[FM24] Everything’s Coming Up Mulhouse!

[Reiver]

 

Founded in 1893, it can be argued that Football Club Mulhouse is the oldest surviving football club in France. Amazingly enough, there's more than one argument for and against when I mentioned that it can be argued, with that expression doing a lot of work. First we have the fact that Le Havre Athletic Club claim to have been founded in 1872. Documents seem to actually indicate that it was founded by local British residents in 1884, but for the first 10 years of its existence the club played by its own football code, a mix of rugby and association football of their own; the club only started playing football in 1894; by this point both Mulhouse and a few teams from Paris existed. No here comes our second argument: while most Parisian teams from the time have since dissolved and can be easily removed from any surviving football club list, one club stands out. 

Standard Athletic Club was founded in 1892. They were even the first French Champions, in 1894, and then again the year after. By the 1930s, the team was no longer a top level competitive team, and bu the 1940s stopped competing in FFF competitions. It survives though, mostly as private British club in Paris, where they still offer spots activities, including football, even signing up as a member of FFF every once in a while, the last one lasting from 2013-2020. Should they count?

On the other hand, should Mulhouse themselves count? You see, while Mulhouse is now part of France, and FC Mulhouse is clearly a French club, it was not so clear in 1893, where Mulhouse was called Mülhausen, FC Mulhouse was called Fussball-Club Mülhausen, and we'd have to go to the German Reichsland Elsaß–Lothringen, or Alsace-Lorraine, to see them play their football. In fact, to this day, if we look at the biggest achievements of the club, almost as many of them happened while part of Germany as when they were part of France.

And if they count, despite their founding situation, yet another contender shows up. AS Strasbourg, now a small amateur team that plays around the ninth tier of French football, was founded in 1920, when the city was finally under full control of the French authorities, but they can trace their origin all the way back to 1890 and the founding of FV Straßburg.  The club themselves claim to be the second oldest French football club; I wonder if they consider Le Havre or AS Strasbourg the first.

This is all to say that FC Mulhouse is old and full of history. While they never really won any major trophies, they were a mainstay in French's second (27 seven seasons there) and third division for most of its existence, even spending 6 seasons in Ligue 1 and they've reached the quarter-finals of the Coupe de France 6 times and the semis once. Several famous (or at least internationally capped) players have donned their shirts, including the great Abedi Pele, Kees Kist (this one on loan from Paris Saint-German), Borislav Mihaylov, Arsène Wenger and Raymond Domenech, who also started their managerial career here.

While historically a decent professional club(well from 30s to 1945, and then again from 1970), FC Milhouse has been on a downwards trajectory. 1998 saw them relegated to the third tier, and just one year later they went bankrupt and got relegated one more time; and by the 2000s the team yo-yoed between the 3rd and 5th divisions, With the introduction of different divisions and restructuring of the league structure, they are currently sitting in the the Poule (or Group) C of the Régional 1 - Grand Est, the 6th tier of French football. Considering their history, the fact they Milhouse is one of the 40 biggest French cities, with over 100000 people, and the second biggest Alsatian city, and that they play in a 11303 people stadium in Stade de L'Ill, this is a club clearly hanging out well below their potential. I hope I can change that.

I am also old. Well, at lest internet old. I mean, I'm writing in a forum in 2024 instead of streaming on Twitch, making videos on Youtube or posting content on Tiktok. I am old enough to have a kid the same age I was when I started play Championship Manager 2. Am I good at tactics? Not really. Am I good at training? Not really. So let's see how it goes!

 

[Reiver]

 

 The Club

Playing in the sixth tier of French football, the club is fully amateur, as are all teams at this level. We play at the 11303 people Stade de L'Ill (with roughly half of the capacity being seated), and have below average training facilities and poor youth facilities; our reputation is currently local and as expected from an amateur team, there is no money in the bank. Youth recruitment is basic, but junior coaching is excellent; we have an agreement with FC Basel, where they have first option on our players, we can send youth players to their academy and we share scouting knowledge. There is hope we can take advantage and add more advantages to the agreement as we hopefully move up the tiers.

 

The Competitions

 

We play in three competitions this year. Two regional competitions (one league and one cup) and in the national cup. In the Regional 1 Grand Est we are grouped with 13 other teams from  the old regions of Alsace and Lorraine; in practice, you have 3 teams from around Nancy, 4 teams from around Strasbourg, 2 teams from around Mulhouse, 3 teams next to the border with Basel and Colmar and Biesheim's reserve teams. We are predicted to finish 3rd, behind the two reserve teams, and apparently only the top team has a chance of getting promoted. The board expects us to have a top half finish.

We will also play in the third round of the Coup de France. I have no idea what to expect here. A nice cup run would be nice, or alternatively playing against a team from an Overseas territory for the fun of it. The board wants us to be competitive.

Finally we will play in the regional Coupe du Grand Est. The competition has not been set up yet, but considering that it is a cup competition for levels 6 to 8, and we are one of the better teams of the 6th tier, we can do well here. No idea what the board wants, likely reach the latter stages. I'd like to reach the quarter final.

[Reiver]

The Squad

This is what I found on my first day, after joining up the first squad, reserves and under 19s to have a first look at what we have. First thing you can notice is that we have a very small amount of players that are first squad ready, but that we actually have a decent defensive core, even if a bit aging.

Samir Kecha; 35 year old French/Moroccan veteran fullback (Profile screenshot)

Samir Kecha is a club legend, and one of the last of a dying breed: the one club man. Samir here has been playing for Mulhouse since 2006/2007. He broke the record of most appearances for the club in November 2022, and is still going. Now aged 35 he has played for us 338 times in the French leagues, and 59 games in French cups. For this level, he's a speedy attacking full back with great mentals and average defensive stats. He'll be our captain, and I hope I can get him to have a staff role at the club after he retires, which is likely to happen in the next few seasons.

 

Jude Varsovie; 31 year old French/Martiniquais/Reunionese centreback (Profile screenshot)

Varsovie is a strong and intimidating defender that originally came from the youth rankings of the club. From 2012 to 2016 was a regular player at Colmar, then playing in the French third tier, and also played one season at Delémont in the Swiss third tier in 2017; since then he's been playing at other local clubs at around our level and has come back to his Alma Mater this year. Hopefully he'll finish his career here.

 

Gorgui Assane Diouf, 32 year old Senegalese/French centreback (Profile screenshot)

Diouf complements Varsovie well, I think. While his strength value is a bit worrisome even for this level, he has higher defensive technical stats, and if I see that the strength stats compromising games, he still has potential as a defensive minded fullback. In the club ever since he's been in France in 2015, I have found a few mentions of him playing for clubs in the Senegalese Premier Division, though stats are hard to come by.

 

Siegfried Aissi Kédé, 31 year old French/Cameroonian goalkeeper (Profile screenshot)

Unlike the rest of the players that either were formed by Mulhouse or played in the area ever since they came to France, Siegfried was actually formed at a small club from near Lyon, then spent some years in the youth ranks of Metz, then one year at Jura Sud, then a couple at Mulhouse when they were in the 4th tier, then in another Alsatian club, then in a club from Marseille, then in Paris, then back at the same Alsatian clubs as Varsovie, and now back at Mulhouse. That's to say, he's been around. A very good sweeper keeper option, that I hope will make the difference in some games at this level.

 

Now, I usually go for direct and pressing tactics when playing at this low a level, the idea being that if we try to minimise the time we have the ball near our goal, so we have less blunders there, and we at the same time try to maximise the chances of our opponents to blunder near their goal, we have the basis for something that might just work. However, we don't have enough players to have a skeleton of a formation we can get behind yet, there will be a lot of transfer work happening.

Which leads me to my next point, which is probably a very important point regarding the save and how I usually play in general - I always go for realism. This means that if it doesn't make any sense in real life, I will not go through with the transfer. At this level, considering that the team plays against teams from their local region, is amateur but still has the pull of having one of the biggest names and is the team from one of the biggest teams from the region, I would sign players from around the area and like up to around 40 minutes to an hour away; both looking at where they're originally from and the last few teams they played for. However, even if my scouts found a player that was amazing, the game decided he was willing to come play for us, but he only played for team in Brittany, it would never happen in real life.

This realism idea extends to members of staff and is revised as years go by: as a semi-pro team i will probably go for players a bit further away, even signing some foreign players (depending on their origin country) if offered by their agents, and sometimes, if a player's career looks like a proper mercenary or journeyman kind of guy, I'd go for them as well. So, my next step is to sort out my staff team and go find me some players.

[Reiver]

The Staff: Coaching

André Reiver, 36 year old Portuguese Manager (Profile screenshot)

It's us! A Portuguese former lower leagues goalkeeper that emigrated to France after retiring, started getting into coaching and after a couple of years managing the reserves of Mulhouse, he was given a chance in the first team.

 

Nico Zwimpfler, 30 year old Swiss Assistant Manager (Profile screenshot)

After a quick clean up of the existing staff where positions that were utterly unneeded at this level (like a Loan Manager or Recruitment Analysts, as well as staff that were utterly trash (my previous assman had 1s on some of the key attributes), our first hire was Nico here. Born in Luizern, he played at Basel from, age 15 to 19, followed by stints at Schalke 04, Mainz and Freiburg...'s B teams, followed by a stint at a lower league Swiss team, both as player and then as their Assistant Manager. Due to his links with Freiburg and specially to Basel, having sdtarted his career there as a teen, he was close enough for our recruitment rules.

 

Farid Chergui, 24 year old Swiss/Algerian Fitness Coach (Profile screenshot)

Farid was already at the club, and I could not find anyone better yet. Is it a great endorsement? Probably not, but we're an amateur sixth tier team with specific recruitment rules, so he'll do for now.

 

Nathan Favre, 44 year old French/Egyptian Head of Youth Development (Profile screenshot)

Another member of staff already at the club when I joined, this one is slightly better, and will do at least while we're amateur.

 

The Staff: Recruitment

Hakim Aïbeche, 51 year old French/Algerian Technical Director/Director of Football (Profile screenshot)

Hakim was a Mulhouse player, from 1990 to 1994 and also in 1998-99; he also had stints at Rouen, Beauvais, and Clydebank in Scotland; once he hung his boots, he managed local Alsatian team FC Brunstatt, then he was the assman at Mulhouse, then under 18s manager, then the reserves manager, and our first team manager (by now in 2015-16); left to be the Grenoble reserves manager, and then their Head of Youth Development, and in 2021 became the Technical Director of Mulhouse. And since I could not find any Direcotr of Football that was any decent and fitted our recruitment rules, i just offered him the DoF job as well. He's part of Mulhouse's furniture by now.

 

Patrick Betschart, 38 years old Swiss Scout (Profile screenshot(

Mulhouse's scout position is the first job of Patrick here. From the outskirts of Basel, his JPP and JPA of 4 is painful, but he was the best we could do. We have no Chief Scout exactly because of that, we could not find any better.

 

The Staff: Medical

Chloé Gherardi, 30 year old French Head Physio (Profile screenshot)

Chloé has been Mulhouse's Head physio since 2017, and unlike most of the staff we have, she's actually very decent for this level!

 

 

[Deisler26]

Love the name, love the start. Good luck!

[_Ben_]

Always love a Reiver save to follow! Welcome back and good luck.

[Reiver]

2023/24 Squad

Now that the transfer season as closed, and after more than a dozen signings, we have a more decent main squad. On goal we keep Aissi Kédé as our first option, with Judler Delva, formerly of Strasbourg as our Cup keeper and Anthony Massry, formerly of Sochaux as third option keeper - Sochaux and Strasbourg as the two biggest teams in France that are closest to us with FC Basel and SC Freiburg also being quite close, albeit in Switzerland and Germany respectively.

In defense, we actually lost one of the players I proudly presented earlier, with Gorgui Assane Diouf as he goes back to Senegal, where he is actually getting paid to play football. To replace him comes our new biggest star (not in ability, but in reputation), so much i will give him a proper introduction:

Seidou Barazé, 32 year old Beninese centre back; 24 caps for his country. (Profile screenshot)

An international player on our team? And from a country in the top 100 World Coefficients? Not bad! Seidou spent the first 7 years of his career as a bit of journeyman: started his career in Cameroon, then Benin, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait, Lybia, and Egypt. Then he spent one season playing for OPS in the Finnish Second tier, and for clubs in the French fourth tier, where he spent the last 3 years playing for Alsatian clubs, including 2 seasons at SC Schiltigheim, in the suburbs of Strasbourg, which made him within my preset range to hire him.

In defense, we also have Loris Sebert and Enzo Lamarre, coming from the Sochaux youth team and Mikael Ngango Dikobo, who at point played for Peterhead in Scotland! The other new star comes in midfield:

Mohammed Ambri, 24 year old French/Algerian central midfielder (Profile screenshot)

Formed at Strasbourg, Ambri played from 2019-2022 at SV Oberachern, a 5th tier German team from the town of Achern, around 20km from Strasbourg, just on the other side of the border. Quick, with good decisions and passing, he should make the difference in midfield.

You will notice that there's an abundance of wingers in the team: well, finding decent midfielders was actually our bottleneck this transfer season. a couple of the wingers can also be (and will be) played as central midfielders and a couple are being retraining as such. Mehdi Fischer, who was already at the club is our most defensive midfield option; Jordan de Santi comes from the Strasbourg's reserves and Jan Muzangu, the man with one of the weirdest nationality mixes I've ever seen, was formed at Concordia Basel, played several years for the Basel Under 21s,and  one season at Chennai City team in India on loan. On the wings, we have Mathieu Tahmouch comes from Strasbourg's youth team, Elie Rousseaux comes from our neighbours AS Illzach-Modenheim (and his explosiveness is amazing for this level), Dylan Saoudi spent pretty much all his career at clubs from Belfort, the first decent sized town if you leave Alsace going south in France. Clément Raffoul comes from the youth ranks of Sochaux, and Hicham Chirouf comes back to his alma mater, after having played in Switzerland and in multiple Cypriot clubs.

As main goalscoring threats, we have some youngsters: Naoufel Abdou comes from Sochaux, and Elliott Labeth (who is Mulhouse born) and Victor Tiré come from Strasbourg.

Tactics wise,  as we have a very fast team for this level, with an abundance of wingers, we will be going for a tactic exploiting that, and are currently training a 4-3-3 with a DM, and 4-4-1-1 and a classic 4-4-2 formation.