Help with ideas for completely changing the world

[Fire0Fart]

So, I'm creating a database in which I want to completely change the world. 
For example:
1. Merging MLS and Liga MX
2. Caribbean superleague
3. Central America superleague
4. African superleague like the one that is starting in August this year but maybe splitting merged zones (in real life it will be north, west+central, east+south, so for each zone its own division)
5. Merging some European league like Scandinavian, Balkan, central Europe etc.
6. South American superleague or also merging some leagues like in Europe 
7. World cup, continental cup, regional cup every third year?
8. Move Israel, turkey, Kazakhstan to Asia, Guyana's and Suriname to south America?

I have this idea in my head but it needs some work, so I want to hear some opinions from you guys. Like what to do with asia (also thought about merging some nations and creating a 3-tier competition that coming in a 2024?),  should I merge Oceania with asia, European superleague above all other European leagues (merged) or a tweaked champions league, world club cup, maybe crate an Arab confederation. I intend to put a lot of work in this but I always come with a new idea in the middle of creating it and then start again from the beginning... So I want to hear as much ideas as I can (literally anything can help, as you can see with Guyana's idea lol). With your help I think we can create something really incredible and fun.

Again, even the STUPIDEST idea can eventually make it to the database.

Edit:

I will put a list here of all things that I'm currently thinking about and would like to hear some opinions. Some things I already mentioned above but here is a little more in depth explanation.

Merged Americas:

1. Merge MLS and Liga MX - one top division with 2 subdivisions, 10 american and 8 Mexican teams, each playing home and away with top 4 from each going to playoffs, bottom 1-2 teams from each subdivision relegated. Second division with 2 subdivisions, 20 American and 20 Mexican teams, only playing with teams from its own subdivision, 1-2 promoted. Would like to include Canada but don't know how (Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are in MLS so that's something)

2. Central American league - 16-20 teams in first and second division, regional third division for each country with champion teams going to playoffs for promotion.

3. Caribbean league - could use some advices and ideas

4. In south America either a superleague with second division having a league for each nation or merging some leagues (Brazil on its own, Argentina,Uruguay,Paraguay,Chile,Bolivia,Ecuador,Peru,Colombia,Venezuela)

5. Merged Champions league for both Americas

Europe:

1. UK league (either all of UK in one league or leaving England by itself and creating a league of Scotland, Wales, Irelands)

2. League of Spain, Portugal, Andora and Gibraltar

3. Benelux league (Holland,Belgium, Luxembourg and can't decide if leaving France alone or also include it)

4. Central Europe (Czech republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Poland - maybe Germany)

5. Balkan league (Yugoslavia nations with Bulgaria, Albania, Greece) Here we have a lot of nations with each having 3-5 clubs worthy of top division so I want some ideas on the league format. I will probably include Romania but what about Moldova?

6. Scandinavia league (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Faroe islands)

7. Eastern league (Ukraine, Russia) now here is a problem. Should I include Baltic nations here or with Scandinavia, caucas nations (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) or move them to Asia, Kazakhstan also to Asia, or include central Asian teams and create USSR league?

8. Italy probably by itself or include with Spain and Portugal?

9. Euro-asian league with Israel, Turkey, and Cyprus (maybe also caucas nations since they have a border with Turkey) and move them to Asia or leave in Europe?

10. Creating superleague with all these league below it or keep champions league, Europe league and conference league, or maybe both for teams outside of superleague? Should superleague be seasonal (teams playing in their own league and top teams qualify to superleague each season or superleague with promotion-relegation?

Africa:

I will most likely merge nation into regional leagues (north,west,east,central,south) with top 2 divisions in each and third tier for each nation in region with promotional playoffs  or a superleague above all these league?

Asia and Oceania:

Don't know exactly what to do here. I was thinking about merging nations and creating a 3 tier continental competitions like what's coming in a few years. Merge nations would probably be regional (south,southeast,west,central...) Or leave top league like Japan and South Korea by themselves.

Arab World:

Maybe even creating a new Arab association with north Africa, west Asia, and central Asia to fill up some spots. Maybe include already mentioned European nations that I intend to move to Asia? Then merge Oceania and east Asia.

World:

Some type of world champions league or superleague for clubs? World cup, continental cup, regional cup for nations every third year?

I will write somewhere here a list of things which are decided so we can build something step by step.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Fire0Fart

[Motobaka]

Maybe include Canada in the MLS LigaMx league.

[Wolf_pd]

If you need ideas and suggestions, check this thread 

Sorry for the shameless plug   Also, keep in mind that it can take a while to work something like your plan out.

[Fire0Fart]

55 minutes ago, Motobaka said:

Maybe include Canada in the MLS LigaMx league.

Canada is kind of represented already in mls with Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. I was thinking for that to be like first division with two subdivisions. 10 clubs MLS and 8-10 Liga MX with each team playing home and away with every other team from both subdivisions, top 4 from each go to playoff, last one or two relegate from each subdivision. Second divisions MLS 20 teams and Liga MX 20 teams, playing only against teams in it own subdivision and one or two from each promoted. So any idea how to put other Canadian teams in this?

[Fire0Fart]

20 minutes ago, Wolf_pd said:

If you need ideas and suggestions, check this thread 

Sorry for the shameless plug   Also, keep in mind that it can take a while to work something like your plan out.

Thanks I've seen your work before, great job. I know it will take a while but the problem I have is that I have too much ideas and when I start working on something I get a lot of new ideas which intervene with the old ones, so I just stop working on it for a few weeks because I can't decide with which version to continue... That's why I started this thread to see if anyone can set my mind on some things. For example if I'm doing a Balkan league do I include Romania? And then if I include Romania do I also include Moldova (because they are some talks about unification) or do I put Moldova in eastern (USSR) league, which brings to another problem lol, if I'm doing USSR should I include the Stans or not because it would be weird for clubs to be in Europe and nations in Asia, and then what about Baltic states? Northern Europe league or USSR? Things like this completely ruin me 😂.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Fire0Fart

[Wolf_pd]

I know. I have the same problem. That's why I did it in this style this time so the story would add up for me.

Mapping out things does help me, but what also helps is taking certain basics as your starting point. For me language is a thing for instance and I lift a lot out of history.

[rusty217]

6 hours ago, Fire0Fart said:

4. African superleague like the one that is starting in August this year but maybe splitting merged zones (in real life it will be north, west+central, east+south, so for each zone its own division)

If you're interested I've already made a working African Super League. Planning to release a few new versions (with more teams) in the near future too.

 

[Fire0Fart]

9 hours ago, rusty217 said:

If you're interested I've already made a working African Super League. Planning to release a few new versions (with more teams) in the near future too.

 

Yeah when I saw your work I actually started thinking about my database lol so thanks for that. About your version I was thinking about creating it in a single nation so there could be some stuff like all african cups or something, without teams actually playing in their own national leages. But since Africa has a really small number of "top" clubs outside of north Africa I can't decide if each region should have its own league or to merge some. For example in central Africa there are some clubs from Dr congo and congo but thats pretty much it. In south African region sooner or later the whole league will be dominated by south African clubs.

[rusty217]

13 minutes ago, Fire0Fart said:

Yeah when I saw your work I actually started thinking about my database lol so thanks for that. About your version I was thinking about creating it in a single nation so there could be some stuff like all african cups or something, without teams actually playing in their own national leages. But since Africa has a really small number of "top" clubs outside of north Africa I can't decide if each region should have its own league or to merge some. For example in central Africa there are some clubs from Dr congo and congo but thats pretty much it. In south African region sooner or later the whole league will be dominated by south African clubs.

Yep, that's definitely an issue for Africa. North Africa is well stocked with good teams. Western and Eastern Africa aren't particularly competitive for continental titles, but at least their country's top clubs are at a pretty similar level so they don't just get dominated by 1 country. Central and Southern Africa however...

Personally I try and pick some countries that I could realistically see becoming powerhouses in African football and giving them some boosts to help develop their league. It's a long term goal, I don't just throw money at them, rather try and balance them in such a way that when their reputation does increase the prize/TV money in those leagues will be comparable with DR Congo and South Africa. Having the default CAF Champions League still running and teams split up into their domestic leagues is needed for dynamic rep/prize money to work, so I have to keep a fair amount of separation.

I picked out Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola for that area. Tanzania have a similar population to South Africa, while the latter two certainly have high enough populations to support a decent league plus those two have a fair bit of Portuguese influence so ending up football powerhouses would make sense (I mean, just look at Brazil!). Their economies are all way behind South Africa (although Tanzania and Angola are ahead of DR Congo at least), but like I said it's a long term project with the goal to make them competitive with South Africa and DR Congo over the course of a few decades.

All 3 could fit into either a Central or Southern African league/group depending on the need too.

[Fire0Fart]

2 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Yep, that's definitely an issue for Africa. North Africa is well stocked with good teams. Western and Eastern Africa aren't particularly competitive for continental titles, but at least their country's top clubs are at a pretty similar level so they don't just get dominated by 1 country. Central and Southern Africa however...

Personally I try and pick some countries that I could realistically see becoming powerhouses in African football and giving them some boosts to help develop their league. It's a long term goal, I don't just throw money at them, rather try and balance them in such a way that when their reputation does increase the prize/TV money in those leagues will be comparable with DR Congo and South Africa. Having the default CAF Champions League still running and teams split up into their domestic leagues is needed for dynamic rep/prize money to work, so I have to keep a fair amount of separation.

I picked out Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola for that area. Tanzania have a similar population to South Africa, while the latter two certainly have high enough populations to support a decent league plus those two have a fair bit of Portuguese influence so ending up football powerhouses would make sense (I mean, just look at Brazil!). Their economies are all way behind South Africa (although Tanzania and Angola are ahead of DR Congo at least), but like I said it's a long term project with the goal to make them competitive with South Africa and DR Congo over the course of a few decades.

All 3 could fit into either a Central or Southern African league/group depending on the need too.

I was thinking maybe since the league would be on a higher level like in real life if merged to increasing reputation of some weaker clubs but not by much.

Also what do you think about creating new Arab association and moving north Africa there? Also I've wrote some more information in the first post so I you could look at it and give me some recommendations please😁.

[lukavski]

Those are great ideas! Especially the regional Super-Leagues (South-America, Balkans, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Central-Europe, Africa, Western-Asia, Caribbean...) to make those regions competitive along the Big 5.

Sometimes the game gets boring when the same Nations always win the biggest trophies in the World.

 

I made a Database with a competition where each team represents a city, based on Luxembourg. I separated all clubs (cities) by regions (16) with two major world tournaments and an end of Season Super-Cup between the two winners.

Every League (Region) has the same power.

So, for example you can have a Stockholm vs Tokyo Grand Final at the end of the Year. Or maybe a Munich vs Brasilia, or Cairo vs Madrid, or Seul vs Milan. You get the idea.

 

That's the only solution for a New and Complete World I could come up with.

Every other options I though of required to change too many active Nations to move clubs from and the game felt broken. 

I'm enjoying the game like never before, but I know is not for everyone. 

[rusty217]

On 26/01/2023 at 23:00, Fire0Fart said:

I was thinking maybe since the league would be on a higher level like in real life if merged to increasing reputation of some weaker clubs but not by much.

Also what do you think about creating new Arab association and moving north Africa there? Also I've wrote some more information in the first post so I you could look at it and give me some recommendations please😁.

As far as I'm aware you can't create new associations. So the only way to do that would be to use an existing one (Oceania, maybe? You could move the existing Oceania nations into Asia instead).

Didn't realise there was a new 3 tier setup coming for Asia, thanks for the info. That sounds very interesting. Too bad it probably won't be implemented in the vanilla game until FM25

There's also an OFC Super League planned in the near future too, something like that could be interesting. Especially trying to balance it so that it isn't completely dominated by New Zealand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFC_Professional_League

[Wolf_pd]

Is there any info on the Asia changes? Oceania plans look interesting, hopefully SI implements them soon(ish).

[rusty217]

3 hours ago, Wolf_pd said:

Is there any info on the Asia changes? Oceania plans look interesting, hopefully SI implements them soon(ish).

Not too much yet, here's a summary of what's known so far though https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2022/12/30/afc-plans-radical-revamp-champions-league-afc-cup-competitions/

Sounds pretty interesting. Seems they're copying the UCL league phase, but split into 2 groups so they still have an East/West split. Only 24 teams in the ACL will be quite strange though, especially as the current group stage has 40!

The 2nd tier sounds basically the same as the old 32 team group stage ACL (or the current UCL for that matter!). The 3rd tier sounds pretty interesting too, possibly the most disruptive to domestic seasons though, with teams playing group stage matches at a host venue I assume they'll play them all within a few days of each other and not staggered over a few months like current continental competitions. Could make it exciting at least.

Gotta say I'm a bit disappointed they plan to have the same number of teams involved. It kind of annoys me that for the top Asian nations it's currently top 3/4 (or cup win) to get into continental competitions or nothing. Would be better having more tiers allowed 5th/6th placed teams to get involved too or something, like in Europe. But I already have plans to fix that myself when FM25 (I assume SI won't implement the changes in time for FM24) releases!

[Wolf_pd]

6 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Not too much yet, here's a summary of what's known so far though https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2022/12/30/afc-plans-radical-revamp-champions-league-afc-cup-competitions/

Sounds pretty interesting. Seems they're copying the UCL league phase, but split into 2 groups so they still have an East/West split. Only 24 teams in the ACL will be quite strange though, especially as the current group stage has 40!

The 2nd tier sounds basically the same as the old 32 team group stage ACL (or the current UCL for that matter!). The 3rd tier sounds pretty interesting too, possibly the most disruptive to domestic seasons though, with teams playing group stage matches at a host venue I assume they'll play them all within a few days of each other and not staggered over a few months like current continental competitions. Could make it exciting at least.

Gotta say I'm a bit disappointed they plan to have the same number of teams involved. It kind of annoys me that for the top Asian nations it's currently top 3/4 (or cup win) to get into continental competitions or nothing. Would be better having more tiers allowed 5th/6th placed teams to get involved too or something, like in Europe. But I already have plans to fix that myself when FM25 (I assume SI won't implement the changes in time for FM24) releases!

From the article this remark is interesting as well as it would mean a possibility for new foreign player regs

Quote

This will change again from the 2024/25 season with the AFC now recognising each nation’s domestic regulations on foreign player registrations.

I always like the European competitions as being disruptive for the national one. Playing both European and national should be bring extra pressure on the team (and that's why I don't the big-team player hoarding). It seems that this will bring a bit more pressure on the Asian teams, so I like it.

[rusty217]

9 hours ago, Wolf_pd said:

From the article this remark is interesting as well as it would mean a possibility for new foreign player regs

I always like the European competitions as being disruptive for the national one. Playing both European and national should be bring extra pressure on the team (and that's why I don't the big-team player hoarding). It seems that this will bring a bit more pressure on the Asian teams, so I like it.

Yep, very interesting. Especially since here in Japan they've scrapped foreign player limits. There's still a limit of 5 foreign players in a match squad, but you can have as many as you want at the club now. Advantage Japan in ACL matches now?

Although we're also expanding to a 20 team league so having an extra 4 league matches per season, plus possibly more continental matches. It'll be interesting for sure!

[Fire0Fart]

On 30/01/2023 at 05:00, lukavski said:

Those are great ideas! Especially the regional Super-Leagues (South-America, Balkans, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Central-Europe, Africa, Western-Asia, Caribbean...) to make those regions competitive along the Big 5.

Sometimes the game gets boring when the same Nations always win the biggest trophies in the World.

 

I made a Database with a competition where each team represents a city, based on Luxembourg. I separated all clubs (cities) by regions (16) with two major world tournaments and an end of Season Super-Cup between the two winners.

Every League (Region) has the same power.

So, for example you can have a Stockholm vs Tokyo Grand Final at the end of the Year. Or maybe a Munich vs Brasilia, or Cairo vs Madrid, or Seul vs Milan. You get the idea.

 

That's the only solution for a New and Complete World I could come up with.

Every other options I though of required to change too many active Nations to move clubs from and the game felt broken. 

I'm enjoying the game like never before, but I know is not for everyone. 

Yeah i intend to improve all world regions with things that could actually happen in real life like some football league merging, African superleague a things like that. But I have problems with things like chosing a format for bigger regions like south America and Balkans. How many teams should be in first division and should it be split in subdivisions or all in one since for example in Balkan there are actually like 30 teams that could compete for first division and I feel bad about moving them to second tier. With south America I already tried a first division with 32 teams in 2 groups and each nation having its own league below, but with time most of Brazil teams end up in the first division.

[Fire0Fart]

On 30/01/2023 at 08:51, rusty217 said:

As far as I'm aware you can't create new associations. So the only way to do that would be to use an existing one (Oceania, maybe? You could move the existing Oceania nations into Asia instead).

Didn't realise there was a new 3 tier setup coming for Asia, thanks for the info. That sounds very interesting. Too bad it probably won't be implemented in the vanilla game until FM25

There's also an OFC Super League planned in the near future too, something like that could be interesting. Especially trying to balance it so that it isn't completely dominated by New Zealand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFC_Professional_League

About new association only way I can think of is creating everything in a single nation file.

New asian competitions sound really interesting especially if they remove foreign players rule which would really improve teams playing in it in my opinion if there is enough money involved which probably will. But it will suck for every underdeveloped nation because it will be mostly for nations like Japan,china and South Korea (afc released quotas for each nation based on coefficient and in east group out of 12 teams 8-10 will be from nations I mentioned above and only top 6 ranked in east Asia are allowed to participate, the rest go to lower tiers).

First time hearing about Oceania, could help them develop a lot actually.

Things are better explained here lol.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Fire0Fart

[Wolf_pd]

With regard to the continental cups rant, that's not up to FIFA, that's purely for the continental FA. Btw, UEFA did the same in the early 90s.

[Fire0Fart]

13 minutes ago, Wolf_pd said:

With regard to the continental cups rant, that's not up to FIFA, that's purely for the continental FA. Btw, UEFA did the same in the early 90s.

It isn't even different today since 20 out of 32 teams in the champions league are from top 5 leagues.

[rusty217]

12 hours ago, Fire0Fart said:

About new association only way I can think of is creating everything in a single nation file.

New asian competitions sound really interesting especially if they remove foreign players rule which would really improve teams playing in it in my opinion if there is enough money involved which probably will. But it will suck for every underdeveloped nation because it will be mostly for nations like Japan,china and South Korea (afc released quotas for each nation based on coefficient and in east group out of 12 teams 8-10 will be from nations I mentioned above and only top 6 ranked in east Asia are allowed to participate, the rest go to lower tiers).

First time hearing about Oceania, could help them develop a lot actually.

Things are better explained here lol.

Thanks for the info, didn't know about the details regarding the teams.

That person is wrong about some of it though. It's very important to note that Asia uses coefficients, the top countries that get teams into the tournament aren't fixed. Other countries can move up the rankings and replace them. The American competitions however are fixed, so are inherently less fair. The Brazil bias in the Libertadores is especially ridiculous!

Plus it makes it sound like the 40 team group stage ACL was a massive failure. Before that it used to more concentrated on the top nations, they opened it up and now very quickly they're closing it down again. Must've done poorly financially.

I don't really see the problem with having the 1st tier competition exclusively for the top nations though, hopefully the 3rd tier specifically excludes the top nations, like the current AFC Cup does. I kind of wished the Europa Conference League excluded the top 4-5 countries in Europe too actually, the idea of a tournament just for the lower ranked countries is pretty cool.

[rusty217]

12 hours ago, Fire0Fart said:

Yeah i intend to improve all world regions with things that could actually happen in real life like some football league merging, African superleague a things like that. But I have problems with things like chosing a format for bigger regions like south America and Balkans. How many teams should be in first division and should it be split in subdivisions or all in one since for example in Balkan there are actually like 30 teams that could compete for first division and I feel bad about moving them to second tier. With south America I already tried a first division with 32 teams in 2 groups and each nation having its own league below, but with time most of Brazil teams end up in the first division.

Have you thought of maybe running two separate leagues for it?

I was thinking myself about a potential Yugoslavian Super League (in my current FM save I'm managing in Serbia and the Red Star/Partizan dominance is ridiculous, would be nice to spice things up a bit with some other decent teams). Personally I'm dead set on maintaining separate UEFA places for each country though, which means they each need to remain in their own national league.

So what I was thinking was, play a shorter season, eg. 12 teams double round-robin so 22 games per team. Then split the league into 3. The top 2 from each country are declared winner/runner-up and qualify for the Super League which takes place from Jan/Feb-May. Maybe just single round robin with like 14 teams or something. The next 5 teams form a new group in the national league doing another double round-robin to compete for 3rd place and European spots, the bottom 5 do the same in their own group to determine who gets relegated. Perhaps a playoff between the top team in the relegation group and the bottom team in the Euro quals group that would've qualified for Europe for the final place so teams have incentive to top the relegation group too, not just avoid being bottom.

So then the top 2 play 35 games per season, and potentially win 2 trophies, while the other 10 teams place 30 games per season.

It'd be a bit like Brazil's state/national league system, except the state (country) leagues act as qualifiers for the national (regional super league) league, rather than teams being guaranteed both. Plus a more compact schedule, since Brazil's 50+ league games per season is crazy!

[Wolf_pd]

In the style of Moana Pasifika would Crimea work as a base nation for an Oceanian Superleague. You could keep al the nation, but not have the hassle of all competitions, just one big one.

[Samuel77]

Very interesting discussion. Very useful. Thank you!
Here are some points I took away from what I am trying to do.
I'm posting it here as well.

Citation

Here are some thoughts I have:

1) The fact of gathering in one nation several other nations (or in part) forces me to rebuild all the youth divisions and for that we are obliged to do it team by team which represents an enormous time. Especially as each country is different, some have U18s, others U20s and so on.
2) The file is likely to be very heavy, that would make a nation with 10 000 clubs at least, probably more.
3) There are some clubs that would end up in the third division even though they are recognised clubs in their own nation and their name evokes something from their history.
4) The risk of having only clubs from one country in the first division.
The solution to this is simple in principle, simply regionalise the groups or assign certain countries to specific groups.
5) An overloaded calendar. For various reasons, including 1) and 2) I have established the first division with 2 groups quite similar to the MLS for a total of 26 games (not counting the playoffs) from January to June + about 15 games for the regional championships from August to December. That would be about 45 games and to that you have to add the national cups and the continental competitions.

So for these reasons,
A) I would rather keep each team in its own nation and therefore rebuild their championship so that it stops in December and takes the form of "state championships" but remains my basis on which teams qualify for the continental cups.
B) So either build the "Super League" using the secondary divisions, or build the Super League in Continental Rules. Neither of these two solutions fully suits me, they both have their benefits and drawbacks (we talked about this somewhere on the forum) but would simplify the construction of the project in many ways.

 

[rusty217]

7 hours ago, Samuel77 said:

B) So either build the "Super League" using the secondary divisions, or build the Super League in Continental Rules. Neither of these two solutions fully suits me, they both have their benefits and drawbacks (we talked about this somewhere on the forum) but would simplify the construction of the project in many ways.

What do you think the drawbacks for making Super Leagues in continental rules are?

Personally I only see appearances not counting as "league" in player career histories as a drawback. But I think that's outweighed by the benefits, particularly national flags being shown alongside teams in the competition.

[Samuel77]

Yes, there are many advantages.
I find it more flexible to build. Also what makes me think it's a good solution for what I want to do is that it allows some teams to stay in the best national competition in their country which I imagine has an influence on their budget as well as on the players they can recruit.
I imagine a super league as a major competition with a promotion/relegation system and a second division where all the teams from the first national division that are not in the super league would qualify to fight for promotion. This would avoid having a multi-level pyramid where it would take several years for a team to reach the super league.
It would also allow for a normal format for the lower national divisions.
It is also easier to control squad registration under the continental rules.