What are some tips for winning the Champion's Cup with a team from a terrible league?

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

I made the mistake of playing Olympiakos for my first playthrough thinking I could vie for CC title but I got immediately smashed. Then, I tried to play Schalke, and I was top of Bundesliga my entire season. But Barcelona absolutely tore my team apart in CC.

I thought I might ask, how do you get together a team good enough in these lower rungs to challenge the bigger teams?

[Danielfc]

Simple - build a squad strong enough to challenge stronger teams. If you're in a poor league, logic would dictate that good players do not want to play in that league so you will find this difficult. 

Fortunately in FM you can now improve the standard of your domestic league over time by brining in good players, a coup here and there and build the leagues reputation. Though this will take donkeys years to contend with PL and LA li ga

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

50 minutes ago, Danielfc said:

Simple - build a squad strong enough to challenge stronger teams. If you're in a poor league, logic would dictate that good players do not want to play in that league so you will find this difficult. 

Fortunately in FM you can now improve the standard of your domestic league over time by brining in good players, a coup here and there and build the leagues reputation. Though this will take donkeys years to contend with PL and LA li ga

Have you done it? Think it would be funny to see the Bulgarian league top the coefficient ranking.

[Danielfc]

I absolutely have not done it nor have any intention haha. I invest far too much emotion just to get Newcastle to CL standard (took me 12 bloody years to win PL on this FM!) let alone develope an entire nation 😂😂

1 hour ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Have you done it? Think it would be funny to see the Bulgarian league top the coefficient ranking.

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Danielfc

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

13 minutes ago, Danielfc said:

I absolutely have not done it nor have any intention haha. I invest far too much emotion just to get Newcastle to CL standard (took me 12 bloody years to win PL on this FM!) let alone develope an entire nation 😂😂

 

Holy crap 12 years! On my save Newcastle actually challenged for title after about 12 years (same as you), but in the season right after that got relegated :P

[metallimuse]

Into season 2033/34 with Motherwell in Scotland and only this year do I think I'm starting to make headway with challenging in Europe.

Thanks to some good Europa League runs by myself and the Old Firm over the years we've turned the SPFL into the 8th best league in Europe and Motherwell are currently ranked 18th in European club ranking charts.

I think next 5 years I can crack Champions League.

[Mypos]

11 hours ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Have you done it? Think it would be funny to see the Bulgarian league top the coefficient ranking.

On FM2011 I won the CL with Shamrock Rovers from Ireland. I plan on doing the same now on FM2017 but im looking for the right DB setup so that bigger clubs from England come in and steal my better players. Most realistic way imo.

[Gross_Ballon]

9 hours ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Holy crap 12 years! On my save Newcastle actually challenged for title after about 12 years (same as you), but in the season right after that got relegated :P

Is fat ashley still in charge ? 

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

12 hours ago, metallimuse said:

Into season 2033/34 with Motherwell in Scotland and only this year do I think I'm starting to make headway with challenging in Europe.

Thanks to some good Europa League runs by myself and the Old Firm over the years we've turned the SPFL into the 8th best league in Europe and Motherwell are currently ranked 18th in European club ranking charts.

I think next 5 years I can crack Champions League.

Holy crap that's progress. I tried doing it with the Albion Rovers but I just can't do it, I can barely fight myself up into the Premiership, let alone battle my way through Europa.

10 hours ago, Mypos said:

On FM2011 I won the CL with Shamrock Rovers from Ireland. I plan on doing the same now on FM2017 but im looking for the right DB setup so that bigger clubs from England come in and steal my better players. Most realistic way imo.

That's amazing, but question — is that how a league gets better? If your players get poached or am I misunderstanding your statement?

10 hours ago, Gross_Ballon said:

Is fat ashley still in charge ? 

Unfortunately not, I can't remember his name but it started with "Darko". There are apparently a lot of people called Darko in the database.

[yolixeya]

5 hours ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

That's amazing, but question — is that how a league gets better? If your players get poached or am I misunderstanding your statement?

League gets better if teams from that league do well in Europe consistently. He probably has a very well developed scouting network and repacements are always ready.  But I still think it just takes a lot of years to achieve that, and you are dependant of how other teams in your league perform.

[Danielfc]

16 hours ago, Gross_Ballon said:

Is fat ashley still in charge ? 

He also left in my current save. I'd been waiting ten years for it to happen then I decided to open up to check on Ashley's status.., he had gone 😂 there was nothing in my newsfeed about it though, just vanished. Could've been ten years but could've been the first season, really couldn't tell you. "Get out of our club,you fat cockney b*****d , get out of our club".

[Britrock]

51 minutes ago, Danielfc said:

He also left in my current save. I'd been waiting ten years for it to happen then I decided to open up to check on Ashley's status.., he had gone 😂 there was nothing in my newsfeed about it though, just vanished. Could've been ten years but could've been the first season, really couldn't tell you. "Get out of our club,you fat cockney b*****d , get out of our club".

He tends to sell up pretty quickly in game and has done the last few FMs I think, usually in the first season. He's not such a tight git as in real life!

[metallimuse]

7 hours ago, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Holy crap that's progress. I tried doing it with the Albion Rovers but I just can't do it, I can barely fight myself up into the Premiership, let alone battle my way through Europa.

 

I kept getting West Ham in the 2nd round Knock Out for years. Always that round, always that team. 5 times in total over say 8/9 years. Finally overcame then and made it to Europa League Semi's and Barca put me out. 

I'm now a decent Champs League team getting to the knockouts past two years.

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

2 hours ago, metallimuse said:

I kept getting West Ham in the 2nd round Knock Out for years. Always that round, always that team. 5 times in total over say 8/9 years. Finally overcame then and made it to Europa League Semi's and Barca put me out. 

I'm now a decent Champs League team getting to the knockouts past two years.

West Ham is brutal for whatever reason. Denied me cup games plenty of times in the PL. :S

[Gross_Ballon]

7 hours ago, Danielfc said:

He also left in my current save. I'd been waiting ten years for it to happen then I decided to open up to check on Ashley's status.., he had gone 😂 there was nothing in my newsfeed about it though, just vanished. Could've been ten years but could've been the first season, really couldn't tell you. "Get out of our club,you fat cockney b*****d , get out of our club".!

Im a Rangers man and we despise that fat *****!! no one likes him been hard to watch Newcastle fans suffer under his regime! club deserves so much more. letting Rafa go was un real.

[Mypos]

On 22/04/2020 at 04:40, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Holy crap that's progress. I tried doing it with the Albion Rovers but I just can't do it, I can barely fight myself up into the Premiership, let alone battle my way through Europa.

That's amazing, but question — is that how a league gets better? If your players get poached or am I misunderstanding your statement?

Unfortunately not, I can't remember his name but it started with "Darko". There are apparently a lot of people called Darko in the database.

I have to say FM2010 and FM2011 where more easy to play. Scouting was way more easy, i could get very good gems if you had a decent scouting system. Now im playing FM2017 and its way way harder to find these gems. Also on FM2010 and 11 i used downloaded overachieving tactics which made it also way more easy.  Now i use my own tactis. (more realistic) But bigger clubs coming in poaching your best players made it alot of fun for me because i could find very good or even better replacements. So you get more money and you can upgrade your facilities. Leagues get mainly better by how well you do in European games. They get a little better also by how much high profile players there are playing in your league.

 

Good luck man!

[el canadiano]

I won the Champions League as Hearts in FM15, but it took me 12 seasons. Mentally you have to think to yourself to "make yourself the money you need to win the Champions League", so you have to think shrewd. If you can make the group stages of the CL, then you're already on the right track.

Increasing your country's coefficient is largely dependent on teams from your country winning CL/EL/EL2 games. If you make top 10, then if you become champions, you make it in automatically. It also means that selling people at a cut-rate to your domestic rivals if you walk all over them is a thing to consider as well.

If you're in a country like Greece, you will always have to mentally think to yourself as a selling team (really if you weren't from England, Germany, Spain, France, or Italy, you probably would have to). This means that you need to think that every player is sellable, but it also means that you need to be able to replace anyone on your team, so you need to build the heck out of your scouting network, often going to countries like Colombia, Croatia, etc.

[alanschu14]

On 20/04/2020 at 22:41, LetsNotScoreGoals said:

Have you done it? Think it would be funny to see the Bulgarian league top the coefficient ranking.

I was able to get to late stages with Skeid in Norway. It's a long haul because you have to (slowly) raise your nation's standing which makes it more appealing for players to remain there. But getting additional europe spots can also really help with the income of clubs in your nation. As your league goes up in the rankings you'll see (modest... would like this to be more but alas) improvements in both prize money as well as TV money, and the league will be more competitive which improves the standard for match experience for the purposes of training as well.

It is a long slog though as there's only so much you can do on your own, and once you get a 5th Europe qualification spot it's also more difficult for you to influence the coefficient on your own. Plus there's always challenges because the economics just aren't there like bigger nations.

That said, a place like Schalke shouldn't be too hard. You have a fantastic nation with great economics and the rest of the nation will be able to hold their own in Europe much sooner than smaller nations. Until you see a big uptick in reputation with championships and Champions League success you'll still have to compete with other clubs who your players will find more appealing. But it's certainly doable.

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

8 hours ago, alanschu14 said:

I was able to get to late stages with Skeid in Norway. It's a long haul because you have to (slowly) raise your nation's standing which makes it more appealing for players to remain there. But getting additional europe spots can also really help with the income of clubs in your nation. As your league goes up in the rankings you'll see (modest... would like this to be more but alas) improvements in both prize money as well as TV money, and the league will be more competitive which improves the standard for match experience for the purposes of training as well.

It is a long slog though as there's only so much you can do on your own, and once you get a 5th Europe qualification spot it's also more difficult for you to influence the coefficient on your own. Plus there's always challenges because the economics just aren't there like bigger nations.

That said, a place like Schalke shouldn't be too hard. You have a fantastic nation with great economics and the rest of the nation will be able to hold their own in Europe much sooner than smaller nations. Until you see a big uptick in reputation with championships and Champions League success you'll still have to compete with other clubs who your players will find more appealing. But it's certainly doable.

I'm actually doing a HSV save now. Got close to quitting because of how heavily indebted the club is and how little transfer budget I'm afforded but I'm confident yeah. I won the Europa and hoping I can get a result in the UEFA Supercup and Champion's League. But for some reason the other German clubs are horrible, managed to pummel Dortmund and Bayern in cup matches even when I was in the second league.

[yolixeya]

Bundesliga is one of the top 5 leagues so it shouldn't be hard to win CL with Schalke. In FM 18 I had one save where I was managing Lens and it was rather quick one, because they start in 2nd tier and I was able to win CL within 3-4 years. Practicaly first season i CL I won it, they had a good youth academy and  I was lucky but I won it. However French League stayed in 5th place despite ME and PSG doing well, but it was a short time period anyway.

[andu1]

Took me 10 Years to win it with a Romanian team, FCSB.

The English teams are unstoppable in my save, They won 8 out the last 10 finals.

 

It's very hard to keep good players when they have offers but what i did was buy cheap and sell expensive, especially Easter European and South American Players. In doing so I managed to create a good enough budget to pay the players absolutely ridiculos wages for the Romanian League.

 

This guy is an example of the players i managed to buy at a ridiculosly low price ( 5 milion Euros )

 

It takes time and patience to build a powerful squad and even then , the Super AI English teams can still trounce you with their infinite transfer budgets.

Edited April 27, 2020 by andu1

[yolixeya]

12 minutes ago, andu1 said:

It's very hard to keep good players when they have offers but what i did was buy cheap and sell expensive, especially Easter European and South American Players. In doing so I managed to create a good enough budget to pay the players absolutely ridiculos wages for the Romanian League.

It is good to know that it is possible without any tempering in the editor. That is the strategy I would try also. Have you had any problems with players not wanting to come to your league? And how did Romaninan league progress in the standings during that time?

[metallimuse]

31 minutes ago, andu1 said:

It’s very hard to keep good players when they have offers but what i did was buy cheap and sell expensive, especially Easter European and South American Players. In doing so I managed to create a good enough budget to pay the players absolutely ridiculos wages for the Romanian League.

 

This is the cross roads I’m at in my Motherwell save in the career thread but I’ve never really one to play in this position before paying big wages going all out for champions league and I’m kind of gun shy at doing it and taking the leap.

[andu1]

14 minutes ago, yolixeya said:

It is good to know that it is possible without any tempering in the editor. That is the strategy I would try also. Have you had any problems with players not wanting to come to your league? And how did Romaninan league progress in the standings during that time?

There are issues at first with players not wanting to come, especially the South American players. After several seasons and the team reputation grows they want to come but they demand slightly higher wages. The leagues is currently 8th in the coefficient list and I am aiming to get it to the 5th place.
I think i need to win another UCL since the other Romanian teams don't to to well in Europe cause they don't have the financial power to attract much better players.
Also, the Dutch and Scottish leagues seem to make a return to glory in the last couple of season with Ajax and Celtic both reaching Semis.

[andu1]

10 minutes ago, metallimuse said:

This is the cross roads I’m at in my Motherwell save in the career thread but I’ve never really one to play in this position before paying big wages going all out for champions league and I’m kind of gun shy at doing it and taking the leap.

I don't see how you can do it otherwise. Without top players it's next to impossible to beat the big teams.