FM23 - Regional Save in Germany, only signing players from Saxony-Anhalt

[ToMexico!!]

Germany & Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony-Anhalt is a region in the midst of Germany, highlight in red above, it is surrounded by Lower Saxony() to the West, Brandenburg to the East, Saxony to the South-East and Thuringia to the South-West. Saxony-Anhalt is the 8th largest state by area and 11th largest by population which is 2.2m inhabitants.

I chose Saxony-Anhalt for a couple of reasons; 

• No Major Cities (with Halle at 240k population and Magdeburg at 235k population) but major cities nearby in other regions with big teams.
• No Bundesliga teams so the team I have chosen will start from the lower leagues. 

Above is a list of teams from Saxony-Anhalt who are within the top eight tiers of the German League structure and the league they play in. With FM23 only having come out there aren't any league expansions out yet. 

And here is a list of the major cities, towns and villages(?) that are found in FM. This list was compiled by creating a new manager and painstakingly going through every place name possible in Germany that had Saxony-Anhalt beside it in brackets. I have then subsequently created a filter in the scouting centre which has the above places listed to weed out the players I'm allowed to sign. 

The aim for the save is take the team I have chosen to some sort of glory by only signing players that are born in Saxony-Anhalt. 

Next we'll delve into the team I have chosen. 

[Cheez3y]

GL, my home region is a tough one.

You basicly only got 3 teams to get players from.

[ToMexico!!]

Hallescher Fussball-Club e.V.

Hallescher are a football club based in the Saxony-Anhalt city of Halle. Founded 56 years ago in 1966, they currently reside in the German 3rd tier, the 3. Liga. 

The origins of the club can be traced back to 1900 when Hallescher Fussball-Club Wacker 1900 were founded but after the Second World War the club was dissolved and a year later in 1946, SG Halle Glaucha was formed. The club has changed name and form throughout the years including; BSG Turbine Halle, SC Chemie Halle Luena and HFC Chemie. 

The club has some winning heritage with two DDR-Oberliga wins in 1948/49 and 1951/52, also winning the East German Cup in 1956 and 1962. They were promoted to 3. Liga back in 2012 having won the Regionalliga-Nord. Hallescher have also played in Europe, participating in the 1970/71 UEFA Cup against PSV Eindhoven, they drew the first leg 0-0 but promtly pulled out of the competition after a fire broke out at the hotel they were staying in killing a player and injury others. 

Facilities

Hallescher play in the 15,057 capacity Leuna Chemie Stadion which was built in 2011. 

The club also boasts adequate training and youth facilities along with average academy coaching but fairly basic youth recruitment. 

Vision

The board require us work within the wage budget and avoid relegation from the 3.Liga which I think are both achievable. 

The supporters are not asking for too much here. 

Finances

A healthy balance to start things off with no debts either. There is no transfer budget available but some wiggle room in the wage budget if we can find the right player. 

Squad

We don't have a 2nd team so the squad is overran with players that are too old to be in the U18's. 

I need to go through the squad, nickname every player from Saxony-Anhalt and then look to loan out a lot of players. I will search for players who don't have a place of birth and see where they were born. 

Best 3 Players by CA

1. Niklas Landgraf - a non-Saxony-Anhalt native will be first choice CB
2. Jonas Nietfeld - another non Saxony-Anhalt player but will first choice at either DM or CM
3. Nico Hug - will be first choice LB but again not from Saxony-Anhalt

[ToMexico!!]

1 minute ago, Cheez3y said:

GL, my home region is a tough one.

You basicly only got 3 teams to get players from.

Thanks! 

My hope, like my previous regional save with Santander was that big teams around us recruited players from our region and develop them and then I can go and sign them. We have Wolfsburg, Leipzig and Hannover reletively close by as well as a few other Bundesliga 2 and Liga 3 sides to raid. 

[ToMexico!!]

Staff

This is all of our staff except for the doctors, we don't have any physios. Just signing players isn't limited to the region either, we'll also limit is to staff too. 

[ToMexico!!]

Scouting

Being able to sign players that originate from Saxony-Anhalt means we need to be able to see them in our scouting list. We're at our first stumbling block. 

Our scouting budget means we can't afford much of a scouting range. 

We're currently on 3. Liga but we could bump ourselves up to "Surrounding Divisions" which will see us run out of budget before the end of the season but its a cost i'm willing to make. On the current 3. Liga range we have just 12 players interested in signing for us, with a further five not interested in signing. 

Changing to "Surrounding Divisions" range which includes Bundesliga 2 and the Regional Divisions it increases to 18 players interested and 48 players when the interested option is unticked. 

Going further, changing the range to Germany we get 83 players overall and 87 when we change it to world. 

Of those players from the region here's the best; 

• Armindo Sieb (Halle/Saale)
• Nils Peterson (Wernigerode)
• Paul Seguin (Magdeburg)
• Manuel Wintzheimer (Arnstein)

Whilst there isn't a huge number of player available I believe that should grow over the seasons as all Newgens will come through with a Place of Birth and not be unknown to the game like many of the current players in game. 

[ToMexico!!]

Pre-Season

A short pre-season with just two games. 

We beat Czech 2nd tier side Karvina with Saxony-Anhalt's very own Tom Bierschenk scoring twice and then we drew against Wurzburger Kickers. 

We move straight onto the league in July, much sooner than I expected but I guess there's the winter break to contend with in Germany. 

Expectations are low in the media with a predicted finish of 16th with three of the four promoted sides expected to finish above us. 

We've made two staff additions to the club. Magdeburg born and former Dortmund defender Marcel Schmelzer joins as U19 Coach and Jana Lehmann who left rivals Madgeburg in the summer makes the short trip down the region to join as physio. 

[ToMexico!!]

July/August 2022

A slow start to life in 3. Liga this season that soon picked up with a win versus Oldenburg before somehow beating former giants 1860 Munich. We're still very much an unsettled side as we've had some major injuries to first team players and some other niggly injuries which probably stem from such a short pre-season. 

However, we find ourselves in 4th place at this early stage of the season. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by ToMexico!!

[TelcontarTargaryen]

Always a fan of youth only or regional save.

[ToMexico!!]

September 2022

A really poor month all in all. We lost both home games but managed to win the away game to a side just below us in the table. The Elversberg defeat left the fans unhappy with my apparent negative tactics. Lets take a look;

I don't think they're overly negative just fitting in with the players we have and how we can play with those players. We're playing with plenty of width, focusing the play down the wings, using a mid-block and pressing quite high. I will see how the next few games go and maybe change to inside forwards and focus the play through the centre instead. 

We must remember though we're predicted to finish 16th and the board want us to remain in the league. 

Edited October 21, 2022 by ToMexico!!

[ToMexico!!]

2 minutes ago, TelcontarTargaryen said:

Always a fan of youth only or regional save.

Thanks for checking in! 

Enjoying it already despite being early days. 

[deltablue]

This is always a fun thing to see people try.

[ToMexico!!]

2 hours ago, deltablue said:

This is always a fun thing to see people try.

Thanks delta. Definately going to try, whether we have success I'm not sure. 

[ToMexico!!]

October 2022

A busier month but another mixed bag.

We started with a tough away game against Duisburg but did enough to get a draw. Dortmund II next and we struggled to 0-0 draw despite changing tactic slightly to a more attacking one. We did however pick up three points on the road aginst Aue. 3rd placed Bayreuth visited a week later, two goals in two minutes wasn't enough to claim the win. We ended the month with a narrow away loss against Osnabruck.

We remain in 8th but another poor result could see us drop down the table at a moments notice. 

[ToMexico!!]

November 2022

We're really beginning to struggle, its now no win in five. 

We were leading 2-0 against Mannheim with 15 to go. Ingolstadt were 18th but Saarbrucken were 2nd and that win took them top. 

We're dropping down the league. Its the winter/World Cup break now, we need to regroup, increase the tactical familiarity and team cohesion somehow. 

[ToMexico!!]

Youth Intake Preview

Our first of many youth intake previews on FM23 and on paper it looks a good one. 

Looks like we potentially have four good players through the spine of the team. The intake distribution looks quite well spread too. 

[Hootieleece]

Good Stuff!! subbed.

[ToMexico!!]

January 2023

An unbeaten month looks good but it could have been so much more. Essen were top when we visited and we were unlucky not to come away with three points. We conceded another late leveller against Wehen Wiesbaden having scored in the 81st minute to take a 4-3 lead. We then managed to finally win a game against rivals Zwickau as Steczyk scored for the 3rd game running this month. 

We're comfortably above the relegation zone but we need to push on a bit, we need another couple of wins next month. 

[ToMexico!!]

February 2023

Another mixed month but some vital points gained. 

Over thirty thousand spectators witnessed a drab nil-nil against Dresden before we won our 7th game of the season against a then 4th placed Freiburg II. We then undid all of our good work by losing to 15th placed Oldenburg, an awful result. We ended the month with another draw (11th of the season) against 1860 Munich with Saxony-Anhalt born Tom Bierschenk scoring his second goal of the season, 19 games after his first one. 

Up to 10th at the moment but its a tight middle group in the league.

[ToMexico!!]

March 2023

Another five games this month. 

Back to back goals for Bierschenk as we seal a 1-0 win away at Meppen. Then it was back to back draws, disappointingly against Verl who are in the relegation zone. The 2-0 win over Elversberg was pleasing as another Saxony-Anhalt player Elias Loder scored his first goal of the season. Duisburg was a tough end to the month, they are currently 4th a hold a play-off place due to the current 3rd placed team being Freiburg II and they can't be promoted. 

Up to 9th. Next up is Dortmund II in another five game month. 

[ToMexico!!]

Youth Intake Review

Still an excellent intake but it harbours just one elite talent. 

The thing that hits me first is that every single player has an African second nationality. I mean have I missed something here. I wonder if anyone else has this in their saves but I will take a look in the bugs forum. 

Anyway, i'm not overly impressed but we need to remember where we are. Houari Saadoune is deemed the best of this bunch. 

Spoiler

 

[DaneBramage]

57 minutes ago, ToMexico!! said:

The thing that hits me first is that every single player has an African second nationality. I mean have I missed something here. I wonder if anyone else has this in their saves but I will take a look in the bugs forum. 

@Jimbokav1971 will be mad that he picked the wrong club.

Solid enough start so far.

[ToMexico!!]

1 minute ago, DaneBramage said:

@Jimbokav1971 will be mad that he picked the wrong club.

Solid enough start so far.

Thanks! 

Yeah I should have tagged him in the post. 

[ToMexico!!]

April 2023

We started the month with a loss but things got better after. 

A late goal again saw us draw against Aue. On loan striker Muller netted twice to down Bayreuth who have really slipped down the league recently. We then made it back-to-back wins as we hammered Osnabruck 3-0. We ended the month with draw number 15 of the season away in Mannheim. 

We're safe in this league for another season. There's four games remaining, can we stay in the top 10? 

[ryanlion28]

If that is a coincidence it's a very weird one. Especially the range of nationalities too. 2 from Zimbabwe and then every other nation is unique! Best prospect not born in the region either

[Sonic Youth]

2 hours ago, DaneBramage said:

@Jimbokav1971 will be mad that he picked the wrong club.

That’s the sort of intake he’d want!

[Sonic Youth]

Looks like a good start to your challenge.

Will youth intake players who aren’t born in the region be considered able to be signed for the club because they came through the intake and probably lived in the region for a fair few years?

[OlivierL]

3 hours ago, ToMexico!! said:

Youth Intake Review

Still an excellent intake but it harbours just one elite talent. 

The thing that hits me first is that every single player has an African second nationality. I mean have I missed something here. I wonder if anyone else has this in their saves but I will take a look in the bugs forum. 

Anyway, i'm not overly impressed but we need to remember where we are. Houari Saadoune is deemed the best of this bunch. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Very special, curious now if this is a bug or something linked to this club. Don't think they had intakes like this on fm22 ?

[ToMexico!!]

9 hours ago, ryanlion28 said:

If that is a coincidence it's a very weird one. Especially the range of nationalities too. 2 from Zimbabwe and then every other nation is unique! Best prospect not born in the region either

I love a second nationality on most players but every player and only from Africa it can't be a coincidence. I've reported it in the bugs forum, although theres no specific youth intake section. 

6 hours ago, Sonic Youth said:

Looks like a good start to your challenge.

Will youth intake players who aren’t born in the region be considered able to be signed for the club because they came through the intake and probably lived in the region for a fair few years?

Thanks, its been a middling start for sure. 

Yeah something I completely glossed over, youth intake players will be exempt from the rules of Saxony-Anhalt only. Its going to be a struggle as is without the help of intakes, so I need to make the most of them when good players do start to come through. I'll tag newgens with the (YP23a) etc tag and any Saxony-Anhalt players I sign or shortlist will have (SA) beside them. 

6 hours ago, OlivierL said:

Very special, curious now if this is a bug or something linked to this club. Don't think they had intakes like this on fm22 ?

I'm not sure if they did, I could holiday to the next intake and see if it happens again but I don't think I want to do that. I've reported it and SI have the save game, so they can take a look. 

[Jimbokav1971]

13 hours ago, DaneBramage said:

@Jimbokav1971 will be mad that he picked the wrong club.

Solid enough start so far.

What the actual flippin flippity hell! 

Forget the quality of that intake, (which is decent in itself), the 2nd Nationalities on show are a thing of splendored beauty even if you're not doing a save like mine. (I absolutely love a 2nd Nationality). 

[Jimbokav1971]

14 hours ago, ToMexico!! said:

Youth Intake Review

The thing that hits me first is that every single player has an African second nationality. I mean have I missed something here. I wonder if anyone else has this in their saves but I will take a look in the bugs forum. 

First of all I just love this. Absolute love it. 

If you had just 1 Nation represented twice I would say that it's probably not a bug, but 16 unique African 2nd Nationalities seems.... strange. I think it probably is a bug. You need to buy a lottery ticket tonight just in case though. 

[ToMexico!!]

13 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

First of all I just love this. Absolute love it. 

If you had just 1 Nation represented twice I would say that it's probably not a bug, but 16 unique African 2nd Nationalities seems.... strange. I think it probably is a bug. You need to buy a lottery ticket tonight just in case though. 

There’s two Zimbabwe second nationalities in there so I don’t really know what’s going on. 
 

I’ve reported it so SI can take a look and I will see what happens in the 2nd seasons intake. 
 

If it is legit then you’re right it’s a thing of glory! 

[wearesporting]

That's an intake bug. What do the other teams' intakes look like?

Edited October 22, 2022 by wearesporting

[ToMexico!!]

1 hour ago, wearesporting said:

That's an intake bug. What do the other teams' intakes look like?

They were pretty normal when I had a quick look through. 
 

I’ve reported it but we’ll continue on! 

[ToMexico!!]

May 2023

A disappointing month to end the campaign. 

Although I can't be too disappointed can I? Two goals in two minutes downed a freefalling Ingoldstadt, we were then pummeled by a title fighting Saarbrucken. Essen came to town and left with a point which was a good result as they are battling for promotion also. We probbaly could have got something out of the Wiesbaden game but another draw was probably the right result. 

I won't show the league table in this update. Will do it in the season review, coming up next. 

[ToMexico!!]

2022/23 Season Review

Going back to the beginning season expectations were to avoid relegation, we did that fairly comfortably in the end. The media predicted 16th place but we managed to deliver an 11th placed finish. We struggled to score goals and that was our downfall this season, 38 goals in 38 games is not enough but we were hard to beat as shown in the draw/loss columns. 17 draws in huge, most of them 0-0's I think (yep counted up there were nine 0-0 draws). Also just single digit losses in an 11th placed finish is good. 

We didn't enter the DFB Pokal which was strange, not sure if thats a bug or not as only four teams from 3. Liga entered the competition; Ingolstadt, Aue, Dresden and 1860 Munich. We'll see what happens next season. 

We didn't make any signings this season, not for the lack of looking. Remember we must only sign players born in Saxony-Anhalt. 

Squad Highlights

There aren't too many standout players at the moment. Dominic Steczyk top scored with just eight goals whilst on loan Sebastian Muller notched one less with seven. With Muller leaving once his loan ends that will give me more chance to start Tom Bierschenk who is from Saxony-Anhalt, he made more sub appearances last season that starting games but did only score four goals. 

Leon Damer made seven assists from right wing but only managed 22(4) games this season due to fitness issues, hopefully he can kick on next season. 

The main issue we have next season is players leaving the club. 

The above six players (excluding Muller) are all waiting for their contract to expire before decided what to do. Zimmersheid has already signed for Admira Wacker in Austria so he's not a concern. The two standouts are Halangk and Loder both of whom are from Saxony-Anhalt, whilst neither are first choice options at the moment in their positions they're players I don't want to lose for the sake of the region. The only other player I would want to keep on from above is Nietfeld who would be first choice CM. There's actually another eight players with their contracts expiring in the summer who I don't want to re-sign. 

Off The Field

Finances have dropped like a stone, we're £700k into the red at the moment. 

 

We have three sponsorship deals that are due to end this month, so hopefully we can get similar sized deals to recoup our losses. 

We managed to secure our first affilation with another club based in Saxony-Anhalt. 

Bitterfeld is to the east of Halle. The partnership is for loans only but I will look to renegotiate to being able to bring players in from their youth academy. 

[ToMexico!!]

Early Transfers

We've knocked something like £25k per week off the wage budget by allowing the below players to leave the squad. 

We did however managed to renew the contracts of Halangk (SA), Loder (SA) and Deniz. 

Two players have joined so far. Benjamin Girth joins from Duisburg, the Magdeburg born striker will be first choice and offers experience at 31 years of age. We've also signed Pascal Hackethal from Halberstadt, the 23 year old left back came through at local club Sangerhausen before joining Magdeburg and then Werder II. 

After these two signings we have the below budgets remaining. 

[ToMexico!!]

Searching for Players

Using scouts to find players is pretty useless in this save, we can't narrow down the search enough to warrant it.

I've moved a fraction of my transfer budget over to the scouting budget to ensure we can see the range I've selected throughout the season. 

With this range we can see that there are  interested in signing for us and  overall to scour through. 

At the top of the interested pile is..

Joscha Wosz is Halle/Saale born but came through the RB Leipzig academy, he spent the 2021/22 season on loan at Hallesher. I've made an enquiry with his current club Verl after having guaged his contract demands with his agent already. 

I've got a shortlist set up of Saxony-Anhalt born players to keep an eye on. 

[Hootieleece]

How are you finding scouting and recruitment with the "improvements"?

I must say that scouts are much more likely to give reports on what you are actually looking for which is great.

But in your case, I think your geographical parameters are too narrow to really use the system.

Also did you have a major fall off in your players forgetting your system and tactics in the offseason?

[ToMexico!!]

1 hour ago, Hootieleece said:

How are you finding scouting and recruitment with the "improvements"?

I must say that scouts are much more likely to give reports on what you are actually looking for which is great.

But in your case, I think your geographical parameters are too narrow to really use the system.

Also did you have a major fall off in your players forgetting your system and tactics in the offseason?

I've not really looked at scouting due to the geographical limits like you said. I've manually searched for players myself and then scouted them for a report etc. 

Familiarty with the tactic definately dropped due to the amount of players that were in and around the first team leaving. Although I haven't changed anything in it yet, I'm going to play a more settled side this season, well hopefully barring injuries as I think I changed the team so much due to having enough players for three XIs. 

[Bigshow1]

This is a really challenging yet interesting save. I’ll be following this one 👍

[abulezz]

I would say that was a pretty decent season considering the goal was to avoid relegation. Finances looking a bit scary, though!

[ToMexico!!]

2 hours ago, Bigshow1 said:

This is a really challenging yet interesting save. I’ll be following this one 👍

Thanks for following!

2 hours ago, abulezz said:

I would say that was a pretty decent season considering the goal was to avoid relegation. Finances looking a bit scary, though!

It was a good season, performances were rubbish but we ground out the results. Finances are awful at the moment, we're losing £300k a month. 

[ToMexico!!]

Transfers - Summer 2023

Despite the poor financial situation we needed to spend some money to recruit some Saxony-Anhalt players. 

We've already mentioned the top two; Girth and Hackethal but we made a further three summer signings to boost the squad. 

I had also mentioned that we were looking at brining in Joscha Wosz from Verl who were relegated last season from the 3.Liga, the Saxony-Anhalt born midfielder came through at RB Leipzig before joining Verl on a free. Initially after enquiry Verl wanted £275k but I plumped for a bid of £100k and they accepted. 

We then trialled and subsiquently signed Niklas Kastenhofer who had been released by Lubeck, not the greatest addition but a former player of ours who came through the academy in 2014. We then plumped for another lower league player in Alexander Schmidt from Halvelse, again another former player of ours, he was snapped up from Halle 96 after coming through their academy in 2011/12. He's then bounced around some lower league teams including Saxony-Anhalt clubs Sandersforf and Halberstadt and a brief spell in Denmark. 

We now have 10 Saxony-Anhalt born players in the squad.

[ToMexico!!]

Season 2023/24 - 1st Half

Got majorly carried away yesterday watching the football and played the majority of the first half of the season. 

No win in the first four games of the season was a concern but we did play Freiburg II and Holstein Kiel amongst them. We needed the win against bottom side Erfurt to kick things off followed by the win over Bayreuth. Relegated Sandhuasen soundly beat us as did 1860 Munich. A little winning run against Viktoria Koln, Elversburg and Mannheim who were all below us in the table settled things down. We then played three of the then top six, losing all three. I then decided to change tactics, one up top, two CAMS and a DM, three wins from four albeit not against the best opposition. 

We find ourselves in a respectable 9th place with two more game remaining before the winter break. 

Financially we're in the mud, we're losing between £200k and £300k depending on how many home games we have a month. 

[ToMexico!!]

Youth Intake Preview - December 2023

Another apparent excellent intake. Will we get an intake full of players with African nations as second nationalities? 

[ToMexico!!]

Youth Intake Review - April 2024

Downgraded from Excellent to Good. Bodes well 

Two elite talents this time. Nyong Mamer & Eric Bwanakweri

And again, every single German has an African second nationality. We do have a Bosnian national with German second nationality. Anyway, this is an poor intake overall. 

Spoiler

 

[ToMexico!!]

I've just holidayed until intake on a seperate new save with the same club and the outcome is similar. 

All except one player has 2nd nationality as from Africa. I've commented this on my bug post. 

[ToMexico!!]

2023/24 Season Review

Through the second half of the season there was no consistency whatsoever, we managed to string two wins in a row together just once and our longest unbeaten run was three games, twice. The tactic we seemed to change to and intially did well, stopped being effective and we return to our previous 4-2-4 with wing play but then returned back to a DM, two CAMs and a lone striker. We did, however, better last seasons 11th placed finish with a 10th placed one. 

We mustered the same amount of points (53) as last season and managed to win more games (3) as we lost more games than the season before. We scored more goals with 64 (compared to 38 last season) but also conceded more (66 versus 34) as we were more open in attack and were succeptable to the counter. 

I now know that just the top four teams enter the Pokal for a reason as the competition is limited to 64 teams (All Bundesliga, Bundesliga 2 teams + top 4 3. Liga and 16 Lower League cup winners). It could be a while before we enter that competition. 

Benjamin Girth will almost likely have spent one season with us as his demands to renew are unacceptable, the forward however did score 14 goals and make seven assists in 23(3) appearances this season. He's currently on £3k p/w but wants in excess of £5k p/w as a regular starter. Biershchenk and Steczyk both notched eight goals whilst Damer got seven from the right. New signing Wosz scored six from a mix of MC and AMC depending on formation we played. 

The board are really happy with the job I am doing...

Whilst the Supporters aren't as happy but content.

The finances are wild, theres been no imput from the board but also no negativity around the loss of money although its not becuase of anything I am doing as we are £15k p/w under the wage budget. 

[ToMexico!!]

Sponsorship

The 1 year deal in place at the start of the save was £2.1m, it halved last season to £1.2m (well nearly halved) and this season its halved again. 

Despite doing better than board and media expectations. This save could become unsustainable quite quickly as we will soon be unable to buy any players let alone ones to improve this squad.