Wandering in America to find the American Dream

[Makoto Nakamura]

There could be as little as a week left until FM16 comes out but one career I've wanted to try out is activating the lower leagues of the USA and so I have done that. The idea behind this is start in the 4th tier (apologies in geographical boundaries are inaccurate) and work my way to the top, I don't have to stay loyal to any clubs but the eventual aim is to win the MLS and the NACL.

I shall be starting unemployed with a Sunday league experience, I've also holidayed for one season so all the managerless clubs at the start find managers and I have to take over from someone who has been sacked/resigned/retired.

Here are the leagues loaded:



I will also be using American as the game language and the US Dollar is the currency instead of my usual £££.

[Makoto Nakamura]

Seattle Sounders FC U-23 is an American soccer team based in Tacoma, Washington, United States. Founded in 2006, the team plays in the Premier Development League (PDL), the fourth tier of the American Soccer Pyramid, in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference.

In 2011, Cliff McElroy and Lane Smith also acquired the Tacoma Tide Men's PDL Franchise which took on the name; Sounders FC U-23 PDL Team. The function of the Sounders FC U-23 PDL team will be to compete for a PDL title while helping to develop young future Sounders FC Players. The Sounders U-23's will play their home games in the Tacoma South Sound area and will wear the official kit of Sounders FC.

2006-2009: Playoffs

Tacoma were introduced into the league at very short notice in 2006 when it was announced that the now-defunct Spokane Shadow franchise were suspending operations for the season, and during their first season they were simply referred to as Tacoma F.C.. Under the leadership of Mike Jennings as head coach, Tacoma finished 5th in the Northwest table, 16 points off the leaders. Rory Agu was the top scorer with 5 goals, while Spencer Schomaker registered 3 assists.

2007 began with a new official name, the Tacoma Tide. By the end of the regular season Tacoma sat in second place in the Northwest division.Rory Agu was again one of Tide's top marksmen with 7 goals, while MLS-bound Ciaran O'Brien notched an impressive 7 goals and 5 assists.

Tacoma were looking to build on their impressive sophomore season in 2008. The Conference Final saw them face divisional rivals Vancouver Whitecaps Residency for a third time. Tacoma were on the receiving end of a 4-1 final score. Rory Agu and Spencer Schomaker ended the year as Tide's top marksmen, with 11 and 9 goals respectively, with Schomaker also contributing 5 assists.

2009-2010: Playoff-less seasons

O'Brien was replaced as Head Coach by former Rochester Rhinos and Seattle Sounders midfielder Greg Howes in 2009, and the change in leadership, combined with the excellence of the expansion teams in the Northwest, seemed to affect Tacoma on the field. A 4-3 loss to the Kitsap Pumas on the final day of the season left the Tide in seventh place, a full 20 points behind divisional champions Kitsap, and out of the playoffs for the first time in three years. Rory Agu was again Tacoma's top scorer, hitting the net 11 times, while Leighton O'Brien provided 4 assists.

Tacoma Tide logo 2007-2011

2010 began with a change in coaching with former Canadian national team player Gerry Gray replacing Greg Howes. 2010 also saw the team acquire several new players, as well as see some players return from other teams. Chris Sanders joined after a stint with FC Nuremberg and Mark Conrad joined from Kitsap Pumas. Raphael Cox rejoined the team after a year with Real Salt Lake and an MLS Championship. With the two playoff spots locked up by Kitsap and Portland the last game of the season against Kitsap was for pride only. The season was nonetheless an improvement from 2009 with the team finishing third and only narrowly missing out on a playoff spot.

2011

In August 2011, ownership of the team was reorganized as the club sought new investors.

2012-2013: Sounders U-23

On January 25, 2012, it was announced that the Tide will re-brand as Seattle Sounders FC U-23.

Squad:





Key Players:









We have a good squad in my opinion, a strong attack especially so I'll be looking to build on that by time the season starts and have an attacking focused tactic.

Stadium:



And finally...my league opponents for the season:

[Makoto Nakamura]

2015 Pre-Season

The games weren't very promising other than the victory over Sporting Seattle, we had good possession stats though as we had 68% possession in the loss to Seattle Sounders 2.

Transfers:









The best of these in my opinion is Christian Wynn who has pace for days!

[Makoto Nakamura]

March 2015

With it being just a 14 game season we'll only be playing a couple of games each month (at least there won't be any complaints about being too tired...) To start things off we had a rather acceptable draw against Kitsap Pumas, I'm more impressed with the away win against Victoria Highlanders as I was using s very experimental tactic which the game shows as an Attacking 3-2-3-2 DM Asymmetric AM ®.

[Makoto Nakamura]

April 2015

The 3 fixtures this month and it leaves us unbeaten, and rather surprisingly sitting at the top of the table! The table is really tight as we near the halfway point as there is just 2 points separating 2nd and 6th, I've also stuck to my rather weird and experimental tactic and well, this is what it looks like:



It shouldn't work, but somehow it sort of does.

[Makoto Nakamura]

May 2015

Our unbeaten run came to an end against Puget Sound Gunners which takes us into a joint lead along with Puget Sound Gunners and Portland U23's, we now don't have a league game until 20th June and then the next match is the 2nd of August so quite a big break ahead of us!

[Makoto Nakamura]

June & August 2015

2 Identical games against Kitsap and San Jose U-23 with Daniel Bernal being our saviour both times and giving us a point, we hit our form again against Victoria Highlanders and it brings us back up to 2nd, just 1 point behind Portland U23's.

[Greyfriars Bobby]

I've never tried a Football Manager career in the USA, oddly enough. For one thing, I don't care much for MLS's rules, and I like my "soccer" to feature promotion and relegation. If I ever did an American career, I'd use one of the "fantastic" databases that creates an imaginary pyramid system like the ones European nations have.

Still, I'm following your thread with interest. Good luck in the fight for the PDL championship, and I'll look forward to seeing some of your alumni in the Sounders first team before long!

[Makoto Nakamura]

September & October 2015

Another unbeaten couple of months, a small fact is we've not scored any less than 2 goals in any games this season with just 2 games to go! we're now a solitary point ahead of Lane United who have the leagues top goalscorer, Haitian International Jean-Jacques Durand who's scored 20 in 13 appearances.

[Makoto Nakamura]

I've never tried a Football Manager career in the USA, oddly enough. For one thing, I don't care much for MLS's rules, and I like my "soccer" to feature promotion and relegation. If I ever did an American career, I'd use one of the "fantastic" databases that creates an imaginary pyramid system like the ones European nations have.

Still, I'm following your thread with interest. Good luck in the fight for the PDL championship, and I'll look forward to seeing some of your alumni in the Sounders first team before long!

Thanks for following Greyfriars I've never tried a serious career in the USA and I'm sure once I get to the MLS I'll be completely confused by all the rules and regulations that come with the league but hopefully I can adapt to it. I would have used one of the databases in the Editors Hideaway but iirc the finances are completely changed to every club being mega rich, and this does have promotion and relegation, just sadly not to the MLS, ideally I'd like the MLS to have the team that finished last to enter a play-off with the team that wins the NASL.

[Makoto Nakamura]

November 2015

Just the one game this month so I just decided to take a screenshot of the match info:





We've won the league which means we qualify for the promotion playoffs, whether Under 23 teams can actually get promoted remains to be seen, but I guess there's only one way to find out!

[Makoto Nakamura]

End of Season 2015

There we have it! Hopefully next season we'll be playing in the American Third Division - Western Conference which features LA Galaxy II, Portland Timbers II and Seattle Sounders II.





Key Players:

Season |         Club         |          Division        |  League | Notes                 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015   | Seattle Sounders U23 | PDL - Northwest Division |  1st    | Won Promotion Playoff |

[Makoto Nakamura]

2016 Pre-Season

I get a new contract.





We're playing in the Eastern Conference, not game-breaking but obviously lacks a lot of realism, even more so that we're expected to win the league and I really can't see that happening!



Key Transfers:









We lost star striker Daniel Bernal to New England who has been sent on loan to Rocester Rhinos.



Another poor pre-season

[Jimbokav1971]

I'm following but am a little confuddled having never managed in USA before.

1. You are managing an U23 team. Is it U21 in name only or are there strict restrictions about who you can sign and play?

2. Some of the other teams are also U21, but I see others are not, Is that just in name or do they not have the same rues to adhere to?

3. You have just turned Pro, Were you Semi-Pro before or Amateur?

4. You were in the Nothwest Div and after promotion you are in the East Div above? Is that right?

5. Any chance you can explain how the system in the states works?

6. I would love to have someone go through the draft system too. Does the league you are in now have a draft?

Apologies for all the questions.

[Makoto Nakamura]

I'm following but am a little confuddled having never managed in USA before.

1. You are managing an U23 team. Is it U21 in name only or are there strict restrictions about who you can sign and play?

2. Some of the other teams are also U21, but I see others are not, Is that just in name or do they not have the same rues to adhere to?

3. You have just turned Pro, Were you Semi-Pro before or Amateur?

4. You were in the Nothwest Div and after promotion you are in the East Div above? Is that right?

5. Any chance you can explain how the system in the states works?

6. I would love to have someone go through the draft system too. Does the league you are in now have a draft?

Apologies for all the questions.

Don't worry, I'm playing the game and I'm more than a little confuddled so I'll try my best to help with the questions.

1. We are an Under 23 team and we have Seattle as our parent club and I think if it were real life then there would be some sort of limit with Over 23's in the team, I currently have 6 players who are 23 or over with the oldest being 28.

2. I've checked the other Under 23 teams and the most over 23's in a team was only 2 so it seems they adhere to the same rules.

3. We were amateur before and just went straight to pro.

4. That's a mistake of mine, since I just made the leagues playable in the editor I didn't think to set the regional boundaries, so yes, we've gone from Northwest Division to the East Division.

5. By system I'm guessing League System? The top level is the MLS which everyone knows and there's no promotion/ relegation, below this is the 11 team North American Soccer League, all teams play each other twice and the bottom 2 of the NASL get relegated to either the 3rd Division East Conference or West Conference. 1 club gets relegated from each conference and there's a playoff with all the winners of the PDL which I think means Premier Development League which is split into 10 leagues: Great Lakes Division, Heartland Division, Mid Atlantic Division, Northeast Division, Mid South Division, Southeast Division, Northwest Division, Southwest Division, South Atlantic Division and finally the Mountain Division. No club is relegated from these leagues although in real life there is relegation and I probably could have added the next division down which has 307 teams in.

6. Only the MLS has the draft system and right now I just do not know how it works, sorry

[Makoto Nakamura]

March 2016

A mixed start to the season with 2 3-1 losses but also a big win, so even in these early days absolutely anything could happen, the only disappointing thing for me is that for a 2nd season we're not entered into the Lamar Hunt U.S Open Cup which is rather annoying...

[deltablue]

Well done going up. Interesting that you can be promoted to the same league (though not the same group) as a 'senior' team.

[Makoto Nakamura]

Well done going up. Interesting that you can be promoted to the same league (though not the same group) as a 'senior' team.

Thanks delta, indeed it is interesting, not sure if it's like that in real life but I presume it is.

[albolte]

Always nice to see a US save! Is there a database available that doesn't put in pro/rel though? NASL, USL, and USL PDL are all closed leagues in reality, with the only "promotion" or "relegation" coming from clubs who purchase franchise rights in a higher league or self-relegate to cut costs (a la Charlotte Eagles and Dayton Dutch Lions from USL to USL PDL last season).

[Makoto Nakamura]

Always nice to see a US save! Is there a database available that doesn't put in pro/rel though? NASL, USL, and USL PDL are all closed leagues in reality, with the only "promotion" or "relegation" coming from clubs who purchase franchise rights in a higher league or self-relegate to cut costs (a la Charlotte Eagles and Dayton Dutch Lions from USL to USL PDL last season).

Thanks albolte, I looked a few weeks back in all honesty and the only one I could find which may have been decent was the world class 8-tiered USA, not sure if that had promotion or relegation but with reputation and finances boosted to the max I decided against it as it would provide even less realism then this.

[Makoto Nakamura]

April 2016

A nice start to the month with the victory over Charlotte Independence but then we were lucky to get the 2 points as we came from behind both games to get the draws late on. I've decided to sell/release some players as the squad is massive, we're well over budget and with just 22 games to be played in total a lot of people are going to be complaining.

[albolte]

Too bad - I'd found one for FM14 that kinda fit the bill, but the PDL divisions weren't fully accurate and my Albuquerque Sol would only draw 1 fan per match (we normally draw at least 3, thank you). Was hoping they'd worked out the problems - maybe for FM16, then.

[Makoto Nakamura]

Too bad - I'd found one for FM14 that kinda fit the bill, but the PDL divisions weren't fully accurate and my Albuquerque Sol would only draw 1 fan per match (we normally draw at least 3, thank you). Was hoping they'd worked out the problems - maybe for FM16, then.

Albuquerque Sol were one of the 4 teams without a manager when I came off holiday so I could have ended up managing them! There last home league game saw an attendance of 3 believe it or not and they've beaten Phantoms United 1-0 in the 1st Round of the Lamar Hunt Cup, then faced Minnesota Untied of the NASL and lost 2-0 at home with an attendance of 153

[albolte]

We've never been to the US Open Cup before (normally have to win your division or finish in 2nd place to qualify, and the number of PDL teams to qualify changes every year), so someone did a good job there!

[Makoto Nakamura]

May 2016

Another poor month with 2 defeats but we thrashed struggling St. Louis FC 5-0, and by 'we' I mean Kevin Parsemain thrashed St. Louis FC.

With us 'under-performing' in the league even though this is around where I thought we would be when the season started and with me needing to get the wage budget down I've needed to get rid of a lot of players:



And with all these players gone we're still slightly over budget and I didn't want to lose Marco Cuducci or Dave Weaver really but Dave Weaver I managed to get money for and Marco was our one and only goalkeeper so I had to bring in a replacement for him very quickly. and with us being in 8th and our expected finish to be 1st...how do our wages shape up?

[Makoto Nakamura]

In taking them to the US Open Cup, you're already the most successful manager in club history!

Normally we draw around 750 per home match - enough to pay the bills in PDL, but not much more than that.

I didn't take them to the US Open Cup they've actually been managerless since a regen George Willis left them in December 2014! :o

[Makoto Nakamura]

June 2016

This is becoming the norm now, winning one game in between 2 losses and it's ot even a narrow win, it's a good clear-cut win, it's like the guys can only be bothered to show up to every 1 in every 3/4 matches!

[Makoto Nakamura]

Shock Horror!

2-1 up with just 8 minutes left on the clock and then it leads to be the result that gets me fired....

Season |         Club         |                    Division                  |  League | Notes                 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015   | Seattle Sounders U23 |           PDL - Northwest Division           |  1st    | Won Promotion Playoff |
2016   | Seattle Sounders U23 | American Third Division - Eastern Conference |  8th    | Sacked 14th July      |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Makoto Nakamura]

1 Week later...

The jobs available meant that I had to take a step down back to the 4th tier so I went on holiday for all of 3 days and this is the offer:









Forest City London Soccer Club usually referred to as FC London, is a Canadian soccer team based in London, in the province of Ontario. The club was founded in 2008 and plays in USL Premier Development League, the fourth tier of the American Soccer Pyramid, in the Great Lakes Division of the Central Conference.

Since 2009, the team plays home games at German-Canadian Club of London Field, which seats 900 spectators. They won the 2012 PDL title, their first championship, and are the current defending champions.

Where They Play:



Squad:





Key Players:









And yes, you are seeing double and we do have 2 Kevin Di-Bernados!

And finally hows the league season gone for them thus far?

[Makoto Nakamura]

July & August 2016

Just the 2 games and although it has made us the team in last there are a couple of positives I can take from this, one is that I'm unbeaten so far, the second is that I've given Forest City their first 2 clean sheets of the season and with 4 games left of the season there's 6 points between first and last.

One other thing is that I wanted to bring in a striker, specifically a striker called Mike Nardiello who at the time was a free transfer and unattached, first time I try to sign him he rejects me to go on trial with Whitecaps 2, a week later I try to sign him again and what happens? He goes to Real Monarchs where he makes hist first team debut against Toronto Lynx and scores a first half 25 minute hat-trick

[Makoto Nakamura]

Potentially the closest league ever?

[Makoto Nakamura]

September & October 2016

2 more victories has taken us up to 6th with just 2 games to go and still a very tight league....and how is Mike Nardiello doing after 3 appearances for real Monarchs?



3 appearances and 3 man of the match awards

[Makoto Nakamura]

End of Season 2016

Another 2 great wins which saw us finish in 2nd in what is definitely the closest league race I've been a part of with just 5 points separating 1st and 7th!

Squad:





Key Players:









Tommy Parra is included because I signed him once I couldn't get Mike Nardiello and he still gave me 4 goals in 5 appearances.

Season |         Club         |                    Division                  |  League | Notes                 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015   | Seattle Sounders U23 |           PDL - Northwest Division           |  1st    | Won Promotion Playoff 
2016   | Seattle Sounders U23 | American Third Division - Eastern Conference |  8th    | Sacked 14th July      
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016   | Forest City London   |         PDL - Great Lakes Division           |  2nd    | Joined 23rd July in 8th

[Makoto Nakamura]

Pre-Season 2017

I should not have organised that friendly against K-W United, the team who finished bottom of the league last season, we out shotted? them 27 to 11 and they won 4-1 almost Liverpool vs Rubin esque. Other than that we had 2 good wins that I was very happy with.



This season we're predicted to finish down in 5th with recently relegated Ocala Stampede being the runaway favourites to finish bottom of this league which is no surprise as they finished last season with just 2 points from 24 games, scoring 9 goals (3 of those in 1 game) and conceding 83.

Transfers:



Key Transfers:





Most of the players brought in were backup players and some may not even play, but I just wanted to strengthen in depth.

Youth Players:





These 2 came through the Youth System and I'll be following how they do and how there career goes, probably won't document it in the thread though.

[Makoto Nakamura]

March 2017

What a reversal that was! A massive 5-1 win over the team that beat us at home 4-1 in a friendly just a week before! And we follow that up with a 5-3 win over Royal Monarchs who had Mike Nardiello off injured in the 26th minute. What's even greater about the win against Royal Monarchs is that we started the game with just 3 players that started against K-W United!

[smp20]

Interesting save in the American lower leagues, does the MLS still have the draft system? Is there now relegation/promotion to the MLS?

[Makoto Nakamura]

Interesting save in the American lower leagues, does the MLS still have the draft system? Is there now relegation/promotion to the MLS?

The MLS still has the draft system but there is no promotion/ relegation from MLS to NASL.

[Makoto Nakamura]

April 2017

2 wins and 2 draws sees us stay at the top of the table Rade Mirkovic scored the fastest goal in league history against our fierce rivals Toronto Lynx scoring after just 10 seconds.

I also brought in some new defenders, first team and backup defenders:

[Makoto Nakamura]

So I noticed that Orlando City had signed Scott Carson so I looked at their squad and noticed the rest of the team....

Scott Carson, John O' Shea, Mikel Arteta, Kaka and Peter Crouch in the same team!

[Makoto Nakamura]

May 2017

Manged to stay unbeaten for another couple of games and our goals are becoming more spread out, by that I mean we've scored 21 goals and they've come from 13 different goal scorers so no-one is really the sole out-and-out scorer for the side.

[Makoto Nakamura]

June and July 2017

2 games and 2 wins, narrows wins at that but we had 55% possession for both games which takes us to joint 2nd in the league for average posession at 52.3%

[Makoto Nakamura]

August 2017

A great match against Michigan Bucks where the game was completely over 15 minutes before half time and Michigan had no reply after the break, then we went and lost our first game of the season at home to Whitecaps 2 but we still have a 6 point cushion at the top of the league.

[Maaka]

Did you download a db to enable the US leagues, or did you just play with the editor? If the latter, did you set prom/rel between leagues yourself? As there's no RL prom/rel between leagues "over there".

[Makoto Nakamura]

Did you download a db to enable the US leagues, or did you just play with the editor? If the latter, did you set prom/rel between leagues yourself? As there's no RL prom/rel between leagues "over there".

I just spent a few minutes playing with the editor really so I did set promotion/relegations between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tiers, I really wanted to do a career in America but thought it would be a bit boring if there were no promotions or relegations.

[Maaka]

Ok, so you can take a team up to NASL, but to get into MLS you'll have to take over one of the existing teams, right? Good luck with London, realistically, it'd take a few seasons just to get into shout of the NASL, but in FM, you'll never know, might get there before the next decade.

[Makoto Nakamura]

Ok, so you can take a team up to NASL, but to get into MLS you'll have to take over one of the existing teams, right? Good luck with London, realistically, it'd take a few seasons just to get into shout of the NASL, but in FM, you'll never know, might get there before the next decade.

Correct, sorry for the late reply I've just gotten back from work but yes it looks like we'll get a play-off place this season at the very least

[shantebellum]

Scott Carson, John O' Shea, Mikel Arteta, Kaka and Peter Crouch in the same team!

That team would have kicked quite a few behinds back in 2008 or so! Very interesting read, haven't yet had a go at managing in the U.S. - the various rules and regulations make it a challenge to even understand what the heck is going on. Also, if I may ask - what regen facepack are you using? It looks great!

[Makoto Nakamura]

That team would have kicked quite a few behinds back in 2008 or so! Very interesting read, haven't yet had a go at managing in the U.S. - the various rules and regulations make it a challenge to even understand what the heck is going on. Also, if I may ask - what regen facepack are you using? It looks great!

Orlando City look like they're going to be retaining the NASL title this year, 2 points ahead of Tampa Bay Rowdies with a game in hand. And I downloaded it a long time ago but if I'm not mistaken I got it from the sortitoutsi website, not 100% sure though.

[Makoto Nakamura]

September and October 2017

We outplayed our rivals Toronto Lynx but we committed far too many fouls and ended up with a undeserved loss.

Again we outplayed bottom team FC Montreal but we left it until the last minute of stoppage time with a goal from a corner kick when we were down to 9 men.

We finished off with a narrow victory over Ocala Stampede, again I'm happy with our possession percentage for all 3 games, the lads are playing the kind of football I want to see.





One question, is there any way I can get the writing to go to the top of the picture instead of at the bottom?

[Makoto Nakamura]

End of Season 2017

USL PDL Playoffs













Squad:





Key Players:







Also, what do you guys think of this as a layout, keep it or go back to the way I used to do it? I'll probably only do this for seasons where I play less than 20 games per season or just a couple of games per month.

The last league game of the season and I made 3 half-time changes and those changes ended up scoring us all

3 goals.

The Quarter Final stage of the play-off put us against Chicago Inferno who'd only just scraped into the playoffs as they had the same point total as Springfield Demize but had 2 more GD, they outplayed us marginally but we were unlucky not to win it in regular time as they scored a 93rd minute equalizer which led to extra time which led to penalties where we ended up winning 5-4.

Next up were Carolina Dynamo who topped their league by 7 points, we kicked things off by scoring right at the end of the first half and looked to be cruising to a 1-0 win, but then, almost the same thing happened as the Quarter Final as Chicago scored in the 87th minute taking things to extra time. Thankfully we found our scoring boots in extra time and ended up winning 3-1 which was well deserved as we actually outplayed them and we did well on all fronts with the stats.

Last up was the Playoff Final, the game we'd been waiting for all season, Westchester Flames won their division by 2 points ahead of Seacoast United Phantoms and again we scored the first goal of the game (technically the first 2 but I'll overlook that...) but Westchester completely screwed us over by scoring 3 goals in the last 6 minutes of the match which sees them promoted and us staying in the Great Lakes division for next season. Heartbreak ensued.

Season |         Club         |                    Division                  |  League | Notes                 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2015   | Seattle Sounders U23 |           PDL - Northwest Division           |  1st    | Won Promotion Playoff 
2016   | Seattle Sounders U23 | American Third Division - Eastern Conference |  8th    | Sacked 14th July      
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2016   | Forest City London   |         PDL - Great Lakes Division           |  2nd    | Joined 23rd July in 8th
2017   | Forest City London   |         PDL - Great Lakes Division           |  1st    | Lost Playoff Final