[FM15] Samoa - Home of the Sepp Blatter stadium Samoa Club & Country

[Truegunner]

Introduction

Welcome to my main career save for this football manager. I am attempting arguably the most difficult challenge in Football Manager, taking possibly the worst team in the game from the worst continent to oceanic glory and to the world cup (most likely not). However I am also adding an additional element to this challenge by playing as a club team in the second tier of American Samoa, this team also has the lowest possible reputation (1) and my aim is take them to the very top of oceanic football an hopefully to Club World cup glory (again most likely not).

American Samoa - A Brief overview

Throughout their history they have been seen as one of the worlds weakest teams, which is evident through some infamous results (most notably the 31-0 loss against Australia which is the record for the largest international loss). However despite this American Samoa has had some success such as their first win in FIFA Competition against Tonga in 2011 (2-1) and a draw against the Cook Island soon after. The only other performances of note from American Samoa has to be their 1987 South Pacific games record where the managed a sixth placed finish. They were subject to a football documentary in 2014 called the Next Goal Wins which followed their efforts in qualifying for the 2014 world cup.

Who is the club team I have chosen...

Atu'u Broncos

Unfortunately I can't find any history about them, all I have is what Football Manager has told me which is that they finished 3rd in the second division in 2012-13.

Objectives

Nation

-Win a game

-Improve the ranking

-Try not to be humiliated

Club

-Finish Mid-table

-Develop the youth academy

-Try not to be humiliated

Oh and if I didn't need reminding how bad we really are:

Bad.

[Truegunner]

American Samoa - Season 1 - 2014

Looking through the squad I wasn't exactly optimistic especially with the fact my best player was this guy. The first game I arranged was against Samoa, one of the few teams not much better than American Samoa, so I was relatively optimistic that we could get a good resut. Going into the match I had no idea what tactics or formation I would use on the team, as they were weak in every single area, but what I did notice was a lack of wide players particularly MR/ML areas, so I went to work and settled with a 4-1-3-2 defensive formation and at first it appeared to be working poorly as I was already 1-0 down inside 7 minutes, however we quickly countered with two quick fire goals inside the next ten minutes. After this I set us up to play defensive to hold the lead and surprisingly it worked and we held on for our first win in my first game in charge! After this great result I thought that maybe this save wouldn't be too difficult after all, well I was wrong and my next two matches brought two losses at home to other teams in our confederation, after this I decided to keep faith in the tactic as after all it had got me a win in just my first game. This however turned out to be another big mistake as in the next match against Tajikistan we conceded within literally 1 minute and then they completely destroyed us, it was an awful end to a year that started off so well. Oh and of course to make things worse our ranking has went even lower to a pitiful 199, not the greatest of starts...

Objectives

Nation

-Win a game (Achieved)

-Improve the ranking (Failed)

-Try not to be humiliated (Failed)

Next Season

-Win a game

-Improve the ranking

-Try not to be humiliated

[Northernpilgrim]

American Samoa - Season 1 - 2014

Looking through the squad I wasn't exactly optimistic especially with the fact my best player was this guy. The first game I arranged was against Samoa, one of the few teams not much better than American Samoa, so I was relatively optimistic that we could get a good resut. Going into the match I had no idea what tactics or formation I would use on the team, as they were weak in every single area, but what I did notice was a lack of wide players particularly MR/ML areas, so I went to work and settled with a 4-1-3-2 defensive formation and at first it appeared to be working poorly as I was already 1-0 down inside 7 minutes, however we quickly countered with two quick fire goals inside the next ten minutes. After this I set us up to play defensive to hold the lead and surprisingly it worked and we held on for our first win in my first game in charge! After this great result I thought that maybe this save wouldn't be too difficult after all, well I was wrong and my next two matches brought two losses at home to other teams in our confederation, after this I decided to keep faith in the tactic as after all it had got me a win in just my first game. This however turned out to be another big mistake as in the next match against Tajikistan we conceded within literally 1 minute and then they completely destroyed us, it was an awful end to a year that started off so well. Oh and of course to make things worse our ranking has went even lower to a pitiful 199, not the greatest of starts...

Objectives

Nation

-Win a game (Achieved)

-Improve the ranking (Failed)

-Try not to be humiliated (Failed)

Next Season

-Win a game

-Improve the ranking

-Try not to be humiliated

You could easily argue that the third objective has been achieved too, as you won a game and had 2 narrow losses, with only 1 hammering, which can happen even to good teams.

[Truegunner]

You could easily argue that the third objective has been achieved too, as you won a game and had 2 narrow losses, with only 1 hammering, which can happen even to good teams.

I am not too disappointed I just was shocked at the defeat as I expected a little better from the team.

[deltablue]

This could be epic.

[Truegunner]

Atu'u Broncos - Season 1 - 2014-15

The squad was really atrocious we had only one player who was actually at the required level I kid you not! I decided to ignore the assistant and give the squad a chance however after we lost our first friendly to our B team, I was so angry that I promptly released pretty much the entire first team. It was so bad that the grey players in our reserves and U19's were better as a result I signed them all up. After all this upheaval my gamble seemed to work as the first three games resulted in 7 points out of 9 and we were top, we were then completely torn apart by Green Bay whom were starting to build a distance between themselves and the rest of the league. However for the rest of the season we were pretty consistent and only lost one more league game and where did this leave us?

Against all odds we achieved promotion, I had pretty much given up after the loss to Vaiala Tongan B. But we did get a little lucky as the other teams around us were dropping points, unfortunately Green Bay were completely running away with the league and were untouchable, which meant we settled for 2nd. This gave us a Relegation play-off against Utulei where we scraped to a 1-0 win and with it top tier football. In the cup well we surprised many...

I really did not see this coming, but I will take this! We were particularly lucky in the Pago Youth game which was very nervy especially when we went 2-1 down as they threw everything at us and we had to defend with all our might. I also found that the cup was our only chance of money in American Samoa as we were handed 10k for winning the cup which was a nice bonus and allowed me to improve the junior coaching.

Best Players

Ace Leota - Yes that is really his name and you know what he lived upto his name (well not really) he had a relativly ok season, however really he is essentially the best of a very poor crop of players.

Rapi Atualevao - Nothing too great here essentially ok performances and nothing more, still I guess he was a solid enough keeper for the season.

Objectives

Club

-Finish Mid-table (Achieved)

-Develop the youth academy (Achieved - Junior Coaching upgrade)

-Try not to be humiliated (Achieved)

Next Season

-Survive in the top tier

-Develop the youth academy

-Retain the cup

[Truegunner]

American Samoa - Season 2 - 2015

Going into the new year, I noticed the major problem with the team they were all over 30 with many at 34/35! As a result I completely chopped and changed the team (which essentially ended up being filled with mostly my players) this was particularly needed as the Pacific Games was coming up this year. We had a miserable start to the new year with consecutive losses against Hong Kong and Afghanistan, however I wasn't too disheartened particularly against Hong Kong who have a few professional players and have a much higher standard of football than us (relatively speaking) We then managed a credible draw against New Caledonia which was our last game before the Pacific Games, going into the games I expected little from the team and was just hoping we could maybe snatch a point. Surprisingly the players gave it their all and in the first within 7 minutes we were 1-0 up we had a ream start until Vanatu scored 4 minutes later, at half-time I decided to try a more attacking approach in hopes of getting a goal and we managed just that in the 62nd minute through a goal from Tipi Laulu. For the rest of the game we went defensive and held on to claim the three points. After this result I was delighted but the game after was even as we gave a good performance in a solid 2-0 over Tonga, thanks to this we qualified! Against Tahiti though we were given a massive reality check as they pumped us 6-2, this didn't matter as we had Fiji next in the Quarter-finals, alas the players gave it their all and we matched Fiji through the whole match but unfortunately we lost 1-0. Despite going out I was very happy with out performances and feel we gave a good account of ourselves.

After this we had a run of three consecutive wins, before finally losing to the Solomon Islands 4-1. This led to us achieving a record ranking.

Objectives

Nation

-Win a game (Achieved)

-Improve the ranking (Achieved)

-Try not to be humiliated (Achieved)

Next Season

-Win two/three games

-Improve the ranking

-Try not to be humiliated

Note: I noticed that in the OCE Nations Cup we are not in it, at first I thought we had already played the matches but we haven't even been entered! For some reason Tuvalu have taken our spot, can anyone shed some light on why, because looking online American Samoa are meant to have the final round one spot and if this is not in the game then we may never be able to qualify.

[Truegunner]

Well this save has come to an end after I have found out American Samoa has been hard coded (from the looks of it) to never take part in the OFC Nations cup first round, with their place given to Tuvalu as this is my only route to the world cup it has halted my save, having just the Pacific games to play for is not enough. However I haven't given on the challenge idea and I have decided to try with Samoa and a club team from Samoa (Western Samoa) I will probably post that save in here.

[Truegunner]

Samoa - A Brief overview

Although not as weak as their more eastern brothers their history has hardly been better. They have never reached a world cup and have only once to date made the OFC Nations cup which, funnily enough was the last one in 2012 where the lost all of their games and only scored one goal. Ironically their best result in their history is against American Samoa which was 8-0, while their worst result was 13-0 to Tahiti so again not as bad as American Samoa's record but they are hardly much better sitting in 194th in the rankings at the start.

The club...

Togafuafua

Not much about them, with no history of note. Still the badge is quite good

Objectives

Nation

(The same as American Samoa pretty much)

-Win a game

-Improve the ranking

-Try not to be humiliated

Club

-Finish Mid-table

-Develop the youth academy

-Make some money

[Truegunner]

Samoa - Season 1 - 2014

Well the team given too me was hardly much better than American Samoa's. Their best player was no better than American Samoa's best player, still overall there was more depth to the squad and as a result when we had injuries we had a number of players to fill in the gaps. I actually went unbeaten in my first year as I joined in late September due to the season's start date. The first game against the Solomon Islands went much better than I had hoped and we were extremely lucky to come away with a draw, however after that match I tinkered more with the teams tactics and playing style and we managed credible wins against the Cook Islands and American Samoa away which did wonders for the squad morale and lead us to a higher ranking. All in all a great first year for us, but I do help but wonder how we would have done against better opposition, thankfully we will have the chance as we are in the OFC nations cup next year.

Objectives

Nation

-Win a game (Achieved)

-Improve the ranking (Achieved)

-Try not to be humiliated (Achieved)

Next Season

-Improve the ranking further

-Have a good go in the upcoming Pacific games

-Pass the first round of the OFC Nations Cup

[Truegunner]

Tagofuafua - Season 1 - 2014-15

This squad was not great. Barring one or two players there was little quality and this time there was no decent grey players to help me out . The season started off pretty well and after four games we were top, we were a mixed bag for the next couple of games but after this slight blip in form, we went unbeaten in our next nine league games, however as this league has only one promotion spot it means dropping any points is costly especially with only 22 games played each season...

We ended up winning the league at a canter, this was no mean feat considering there is only one promotion spot in this league. Because of this promotion this happened...

I don't know what to say really I think it's much too soon, as we hardly make any money at this level, we literally just break even so paying any wages would be a bad idea, still at least it will be easier to sign new players. How did the cup go?

Going all the way to the semi-final I was worried when we drew, however I needn't have worried as we made an absolute mockey of Lupe in the semi-final! The fact they are one of the best teams in Samoa meant this was a very significant victory and after this I felt we could beat anyone, unfortunately we were given the best Samoan team Moaula, looking at their squad they had several national team players and even a former professional New Zealander in their squad so I was not optimistic. But surprisingly my players gave as good as they as every time they scored we hit back, in extra time I tried everything to score the winner but we just couldn't find it. In the penalty shoot-out we completely lost our nerve and missed out first three penalties. The loss is not what hurt it was missing the 10k prize money that hurt as we really needed it. Still I am happy with my players nonetheless as none even expected us to reach the semi-final let alone come a few penalties away from winning the cup.

Best Players

Robert Hellesoe - With a finishing stat of only 9 and only 9 pace you would expect him to struggle, but in this league that makes him one of the best players. He was literally unstoppable, it reached a point where if I dropped him then we would struggle to win.

Peniamina Timo - Didn't score, but he didn't need to he possessed a reasonable amount of pace for a winger at this level and as a result had no problem beating his man, his stats don't tell the whole story he was key to some of our performances.

Objectives

Club

-Finish Mid-table (Achieved)

-Develop the youth academy (Achieved - Junior Coaching upgrade)

-Make some money (Achieved) (only 2k)

Next Season

-Survive in the top tier

-Develop the youth academy

-Make some more money

[andychar]

Always good to see something completely and utterly different, shame American Samoa didn't work out but Samoa will still be an up hill struggle. Keep up the good work looking forward to some updates.

[Truegunner]

Always good to see something completely and utterly different, shame American Samoa didn't work out but Samoa will still be an up hill struggle. Keep up the good work looking forward to some updates.

Thanks for the feedback and yes I am disappointed with what happened with the American Samoa save, I was really enjoying it and to find I could never reach the world cup ruined the save. Still the good news I am really enjoying this save currently and have played a few seasons ahead and can safely say there has been no issues so far and onto that note...

Samoa - Season 2 - 2015

With the upcoming Pacific Games and OFC Nations Cup coming up I decided to arrange a friendly against one of the top teams in the continent Tahiti, and the match went much better than I expected. Unfortunately we couldn't find the winner during this match, but we held on for a good result and just the result we needed to prepare us. Onto ehe first round of the OFC Nations which was against fellow minnows and looking at the teams we were up against I expected us to go through. Which we did through our first two matches, Tonga did make things difficult in the final match though. After this we had the Pacific Games and I was hoping for a good draw since the likes of Kirbati, Wallis & Futuna and the Cook Islands were in the draw and boy was I wrong! They gave us some difficult teams with the Solomon Islands and Vanatu which were teams that I had wanted to avoid. It looked like my suspicions were correct after the first game against the Solomon Islands, although we were the better team that match, however the players were here to prove a point and did so by completely smashing American Samoa, we then had a nervy win against Vanatu which secured our place in the next round where we faced Wallis & Futuna. They gave a good game but our quality shone through and we booked our place in the Semi-final unfortunately our wonder run came to an end as New Caledonia even though we had a better game than New Caledonia we still came out with a 3-1 loss, we did however recover to get a priceless win over Tahiti and we managed to finish 3rd!

The players then went back to their usual selves the next game losing 2-1 to Papua New Guinea in the next friendlily, this didn't matter though as we then beat them a month later in the OFC Nations Cup second round, we ended the year grinding out a 2-1 win over Vanautu. These results have left us:

Barring Fiji I really do think we have a good chance of reaching the semi-final. All this progress resulted in a new http://i812.photobucket.com/albums/zz50/Truegunner/FM 2015 Saves/Samoa Cluband Country/Season 2/Ranking 2015_zpst470tm57.png'>ranking.

Objectives

Nation

-Improve the ranking further (Achieved)

-Have a good go in the upcoming Pacific Games (Achieved)

-Pass the first round of the OFC Nations Cup (Achieved)

Next Season

-Try to reach 150th in the rankings

-Reach the semi-finals of the OFC Nations Cup

-Improve the national squad

[Truegunner]

Tagofuafua - Season 2 - 2015-16

As you can see results were very good for a newly promoted team and to be honest were much better than expected. Surprisingly even in the matches we lost we were dominant. After our reasonable start to the campaign we then went unbeaten for a while before losing to Central, by this point we had reached 1st in the league and looked capable of challenging, unfortunately we started dropping points here and there in games we could have won. However this soon culminated when we played fellow contenders Kiwi at home, after having beaten heavily into the players and how did they respond? by going 4-0 down in the second half! Iaone scored a goal in the 82nd minute which made me think we could possibly try to bring back a draw but my hopes were dashed minutes later when Kiwi scored again to make it 5-1. After this result Kiwi were back on top of the league and at this point I had almost given up on the title. We managed to win our last two games, the question is however was it enough?

Yes! Kiwi bottled their chances due to their draw in the second last match, this left us needing a win in our last match to take the title which we duly did. I was really surprised at just how easy this league is, I was expecting the step-up to be huge but it seems this league is not much better than the first division. Of course the best part about winning the title means we get to have a crack at the O-League.

Nothing to see here just the same team bottling at penalties again.

Best Players

Junior Fuimanoa - Now this guy surprised me, I managed a major coup by snatching him from Kiwi and I did not expect him to feature as much as did so soon. But when I gave him his chance he performed very well becoming literally undroppable, he also looks like he will be a handy player for the NT.

Dominic Iafeta - Another player I nicked from Kiwi! just like Junior at first I planned to rotate him in, but he proved to be very important to our play and his speed was a very handy asset to our title charge.

Objectives

Club

-Survive in the top tier (Achieved)

-Develop the youth academy (Failed)

-Make some more money (Failed)

Next Season

-Retain our title

-Win the cup

-Have a good O-League run

[Truegunner]

Samoa - Season 3 - 2016

Against Fiji the players were able to match them throughout the whole match and really we deserved at least a draw. But unfortunately and irritatingly they scored in 90+6 minute to win the game, lets just say after that match I wasn't really look forward to the rest of the matches. Thankfully we picked ourselves up with a solid 1-0 win over Papua New Guinea putting ourselves in a good position before our final games, in June we faced Fiji away and Vanatu at home, against Fiji we surprisingly came out with a credible draw and thanks to Papua New Guinea and Vanatu drawing we qualified with a game to spare! After picking up another draw we were given New Zealand and the minute I saw that draw I knew we were out, however we really surprised everyone after losing at home I was very pessimistic and set us up to be very defensive for the away game and it actually worked. We took the lead fr over 30 minutes before New Zeland equalised, after this the New Zealand onslaught of shots came; but they couldn't hit the back of the net and I saw my chance we changed to a more attacking approach but we also couldn't find the back of the net, this is turn meant we were knocked out. After a great showing the OCE Nations Cup we continued our decent form into the friendlies going unbeaten in all three thanks to our stellar tournament and frendliy results we moved up decently in the rankings.

Objectives

Nation

-Try to reach 150th in the rankings (Failed)

-Reach the semi-finals of the OFC Nations Cup(Achieved)

-Improve the national squad(Achieved - called up some good dual nationality players)

Next Season

-Try to reach 150th in the rankings

-Do well in the upcoming friendlies

-Improve the national squad

[andychar]

Showing some potential just need to build on these good competitive performances.

[Truegunner]

Showing some potential just need to build on these good competitive performances.

I don't know how far I can push Samoa considering there is a limited talent pool and their best player wouldn't even make a conference side. We shall see though as hopefully the talent should improve.

Tagofuafua - Season 3 - 2016-17

With me being worried about second season syndrome I wasn't taking any chances, however I needn't have worried as we made light work of retaining the league and even gave ourselves a large point gap over the other teams. Kiwi had a very strange off year although we didn't exactly help that by nicking 1/3 of their team! To Kiwi's credit they did put up a good fight, but their awful form in the first month really cost them and as a result it left them playing catch up and even cost them higher positions in the league, meanwhile our form was generally very good however I was very irritated at the 2-0 home loss to Mouala whom up to that point had been near the relegation spot and had been pretty bad. But then again that's probably me just being picky as the team has been generally very good all season.

The gap between us and the rest of the league is really telling and its only our second season at this level. The league doesn't seem too competitive as outside of Kiwi I don't really see any competition, I can already see the problems I will have in the long run with trying to progress the Samoan league. Lets hope this changes.

The cup was absolutely ridiculous! We didn't concede a single goal and completely smashed any team that stood in our way, this was very important as the cups prize money had increased to 35k which in this region is a good amount of money (enough to pay my wage bill for a year). The O-League went much better than expected. We made light work out of the preliminary round and we then reached the group stage where we were given Ba, Team Wellington and AS Qanano, somehow we surprised everyone by beating Ba in the first game before being brought back down to earth against Team Wellington. In our last game it was simple win and somehow hope that Team Wellington would lose (unlikely), we did our part beating Qanano 4-1, news then filtered through that Team Wellington also won. Thinking I had been knocked out I started to prepare for next season; but then I found out we had reached the semi-final as the best second placed team. Our dream-run ended against Auckland City where we actually managed a win in the home game before being reminded who we really were and given a 4-1 drubbing in the away game. Despite this we have done very well in our first year and it should really help the league reputation.

Note: No best players this time as I have forgotten to make screenshots

Objectives

Club

-Retain our title (Achieved)

-Win the cup (Achieved)

-Have a good O-League run (Achieved)

Next Season

(the same as last year)

-Retain our title

-Win the cup

-Have a good O-League run

[Maw74]

A great season in the domestic comps and a good effort in the O-League.

How come you have put failed next to cup and O-League? It was a good run, no shame in losing at the Semi-Final stage to Auckland City.

Strickland Brothers, how big is their family if they can set up a team. Also I have seen some funny names but One Way Wind???

[Truegunner]

A great season in the domestic comps and a good effort in the O-League.

How come you have put failed next to cup and O-League? It was a good run, no shame in losing at the Semi-Final stage to Auckland City.

Strickland Brothers, how big is their family if they can set up a team. Also I have seen some funny names but One Way Wind???

Failed? that was meant to say achieved, my mistake. I agree there is no shame in losing to Auckland particularly when you consider their highest paid player matches our whole entire wage budget! Apparently Strickland were once called Tunaimato Breeze (who are also in my save weirdly enough) so unfortunately it doesn't seem like a big family made them . Got to hand it to One way wind at least their name is original unlike Adidas.

[Truegunner]

Samoa - Season 4 - 2017

As we had a year of friendlies I decided to use this as a gauge to measure our progress. First was New Caledonia away and make no allusions they proved we still had a long way to go, we did manage to keep the ball a fair bit though and even bettered them for some parts of the match. We then faced St Lucia at home whom were ranked slightly higher than us, we actually went 1-0 down for the first 44 minutes before scoring just before the break. About 20 minutes later we scored two quick fire goals to seal up the match giving us a good 3-1 win. Against Aruba we were pretty diabolical we mustered only two shots in the whole match, while Aruba managed 17 shots, they completely pumped us and unfortunately we went home with another loss. Thankfully we closed the year out on a high with a solid win over the Maldives, these performances meant we moved up a good deal in the rankings, even reaching a new "]record[/url]. However I have found out to my disdain we have another year of only friendlies .

Objectives

Nation

-Try to reach 150th in the rankings(Achieved)

-Do well in the upcoming friendlies(Partially Achieved - home results)

-Improve the national squad(Achieved)

Next Season

-Try to improve the ranking further

-Go unbeaten in next seasons friendlies

-Win an away game

[Truegunner]

Tagofuafua - Season 4 - 2017-18

League

This league is getting too easy, it seems all it takes is a few decent players (for this level) and your able to start pulling away from everyone. It even got to the stage where I was aiming for an unbeaten run (which unfortunately ended at home to Vaimoso) with no real competition expect from Kiwi it feels like this may become a one team league, the gap between me and Kiwi was also quite large, but interestingly enough they built themselves a nice gap over 3rd so its clear that they are pulling away themselves, so here's hoping they can compete with us.

The gap continues to grow and with only Kiwi providing competition I feel this will not really be a challenge. To Kiwi's credit they gave it a really good go, but once they lost to us they were pretty much out of it.

Cups

It was a relatively easy year in the cup which was nearly made difficult against Viavase, who held us to a 1-1 draw until literally added time in the 90th minute where Hoeflich came up with the goods. The final didn't even feel like a final more like a practice match, but we took the trophy with no problems whatsoever and of course the now increased prize money.

O-League

A new separate section as I feel this competition is worth its own section.

It started off very difficult as Tupapa made it very hard for us as they matched us all game and this was reflected in the final score, we thankfully recovered and won our next two games to progress to the next stage. The group stage draw gave us some quite tricky games such as Amicale whom had been finalists once before and Auckland City possibly the best team on the continent. This left me expecting the worst, but somehow the players were really up for this and ended up getting an impressive draw against Auckland and even beating Amicale. We went through to the quarter-finals where we faced previous champions (2010) Hekari and we fought diligently keeping them out until half time, which they unfortunately did before the break. We however kept the score down at 1-0 and then went for it at home where two first half goals settled the tie. This put us through to our first ever final...

Going into this game I was confident we could take them and we were completely outclassed in the first leg, the game was all Auckland and they even went 3-0 up before we finally scored, it really showed just how much better the New Zealand teams are. We put up a good effort in the second leg as we tried to overturn the defecit, however we just couldn't finish taking 90 minutes to score our only goal of the match. It was harsh lesson for the layers to learn and we were probably a little naive but I feel we did very well, I didn't expect to even get out of the group let alone reach the final.

Note: No best players this time as I have forgotten to make screenshots (Just like last season, should be back for next season though)

Objectives

Club

-Retain our title (Achieved)

-Win the cup (Achieved)

-Have a good O-League run (Achieved)

Next Season

-Go Unbeaten

-Win the cup

-Try to reach at least the O-League Semi-finals

[Truegunner]

Samoa - Season 5 - 2018

Another year of friendlies most of which were arranged to give my team a boost in the rankings. We put in a good showing in our friendlies and our only loss came against Thailand 0-2 at home, results such as the St Lucia game are a particular good point. However I do feel the year could have been better, particularly against Afghanistan as they were there for the taking and we just couldn't defend. Still we ended the year on a new record ranking. Thankfully that's another year of friendlies over with, now we can focus on the tournaments again next year.

Objectives

Nation

-Try to improve the ranking further(Achieved)

-Go unbeaten in next seasons friendlies(Failed)

-Win an away game(Achieved)

Next Season

-Try to improve the ranking further

-Do well in the upcoming Pacific Games

-Reach the OCE Nations Cup second round

[Truegunner]

Togafuafua - Season 5 - 2018-19

League

This time we managed to stay unbeaten, however the real question is did any other teams put up a good fight towards our unbeaten run?

Unfortunately not, the gap is now a whopping 19 points! Kiwi and the rest of the league just can't compete, without any money in the league no team can ever really challenge us and already this league feels like its massively stagnating. The big surprise of the year has to be Adidas who had a diabolical season, which included a nice 5-0 thrashing from us .

Cups

This time around it was not as easy as it looked, particularly against Vaitele who took us to extra time with a 0-0 draw, we actually took 120 minutes before Hoeflich slotted home the winner to avoid a penalty shoot-out. After this it was plain sailing and it ensured we picked up more money for the club.

O-League

The Preliminary round this was a walk in the park with no scares this year, we progressed without conceding a single goal. Next we got the fortunate of getting a pretty easy group with no New Zealand teams; although we did receive a former finalist in AS Tefana surprisingly however I nearly ended up regretting these thoughts as we were 1-0 down inside of 30 minutes. I had a very friendly chat with the team at half time (ok probably not) and they went out there raring to go, we had chance after chance in the second half and as it was approaching the final minutes I had given up, then at the 88th minute Junior scores to put the score at 1-1 and then in injury time he scores the winner! After this game we ended up winning our next two, this rewarded us with a tie against Team Wellington; having learnt from my experience last year against New Zealand teams I tried a more defensive approach thid did only bring a draw at home but kept us in the tie. Away I decided to go more counter and as a result we ended up winning 3-1 to set us up for a second consecutive O-League final. So what happened...

Seeing Canterbury in the draw I was very positive as they were clearly the third best team in New Zealand (after Auckland and Team Wellington). At home I tried the same approach I tried against Wellington where we picked up a draw at home (we achieved this thanks to a penalty from Aloese), this meant in the final all I needed was a one goal win or an away goal draw to win the O-league. Within the first 30 minutes we took the lead and went in at half time 1-0 up, I changed tactic to a more counter game to try and exploit Canterbury's shaky defence this completely failed as minutes after kick-off they scored to make it 1-1. After this the game changed completely where Canterbury had chance after chance and yet somehow kept missing, we had very few chances in the second half while they were making all the chances, yet somehow we managed to hold out until extra time. Once more we scored first and yet again we bottled our lead letting them score minutes later it remained 2-2 until the end of extra time, this meant the dreaded penalties. Here we lost our way and lost the shoot-out within five penalties, Canterbury kept their composure and slotted all but one penalty, this meant they were the new winners of the O-league. It hurt to be so close to winning even being in a winning position twice and then to lose the way we did was just awful, we only have ourselves to blame though as we had our chance and didn't take it, the club world cup will have to wait for another year.

Best Players

Sale Aloese - He was simply unplayable! Whenever he was out of the team we struggled to make chances he was really that important, easily the best player in the league and may even end up being our first import outside of the league.

Junior Palusam Gabriel - Done very well this year being among the top assist makers in the league, however he did have some issues with fitness later in the season I just hope it doesn't become a regular problem.

Pitotua Aloese - Our unsung hero an absolute rock at the back the only player who played every game this season. Maybe better could be found in the next few years, but for now Aloese is more than capable.

Objectives

Club

-Go Unbeaten

-Win the cup

-Try to reach at least the O-League Semi-finals

Next Season

-Remain unbeaten

-Retain the cup

-Win the O-League

[deltablue]

You're probably capable of winning it at least.

[Truegunner]

You're probably capable of winning it at least.

Hopefully just need to get lucky one year and I should be able to, although it doesn't help that Auckland have turned professional! (this makes them the only professional team in the continent).

Samoa - Season 6 - 2019

My first unbeaten year and what a year it was! After easing past the first round of the OCE Nations cup, we had the pacific games. Before the tournament started the game still had us down a big underdogs, and they expected us to do nothing more than turn up. With no pressure on us we promptly stuffed Wallis & Futuna 3-0 in our opening game, however I wasn't too convinced as they were the weakest of the bunch. Next up was Vanuatu and this was one of the craziest games I have ever managed in, at half-time the game was still 0-0 and as a result I decided to take us off the handbrake and try a more attacking approach, this immediately paid dividends as we went 1-0 up minutes later, however this was a short lead as Vanautu immediately hit back two minutes later. Soon after we had a penalty, which Aloese converted putting us 2-1 up, then we proceeded to crumble and went 3-2 down within 10 minutes. Thankfully Stefano scored a few minutes later to level the game at 3-3 and finally Fuimaono scored the winner just before injury time. With this win we had qualified for the next stage regardless of the result against the Solomon Islands. The Quarter-final was very easy and for the semi-final we were given a rather difficult team in New Caledonia the team who knocked us out last time. This time however the match was very even and it took a penalty from Aloese to see us through. The final gave us Vanautu and unlike last time we completely dominated them, thanks to this win we had secured our first ever Pacific Games title!

Since winning the Pacific Games we have continued our impressive form with three wins on the bounce, including wins over Papua New Guinea and Fiji in the OCE Nations Cup second round, our incredible run and tournament has lead to a large rise in the rankings as the graph shows.

Objectives

Nation

-Try to improve the ranking further(Achieved)

-Do well in the upcoming Pacific Games(Achieved)

-Reach the OCE Nations Cup second round(Achieved)

Next Season

-Reach the top 120 in the rankings

-Reach the OCE Nations Cup Semi-finals

-Beat New Zealand in a game

[bbgunn]

Ahhh yeah, the hits just keep on comin' for Samoa! Keep this up and you might just displace rugby as the national sport!

[kevhamster]

Excellent stuff, I will be keeping an eye on this.

[deltablue]

It least you dominate the islands.

[Truegunner]

Ahhh yeah, the hits just keep on comin' for Samoa! Keep this up and you might just displace rugby as the national sport!

Considering many natural dual nationality Samoans would still rather not play for New Zealand instead of having a national career with us, that will be tricky .

It least you dominate the islands.

That is about to change...

Togafuafua - Season 6 - 2019-20

League

Another title, another unbeaten year, did anyone in the league close the gap on us however?

Definitely not! The gap just keeps increasing, so much so that we nearly had double the points of Kiwi! At the other end of the table is is quite unfortunate to see Strickland Brothers go down as they are meant to be one of Samoa's bigger teams.

Cups

It seems we always have trouble in the Quarter-finals, this time we had another close shave as we were 1-0 down until the 81st minute turning the game around to win 2-1. However as usual the cup was relatively easy after this.

O-League

Again the preliminary round was a breeze. The group stage was a bit more difficult getting Auckland in our group which was the team that stood out. The first game was very difficult but we managed to take a draw, it seemed this group would pretty much be between us and Auckland and this was confirmed in the next two games as we both won our next games. Unfortunately despite a good 6-0 win in the last game Auckland only needed a 4-0 win and of course that's exactly what they got . Thankfully though we went through as the best second placed team. Seeing only New Zealand teams at the next stage along with Tefana I was immediately expecting the worst, however we got lucky and received AS Tefana. I completely underestimated them and they gave us a very difficult games, in both we were behind yet in both we turned it around, however we ended up only just scraping through to the final. So how did we do, did we get that elusive first O-League?

I was pleased to receive Team Wellington in the final, as compared to Auckland I felt we could beat them. The first leg was very tight and it took an Aloese penalty to secure the win. Due to this result I was very cautious about the second leg but I needn't have been; the team showed up 100% and completely tore apart Wellington, so much so that at the end of the match I was left wondering how we didn't make it 4 or 5-0! with this win it meant we will finally get to compete in the club world cup with a guaranteed payout of at least 300k onwards and upwards!

Best Players

Dominic Iafeta - Simply brilliant thats how I would describe him! he was pivotal in our O-League quest, there was many time the team struggled for inspiration, in those times he would normally come up with the goods.

Junior Palusam Gabriel - He may not be the fastest or score a great deal, but when it comes to making the goals there is no one better in the country, he was simple undroppable!

Sale Aloese - I didn't think he would top last season but he did! scoring goal after goal together with Gabriel and Iafeta they formed the meanest attack in the Oceania.

Objectives

Club

-Remain unbeaten(Achieved)

-Retain the cup(Achieved)

-Win the O-League(Achieved)

Next Season

-Retain the O-league

-Have a good club world cup run

-Stay unbeaten

[deltablue]

It'll be interesting to see how you cope in the CWC.

[Truegunner]

It'll be interesting to see how you cope in the CWC.

It really won't be considering how far we are from the other teams (unless you want to see us get beat badly )

Samoa - Season 7 - 2020

The OCE Nations cup went very well. After a slow start where we were grinding out some ok results against Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea we got ourselves to another Semi-final against New Caledonia and just like the rest of the tournament it was another scrappy tie, literally just squeaking through 4-3 on aggregate. With New Zealand being unsurprisingly the team we would be up against for the final I had arranged a friendly against Afghanistan to gauge our progress and see if we could stand a chance against New Zealand, irritatingly the team completely fell apart we conceded in just under 5 minutes, thankfully we equalised minutes later, but just before half-time Afghanistan broke us down and slotted home two quick fire goals. We ended up losing 5-1. After that match I was very worried about how we would cope against New Zealand and my worse fears were confirmed as in the away game they dominated us from start to finish, it was a small wonder we kept the score down to 0-2. In the home game I knew we were not going to turn the game around so I went back to basics and New Zealand again carved us open. We were quite frankly awful yet somehow we managed to keep the score at 0-0, after half time we tried a more counter approach and still we created no chances while New Zealand were creating at the bucket load, but they still couldn't score. They finally did in the 81st minute from a great set-piece, looking at another defeat I decided to just go for it and went very attacking, funnily enough in our first and only chance of the match we scored right in the 90th minute! we managed to hold on and pick a credible (albeit undeserved) draw to end the tournament on a high. On reflection the tournament went better than expected and to be honest we are starting to seriously look like the second team in the Oceania.

Objectives

Nation

-Reach the top 120 in the rankings(Failed)

-Reach the OCE Nations Cup Semi-finals(Achieved)

-Beat New Zealand in a game(Failed)

Next Season

-Go unbeaten in friendlies

-Beat New Zealand in a game

-Reach 120th in the world rankings

[bbgunn]

Tough year for the national team (in terms of missing out on two of your objectives), but congratulations on making it to the Club World Cup!

[Truegunner]

Tough year for the national team (in terms of missing out on two of your objectives), but congratulations on making it to the Club World Cup!

Cheers, I wouldn't say it was a bad year really I did set the bar pretty high for the team to be fair, just reaching the final with Samoa is an achievement in itself and you can find out how I did in the CWC:

Togafuafua - Season 7 - 2020-21

League

Just simple too easy, however I am not pleased at the one draw particularly when I played my second string in that games (we had the cup final right after), we actually finished the match wondering how we did not lose but at least we kept our unbeaten run.

Until teams start to improve, I will just write disappointing here.

Cups

No trouble in the quarter-finals this year, in fact that was our best match of the whole tournament! The final however was much more difficult although it didn't seem this way in the first 25 minutes when we went 3-0 up. However fair play to Central as they exposed us twice in the rest of the half to put the score back to 3-2. thankfully half-time came and after a harsh telling-off we came back and held on to claim another cup title.

Club World Cup

Well that was expected; as we finally met a team who were a huge deal better (well better league anyway) surprisingly though we gave it a good go managing to keep the score down, to add to that we made nearly 700k in gate money just from this one match! It was a good learning experience and shows me just where we stand and it also tells me that in a few years we could possibly qualify for it.

O-League

The preliminary was easy as usual. The group stage was also easy as we were literally unstoppable scoring goals galore and not conceding a single goal. The semi-finals were much more up our ally, with Wellington our opponents. I felt we were about equal in team strength and depth so I was expecting a close game (contrary to how last year was) and I was proved right with a close 2-1 win (although it could easily have been 3-1). The second leg however couldn't have been more different at first, as Wellington shot first and took a 1-0 lead, instead of crumbling however we held our nerve and fought for a goal which Aloese managed to bring in the 28th minute. A few minutes in the second half Aloese scored again to end the tie for Wellington, after overcoming Wellington I was expecting to face Auckland; to my surprise I found they hadn't reached the final (in fact they hadn't even qualified that year!) this meant the O-league was up for grabs and as a result when I was given amateur side Ba we completely smashed them with a 10-1 on aggregate win, making a complete mockery of the "finalists". Although we won it again I can't help but feel it was rather too easy particularly when there was no Auckland to compete with this year.

Best Players

Junior Palusam Gabriel - Great again! an integral part of the team now and also key to the national team.

Sale Aloese - He slowed down a good deal this year, (mainly because I moved him into a deeper role) but he was still very pivotal in our O-league push, does really need a move to a European club soon though or else his career may stagnate here.

Objectives

Club

-Stay unbeaten(Achieved)

-Have a good club world cup run([Failed)

-Retain the O-league(Achieved)

Next Season

(Same as last year)

-Retain the O-league

-Have a good club world cup run

-Stay unbeaten

[HotChocolate]

Wow, brilliant thread so far.

Very interested to see how far you can take both club & country.

[deltablue]

Interesting seeing how you dominated the continent so thoroughly this time around.

[DavidBeckham]

Getting too easy for you there! 21 wins and 1 draw in 22

[Truegunner]

Wow, brilliant thread so far.

Very interested to see how far you can take both club & country.

Thanks, Hopefully we can reach that elusive first world cup in the next 40 years

Interesting seeing how you dominated the continent so thoroughly this time around.

The only problem with this domination is the lack of competition, with (as I have already said) only Auckland being competition due to their professional status. Still in the next few years we may be able to become pro ourselves leading to even more domination .

Getting too easy for you there! 21 wins and 1 draw in 22

The league is very uncompetitive; buts that's only because there is no money in the league whatsoever with the only available money in the O-league and the national cup, if there was any prize money I would imagine the situation would be quite different.

Samoa - Season 8 - 2021

Friendlies year, a year that I am always so eager to play (of course not). The year was relatively decent, but again and irritatingly we got beat by Afghanistan who now seem to be the one team in Asia that give us a rather bad hiding. The reality is though Oceania is still a very weak confederation and relatively speaking our squad would probably be completely taken apart in any other confederation.

Objectives

Nation

-Go unbeaten in friendlies(Failed)

-Beat New Zealand in a game(N/A - did not play a game against them)

-Reach 120th in the world rankings(Failed)

Next Season

(Once more the same)

-Go unbeaten in friendlies

-Beat New Zealand in a game

-Reach 120th in the world rankings

[letissierandhenryaregreat]

Great read so far! Both your club and the national team have progressed so much!

[Truegunner]

Great progress, hoping for more in the CWC next time round.

I hope so too, as now I would like the club to become professional to hopefully overtake Auckland.

Great read so far! Both your club and the national team have progressed so much!

Starting to hit a slight brick wall though with the club, progress seems a little slow at the moment.

Togafuafua - Season 8 - 2021-22

League

Brilliant, just brilliant! I have never had a perfect season in the league on FM before (ok if you want to nitpick we did concede some goals, but oh well ). How did this translate on the table...

Surprisingly the gap has been cut by three points, got to hand it to Vaipuna for managing to pull together 40 points and to close down the gap somewhat. At the other end of the table Vaitele were just dreadful picking up a record low of just 6 points, if they just had a few of our reserves the difference it would make for them .

Cups

Interestingly the cup was pretty competitive this year, in the Quarter-finals and semi-finals we literally just scrapped through before reminding Kiwi and the other Samoan teams who the real top team in Samoa is.

Club World Cup

Yes you have read that right, not only did we lose but we lost in a penalty shoot out! Clearly not learning anything from our last shoot out in 2019 against Canterbury. The match in general was actually quite close we matched them we took the lead first, unfortunately we conceded two later on in the match before scoring a late equaliser in the 87th minute. Taking to extra time where they scored first, we desperately tried to find an equaliser and we were rewarded 5 minutes before the end with a good free-kick from Iafeta. As you know we couldn't hold our nerve when it came to penalties, but to the teams credit we actually scored five penalties before missing the decisive penalty. We gave the club world cup a good go, but alas we were so near yet so far there is always next year.

O-League

The group stage was fairly straight forward and we went through only conceding one goal. The Semi-final was much tougher and in the first game we were 1-0 down for most of the match, thankfully Funimaono scored in the 79th minute to tie the game however it all nearly seemed in vain when Slade quite stupidly got himself sent-off. We went defensive for the rest of the match and held-out. The home game was even more dramatic and this time we even took the lead, however much like the Seoul game we couldn't keep it and they equalised, despite being the better team we couldn't break them down and the game went to extra time. This time we didn't bottle it and left it once more until the final minutes to score and when we did it was followed by another goal which put the game at 3-1 and put us through.

Best Players

Faimasasa Losi - Finally a relatively decent keeper and he is from our academy! did a stellar job for us this year as he helped us to a great league campaign, is starting to pick up quite a few suitors too.

Sale Aloese - Another great year, although still not back to his best even though I moved him back to his usual role. He is approaching the age we he should really be on the verge of a big move to a European club (or at least an Australian/New Zealand club).

Dominic Iafeta - Was starting to phase him out and then he proved to me just how indispensable he really is, playing arguably the best season of his career.

Also I had forgot to put this in the last update. Suti Tyrell has become the first (arguably - hard to find any information) Samoan to secure a transfer to a reasonably sized european club

Objectives

Club

-Stay unbeaten(Achieved)

-Have a good club world cup run([Failed)

-Retain the O-league(Achieved)

Next Season

(No change)

-Retain the O-league

-Have a good club world cup run

-Stay unbeaten

[deltablue]

Soooo close to making progress in the CWC now.

[letissierandhenryaregreat]

I can never see the hyperlinked pictures unfortunately Maybe download gyazo to take screenshots and link pictures from there?

What club did Suti Tyrell move to?

You still look like you're making good progress to me! So close to making the Club World Cup breakthrough. It might be a good idea to load the Brazilian leagues and maybe a few African ones too because you can get some really talented Brazilian players that are willing to play for quite small clubs.

[Truegunner]

I can never see the hyperlinked pictures unfortunately Maybe download gyazo to take screenshots and link pictures from there?

What club did Suti Tyrell move to?

You still look like you're making good progress to me! So close to making the Club World Cup breakthrough. It might be a good idea to load the Brazilian leagues and maybe a few African ones too because you can get some really talented Brazilian players that are willing to play for quite small clubs.

I know it seems whenever I post on Photobucket once the link has been clicked it doesn't seem to work any more, I wasn't sure if anyone else was experiencing this, but now I know so I will try and upload elsewhere. Thanks for the heads up. Oh and Tyrell moved to Erogotelis in the Greek super league. There should be another update (national team) later tonight.

[HamoudiLFC]

How about once you dominate the world with Togafuafua, you resign and use another Samoan team to challenge your former team and make the league competitive?

[MTM1977]

This is a very interesting career, i have never tried Samoa myself. Might do that some day, i enjoy those leagues which aren't exactly "top of the world".

I feel that starting career from such a league is more realistic than instantly jumping to a world class team on one of the big leagues

[Truegunner]

How about once you dominate the world with Togafuafua, you resign and use another Samoan team to challenge your former team and make the league competitive?

I was thinking to do so, but that could realistically take another 10-15 years possibly more, as the quality of football in the Oceania is just so bad.

This is a very interesting career, i have never tried Samoa myself. Might do that some day, i enjoy those leagues which aren't exactly "top of the world".

I feel that starting career from such a league is more realistic than instantly jumping to a world class team on one of the big leagues

I wanted to originally give myself the ultimate challenge in American Samoa (as you can see from the opening posts) but after I found they were hard coded to only play in the Pacific games that put an end to that. Still Samoa is not that much stronger than American Samoa so the gap isn't too steep.

Samoa - Season 9 - 2022

As you can see we started off the year pretty well and got a long awaited win over Afghanistan, made more impressive by the fact we were 2-0 down in the first 8 minutes. We then got a credible draw to fellow Asian minnows Bangladesh in game where we bettered them throughout. However we then completely threw away all our progress when we played New Zealand away and were promptly beaten 3-0 on their turf, to make matters worse we only had one shot on target while their chances were coming at the bucket load. We then ended the year with another loss to Mynammer which was made irritating by the fact we twice took the lead only to completely fold each time. This game ended a year that had started off promisingly and in the end was a disappointment.

Objectives

Nation

-Go unbeaten in friendlies(Failed)

-Beat New Zealand in a game(Failed)

-Reach 120th in the world rankings(Failed)

Next Season

-Retain the Pacific Games

-Beat New Zealand in a game

-Reach OCE Nations Cup