[FM23] G'day from Sicily - A Catania SSD story

[Big Yellow]

 

INTRODUCTION

Originally founded in 1908 as Associazione Sportiva pro Educazione Fisica, the club boasts 17 appearances in the top flight, achieved moderate success, reaching the top position of eighth place in Serie A on four occasions: during the early 1960s and again in 2012–13. However, this has not stopped it remaining one of the most important clubs in Southern Italy; is the 12th most popular team in Italy, with around 600,000 fans. The club also went on a number of dissolutions and refoundations, the last happening in 2022.

The Cibali - Angelo Massimino, the home of Catania SSD.

 

Catania were kicked out of Serie C due to financial issues and filed for bankruptcy. The club were saved in June 2022, when they were brought back to life by an Australian-born businessman with Sicilian roots, Ross Pelligra (Pelligra Group) and rebranded as Catania Società Sportiva Dilettantistica, or Catania S.S.D. Ross' right hand man, and Vice President at the club would be no other than former Socceroo and Serie A regular, Vincenzo Grella. 

 

The Pelligra Group also own the Australian A-League side, Adelaide United. So it's a no-brainer that a link between Catania and Adelaide United will be formed, benefitting both clubs. Adelaide United will be used as a feeder club for raw Aussie talent to enter the European game via Catania where they can either stay to be club heroes or on-sold to generate some much needed income for the parent club as they progress through the Italian football pyramid. 

 

Catania SSD look like this on Football Manager 2023:

 

The club are expected to gain automatic promotion by winning their group in Serie D so the pressure is on to perform! 

The board does not have any strict requirements, however, they are focused on youth and bringing younger players to the team. We will do this by scouting in Italy whilst still in the lower leagues, and also using our sources at Adelaide United. 

 

Immediate and short term goals for the save will include:

- Gain promotion to Serie C 

- Avoid bankruptcy 

- Gain professional status

 

With long term goals to include:

- Maintain youth focus and develop our youth facilities/recruitment

- Promote and sign Australian youngsters and develop them to become Internationals

- Gain promotion to Serie A

 

In the next installments, we will assess the squad, club finances and come up with some tactics that will hopefully get us promoted to Serie C!

Thanks for reading!

Edited November 25, 2022 by Big Yellow

[SixPointer]

Fantastic club choice! Following closely! 

[Matty Aqua]

is the debt still remaining at the club?

[Big Yellow]

11 hours ago, Matty Aqua said:

is the debt still remaining at the club?

The club has no net debt or transfer debt it would seem. 

I will go over finances in the next post! 

[Matty Aqua]

I'm pretty sure they had a massive debt but were purchased by the Australians!

[Big Yellow]

Club Assessment

We start off our club assessment by looking at the club finances. We are lucky in that the club does not carry any net debt or transfer debt, although we only have a balance of £105k. 

 

As we are expected to gain promotion in the first year, it is imperative that we have the funds and resources to stay afloat during the year.  Looking at the finance projection for Year 1, the total wage bill will cost £1.79M with a overall projected loss of £1.71M. Given the lack of income during the year, we will look to bolster the coffers by arranging some friendlies with Serie A clubs during the preseason. At this stage, we will only concern ourselves with what happens by the end of the 22/23 season. 

 

So with that said, some friendly proposals have been sent out, and hopefully the income generated from these matches will give us a small cushion to get us going along. 

 

Looking at our staff, we seem to have retained some coaches, a Head of Youth Development and a Director of Football. The recruitment team and medical team are looking like Tottenham's trophy cabinet. I think for the Serie D season, we will try get a few positions filled in the Medical team, however, the recruitment team may have to wait until our finances are more clearer. 

 

Looking at our senior squad, the lack of depth to our winger department will almost see us play with a narrow formation, either as a 442 Diamond or 4312. Considering we have a few centre backs at our disposal, we may look at a three at the back system as well. 

 

We will utilize Target forwards as our forwards seem to possess some decent strength and look to play a high tempo and direct style. 

 

 

The next update will include some tactical development and cover off our friendly matches. 

 

Thanks for reading! 

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by Big Yellow

[Lestri]

Gonna bring in Craig Goodwin aka the Pavard tormentor for 9 minutes in?

[Big Yellow]

1 hour ago, Matty Aqua said:

I'm pretty sure they had a massive debt but were purchased by the Australians!

Yeah must have cleared the debts when Calcio Catania went bankrupt! 

20 minutes ago, Lestri said:

Gonna bring in Craig Goodwin aka the Pavard tormentor for 9 minutes in?

I think Goodwin is out of our reach haha! would love to have him in our team! I have my eye on his Adelaide United teammate, Nestory Irankunda though! 

[Big Yellow]

 

As mentioned in our squad assessment, we will look to play in a narrow formation utilizing our Target forwards. Out of possession, we will play a simple mid block and adjust our defensive line according to the opposition. 

Our main tactic for the season will be a 4312 where we can get on the pitch our better core of players. For tough away games or Cup ties against teams in higher divisions, we may revert to a cautions 5 man defensive system, with a double pivot in the DM line. 

  

 

With the tactics sorted, it was time to look at our squad depth and best XI. 

From the chart above, leftback appeared to be our weakest point. The only two players good enough for the first time are only 18 and 20 so this may be an area we may need to improve during the window if the right player can be identified. 

 

The midfield quartet looks like it will be good enough to compete, however, we may look to bolster this area of the squad to provide some rotation and depth over the season. Getting onto the blower with the coaching staff at Adelaide United, we were able to secure on loan for the season, 18 year old midfielder Bernardo. He possesses some excellent pace, dribbling and flair for Serie D and will compete for a starting spot in the midfield. 

 

After dipping our toes in the transfer market, it was time to get stuck into the friendlies. As the majority of our friendly fixtures were against some bigger teams in Serie A and Serie B, we did not expect to win many of these matches. However, we came away with some surprising victories against Pescara and even a full strength Napoli team!

 

A quick look at our finances after the run of friendlies, we can see we wiped off almost £300k off our projected end of year loss. 

 

With the preseason complete, it was time to select our captains to lead our charge up the Serie D table. Veterans Francesco Rapisarda and Giseppe Giovinco have been appointed Captain and Vice Captain respectively. Hopefully their experience will shine through and provide some mentoring to the younger members of the squad.

 

The next update will include the season opener and first month of competitive fixtures for the reborn Catania S.S.D!!

 

Thanks for reading! 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Big Yellow

[deltablue]

I love the kit.

[Big Yellow]

5 hours ago, deltablue said:

I love the kit.

the kits are very cool!

[Big Yellow]

 

September Update

 

Of the 7 fixtures during August and September, we won all except for a 1-1 draw at Home against Cittanova. 

 

This good run of form allowed us to sit on top of the table at the end of September, scoring a healthy number of goals whilst also keeping it tight at the back. 

 

We lead the league with the most goals scored, most shots for and fewest shots against. 

 

Looking at the player stats overview we can see that our Advanced Striker, Giuseppe De Luca, leads the league with Most Shots and the Shots/90 minutes metric.  However, concerningly, he is no where near the top of the goal charts having only scored 1 goal in 7 games.  

 

 

His underperformance against his xG would suggest that he is getting good looks but simply missing all his chances!

 

Looking at De Luca's stats he has 11 for finishing which is bang on average for the league, and his composure of 11 is amongst the highest in the division. 

 

Considering all our other strikers are no much better and the transfer window is closed, we will need to find other solutions. Considering our tactic is performing well, we don't want to make any drastic changes. 

One option is to play our No.10, Giuseppe Giovinco, in the advanced forward role who has much higher finishing compared to De Luca.

 

By moving Giovinco into the 9 role, we leave an opportunity for our youngster from Adelaide United to take on the No.10 spot. Hopefully he can hit the ground running. 

The next update will see us cover the October fixtures and hopefully Giovinco can get amongst the goals!

 

Thanks for reading. 

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Big Yellow

[Ciccio1996]

Hi!! I'm a huge Catania fans and I would like to start a career with my favorite team just like you. I was wondering how you have original Catania logo and kits because i can't find anything on the web about serie D kits and logos. Could you share me the file with Catania logo and kits? A thousand thanks 

[5harkey]

Great start so far, love how you have presented everything... Looking forward to following your progress.

[SanTullo]

Good start! You should steamroll yourself into serie C/C, where things will get interesting. You will automatically be given professional status upon promotion as well.

 

Also, which database are you using? FusionDB has a really good one down to the fifth tier, with all the cups included as well.

Edited January 9, 2023 by SanTullo

[aghtao]

Great start!