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[FM20] Worldwide Champions League (Update 18/11/2020)


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I'd like to start by thanking Graaa, the mad genius behind this custom USA database from FM15. This edit includes a lot of his work on the Extended Club World Cup that was part of that file alongside the changes I made, and I only posted it because he chose not to continue that mod or update it, but left its details as fair use for others, and I thought the idea was too awesome to let it vanish - as someone who plays a lot in the Americas I really liked the option of being able to take my team onto a bigger stage than the CONCACAF Champions League could provide. But enough biography.

This database edit replaces all club continental competitions and the Club World Cup with three worldwide club tournaments: the FIFA Champions League, World League, and Youth League. All domestic leagues are left untouched and will run alongside the intercontinental tournaments: fancy midweek trips to Argentina to play Boca between your league matches? I BET YOU DO.

The FIFA Champions League and World League are senior-level tournaments that mostly work how you expect: Champions League has better competition and better payouts (though the difference between the two isn't as derisory as in real life), finish high enough in your domestic league or win your major domestic cup and you get a ticket (if your league of choice doesn't use a single table or has some other continental qualification shenanigans, it SHOULD work properly depending on how SI or your database modder of choice coded that specific league, but I can't be certain. 

There are qualifiers (the Champions League winner, World League winner, and champions of 30 specified leagues do not have to go through them, and instead get automatic group stage places), and a group stage, and a knockout stage, and Big Fancy Neutral Site Finals. There is now also goal line technology and VAR (in CL/WL group stage games and onward).

The FIFA Youth League uses a similar format and replaces the Viareggio Tournament or whatever it is called for people that aren't using the Susie Real Name fixes. It pits the U19/U18 teams of CL participants (and, where not enough teams are available strictly from the CL clubs, additional elite youth teams from around the world) against each other. 

There is also a a FIFA Super Cup between the Champions League and World League winners, scheduled after qualifiers finish (since neither of those teams participate in them) but before the September international break and the start of the group stages.

News:

No changes from the FM19 version except for bug fixes. The FM19 version is unlikely to receive any further updates.

Update 23 January: Fixed team selection for FIFA Youth League

Update 22 February: Revamped qualifying stages:

  • Champions League now has an extra quallifying round, allowing the vast majority of countries to have two entries into qualifiers (The only FIFA members with one entry are now Anguilla, American Samoa, Tonga, Bhutan, and Montserrat).
  • Teams that lose in the Champions League qualifiers before the playoffs now fall into the new World League qualifying stages. (teams that lose in the playoffs still qualify for the World League group stages as before.)
  • The World League group stages now have 32 groups. The extra spots are filled by the 32 teams that get through World League qualifiers. The top 2 in each group now qualify for knockouts (changed from the winner and 8 best second place teams).

Update 18 November: 

  • Various scheduling fixes to help the game neatly resolve conflicts with domestic league schedules
  • Cup tying in the CL/WL now only occurs after a player has played 6 matches for their club
  • Slots in the CL and WL are now awarded on the basis of a league's reputation ranking as follows: 

    CL and WL holders: automatically qualify to the group stage and instead play a Super Cup, as before

    Leagues ranked 1-10: 7 spots (champion gets an automatic CL group stage spot, cup winner and 2 more spots in Q5, 2 spots in Q4, 1 spot in Q3. )

    *League 10 loses one of the Q5 spots and gains one in Q3

    Leagues ranked 11-30: 6 spots (champion to group stage, cup winner and 1 to Q5, 2 to Q4, 1 Q3)

    Leagues ranked 31-57: 4 spots (champion to Q5, cup winner to Q4, 2 Q3.)

    Leagues ranked 58 and below: 2 spots (champion and cup winner) starting at various rounds from Q4 (for the champions of leagues ranked 58-64) to Q1 (for the champions of leagues ranked below 121 and cup winners from leagues ranked below 111).

Downloads: 

The FM20 version of this mod is available on the Steam Workshop, or as an attachment to this post. (Steam will usually be updated first if bugfixes are necessary). At this point it is unlikely to receive any further updates.

Known Issues

FM will crash dump on 4 July 2019 if you use this file with a start date before then. Start dates after that day (including England's 11 July 2019 start date) work fine. While I'll try and fix this, for now you'll need to use a start date after 4 July 2019. 

Squad registrations may disappear upon loading a save game - this is apparently due to an SI bug, but on a CL/WL matchday you will still be able to select and register ineligible players even though it says you can't, so this is annoying but not fatal?

Duplicate squad registration prompts may appear on the deadline, and the second one usually has glitches. I can't see why this is happening yet (there's nothing in the editor rules that would explain it), so in the meantime I've changed the squad registration for the tournaments so that it's now possible to get past the broken prompts.

Teams may occasionally be drawn into both the CL and WL group stages. I have tried to prevent this in like 5 different ways so if it still happens I may begin tearing out my hair.

The system to allocate CL and WL spots dynamically based on league reputation has some unavoidable issues because of the way it has to be implemented in the editor:

  • Firstly and most importantly, I'm not sure that dynamic league reputation even WORKS when you're using custom competitions like this one (I'm aware of the longstanding bug with it when you're using custom continental competitions, but maybe custom World competitions might work? We'll see I guess. But it might well end up that I've just done a lot of work to trade one static layout for another (at least until SI let us use these two features together).
  • Because this is done by "qualifying" seven teams from every country and then filtering the extra ones out when the qualifying stage is actually set up, some (okay, many) teams may receive inbox items after their domestic season saying they've qualified when they will not even get a spot in qualifying.
  • We still don't have access to the normal game UI and messaging for displaying coefficients, informing managers of slot gains or losses, or showing the number of continental slots on your domestic league table, so knowing whether you have actually qualified or how many spots your country has is unfortunately down to guessing and looking at the league reputation screen, or just waiting until the summer and seeing if/where you get added to qualifying.
  • Since the actual slots in the competition are handed out by filtering teams by their division reputation, rather than matching the qualifiers assigned directly at the nation level as in the static format, a few weird wrinkles can result:

    If a lower division teams gets a spot in the qualifying phase by winning a cup, they might start at an earlier qualifying stage than their nation's top division would qualify them for (because their lower division has a lower reputation), and every cup qualifier between their top division and their actual division in the reputation list will be shifted forward to replace them. 

    A similar effect can occur in countries where teams from multiple divisions have access to the "league" slots (eg Belgium) and in this case it may be possible for a lower-division qualifier to that spot to lose it entirely, if their division has a low enough reputation compared to the top divisions from smaller countries. (this can't happen for cups because every national cup winner gets at least a spot in qualifying)

    Similarly, if teams from a higher-rep league than the national top division play and win in the national cup (eg Canada), the spot they get from doing so will start at a later qualifying stage than it would technically be entitled to.

f you need more details, they're below. Let me know if there are any other bugs or if you have any suggestions, and otherwise have fun!

Qualifiers:

The number of spots is static (update: I've found a way to maybe work around this but it has issues so I'm making it optional), and laid out as follows:

CL and WL holders: automatically qualify to the group stage and instead play a Super Cup, in both versions

Static Version:

6+1 (1 automatic CL group stage place, 3 places in Q5, 1 place and the cup winner in Q4, 1 place in Q3):

Spain, Germany, England, Italy, France, Brazil, Russia, Portugal, Argentina,

5+1 (1 automatic CL group stage place, 2 places in Q5, 1 place and the cup winner in Q4, 1 place in Q3):

Ukraine, Mexico, Belgium, Turkey, Czechia,  Switzerland, Netherlands, Greece, USA, Austria, Croatia, Chile, Denmark, Colombia, Paraguay, Poland, Sweden, Israel, South Korea, Japan, China.

3+1 (1 place in Q5, 1 place in Q4, 1 place and the cup winner in Q3):

Uruguay, Scotland, Romania, Ecuador, Cyprus, Norway, Bulgaria, Peru, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Costa Rica, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Tunisia, Slovakia, Australia, Hungary, Nigeria, DR Congo, Morocco, Qatar, UAE, Belarus, Canada*

(*Canada's national cup winner goes to Q5 instead, and its league spots go to Q4, Q3, and Q3.)

2+1 (1 place in Q4, 1 place and the cup winner in Q3):

Cote d'Ivoire, Azerbaijan, Honduras, Algeria, Iceland, Finland, Venezuela

Every other FIFA member country ((in other words: all other countries in the DB except for defunct, disputed, or the following: Bonaire, Martinique, Reunion, St. Pierre and Miquelon, Zanzibar, Micronesia, Kiribati, French Guiana, Sint Maarten, Mayotte, Northern Mariana Islands, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, Wallis and Futuna Islands, Tuvalu).) starts in Q1 or Q2, with one or two spots:

Countries that are playable in the base game that start here include: 

2 spots (league and cup champion): Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore

Dynamic Version:

Leagues ranked 1-10 by league reputation: 7 spots (champion gets an automatic CL group stage spot, cup winner and 2 more spots in Q5, 2 spots in Q4, 1 spot in Q3. )

*League 10 loses one of the Q5 spots and gains one in Q3

Leagues ranked 11-30: 6 spots (champion to group stage, cup winner and 1 to Q5, 2 to Q4, 1 Q3)

Leagues ranked 31-57: 4 spots (champion to Q5, cup winner to Q4, 2 Q3.)

Leagues ranked 58 and below: 2 spots (champion and cup winner) starting at various rounds from Q4 (for the champions of leagues ranked 58-64) to Q1 (for the champions of leagues ranked below 121 and cup winners from leagues ranked below 111).

Format Details:

The Champions League has five qualifying rounds, with two-legged fixtures starting in June. All CL qualifiers are seeded into these rounds depending on how high they finished and which league they qualified from or won the domestic cup in, as above. The 96 winners in the final qualifying round (August) go to the CL group stage along with the 32 automatic qualifiers, the losers go to the WL group stage along with the 32 teams that survive the WL qualifiers, below.

The World League has four qualifying rounds, beginning in July after the first two CL qualifying rounds are complete.

  • Teams that lose in the first 2 CL rounds start in WL Q1.
  • Teams that lose in CL Q3 are drawn into WL Q2.
  • Teams that lose in CL Q4 are drawn into WL Q3.
  • The winners in WL Q3 are drawn into 32 groups of 3 playing two games each - the winner of each group qualifies for the WL group stage.

Each group stage features 32 groups of 4 (so six games each). CL plays on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, WL on Thursdays, from September through December.

CL: The top 2 in each group qualify for the knockout rounds. Third place teams fall into the World League knockouts.

WL: The top 2 in each group qualify for the knockout rounds. The 32 second place teams will be drawn against the 32 3rd place teams from the Champions League groups - World League group winners will receive a bye to face the winner of those ties.

Everything goes as you'd expect from there.

Prize Money (all amounts in Euros)

Qualifying Phase:

1st round: 75k for CL, 35K for WL

2nd round: 75k for CL and WL

3rd round: 150k for CL, 125k for WL

4th round: 250k for CL, (WL: 75k/win and 35k/draw)

5th round: 400k

CL Group Stage (WL pays about half these amounts)

20M for all Group Stage participants, 1.5M per victory, 750k per draw

CL Knockout Rounds (WL pays about half these amounts, Super Cup final pays approximately half of World League final):

7M for all knockout round participants, + 4M for reaching second knockout round + 6M for reaching QF + 10M for reaching SF  + 20M for winning final or 15M for losing final

 

 

Worldwide Champions League (static).fmf Worldwide Champions League (dynamic).fmf

Edited by Dallan
18 November update
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1 hour ago, anitamui said:

It doesn't work for me it said it needs to be vertified

Sorry, that was my fault, I uploaded without running verification again. Should be fixed now. 

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9 hours ago, Jonathan Natewood said:

Do results in this competition affect league reputation at all?

They should, on at least a similar level to results in the unmodded UEFA competitions, but I've never really done a rigorous observation to make sure.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Updated this file (both on Steam and in the OP) to fix some bugs I noticed regarding picking teams to participate in the FIFA Youth League.

Edited by Dallan
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3 hours ago, vietthaidinh93 said:

Hi Dallan,

1. Could you add 1 more qualifying round for FIFA Champions League which could help all nations have at least 2 teams? 

I'll look into whether there's space on the schedule for it and whether I can structure the qualifiers in a way to allow for it.

Quote

2. Could you add qualifying round for FIFA World League so the team lost in FIFA Champions League can have a chance to play?

Assuming you mean what I think you mean, 3rd place teams in the Champions League group stage are already supposed to qualify for the World League knockouts.

If you mean "teams that lose in CL qualifiers should have a chance to qualify for the WL instead" - that might be tricky to structure but I'll consider it.

31 minutes ago, Mattjohn said:

Hi, have downloaded the file both on this feed and subscribed on Steam but does not show and there is no continental competitions at  all (Champions League, Europa etc..)

What other data files are you using it with? Can you screenshot me a copy of Real's or Barca's or Liverpool's 2019-20 schedule in your save?

Edited by Dallan
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Thank you for your reply.

1.  You can add FA Cup winner from 110th-205th nation so you just add one more Qualification round between FA Cup winner from 110th-205th vs Champions of top division from 116th- 211th. Therefore, the qualification of FIFA Champions League will not change so much (you only add 2 days in the fixture), for instance:

1st qualification round: FA Cup winner from 110th-205th vs Champions of top division from 116th- 211th (192 teams join this stage =>  96 teams go through next round)

2nd, 3rd, 4th, play-off qualification round: the same format as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and play-off qualification round from your file

Edited by vietthaidinh93
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2. I think can expand the FIFA World League group stage from 96 teams to 128 teams with 32 group. The runner-up of group stage in FIFA World League vs The third of group stages in FIFA Champions League in 1st Knock-out round of World League while the winner of group stage in FIFA World League will go through the 2nd Knock-out round.

With 32 new slots in group stage, you can create 4 Qualifying rounds of FIFA World League. For instance:

1st qualifying round: 96 teams lost the 1st qualification round of Champions League vs 96 teams lost the 2nd qualification round of Champions League

2nd qualifying round: 96 teams win the 1st qualification round of World League vs 96 teams lost the 3rd qualification round of Champions League

3rd qualifying round: 96 teams win the 2nd qualification round of World League vs 96 teams lost the 4th qualification round of Champions League

4th qualifying round: 96 teams are seperated in 32 groups (group of 3, 1 round robin => each teams will play only 2 matches). The winner of 4th qualifying round (32 teams) + 96 teams lost the play-off qualification round of Champions League will go through the FIFA World League group stage (total: 128 teams).

 

Edited by vietthaidinh93
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Thanks for the detailed proposal, that's really helpful. 

This doesn't get EVERYBODY two teams, but 205 out of 211 isn't bad really.

I'd given it some thought last night and had come pretty close to this, but switching the 4th WL qualifier from a two-legged round into a 2 match group stage is really clever and the math doesn't work without it (though I'll have to think about who hosts each game, since there isn't time to do it home and away).

The biggest possible problem would be scheduling, because the third round of WL qualifying HAS to happen at the same time as the playoff round of CL qualifying, and then we need to fit the last WL qualifying round into the period between there and the CL/WL group stages, and there's an international break at the same time that needs to be avoided. It might be a tight fit at the end of August.

I'm all for expanding the WL group stage to 32 groups as well - that would allow me to remove the awkward "8 best runner ups also advance" feature, which is definitely a plus. Adding an extra knockout round to the WL to allow for all second place finishers to advance might also be a tight fit scheduling wise, but when I get a chance to sit in front of the editor I'll look at the dates and see what can be done. I have three choices to deal with that, I think:

a) add the extra round, probably at the end of December

b) remove the third-place teams from the CL groups dropping into the WL

c) keep the current situation where group winners from the WL face CL third place teams in knockouts

Ideally I'd want a) or c). The WL knockouts are more even without the CL parachute teams but I think it's more fun to have big teams like that there.

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Thank you for your reply. I usually play in Asia League. I love your tournament however my team (Vietnam League) rarely go to the 4th qualifying round of FIFA Champions League and I only play domestic league after lost in 2nd and 3rd qualifying round. Expand FIFA World League and add qualifying round is not only a real chance for small teams to play in the tournament but also some good teams, which had bad draws in FIFA Champions League in qualifying round, can play in World League.

 

About KO stage of World League, I prefer a). I like to have big team from CL in WL KO but I want the 1st of WL group stage has some advantages. The KO format in UEFA Youth League is a good case.

Edited by vietthaidinh93
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Could you update the slots from the latest nation league ranking from IFFHS with some fixes? Maybe boost MLS, UAE and Qatar because they ranked at below 64th. With other leagues outside top 100, I think you can rank them by reputation in games

 

https://iffhs.de/iffhs-awards-the-strongest-national-league-in-the-world-2019/

Edited by vietthaidinh93
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I'm not planning a major revision of the nation list and slots because they seem to be working out well as is (plus IFFHS only goes down to 100 and they've made some iffy calls in their list so I wouldn't use it wholesale anyway), but there will be minor tweaks in the next version to go with the larger qualifiers.

I've implemented the expanded and interconnected qualifying system and larger World League group stage on my testing copy, but I haven't had time to play it yet so I won't update the release version until I've been able to test it myself.

I'll share the test version when I get home from work today for anyone who's interested in it.

Edited by Dallan
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10 hours ago, anitamui said:

The Fifa world League did not appear with the testing file...

Is anyone else having this problem? It appears for me (when I first make a save, it appears under the name of the Toulon Tournament because I'm using a real name fix that changes the name of the extinct competition I re-used for it, but after reloading the save it has its normal name).

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6 hours ago, vietthaidinh93 said:

It happened again. I think you need to change FIFA Champions League and World League don't have an additional slot.

Capture.PNG

Whoever that is won the Serie A the previous year, right? 

I'll release a new test version in the next couple of days dealing with the rankings thing and, hopefully, also that. 

Edited by Dallan
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On 10/02/2020 at 06:27, vietthaidinh93 said:

When I tested your file in FM Editor, it shows this.

Capture.PNG

I've tracked down and fixed why this was happening and also tried yet another way to avoid teams being drawn into both group stages.

The editor test looks good up to 2030 but we'll see how it works out in game before I update the release version - but I think we're getting close.

Worldwide Champions League (testing).fmf

Edited by Dallan
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I've made another change to try and address this, but since the winter update came out early I'm just going to call it a new release instead of a release candidate. Steam Workshop has already been updated and the OP will be updated shortly. 

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Weird. Okay, I'll do a bit more digging into this. If as many of you as possibble could tell me what leagues you have loaded and/or what other data files you're running with this it would be a big help.

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Let me provide more information

I load many leagues and Japan league plus other pre season competitions.  

I choose the France start date as I manage Hong Kong league teams and play the CL Q1 which starts on 11 June.  

Game crashed at 9 July, after last match of CL Q2, as the CL Q3 draw will starts on 10 July and WL Q1 starts on 11 July too.  

Untitled.jpg

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16 hours ago, jdubsnz said:

hi @Dallan i'm new to using custom data so apologies if this is a stupid question - is this actually playable now?  It looks awesome so would love to have a go

It seems to be playable as long as you start after July 2019 (or at least none of my previous tests have run into the crash everyone is talking about and I think that is why - the file works through July 2020 and onward just fine.

I'll see if I can track down the problem with summer 2019 start dates but for now I recommend starting in fall/winter 2019 or spring 2020.

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I am testing as well.  

If  I choose the England start date 11 July (CL Q3 Round and WL Q1 Round), it will go through all the draws (CL Q4 Round, Playoff, WL Q3 Round, Q4 Round) and won't crash and go all the way to the CL group stage and WL Group Stage.  

But If I start in July, it means I won't be able to guide my local Hong Kong teams (Tai Po and Fuli) into the CL Q1 then

Edited by kayyuenchinup
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On 05/03/2020 at 09:06, kayyuenchinup said:

But If I start in July, it means I won't be able to guide my local Hong Kong teams (Tai Po and Fuli) into the CL Q1 then

Loading China PR or South Korea or Canada let you start at the end of February 2020, as long as you don't have the USA loaded (if you do, there's a trick you can do using Canada start dates to start in 2020 even though it's normally disabled).

I guess that's as close as we can get to a CL Q1 start right now, and as a bonus it matches better with the winter update?

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I am trying to start the England start date 8 July and hoping BOTH Tai Po and Fuli get through to the CL Q4, then i take over from there.  

I have been trying all day and both team never qualify to Q4 at the same time.   

Edited by kayyuenchinup
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