[FM20] Netherlands down to Tweede Klasse: need of Wiki love!

[Xavier Lukhas]

First, shout-out to all the participants in this thread, without whom this database wouldn't exist.

Shout-out to @claassen: if it weren't for your database file, this one wouldn't exist either. Especially since most of the structure was lifted straight from his database, so I take no credits for the rule set!

What is this database?

• Dutch leagues down to level 7, with working periods and playoffs as well as I could. Zondag and Zaterdag clubs should be correctly separated.
• It also includes six Districtsbekers based on a self-made split of the Dutch map to have a rather even number of teams per regions, map that you can find below. The finalists of each Districtsbeker will qualify for the KNVB Beker.
• The Eerste Klasse (D2) follows the 2020/21 rules that already were in the database: two straight promotions and the last promotion spot decided by a gigantic playoff.
• The Tweede Divisie now features two straight promotion places and four Periods. The four Periods winners will be matched against the 17th and 18th in the Eerste Divisie.
• The rules for the Eredivisie, Eerste Divisie and KNVB Beker are otherwise mostly unchanged if not completely unchanged, aside from the Eerste Divisie adopting the 2020/21 rule set a year earlier than scheduled.
• The clubs in the top two divisions have a Professional status, the following two divisions are on Semi-Pro status, and all the other divisions are on Amateur status. Clubs that are noted as "Always Amateur" in the database remain unchanged.
• Netherlands use a very generic Reserves and U19s system except for clubs who have their Reservers/Jong team in the leagues. I know it's unfair, but it is how it is.
• I've added several other tie-breakers for leagues based on what I could find on Wikipedia.

Known quirks and issues:

• Due to a lack of stadiums in the very bottom divisions when the game starts, you may think the very bottom Zondag playoffs do not work. They do, there just aren't enough stadiums for everyone so they start later than they should. It sorts itself out after a few seasons when stadiums are built.
• I don't know if Always Amateur clubs with affiliations with top division clubs should or shouldn't play the KNVB Beker. It's very possible that Ajax Amateurs can play big boys AFC Ajax in the Beker due to them being technically different clubs
• That one isn't on me, episode 1: lack of kits and full names for clubs. Word salad names like "vv ASVB" don't qualify as a full name @Reddiablo! I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I don't even know how hard your job is, so cheers to you as well. I didn't write "need of Wiki love" in the title for no reason!
• That one isn't on me, episode 2: the Reputation levels of clubs don't scale too well. Clubs beyond the Eerste Divisie have really trash reputation levels, which makes it actually pretty hard to recruit the players you need or afford the wages they require.
• That one isn't on me, episode 3: the Eerste Divisie and Eredivisie don't really have a winter holiday since there simply  isn't enough time to accommodate one. This is part of the vanilla rule set that I didn't modify; players in lower division clubs may go on holidays between Christmas and the first week of January however.
• It's very possible that a Period winner can be decided by a coin-flip. I've added a few fantasy tie-breakers like Discipline, but it's hard to have a fair tie-break since most clubs by design will either not meet each other, or won't play the same number of home and away games during a Period.
• Honestly you tell me. I may have overlooked something, even though I've personally played with a club from the bottom to the top of the pyramid, and it was as tedious as it sounds. Actually I'm not done finishing my first season in the Eredivisie, but since I haven't changed the rules there, there shouldn't be any issues that are my fault. And it not being my fault is the most important thing.

Tips:

• I actually recommend against loading divisions you do not need. The Eerste Klasse and Tweede Klasse have a god awful level of football as well as representing 462(!) teams as well as 33 leagues of worthlessness and genuinely horrible football even by FM's standards. Unless you plan to start that low or your B/Jong team is in those divisions and/or you have a fairly modest computer, do not load necessary division levels. That being said, those two leagues are absolutely brutal to play in: the level is so low and there are so few matches that every slippage will absolutely cost you. You also don't get two legs in the promotion playoffs, so I suggest you aim for the title.
• If you're going to start that low, take the time to add a full name and kits to your club. Ditto if you're going to add a B club in the bottom leagues, I'm no one to judge if how you get your fun. And maybe add a stadium to your club as well.
• If you're going to start that low², I suggest you holiday for a few seasons to allow clubs to find the players and staff they need to settle down.

 

 

 

Netherlands (D7) by Xavier Lukhas.fmf

Edited August 18, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas
Updated file, ABBA penalty format for JC Schaal.

[CrowBar]

Amazing, and was just wondering today if there was a good Netherlands project out there dare I say, one of the most difficult leagues to get right.

Well done! Will use this probably in my really big journeyman game.

[Jeroen Thijssen]

We do long names and short names - we haven't fully implemented full names, so it's not on me. Imagine the NAC Breda full name visible in game. We all would need larger monitors  :-D

Curious about this update. I might give it a bash myself, although I'm really busy at the moment. Would like to know what people think and how it plays.

 

We will have a very decent overhault of the amateur leagues looking at FM 2021.

[Wolf_pd]

16 minutes ago, Reddiablo said:

We will have a very decent overhault of the amateur leagues looking at FM 2021.

[Xavier Lukhas]

As far as the holidays bit go in the opening post, I suppose it's more accurate to say that player may not go on holidays depending of how the schedule fares. It's particularly the case in the Eerste Divisie where there are 38 match days while all other divisions have fewer ones, so depending of national/continental cup commitments of your team or your opponents and how prevalent waterlogged pitches are in November or December, you may end up playing a game or two after the beginning of the winter break on December 24th. Also, depending on how the calendar is cut, the break might be a few days shorter or longer depending of the year. Those things, compounded with the vanilla calendar setup as well as FM's infamously excellent fixture generator can affect how much fixture congestion you can be subjected to. Like having three matches in eight days out of the winter break... while having multiple free weeks in February and March despite there being only one international break.

Those things are difficult to iron out if you don't do a complete fixture schedule by hand from start to finish, and variability in break lengths, presence of international competitions at the end of the season or even simply leap years can throw it off significantly. 

16 hours ago, Reddiablo said:

We do long names and short names - we haven't fully implemented full names, so it's not on me. Imagine the NAC Breda full name visible in game. We all would need larger monitors  :-D

Good. It only needs to appear on the club page anyway and nowhere else, so death to 1366x768p monitors!

More seriously, letter salad names don't happen at NAC's level. It's more prevalent in the lower leagues, with clubs that don't even have kits, and sometimes don't even have cities. You know who or what NAC Breda are without needing the full original name, but at lower levels you have identical short names and long names that don't tell you what the team is. You have to guess which club is which depending of the city or league they're in, but there's not much info on the internet on leagues below the Eerste Klasse. I've added a kit and long names to some of the very few teams that hadn't a city assigned to them since I had to research that to figure in which District to put them in, so if someone notices that, that's why. Fortunately Dutch Wikipedia is very up to date on those matters for some reason.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Jeroen Thijssen]

This is what you can expect....  (just took a random Derde Klasse league)

[Jeroen Thijssen]

Do be advised that the leagues will not be playable, but we will have a lot more set up than before :-)

[Wolf_pd]

Still a massive improvement compared to what we have now. The whole Saturday/Sunday thing also make me stay away from anything Dutch football related.

Anyway, if Gudde is right, you will need to some rework in the autumn anyway. Curious which clubs he is talking about. I have heard some, but he will have better info (I hope...!)

[Jeroen Thijssen]

11 minutes ago, Wolf_pd said:

Still a massive improvement compared to what we have now. The whole Saturday/Sunday thing also make me stay away from anything Dutch football related.

Anyway, if Gudde is right, you will need to some rework in the autumn anyway. Curious which clubs he is talking about. I have heard some, but he will have better info (I hope...!)

Well everything down to the Tweede Klasses is fully up to date.  Derde Klasses for quite a bit. So adjustments should not be incredibly shocking and time consuming.  Although there is an error of margin.

By the way, you should have access - so you can confirm whether it's a mess or not.  I'm not allowed to show kits etc and all that stuff from the database.

[Wolf_pd]

You have been working hard

[CrowBar]

I am still hoping someday SI will include more than just the ERE + KK divisions. I don't think it's too hard or unreasonable to include the Tweede and Derde Divisie at least. Especially considering the Tweede Divisie teams are accurate (more or less) most of the time in a new FM release.  Only problem is, currently we don't have promotion or relegation between the KK and Tweede Divisie. Which is a real bummer. Only because the financial gap is still there and clubs don't want to promote. In an ideal world I can only hope we will have promotion and relegation again someday.

The benefit of nobody currently relegating or promoting between leagues is that for FM21 you guys have a lot less work ahead of you to do all the mutations in that department.  And can focus on other departments more, which is nice.

[Xavier Lukhas]

1 hour ago, CrowBar said:

I am still hoping someday SI will include more than just the ERE + KK divisions. I don't think it's too hard or unreasonable to include the Tweede and Derde Divisie at least. Especially considering the Tweede Divisie teams are accurate (more or less) most of the time in a new FM release.  Only problem is, currently we don't have promotion or relegation between the KK and Tweede Divisie. Which is a real bummer. Only because the financial gap is still there and clubs don't want to promote. In an ideal world I can only hope we will have promotion and relegation again someday.

The benefit of nobody currently relegating or promoting between leagues is that for FM21 you guys have a lot less work ahead of you to do all the mutations in that department.  And can focus on other departments more, which is nice.

I think it's a licensing thing, or it not being worth it. Most of the researchers go above and beyond to have the leagues in the countries they're in charge of mostly mapped in the vanilla release, and that's when they don't do an additional database on top of that. I think in particular about the FMITA.it or manageronline.fr who consistently release a database for Italy and France respectively every year (I'm pretty sure that Vulrak of manageronline.fr has some official role since he has a "face in the game"). In the end, the reality is that the farther you go away from England, the worse the vanilla official databases. It could be a lack of people, a lack of knowledge, the Editor not being fun to work with, or simply there being not enough interest.

As far as the Tweede Divisie go, I simply made up a system to allow some fluidity in the promotions and relegation. But in all honesty and after playing it for a while, the Reputation and finances gap between the top two divisions and pretty much everything below it is so huge that you have teams in FM's Tweede Divisie that have worse reputation than teams in worse leagues in neighbouring countries. You set up a friendly with a team with "much larger reputation", and you beat them up black and blue because while their Reputation is higher, your players are almost always better. It's going to create some dissonance when you play the database, but if you stick with Dutch players until the Eerste Divisie, you should be fine.

Also, expected wages and transfer values are 1) set in the database and 2) are based on Reputation. The short of it is that no matter their quality, your players are absolutely worthless in every league below the Eredivisie. My players didn't want to even sign a contract due to lack of "financial muscle" when I won the Eerste Divisie until the season update day, when I was officially in the Eredivisie. Note that my finances had not changed; just the league.

I'm kinda jumping from topic to topic, but it also reminds me that D3 clubs in France pretty much asked to be allowed to become professional because Semi-Pro status doesn't really exist in France. They 're in a limbo where they can't generate pro level revenue but also have to pay pro level money to even survive. The way the system is structured in France is that there's a "league", the LFP that's in charge of the top two divisions, which is separate from the association the FFF (French Football Federation) that's in charge of all the lower divisions and the French National Cup. On top of that, Ligue 1 clubs don't even want to share their revenues with Ligue 2 clubs, longing for a system similar to England where the Premier League is its own thing and sits above the rest of the pyramid, while in France it's the top two divisions. A whole mess.

[Wolf_pd]

I think the biggest issue is that it is not worth the time for SI to build a league that doesn't have promotion to the Eerste Divisie.

If there would be promotion/relegation between Eerste and Tweede divisie, we would be a lot closer to having a third Dutch level in the game.

[Jeroen Thijssen]

47 minutes ago, Wolf_pd said:

I think the biggest issue is that it is not worth the time for SI to build a league that doesn't have promotion to the Eerste Divisie.

If there would be promotion/relegation between Eerste and Tweede divisie, we would be a lot closer to having a third Dutch level in the game.

Additional problems are that the Dutch FA can't make up its mind and that the majority of amateur clubs prefer not to promote because of the obligatory pro rules, and the big gaps in amateur/semi/pro style players. Even if a lot of players are better off at the Top amateur clubs, compared to the bottom half of the 2nd tier (KKD)

[Xavier Lukhas]

I might tweak something regarding the positions playoffs. Divisions lower than the Eerste Divisie have position playoffs between teams 1) in promotion playoff positions 2) in relegation positions and 3) league winning position. I think I may not have adjusted how it works with the number of league tie-breaks.

In plain(er) English: the league sorting rules have five tie-breaks, but the position playoffs only cares about the number of points and ignores AND overrides any additional tie-break. So two teams with the same number of points but say, vastly different goal difference (1st tie-break) still will play a position playoff against each other if they happen to be have the same number of points and are at 1) 1st and 2nd position, 2) battling for a promotion playoff place or 3) trying to avoid a relegation spot. I'm running a quick simulation to see if the adjustments work or if I should scrape the position playoffs altogether.

EDIT: The tweaks seem to work. Those two teams finished on the same number of points, but the one with better goal difference got crowned champions without requiring a position playoff. Generally it's actually a very unlikely situation, but it should be sorted out.

That being said, one other thing I'm on the fence about is whether Ajax Amateurs or vv Heerenveen should play in the cups. In vv Heerenveen's case, they do not have an active affiliation with sc Heerenveen... although to be quite honest, it looks like they should. Additionally, now the Editor features an option to have an Amateur team as a reserves team. It could be pretty interesting in such cases. I'm probably going to leave the cup situation "as is", but it's something that's worth noting.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Xavier Lukhas]

It's a pretty old discovery, but I've noticed a pretty interesting thing about the rule that says players cannot feature in both the first team and the reserves in the same games' week (U-23 are not included in this ban). I'm talking about this rule.

And before you ask, yes, it is part of the vanilla rule set.

The meaning of "week" does not mean " a slice of time that lasts seven days". It means "a calendar week", from Monday to Sunday (and not from Sunday to Saturday you heathens). Maybe if I explain the obvious loophole it will be clearer. Suppose your main squad usually plays on Saturday. If your Reserves play on Friday and you decide to make first team players available for the Reserves, they won't be available for the first team's match the next day. However, if your Reserves happen to play on Sunday... then you can make first team players available for the Reserves and since the week rolls over on Monday, they'll be available for the next first team match. You likely won't play your first squad two days in a row, but you could field your bench instead for example.

It essentially means that there's a fairly big advantage of having your B squad in a Sunday league if your first team is either in a Saturday league or in one of the top three divisions since most matches are then played on Saturdays or even Fridays. I did say it was a fairly obvious loophole or at least pretty advantageous, maybe unfairly so. @Reddiablo, is it how it works IRL? Conspiracy theorists argue it might explain why Eerste Divisie games usually are on Fridays...

Edited May 20, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Wolf_pd]

Eerste Divisie games were put on Fridays because of a contract with SBS6 (Dutch tv station), somewhere in the early 00s, when there was no idea yet of putting Jong teams into Eerste Divisie. So that's your conspiracy theory out of the window.

Moving to Friday was done, because it gave the Eerste Divisie their own playing day, instead of competing against the Saturday and Sunday of the Eredivisie games. A few years later then the Eredivisie started playing one game on the Friday.

I think the rule mimics Dutch quite nicely with there being a lot of discussion with the Jong teams playing on Monday and then being allowed to fly in a lot of the young first teamers, especially Jong Ajax and to a lesser extent Jong PSV got criticized for that, if I am correct.

[Xavier Lukhas]

Since the Eerste Divisie's scheduling is a hot mess, I decided to look into it. This doesn't mean I will update the database accordingly. Maybe, maybe not. I didn't really want to meddle with the vanilla rules. There are many weeks especially in Fall/Autumn where there's no football but at the same time don't perfectly match international breaks, then on the other hand you have forced match days during international breaks, free weeks in March and April while with 38 match days and supposedly a winter break, there shouldn't be many free weeks... or weeks of absolutely devilish fixture congestion.

So, for example you have a "Check Clashes with All competitions", which would by default include international matches, so this setting actually prevents the possibility of having match days during international breaks.

But after that, you also have a "Should Play On Intl Match Days" contradicting the first rule.

Obviously the Editor sees no issue with that contradiction, and the database is indeed perfectly playable. Looking at the IRL schedule for 2019/20, the Eerste Divisie does play during international breaks. Interesting.

 

Edited May 21, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Wolf_pd]

Eerste Divisie should play most fridays in the fall part of the season. As you say, Eerste Divisie ignores the international break actually. I think 19/20 was the first season of that, but it sometimes gives issues with several teams having (lower level nation) internationals.

A free week in April can be because of Kingsday (April 27th). There used to be a double weekend during the Easter Weekend, play on Friday, play on Monday, because everybody is free that day (except for the football players).

[Xavier Lukhas]

It reminds me that the Eredivisie also has a free week in April, which happens to be the week where the KNVB Beker final happens. That being said, I tested the schedule, and aside from one stretch of 8 days where there are three matches, there's basically one match per week. I've put 2 matches on Monday re-scheduled for TV (big matches). The winter break still doesn't see the Eerste Divisie teams go on holiday since there simply isn't time to do so, as the winter break is shorter for Eerste Divisie teams in order to accommodate for a 20 team league. That's about it for this experiment.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Xavier Lukhas]

Eerste divisie's top scorer award for the Period doesn't work. It just takes the whole season into account. There's not really a relevant item in the database for this anyway. Just another quirk from the vanilla db I wasn't aware of.

[sporadicsmiles]

If I find can ever find the time to play around with adding details to the editor again, I can take a look at names, kits, stadiums et al for some of the lower league sides. I have just moved to Almere and was thinking about making something like this when this popped up. I have a couple of things I need to finalise for another database first, but I find getting club details correct kinda relaxing. 

[Xavier Lukhas]

I'll probably do a minor update regarding Eerste Klasse scheduling and probably deleting those "van de periode" awards. For one, they cannot work within FM's parameters, and it can inflate a player's reputation: a player would for example receive two awards for top goalscorer of the season, making them more reputable and valuable than they should be. But in all honesty, players are worthless until they belong to a club in the Eredivisie, so it shouldn't actually matter too much (as in: create an imbalance).

EDIT: Done.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Xavier Lukhas

[Xavier Lukhas]

Minor update: ABBA penalty format for JC Schaal. Shouldn't bother too many people since it's how the vanilla rules are, but it's more consistent with the fact that all other penalty formats in the country are ABBA.

[Xavier Lukhas]

I've been taking a look at importing the database to FM 2021.

The good news:

• There have been very few (if any) rules changes to Dutch football in FM that I'm aware of, so there's no need to redo most of the rules. There may have been changes IRL, but I don't see anything in FM that catches my attention.
• The Dutch researchers have delivered on their promise to add a bit more comprehensive team names, stadiums and especially kits. "Only" two clubs were assigned no cities, but that was a quick fix.
• Teams as low as the Derde Klasse are in their correct sub-division. Not that I ever plan to do that division; the Tweede Klasse was already painful enough in terms of playoffs.
• The Netherlands have their own bespoke Lower Division. It's empty, but it's going to be useful.
• I was thus able to remove about 7,000 db changes before likely adding some more. Always remove changes you've added, do not delete them, the Editor is extremely finicky like that.
• I can't believe I had never found or never heard of www.hollandsevelden.nl. Not that it's particularly useful since most clubs are in their correct group with the correct info and kits, but it's nice. 

The bad news:

• The entirety of the Districts system I had created is gone. The Districtsbecker weren't imported, nor were the Districts to which each club belonged. They just don't exist in the db anymore, period. This is a big bummer: while the delimitation of each district weren't the same as IRL, it allowed to have a fairly even number of clubs per district and rather fair Districtsbeker groupings. Nevermind that was a huge pain in the butt to make. The rules are completely gone as well.
• One of the Hoofdklasse groups only has 15 teams when the three other groups have 16 teams. When you consider both Derde Klasse had exactly 17 teams last seasons, it just makes sense that it wouldn't be so simple. I'm more likely to drop a team in there than make a 15 teams group.

It's not a lot of negatives, but the first bullet point is a big one, as one of the most time consuming endeavours is gone just like that. That being said, it could've been worse I suppose, and there still are positives. I'm not sure I'm going to invest a lot of time in FM 2021 just yet (I've yet to actually boot the game, I just went straight to the Editor); we'll see what happens.

[Wolf_pd]

There is an issue with importing newly created data. If you have a good idea about the UID range, is it an option to export the file to XML, 're-UID' the newly added items and then import?

From what I understand some data in the database got a new UID range, which conflicts with newly created data from earlier versions.

[lee50_11]

Can you just make down to tier 4 or 5 (FM21) if it's causing issues first? I would love to start a save in those leagues. Thanks

Edited November 28, 2020 by lee50_11

[Jeroen Thijssen]

On 27/11/2020 at 09:00, Xavier Lukhas said:

I've been taking a look at importing the database to FM 2021.

The good news:

• There have been very few (if any) rules changes to Dutch football in FM that I'm aware of, so there's no need to redo most of the rules. There may have been changes IRL, but I don't see anything in FM that catches my attention.
• The Dutch researchers have delivered on their promise to add a bit more comprehensive team names, stadiums and especially kits. "Only" two clubs were assigned no cities, but that was a quick fix.
• Teams as low as the Derde Klasse are in their correct sub-division. Not that I ever plan to do that division; the Tweede Klasse was already painful enough in terms of playoffs.
• The Netherlands have their own bespoke Lower Division. It's empty, but it's going to be useful.
• I was thus able to remove about 7,000 db changes before likely adding some more. Always remove changes you've added, do not delete them, the Editor is extremely finicky like that.
• I can't believe I had never found or never heard of www.hollandsevelden.nl. Not that it's particularly useful since most clubs are in their correct group with the correct info and kits, but it's nice. 

The bad news:

• The entirety of the Districts system I had created is gone. The Districtsbecker weren't imported, nor were the Districts to which each club belonged. They just don't exist in the db anymore, period. This is a big bummer: while the delimitation of each district weren't the same as IRL, it allowed to have a fairly even number of clubs per district and rather fair Districtsbeker groupings. Nevermind that was a huge pain in the butt to make. The rules are completely gone as well.
• One of the Hoofdklasse groups only has 15 teams when the three other groups have 16 teams. When you consider both Derde Klasse had exactly 17 teams last seasons, it just makes sense that it wouldn't be so simple. I'm more likely to drop a team in there than make a 15 teams group.

It's not a lot of negatives, but the first bullet point is a big one, as one of the most time consuming endeavours is gone just like that. That being said, it could've been worse I suppose, and there still are positives. I'm not sure I'm going to invest a lot of time in FM 2021 just yet (I've yet to actually boot the game, I just went straight to the Editor); we'll see what happens.

Hi,

Which clubs were not assigned to cities?

Not sure we did anything to the districts tbh. Not sure what those even are.  Did kill all (almost all) the Gemeentes (municipalities) and added every single city and replaced a bunch.

[Xavier Lukhas]

il y a 1 minute, Reddiablo a dit :

Hi,

Which clubs were not assigned to cities?

Here you go. The filter is "Nation Is/Contains: The Netherlands" with "City Is [Nothing]". Yeah, you absolutely can search for "nothing". VV Zeewolde seems to be based in... Zeewolde, while the "A" in ASV Wartburgia seems to stand for "Amsterdamsche".

il y a 8 minutes, Reddiablo a dit :

Not sure we did anything to the districts tbh. Not sure what those even are.  Did kill all (almost all) the Gemeentes (municipalities) and added every single city and replaced a bunch.

It doesn't have anything to do with what you've done. I had created (read: copied from my elders) a Districtsbeker system last year. The finalists of the Districtsbeker would qualify for next season's KNVB Beker, which for clubs in the Hoofdklasse or below is kind of a big deal since it guarantees that you get to play with the big boys. When I loaded the FM20 file in the FM21 Editor, the cups just didn't port over.

Also, you'd think that the AI board would care about you qualifying for the KNVB Beker through the Districtsbeker, like they sometimes can require you to qualify for the Europa League through the league for example. They obviously didn't give a damn about the Districtsbeker or qualifying for the KNVB Beker through the Districtsbeker at all. One of the most effective way to make them care about that competition was simply to raise its reputation above the reputation of the Hoofdklasse (but below the Derde Divisie), but that's another topic.

[Jeroen Thijssen]

Awesome stuff, I have fixed the two clubs for next releases 

[Xavier Lukhas]

You can now check out the FM21 version of this database in the thread below.