked at other players who were up for the award, Beaurain had more goals and a higher Average playing for Inter, the same is true for Matumona playing for Marseilles.

This is Saito in 2235, right before his award winning season:

And I for one, think it’s vbery cool that his peers thought highly enough of him to give him the best player in football award, despite his not playing on the best team or winning anything else of note.

And that is the third 100 years down!

If you have a specific question about a specific year, you can hit me up on twitter @fm_jellico
In the meantime, feel free to poke around at you leisure:

FM26 – In the Year 2225

Two Hundred Years in, and this is about the time, usually, you see those teams that dominated their league the first 100 years starts to fall off, and newer teams start to rise. It’s all the time, especially in the “Lower Competitions” you start seeing teams you have probably never heard of winning things. As a reminder, the Nations in this years save are:

Brazil
England
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Portugal
Spain

As always, first thing to do is check and see where Crystal Palace is:

Relegated from League One, blivet. But there are other teams who have fallen off as well…

The English Premier League

The “Big Six” had started to fall off by 2125. Teams like Wolves, Brighton and Sunderland had worked their way up the table and into prominence, while more than a couple of teams on the outside were trying to claw their way in. In 2225, some things have changed, some things have stayed the same:

The story thus far has been Wrexham, who worked their way into the Premier league in the 2080’s and 2110’s, and then had a very good run in the 2170’s and 80’s not only winning the Premier League 6 times, but coming in 2nd Place in the Champions League 4 times as well.

Wolves were the dominant team until 2131, and the Liverpool went on a run that saw them finish no lower than 4th for the next 33 years. Brighton, Tottenham, and West Brom all won the league, then starting in 2165 Wrexham and Wolves traded 1st and 2nd place the next decade. Bournemouth had a bit of a run, and then the “usual” unusual event occurred: Preston winning the League. This is the 5th time I’ve done a 1000yr save, at some point, Preston always win the League…

In addition to winning the League 6 times, Wrexham also has a most undesirable honor: In the 2187/88 season, they lost 33 games, and finished with -2 points due to going into Administration. Ignore the date, its FM26 doing FM26 things:

Honestly that season was more notable for what was going on at the bottom of the table than the top. But here’s the 2125 to 2225 English Prem League Winners:

And the Records thus far:

Ligue 1, France

Somethings do not appear to change, because they are gradual, and this is the case for Ligue 1. Yes, the usual suspects are there, but the first switch may have occurred

From 2125 to 2176, with a couple of exceptions PSG was winning the Ligue. The tarting in 2178, Rennes won the Ligue, and then kept on winning it until 2215 (with 4 exceptions when they finished 2nd or 3rd). In 2216 Lyon won 3 in a row, PSG had a brief 2 year renaissance, then Marseilles and Rennes split the other years. The key to PSG’s slide? Starting in 2178, a series of Tycoon owners have gradually sclaed back their investments in the club. In fact their most recent wins have to do with a small surge in spending (if €332M in transfer fees for one year, 2219), can be considered small.

I’ll forgo the League results here, it’s literally just page after page of PSG and Rennes until recently.

Records wise, this is a bit odd when you look at it:

Montepelier had 4 draws and 30 losses, but Laval had 12 draws and 22 losses, while Bourg-Peronnas had 2 wins, a draw, and 31 losses…

The Bundesliga, Germany

There has been a decent amount of change here. As someone who did a save with BFC Dynamo, I will say it’s a bit gratifying to see tems like Carl-Zeiss Jena and Holstein Kiel in the top League, and it is also very nice to see Kaiserslautern finishing top 6 as well. But several teams have fallen out as well, Bayer being the biggest one IMO:

Freiburg had broken the grip Bayern had on 1st place, and kept it until 2138, when Bayern roared back, and after some back and forth with Freiburg the first couple of years, won the League from 2144 to 2153. From 2155 to 2163 it was Hoffenheim winning the league a total of 5 times, Bayern winning it 4, with Freiburg and BVB winning single years. Then in 2163, Hoffenheim went on a very long run, until 2201 it only lost the League 5 times, and since then it has been Hoffenheim, Freiburg and Bayern battling it out for the top spot, with the occasional one off winner, such as Koln in 2208. Staring in 2212 Bayern again went on a winning streak, winning the League 10 times, with Hoffenheim and Koln breaking their streak. The team to keep an eye on? Stuttgart, who have finished top 4 since 2216.

Bayern beat Hoffenheim 3-2 to spoil their invincible season in 2167/68. At some point, Like PSG in Ligue 1, but they do not have the ownership issues PSG does, and while there are years they spend quite a bit in the transfer window, more often than not they do not go overboard (no €332M in and €14.5M out years in Munich…), it will be up to other teams to improve to where they are consistently better than Bayern to keep them out of the top spot. Several teams are close, but not there yet.

Serie A, Italy

Another League where not a lot has changed thus far.

2125 to 2177 was about 2 teams: Inter and Parma…but mostly Inter, as they won it all but 13 times. Parma had a stretch from 2162 to 2169 where they won every year except 2167/68. Then starting in 21778/79, Napoli had a lock on 1st place until 2203/2204, when with the exception of a lone Juve win in 79/80, and a lone Inter win in 86/87, the Scudetto was theirs. Parma, and then Inter won it all again, but starting in 2211 AC Milan made it’s way back to the top, and with the exception of 2212/13 and 2217/18, the Scudetto stayed in Milan, as either AC or Inter won it.
Again, another League where it’s going to take other teams, like Napoli, rising to the top and kicking the Inters, Juve’s and the like down. At one time it seemed Parma would have some staying power, but they have fallen off.

Records wise not a lot has changed:

Inter went ‘Invincible’ in 2150/51, the only blemishes on the season were draws at Lazio and Parma. They won the League by 30 points, in fact it was the battle for 2nd thru 4th that was probably more interesting to ‘casual’ fans.

LaLiga, Spain

The top teams are slowly starting to change here, as the Big Clubs were are used to winning it all are starting to fall of. This is not because the Madrids and Barcelona’s are getting worse, but your Girona’s are getting better. That said, this years winner was a surprise

Mallorca has been a ‘Top 6’ teams for decades, and unless I missed something (entirely possible) they’ve never finished higher than 3rd. This year though, they won the league, maybe not handily, but it was out of left field. They’ve been on a spening spree recently, and it’s starting to pay off. Julian Ludwig, the 24 year old AM(L)/Striker, had 30 goals and 4 assists; 31 year old Konstantyn Bondar, whose been with the team for 12 years now, had 26 goals and 12 assists, and 22 year old Silvi Escabros, a product of Girona’s Youth system, had 14 goals and 16 assists. They have a World Class keeper in Takuya Kaneko, who they paid €42M for. They have the building blocks for the future, and I am interested to see in what happens.

Until Mallorca won, it was a 3 Club League for the most part: Girona, Barcelona, Real Madrid. Occasionally a Real Sociedad or Athletico might win, but for the most part it was Girona’s League to lose, especially during a run from 2139 to 2181 where they won the League all but 10 times.

Girona didn’t lose a game in 2151/52, their goal differential was +80

The Liga, Portugal

Again, to my untrained eye, nothing out of the ordinary here really, other than SPorting dropping off to 10th place:

There hasn’t been the single team domination we’ve seen in other leagues, that is one team ripping off 20 plus years of 1st place finishes. Gil Vicente, Braga, Boavista, Porto, SPorting, Benfica, and at the end of the century Alverca SD traded back and forth, one team might go on a five year run or so, but more often than not it came down to the last few weeks. Starting in 2204 though, it’s been Gil Vicente’s Century, as the only years the haven’t won were in 2220/21 and 2221/22, when Porto won by 5 points and 1 point repectively.

Not a lot has changed records wise, it will be interesting to see if/when Benfica loses the record for most League wins:

Campeonato Brasileiro Série A and The J1 League, Japan

I’m going to be honest here, I included the leagues to give the game more diverse results. I know next to almost nothing about either Countries Leagues, and the fact my real name fix didn’t work for Brazil has be all over the place trying to figure out who’s who and whether or not they are winning is good, bad, or both. The Leagues are still playable, so if your interested in how they are going, please download the save and see for yourself, because anything I come up with will most likely be wrong…

CONTINENTAL COMPETITIONS

EUROPE

The Conference League

“I believe in Breiðablik Superiority” – Zealand

Breiðablik won the Conference League in 2221, a Semi-Pro club in Iceland with no transfer budget to speak of. The more things change…

I love this competition, not because the “Big Teams” win it, and they do, but because there are so many teams from smaller leagues that do win it, and no team has won it multiple times in a row:

Honestly, the only thing more fun than seeing a Panetolikos or Zilina winning, are some of the Stadium names. Mousa Dembele Stadium in Liege? Hugo Lloris Arena in Nice? I’m pretty sure he got that for being a coach though…FM26 is horrible at saving histories so I would have to go back to be sure.

The Europa League

Tottenham has the record for most wins, with 13 thus far. The “Bigger” teams do win this more often than not, but there is the occasioanl surprise, Dundalk Streda in 2143/44, Puskas Academia in 2171/72, PAOK beatin Bayern in 2202/03, Konyaspor beating Parma in 2220/21 or Ujpest beating Rennes in 2223/24

European Football Championship

Belgium won in 2128 and 2132, other than that, the usual suspects of England, Germany and Spain, and France occasionally. More interesting? Scotland in 2nd place in 2204, losing to Germany, Bulgaria losing to Spain in 2196, and North Macedonia losing to Wales in 2156.

The Champions League

I’m not going to screenshot every result, but take the opportunity to point out a few occasions where the expected “Big Team” didn’t win. A Big Team still won though, as a prime example Preston winning in 2204/05, 2201/02/ and 2197/98. They beat Zilina that year, the Slovakian team had a very good run. I suspect we have another century or two before the smaller league big clubs start winning.

The World Cup

Tunisia beat France in 2202. Ghana beat Germany in 2154. Senegal beat Syria in 2142. France Beat Ivory Coast in 2170. Again, as the save goes on, expect more results like this, just not all the time…

The Ballon d’Or Winner

Polydoros Panakoulias won 4 Ballon d’Or’s. 2137, 2139, 2140, and 2143. and those years he didn’t win, including 2138 and 2144, he came in 2nd place. At the end of the 2140 season, he was 27 years old. When he was 19 Inter paid €51M to get him from Olympiacos. In 34 appearances, as primarily an AM(R), he had 14 goals, 13 assists, 12 PoM’s, and an 8.12 rating.

And that is the second 100 years down. If you have a specific question about a specific year, you can hit me up on twitter @fm_jellico
In the meantime, feel free to poke around at you leisure:
https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/1pkrpq0brfzpirg/1000_yr_2225.06.26.fm/file

Thanks for reading!

FM_Jellico

FM26 – In the Year 2125

How far can we go?

In what has become somewhat of a tradition in the FM Jellico household, when the new version of the game goes out of Beta, I start a save, with a throw away manager and 6-8 Nations loaded. Usually the “Big 6”, one Asian and one South American country.
This year, the Nations are:

Brazil
England
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Portugal
Spain

In each Nation, the top league is playable, the leagues below are view only, which gives us a 72K size player database. On a tangent, the game is still running very well, every once and awhile there’s a memory issue, and I have to restart it, but that’s not a huge deal. One thing I have noticed is that this year is that when I compare the size of the save files from the FM24 version of the save I did, the FM26 save is bigger. In the past, the game refused to go on after the save file size hit 5GB, right now it is 2540 in game and the save file is 3.3Gb, with each save adding about 30MB to the file size. That means if the save file size is consistent, we will get ~166 files at 5GB, which is 830 years. Which while not a bad result at all, is not that close to the 1120 years we got in the FM24 version of the save.

So, we are going to try an be a bit more…structured with this review this year. The plan is to go 100 years at a time, Review each country, then the Continental competitions, the then World, and along the way, point out a few of the good and bad things we come across.
So with out further ado, let us start where I always start: Where is Crystal Palace, and how are they doing?

Relegated to League Two…moving on…

The English Premier League

From the 2025/2026 season, it was a 1 team League: Man City. Of the last 100 years they have won it 51 times. Arsenal won it a few times, Man United finally won it all in the 39/40 season, Liverpool in 40/41, Tottenham in 41/42 and 43/44, then it was back to the Man City train until 2062/2063, when Brighton finished 1st 4 of the next 5 years. Villa had a good run from 71/72 to 75/75, winning it all at the beginning and the end, and finishing 2nd the other 3 years, then it was back to Man City, who won the league almost every year or placed top 3 until 2096/2097, when Wolves kicked them to the curb. From 2096 to 2125, Man City has only won twice, with Wolves, Man United (5 times in a row starting in 2102) and Liverpool dominating the top spot, with Brighton competing and winning a couple of times as well.

This was the table at the end of the 2124/2125 season:

What some of you will notice right away is that Wrexham has indeed made it to the Premier League. They were first promoted in 2081, came right back down, bounced back and forth every few years afterwards, finished 2nd in the FA cup in 2114, were promoted again in 2121, and have stayed around so far.

Records wise, nothing too shocking really:

In looking thru the results the 2111/2112 season Liverpool scored 103 points, 29 ahead of City, going 33-4-1, their only loss against United. The best season, competition wise? In my opinion, it’s a tie.

The finish of the 2035/2036 season:

And most recently, the 2123/2124season:

A Note before Continuing

The more leagues you have loaded, the more diverse results you will get, eventually, because
It’s takes a couple of hundred years of simming to see those teams that dominate now fall off
In many Continental and International competitions, the game is’weighted’ towards the countries you have loaded. Case in point, I did a version of this I called the “Small Country” save, where I loaded China, South Africa, Israel, Latvia, Scotland, Peru, and I want to say Slovakia, and about 300 years in all of those countries had teams winning international and continental competitions. It the smaller competitions you will start seeing some more diverse winners, the European Cup for example, before seeing things like Breiðablik winning the Champions League 3 times in a row as a Semi-Professional club…

So, the next few sections may be a bit…short.

Ligue 1, France

As expected, PSG has won the league, a lot. In fact, it would be easier to list when they didn’t win it after 2025/2026.

2076/2077, when Lyon won; and again in 79/80 and 80/81; Marseille winning it every other year starting in 81/82 until 88/89, and Troyes winning it in 2122/2123. I believe Marseilles has come in 2nd more than any other team in the League.

Weirdly enough, at least in my opinion, the most recent table wouldn’t look out of place today:

Beauvais being the one outlier really, they are a CN 2 Group B squad presently.

PSG ran the table in the 2028/2029 season, with no losses, but Pau had a woeful 2075/2075 campaign:

1 Win, 10 draws, 23 losses…PSG has won the league comfortable every year it won, and when it lost, it was close more often than not. The most exciting finish to the season? the 2123/2124 campaign:

Monaco drew 2 of it’s last three games, and PSG won on goal difference.

The Bundesliga, Germany

The most recent table:

If there’s one thing I have been surprised with so far, it’s the state of the Bundesliga. Usually it’s another version of what’s going on in France, 1 or 2 teams dominate, with the occasional outlier winning as well. Not this simulation, although there have been some teams on some nice runs.

Bayern won the league every year except 2033/2034, when RB Leipzig pipped them. the from 2037/2038 to 2047/2048, with the exception of 2 seasons where RB Leipzig and Bayern won, BVB ran the table. With the exception of a lone Hertha win in 2055/2056, the next years were Bayern, BVB and RB Leipzig going on runs. In 2069/2070, and then three times in a row starting in 2074/2075 Stuttgart won the league, another Hertha outlier in 2085/2086, the RB Leipzig winning it 11 times in 13 years, and then the 22nd Century started, and in 2101,2101, Freiburg has won the league every year 2104/2105. For me, what’s more exciting is you have teams like Hoffenheim, Kaiserslautern, and Koln in the mix as well, that’s usually not the case.

As a Kaiserslautern fan, I actually went to a couple of games there in the 80’s when my dad was stationed there, the less we say about the 2049/2050 season, the better.

With the exception of a couple of season where the top 2 teams were tied points wise and they went to the tiebreak, there haven’t been any real seasons of note in terms of close finishes. In terms of overall results though, I believe the 2080/2081 season was the roughest, most exciting one:

You have to go back to 2003 to see 65 points win the league, and the lowest ever was 43 winning it all in 97-98 (The Kaiserslautern miracle run). But the difference between Champions League Football and Conference League was 3 goals…

Serie A, Italy

Another league of the “Usual Suspects” early on, as Inter won every year from 2024/2025 to 2040/2041, except the one year Juve won it in 2032/2033. Napoli had a couple of wins, then it was Inter again, with a lone Juve win in 2047/2048, and then again in 2053/2054 and 20/56/2057. Lazio had a good run starting in 2060, winning it all six of the next 7 years, then Inter won it all again until 2081/2082, the loan break being a 3 year period starting in 2076/2077 when Milan won it.

Then it was Juve, Inter, Milan and Palermo making itself known, then another inter run until 2106, with lone Palermo and Juve wins scattered thruout. Since 2107/2108, Palermo and Inter have been duking it out, whoever isnt winning is finishing 2nd, the lone excpetion being Juve in 2122/2133.

Again, the most recent table wouldn’t look out of place today I think, just the top team really:

Palermo almost went ‘Invincible’ in 2112/2113, a loss to Como being the only thing that stopped them:

In 2075/2076 Milan was running away with the League until April and May, when it drew 6, won 1, and lost 1. The one loss to a midtable Bergamo team that that put them out of contention for good. Inter finished the season with 6 wins and 2 draws, Juve with 6 wins, a draw and a loss as well.

LaLiga, Spain

More Italy than Germany results wise, but not unexpected either: It’s been mostly Barcelona and Real Madrid. However, Athletico has won it a few times, as has Real Sociedad. Girona started popping up with the occasional win in in 2049/2050, and thereafter was a fxiture at 2nd or 3rd place more often than not, then they started winning more often, and starting in 2112/2113, they’ve won LaLiga 9 of the last 13 years.

Nothing out of the ordinary here table wise I believe:

Barcelona lost 1 game in 2093/2094, but to be honest I am more impressed with Sevilla 19 draws…

A 1-0 loss to Real Betis was Barcelona’s only blip in an otherwise very good 2093/2094 season.

Season wise, there have been more than a few times when the teams at the top have ended up on the same points,

The choice for the most exciting season so far in La Liga boils down to 3 seasons, but the participants and results are all the same: heading into the last week, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Girona are either tied on points, or one team is separated by one point from the others. All three teams draw, and the fans are probably disappointed as a result. I am choosing the 2017/73 season though, because all three teams had a chance of outright winning La Liga, instead they all drew, leaving Barcelona to win it all:

The Liga, Portugal

Speaking personally, I have not played a lot in Portugal. I had a banger of a Santa Clara save started when the country database I was using decided to bork everything, but of the “Big 5” European leagues, it’s the one I know the least about. Other than the fact it usually has three teams dominating it.

That’s has changed very little in this timeline.

Sporting, Porto and Benfica have pretty much dominated the last century, with Porto going on a run from 2044/2045 to 2078/2079 where they “lost” the league just four times. Gil Vicente and Boa Vista start winning titles every once and awhile, Gil Vicente had a run at the turn of the century where it won 5 out of 7 years, but both Porto and Sporting have started to fall off, as Braga. Gil Vicente and Boavista step up.
The current table:

Again, other than a few names at the bottom, nothing out of the ordinary here.
Records wise, no real Surprises here either, not a lot has changed since the simulation began:

Porto went 32-2-1 in it’s 95 point season, Sporting beating them 2-1 to ruin the ‘Invincible” season.

With regards to the most exciting season so far, it has to be the 2109/2110 campaign. Heading into the last week, Rio Ave was top of the League with 63 points. Gol Vicente and Boavista were also on 63 points, Benfica was on 61, so all four teams had the ability to win the league. In the end:

Rio Ave was the only team to lose, as a result going from 1st to 4th, while Gil Vicente ended up winning. Although in looking at the tables and fixtures, I am not sure why, as Boavista won and drew, and now the data is jacked up when I go back and look because of course it is…the results in the table don’t match up with Gil Vicenctes fixture schedule…sigh…

Campeonato Brasileiro Série A

I will be the first to admit I do not know a lot about Brazilian football, and what I do know has been thru Football Manager more often than not. But I always try and include them or another South American Country because it leads to more diverse results down the road. I could have also sworn that I used the real name fix, but either SI is doing FM26 SI things, or I used the wrong name fix, because I am still getting 3 letter abbreviations for the team names…but onwards we go!

There has been a decent amount of diversity in the winners of the league the past 100 years. Flamingo dominated early on, but then fell off, with Botafogo , Santos, São Paulo, Vasco de Gama, Fluminense all winning titles, then in 2081 Cortiba (currently a Serie B team) won it all. Bahia has won the league, Cruziero has a title as well, so for the time being Brazil isthe place to be if you are a good team, because there are other good teams but no one team is dominating.

Even a bit more on the ‘odd’ side of things:

Not a lot of new records in the last 100 years, except for Figueirense (Currently a Serie C team in 2025), losing 32 of 38 games…

Season wise, the 2105 season was probably the closest so far:

Atlético Mineiro, if the fixture data can be trusted, went L-W-D-D-W it’s last 5 games. The Fixture schedule for Cruziero has the same result, just in a different order (W-W-L-L-D), and the Fluminese results don’t match up at all.

I suspect this part of the review may not be present in future posts…

The J1 League, Japan

Until recently I never added an Asian team to the countries, the primary reason being League depth. South Korea, Indonesia and China only go 2 leagues down, so as a result, you tend to get the teams winning it all in the 21st Century winning it all in the 27th Century. Japan though, with it’s 3 Leagues and Regional Leagues, is a very good country to add, not the least of which is the knock on effect of very good Japanese players going to European teams and being world Superstars.

That said, my knowledge of the J1 League is less than that of Brazil’s Serie A…

I can’t say anything looks out of the ordinary here, I don’t know what “ordinary” in Japan is. Hiroshima winning the league though, I know they are a good team, they have won the J-League more than any other team. They pretty much dominated until the 2050’s, Kawasaki-F managed to pip a few years from them, then came Urawa, Shimizu, and others. Tokyo-V dominated the 2070’s, a lone Sapporo win in 2073 the only blip there, then it was teams like Niigata, Yokohama F-M, Shonan and Sagamihara winning titles, which I think is a good thing. The last thing a person wants to see, having encountered it before, is one team dominating for the entirety of the save. Which happens more than you think.

CONTINENTAL COMPETITIONS

EUROPE

The Conference League

This is probably, for me anyways, the most enjoyable competition to look at early on, because most of the participants are clubs from smaller nations that we do not have loaded, so the variety of clubs is quite good.

Obligatory Breiðablik appearence made…

What I like about this competition is yes, some of the bigger clubs (Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal, Parma, Bayer) do show up and win, it’s clubs like FC Blau-Weiß Linz in 38/39, OH Leuven in 57/58, LASK in 76/77, Goztepe in 92/93, Puskas Akademia in 98/99, or Hapoel Be’er Sheva in 2116/2117 winng. And as the Sim goes on, yes you will still see big teams win it, but a lot of smaller teams as well. Look at some of the teams coming, those could be the potential powerhouses next centruy.

Your Young Player of the Conference, 2125. Georgian Striker Zurab Telia, on loan from Porto to Torpedo Kutaisi:

The Europa League

As expected this early in the save, a lot of the “Usual Suspects” here, with a couple of outliers every now and again. Ajax in 34/35, Mallorca in 49/50, Derby in 68/69, Servette in 2105/2105, SK Sturmgratz in 2110/2111. This is where up and coming teams in the loaded leagues will start making their appearances on a regular basis. Oddly enough, and since I am wearing the bifocals it’s not impossible, there hasn’t been a repeat Europa League Winner since I started the save:

Your Europa League Young Player of the Season: Luke Anderson-Peters, from Chelsea:

European Football Championship

I’m not going to post the winners, because for the most part it’s the “Usual Suspects”, the Big Leagues I have loaded. The outliers though, will raise a couple of eyebrows.

Denmark beat France in 2044. Belgium Beat Germany in 2088. Romania beat Italy in 2112. Netherlands beat Spain in 2120. Every other competition was England, Spain, Germany, with the lone French win coming in 2052. England did “Three-peat” from 2028 to 2036.

The Champions League

Again, this early in the save, there aren’t going to be very many surprises. The newer winner reflect their own climb to the top of their respective Leagues (Girona and Freiburg), and while some winners may look like an outlier, Wolves in 2094/2095, they were the class of the English Prem then.
No, the outliers are going to be those clubs you wouldn’t be expecting to win it, SK Strum in 2116/2117, and Lille in 2109/2110, whose best finish in the save so far has been a series of 2nd place finishes early in the save, and a few second places since. They lost to Chelsea the previous year in the Europa League final, finished 3rd in France that same year to grab the last Champions league spot, and won it all the next season.

Your Champions League Player of the Season: Bruno Reisinho, Man United Striker:

The World Cup

To be honest, the result from this are a bit more diverse than I expected, with a couple of surprises as well:

The Ballon d’Or Winner

One hand, the screen for this is nice. On the other hand, it’s to small to be useful. You get, at best, 13 years of players in, that’s a lot of screenshots. So what I will do is this:

This is the current Ballon d’Or winner, Javier Mesias from Wolves:

Still going strong at 34.

However, from 2070 to 2079, Alejandro won the Ballon 7 times, including 6 in a row while playing at Athletico Madrid:

And because I am saving every 5 years, here is Alejandro from the 2069/2070 season:

The idea is to do updates every hundred years, hopefully we do get 1000 years out of the save. As I type this it’s currently, 2663 and the file size is just over 4GB, so we will see what happens.

For those of you who want to poke around, just be aware the data doesn;t always match up, but here is the save file for 2125:
https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/80eysorkrz0hkm2/1000_yr_2125.06.20.fm/file

When the save concludes, that’s when I’ll upload all the 5 years files to my Mediafire. If there are other competitions you want me to look at, or other player categories, let me know.

Thanks for Reading!
FM_Jellico