Adding expansion team into MLS

[Augusto11]

I am trying to add San Diego FC into my FM24 save to have 30 teams in the MLS, but I am having problems doing this.

I have created the club, added it to the MLS, and edited the minimum and maximum teams from 29 to 30, but when I test the league I get this error:

Does anyone know how can I fix this?

[themodelcitizen]

The competition rules are specific to 29 teams, you'd have to re-do the fixture plan (not a simple case of everyone playing everyone once or twice) in "group settings" (I think in stage 0) to accommodate the extra team. You'd mess up some of the MLS features like the draft and the weird budget stuff too, at least without lots more work to get it back to normal (some of it might be hard-coded though).

Honestly I'd restart the project with writing over an existing MLS team, especially one in the West already, and making all their staff free agents, then San Diego would just inherit all their draft picks, GAM, international slots etc

Edited September 22 by themodelcitizen

[Toronto Blizzard]

As @themodelcitizen says, you need to do some work in the advanced editor to get it to work, but the easiest thing to do is to re-purpose Chivas USA and CUSA Academy.  Then you need to increase the number of teams in a bunch of places in the USA advanced rules and fix the fixture plan.  The easiest thing to do is to have each team play each other team once (29 matches), and then within the conference five more times (for 34 total games).

With this, Chivas takes part in the waiver/re-entry and Superdrafts (though not the Expansion Draft).

 

Here's the file - all you would need to do is edit Chivas USA and CUSA to San Diego/San Diego Academy, change the stadium, et cetera, and you should be good to go

USA Chivas.fmf

[themodelcitizen]

Wow that's so cool. Wonder if amy other old team IDs like the Metrostars would have similar functionality. Probably too far back though

[PaMi 7]

Does it work only with former MLS team?

[Toronto Blizzard]

12 hours ago, themodelcitizen said:

Wow that's so cool. Wonder if amy other old team IDs like the Metrostars would have similar functionality. Probably too far back though

I haven't experimented with Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny yet (both extinct after 2001).  I chose Chivas because they a) were an extinct MLS team and b) they had an academy affiliate (I don't believe these were added to MLS in FM until the early 2010s).

My guess is there's some back-end hard-coding that would make it easier to use Chivas - you could always try another team.  You might be able to use Chivas USA's academy team and change the affiliation to still get the youth intake (or one of the myriad other teams at that level in the US pyramid that generate newgens).

[themodelcitizen]

Yeah there are some interesting possibilities there. I guess you'd have to account for game trying to fit the extra MLS team in the Leagues Cup and Open Cup as well, although the game might be able to bump a Mexican team (in Leagues Cup) or lower league team (in Open Cup) to make room 

[Toronto Blizzard]

They played in both.  I think a Mexican club got bumped, but I haven't done the counting to confirm.

 

 

Edited September 26 by Toronto Blizzard

[themodelcitizen]

As far as you can see is everything working around them? MLS drafts, allocation order, other teams' international slots, GAM, TAM, all that crap. Tempted to add San Diego FC this way, even if they aren't fully participating it would be OK if everyone else is

[Toronto Blizzard]

I only ran a simulation for a bit over a season to see if I got Superdraft picks, so I never actually played, but, as best as I can tell, it was working properly.  You may want to simulate a couple of seasons with the file I attached in an earlier post to check some of those things.