[FM23] African Super League

[rusty217]

Current version:

Africa Super League.fmf

African leagues:
Morocco.fmf

Old versions:

Africa Super League.fmf

My attempt at the Africa Super League intended to start next year.

Firstly, I'd highly recommend using smaller African domestic leagues alongside this to prevent crazy fixture congestion. I'm planning on working on a bunch in the near future. The group stage of the African Champions League and Confederation Cup has been removed to partially account for the increased number of games. The Champions League now mostly takes place in the first half of the season with the final in February, the Confederation Cup in the latter half with the final in May.

The Super League starts in August 2023 with 24 of the best African clubs from 16 different countries. The teams are split into 3 groups of 8, split geographically with the northernmost teams being in group 1, the central teams in group 2 and the southernmost teams in group 3. The group stage runs from August -February with teams playing a 2x round robin in their group, and 1 match against 2 teams from each of the other 2 groups, for a total of 18 games.

The top 2 teams from each group, and the 2 3rd/4th placed teams with the most points, progress to the knockout rounds. The knockouts are 2 legged until the 1 off final at a pre-determined host stadium.

The bottom 2 teams from each group proceed to the relegation playoff. They are joined by the 12 best teams from that seasons Champions League that aren't already in the Super League and make 6 groups of 3 teams. The existing Super League teams are all placed in different groups. Each group plays 2x round robin, the winner of the group gets a place in the Super League next season, the 2nd and 3rd placed teams don't.

The competition has working awards including a manager of the year and dream team.

The competition features significantly more money than the African Champions League. Lots of prize and TV money is available. TV money is also boosted in any match featuring 2 high reputation teams.

As far as I'm aware African coefficients are unaffected, countries can still gain/lose places in the Champions League and Confederation Cup and league reputations/prize money are still dynamic.

The group stage schedule could probably do with a bit of fine tuning, especially given Jan/Feb clashes with both the AFCON and CHAN, as well as busy domestic schedules, host stadium selection for the final could be better too, but I'm not aware of any issues other than those.

 

Edited November 14, 2022 by rusty217

[anitamui]

where will the teams relegated from the Super League play?

BTW,thanks for your work

[rusty217]

1 hour ago, anitamui said:

where will the teams relegated from the Super League play?

BTW,thanks for your work

All the teams in the Super League stay in their national leagues, so getting relegated just means no more Super League. They'll still be in their national league/cup and be able to qualify for the Champions League/Confederation Cup. They need to do well in the Champions League to get another chance at the Super League.

[rusty217]

A small update to fix the records page never updating. For some reason it wouldn't update until I put a fake record on there to start it off.

[kandersson]

Looks amazing, and a game-changer for any african save. Thanks a lot for this 

[rusty217]

17 minutes ago, kandersson said:

Looks amazing, and a game-changer for any african save. Thanks a lot for this 

No problem

The fixture congestion is still a real issue though. Currently testing a 12 team Moroccan league and even that is having issues. This is the end of Raja's season:

That April is crazy! Might have to try a 10 team league instead. Or if I could figure out a way for the game just to force teams to play their reserves or something in domestic league matches rather than postponing them and having a crazy end to the season that could work too.

Edit: I might have a solution. If I copy Brazil's method of playing through international breaks for the domestic league that could work. Just play through qualifiers and the AFCON/CHAN instead of stopping for them. Still stop for the ASL of course, but the domestic leagues can just play through. It should mostly affect teams in the ASL anyway who should really have greater squad depth and resources anyway.

Edited November 10, 2022 by rusty217

[kandersson]

@rusty217not sure about other leagues but in South Africa there's usually a pause in january (I also see that gap in your screenshot from Moroccan league) maybe you could squeeze more ASL games during that window?

[themodelcitizen]

Re: forcing the U23s, I suppose you could just add basic nation rules for each country. For example with Morocco, in the Botola rules where it says "teams", it should currently say "get all teams from division". Enter a new line BEFORE that line, with "get best teams in competition", with "team type" set to first team, with competition set to the Super League, max number of teams 24. Make sure the box at the top of this detail panel is checked for "ignore teams".

Then on the second line, which is the existing "get all teams from division", just add "backup team type" as "reserve team" or whatever. As long as the domestic leagues are set up AFTER the Super League has been drawn, obviously, and everyone has a reserve team added (at the top of the reserves panel under the club ID), I *believe* this should work.

edit: if the Super League hasn't been drawn for some domestic leagues but the African CL is already down to the final 4 or however many teams qualify for the Super League, you could instead use "ignore teams" with "best teams in comp" and max teams 4 for the African CL. That would just be telling it to ignore anyone left in the African CL and to then use the reserve team as a backup.

Edited November 10, 2022 by themodelcitizen

[rusty217]

15 hours ago, kandersson said:

@rusty217not sure about other leagues but in South Africa there's usually a pause in january (I also see that gap in your screenshot from Moroccan league) maybe you could squeeze more ASL games during that window?

That was actually intentional gap since the AFCON and CHAN take place Jan/Feb every year. I'll see if I can get domestic fixtures played in that period at least, that could help.

[rusty217]

10 hours ago, themodelcitizen said:

Re: forcing the U23s, I suppose you could just add basic nation rules for each country. For example with Morocco, in the Botola rules where it says "teams", it should currently say "get all teams from division". Enter a new line BEFORE that line, with "get best teams in competition", with "team type" set to first team, with competition set to the Super League, max number of teams 24. Make sure the box at the top of this detail panel is checked for "ignore teams".

Then on the second line, which is the existing "get all teams from division", just add "backup team type" as "reserve team" or whatever. As long as the domestic leagues are set up AFTER the Super League has been drawn, obviously, and everyone has a reserve team added (at the top of the reserves panel under the club ID), I *believe* this should work.

edit: if the Super League hasn't been drawn for some domestic leagues but the African CL is already down to the final 4 or however many teams qualify for the Super League, you could instead use "ignore teams" with "best teams in comp" and max teams 4 for the African CL. That would just be telling it to ignore anyone left in the African CL and to then use the reserve team as a backup.

Interesting. That could work. Would need to make sure the databases for all the files are the same so the Super League has the same UID in each. The Super League is drawn in July/early August so getting domestic leagues to be setup after that shouldn't be an issue. I'll have a play around and see if I can get it to work.

[themodelcitizen]

Keep us posted. I tend to favour using extinct competitions where possible to work across databases like that, although it has its own issues. It looks like you might be able to add multiple nation rules in the same file now though? Haven't tested it out

[rusty217]

Tried both methods. The ignore teams method is certainly interesting. There are a couple issues though, firstly the reserves team is counted as the winners rather than the main team on the league page. They're still credited on their team competition history, but it can make it look odd. Tried with Tunisia and ES Tunis ended up with 49 Ligue 1 wins, but the Ligue 1 record for most times won was ES Tunis with only 35. 14 of those wins went to the reserves so didn't fully count. Also, players aren't often made available for the reserves. It's a bit weird seeing star players with only like 3 appearances some years (SI really need to update the Career Stats page so it shows all apps, not just league ones!) I considered just removing them from the domestic leagues entirely and having dynamic league sizes. That could be a good option in some situations. But the Super League not counting as "league" appearances would definitely be an issue for me (see above).

Also tried telling the leagues to just ignore international fixtures. January ended up being crazy busy, but it kind of worked out. The only issue Super League teams can have manager job security issues due to poor league position. Al-Ahly's manager was insecure at one point because they were in the relegation zone, they also had 7-8 games in hand though and actually finished 1st in the end. I figure if I try and bias league matches towards the end of the season (when the Super League only has knockout matches) that should keep teams from getting too far behind. I'll also see about changing the Super League schedule, start it in late July maybe and have the group stage finished by the end of December. Now I just need to create a couple dozen African leagues!

[themodelcitizen]

There might be a stage flag somewhere (under "add league history" maybe?) to bring in apps/goals from another competition as part of a team and player's league history. I also wonder if there's a way to force the history to be written to the first team, that might be impossible though. I wonder if the "other league stage flag" of "only give league fates out when the stage is finished" might help with the sacking issue, that's just speculation mind you.

Anyway sorry to digress so much, I guess if you're creating nation rules you could try and take the participants out of their domestic cups that year as well (same "ignore teams" method with flexible amounts of cup teams). Free up a few days

[Samuel77]

Le 11/11/2022 à 05:53, themodelcitizen a dit :

It looks like you might be able to add multiple nation rules in the same file now though?

Sorry to pollute this thread but how do we do it? Do we have to merge the files of the different nations? 

[rusty217]

Updated with a new version. Tweaked the schedule slightly to prevent fixture congestion. Also changed the Champions League to be a 2 legged final. Had an unfortunate bug where it refused to play the match at the host stadium, despite recording the host stadium in the history. Couldn't get around it so just playing it over 2 legs like it used to be instead.

Also finished a league file for Morocco. I'm pretty happy with the schedule now. It's busy, but it's more balanced and the most important months aren't too busy, so players shouldn't be exhausted for semis/finals etc. I reduced the league to 14 teams, and added a League Cup for teams not involved in the Super League so they're not actually playing any less games. I'm not sure how accurate it is financially though, I don't know much about finances in African football.

Going to try and do some more leagues too, focusing on the strongest countries in Africa.

Edited November 14, 2022 by rusty217

[guku]

Wooo keep going I want to play in Africa

[Alzo0z]

Is there a similar file for fm22?

[rusty217]

15 hours ago, Alzo0z said:

Is there a similar file for fm22?

No, sorry. This was my big new project for FM23. The 40 team WC and international overhaul was what I did for FM22.

It might be compatible if you try and load it in the editor for FM22, I doubt it though. And considering how long it took to fix issues with converting my FM22 files to FM23, even if you can go back a game too I doubt it'd be easy.

[benhamoudafares010]

Can you create tunisian league ?

 

[donbalonofficial]

Is it possible to make a AFC or CONCACAF/CONMEBOL version of this file?

[anitamui]

23.4?

[NadhirFM23]

23.4 ? 

[zaqifier]

Can't wait for it to actually start. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by zaqifier

[WotinTarnation]

On 06/07/2023 at 18:24, zaqifier said:

Can't wait for it to actually start. 

I agree, since we haven't gotten a timetable, list of clubs or anything since it was announced last year, and I'm not gonna be surprised if it's delayed to 2024-25 or 2025-26. Maybe we will see more information at the CAF General Assembly next week?

[themodelcitizen]

Just 8 teams for first one next year (Oct 2023). https://jinsiyaonline.com/clubs-participating-in-africa-super-league-2023/ Should help with the fixture congestion that kept coming up here

EDIT: It's the AFL now https://independent.ng/caf-renames-african-super-league/

Edited July 9, 2023 by themodelcitizen