resurectedja

FM 23 Catania season 10 and in general, the end 7 players from my starting eleven left. Every single one of them had their release clause met by teams from Serie A. I was between 17-19 for most of the season. The expectations were midtable. Managed to stay afloat, but still got the sack. The second part of the season was easier once the kids started improving. But I was still dismissed. I feel like this is the right time to retire from playing FM. Have different things that i want to give my time. Thank you all for reading and thank you all for inspiring me to start all those saves, from Merthyr Town to Burgas and Deportivo Armenio, but also the unsuccesful ones with Jadran Luka Ploče and now Catania. I had a blast. Hope you all keep finding joy and reasons to come back, play and hopefully finish your saves. Hope you have as much fun doing it as I did playing and completing mine. Especially hope Padders completes his current save. Thank you all , and goodbye.

FM 23 Catania - Season 9 - 2032/33 We grew in the eyes of the bookmakers, as they predicted we would finish a very solid 12th in the league. But then our chances got worse. We lost one of our mainstay players. Vicedomini’s release clause was triggered by Salento, a team that plays in the same division as us. He got a 2 year 900K deal and squad player status. But off we went, and poorly. Two points in five games. So I switched it up a notch, added two more attacking roles and we started scoring at a very high rate, even tho our defense stayed at an average level for most of the year. Round by round we were raising towards the top,which was held by a pretty impressive Pisa team this season. We won 5 straight in and around November. December went smoothly as well, winning the majority of our games. And then Cagliari swooped in a took our best player, Esposito. He had a 3,4 mil release clause for teams in the higher division. He settled on a 4 year 1,4 million euro deal and squad player status. I will miss him dearly. He is the best player of the save so far and was heading towards another 20 goals 10 assists season. In total he has played 246 games for us, scoring 109 along with 29 assists. But we still managed to keep the form going. Another five game streak followed, 4 wins and 1 draw. We were excellent throughout the season and in the end finished 4th, just 3 points shy of a direct promotion spot and into the promotion playoff semi finals. The slower start of the season really messed up our chances. With one more win we could have been in the big leagues. Based on the xG table we were the best team, 2 points in front of Spezia, who we would face. Sadly, they got a better of us thanks to two amazing goals, one a long range hit in the first game which they won 2 1 and a great curling free kicks in the second which was a 1 1 draw. We did break a record in the last round by beating Pordenone 7 0. Pisa, SPAL and Spezia were promoted. I just want to highlight a player from an opposing team. Pisano scored 39 goals for Catanzaro 35 games. The whole team scored 60. Wild scoring performance. Wish I could sign him to replace Esposito. The kids really made me proud this season and they have shown that there is plenty of promised in the club, as well as that we are in fact developing these kids really well. The u20s, who still arent in a league and I have to set up 30+ friendlies for them each season, have won the u20 cup! They did it in a very impressive manner, with only 1 goal conceded. The u18 team won their first ever league title. They finished first in their group, which did feature a bunch of elite Seria A teams. They routed Napoli 3-1 to secure their first title. Sadly they also lost the Super Cup to Chievo on penalties. The board wont let me invest in youth facilites so I burned both transfer fees and improved our training facilities. They are now Superb. The youth intake preview was similar to the one we had last season. Three A rated youngsters were promised, a goalkeeper, a full back and a central midfielder. I am sick of elite level fullbacks. I seem to get one every single year. Just one striker and right winger. Please? The intake was worse than the preview suggested. I only had 2 elite talents and only one of them a five star potential. So lets look at them closer. Angelili is a determined and well rounded left winger. Nothing really jumps out, but I do like the plays 1-2s. Mantovani is a balanced midfielder who lacks athleticism but has plently of technical quality. Seems more suited for the offensive part of the game than the defensive eventho the game sees him as a DLPD. Training him as a CMA. First big job offer, as Udinese tried to sway me to join them in December. Poaching from our academy happened once again. Young Masiero went to Crotone and Franchi went to Cagliari. Cannavaro went to Palermo. I have scouted all of the poached kids that have appeared in the game so far. Only 1 of them is a 3 star, the rest are 2-2.5 star potential. We didn’t really lose anyone of major talent. Tortelli was our leading scorer with 24, as well as our best rated player with 7.34. He also won the Young Player of the Year. He won the Young Player of the Month for September and October. He was the Player of the Month for February, March and May. He was featured in the Team of the Month in September, February, March and May. Federico lead the assists chart with 9. Cali won the Scopigno award for best newcomer. He won the Young Player of the Month in November, January and March. He made the Team of the Month in November, January and March. Mora was selected in the Team of the Year for the 3rd straight year and he won midfielder of the year. Really impressive run by a 3-3.5 star inverted winger. He made the Team of the Month in November, December and April Lo Cascio was the Young Player of the Month in February and April. He also made the Team of the Month in February and April. Assumma was the Young Player of the Month in May. Zadi made the Team of the Month in November and December.

FM23 Catania - Season 8 – 2030/2031 The season started with a bunch of staff members demanding much bigger wages, usually double what they were previously on. This meant that I parted ways with the majority, including my HoYD. Our new intake guy is Lubambo Musonda. Good personality with decent stats, hopefully adding licences will improve his attributes in the near future. We were predicted to finish 15th. I was optimistic about the season, especially how good the previous one left. But from the start it was an epic nightmare. Thats why I didn’t post much. The combination of living in the part of the world were you get daily highs of 37,38 C combined with everything going wrong and frustrating me life out of me lead to a 20 or more days gap between updates. Vicedomini, our only Serie B level midfielder got a 3 month injury 5 days before the start of the season. Rao our new starting LB missed the first month. Savoia missed the first month and a half and was seen at a bar on the night before his first game of the season. And the xG gods really left us from the sixth round. There were so many games, like 8 or 9 where we had the better xG, even by goal and we would still lose by 2 or 3 goals. I felt completely hopeless and paralyzed. We had a 12 game win-less streak after we started the season with 2 good wins. The worst was the game against Modena. Losing 5 0 at home with an extra man. They had an xG of 1,3, ours was 3,41. Reggina was similar, 2 0 loss, xG was 2,7 to 0,64 in our advantage. We won a few games after that. But slid again and had another 6 game win-less streak towards the end of the season. So towards the end of the season, both our xG and xG against were in the negative by double digits. So what does the game do? We win our two last games 5 0 and 6 0. And now it seems we only missed our xG for by 4,5 goals. But thats ****ing ******** and idiotic attempt at leveling out a statistic. In the end we conceded 12 goals more than we should and finished 14th. The youth intake preview was also our worst one yet. It only promised 3 A rated youngsters, a FB, CD and MC. I am already stacked with FB on either side. Shockingly, for the first time in the save, we had a better intake than the youth preview. Instead of 3 we got 5 elite talents. Baglieri could very well be our goalkeeper of the future. Rough mentals but great technicals. Balanced personality is tricky. Franzoni can play along the right side, equally well in all roles. Training him as a invereted winger since he is either footed and I have right backs to spare. Confident he will take over from Mora given his Fairly Professional personality. Vasallo is a raw but all round talented midfielder with offensive tendencies and a good personality. Ballerini cant dance but he will be a very good left footed central defender with plenty of work rate. Chierchia is the star of the intake and only one with 1.5 stars. Very athletic and hardworking, but horrific personality combined with low determination. Happy how it turned out, especially if Baglieri develops into a starter caliber keeper. We made our first big proper sale of the save. Savioa’s release clause of 3,7 million was triggered. He has made 140 league Apps for us and will be greatly missed, as he was by far our best player over the last 3 seasons. I immediately spent like a third of that on youth facilities. First facilities update as well! Money has been tight. Over the last few seasons we have been losing around 200-300K a year, except for that one season where we went far in the cup. That gave us an extra 800K or so to stay in the green. We should be in a good place with this amount of money. Hopefully I get to improve them youth facilities more. The senior training facilities are at a high level already. Will really miss Savoia in the next season. Esposito ran the show this year. He was our leading scorer with 18 and most creative player with 7 assists. This also means he was our best rated player with 7.12. Bledar Daci is our first newgen international after he got a call up from Albania. Hes still on loan btw. Filipo Esposito made the Serie B Team of the Month for August and May, Savoia made it in January and May, while Minotti made it in November, Mora made it in February and May, Lo Cascio made it in May as well. Luca Minotti won the U19 Player of the Month for September and November, Assumma won the same award for January. Marco Cali won it in February. Lo Cascio in May. Lo Cascio won the Scopigno award for best newcomer. Savoia was the Young Player of the Year. Mora made the Team of the Year.

Fantastic stuff @Daddy. Congratulations on finishing. Was really fun to follow.

Congratulations @djsterry. I would recommend you try Argentina. I had a lot of fun doing Argetina. Finished in a record time. You get good teams with good facilities and dont really need to improve anything due to the high youth rating. Once you get into the Libertadores, which is easier than making it into the Champions League, you can improve stuff.

Sorry to see you sacked. I would recommend Italy. There are 3 different third tiers and plenty of good clubs to choose from. The 3 different third tiers also make it really easy to loan out players and give them plenty of game time to aid their development.

FM23 Catania - Season 7 – 2029/30 Second season in the division started with the same expectations and the same amount of belief in us by the bookies. We were projected to finish 16th. We started the season great, with a 3 0 win over Frosinone. That game had the best first 20 minutes a team of mine as every played. A 2 0 lead and 2,3 xG. We were battering them without mercy. We continued strong after that with a 6 game unbeaten streak. A streaky form after our first loss turned into a 5 game winning streak in November, which morphed into a 9 game unbeaten run later. These two fantastic runs had us in 1st place after 17 matches played. Then we lost to Salento, our main promotion rival at the time. Sadly, we didn’t bounce back the same way, but were sent spiraling down in form for most of December and January. It was a 5 game losing streak where we scored a single goal. But we bounced back later in the season. But we couldn’t bounce back well enough and direct promotion was out of our reach. A very unlucky performance against league worst Foggia dropped us from 5 to 8 in the final round of the season. We still managed to qualify for the promotion playoffs but with a bad draw. Genoa away was our first opponent. We cooly dispatched them 2 0, but the game could have been a goalfest according to the xG. We played Brescia in the second round. First game was a quiet 0 0. That home game broke our attendance record just shy under 16k, which also brought a record 250k gate reception. They easily dispatched us 3 1 in the second leg. I am a bit disappointed how the season ended. We were top at the half, and if it weren’t for the 5 game streak, and all those 1 1 draws where we were the better team, maybe we could have gotten promoted. I haven’t written about the Cup before. That is because up to this season there wasn’t anything to report. The third tier clubs have their separate cup which I never really gave much thought. Since last season we are in the real deal. Last year we lost in the first round, but this year we made a bit of a run. We played three different Serie A teams. Our first victim was Verona, a midtable team in the first tier. We beat them 1 0 away. In the third round we played Serie A leaders at the time - Roma. We were absolutely incredible. Going down a goal early in the game had me worried, thinking we might get pummeled, but the team reacted brilliantly, and turned it around in the 91st minute for a 2 1 victory. We even out xGed Roma. Such a proud moment for the team. We also made 600K of that win alone for playing in that round of the cup. Sadly both of those games were away, so we couldn’t get a big boost in terms of revenue. A game against Lazio in the quarter finals was the end of our run. Easy 2 0 win for them in a match that dominated from start to finish. I keep getting offers. This year Brianza and Spezia came calling this season. There were some kidnappings this season. A few of our academy kids have been poached. Capasso was taken by Udinese. Pacetti doesn’t mind delayed garbage disposal, and he went to Napoli, its probably the pizza tho. Morelli went to Salernitana. The youth preview was pretty good this time around. We were promised 6 awesome prospects including 3 A rated center backs. The intake itself was really different, and really disappointing. While we did get 4 elite talents, none of them was a 5 star prospect, and some of them had really poor personalities. Confronti would be a dream prospect if it wasn’t for such a bad personality. Hes a 2 star CA inverted winger on the right, where my starter is a 3 star. But I am very pessimistic about him being better than Mora in a few years due to the unambitious personality. Rota is a raw central defender with a great personality. Really hoping I squeeze every single ounce of potential out of him. Santangelo can play everything along the right flank but has a low determination personality. Guida is a fairly ambitious left back. I already have two prospects at that spot, both 5 star so I am training him as a right inside wing back. Oumar Zadi is now our leader in league appearances. The previous record was 269 and with the conclusion of this season Zadi is over 280 apps. Now we have 6 youth internationals. Our leading goalscorer this year was once again Esposito with 13, which was also his xG. Different rating leader this year, our right winger Mora lead the charts with a 7.21, he was also the best dribbler in the league with 5,1. Mora was also our only player in the Team of the Year. Zadi led the assists chart with 7. In terms of awards, Esposito won the u19 Player of the Month for August. Savoia won the same award in September and November, Tortelli won it in October. Players who were in the Team of the Month were, Luongo, Savoia, Mora twice, Federico, Lubishtani, Esposito twice, Boccia twice and Vicedomini twice. Tortelli won the newcomer of the year award, while Savoia was the Young Player of the Year. Plan for next season is to hopefully keep Savoia who wants out and is getting interest from various Serie A teams. I wouldn’t mind another good season in the second tier if we get 4 or more million for Savoia. I still haven’t improved any of the facilities since I try to run a very tight ship financially. Such an offer would finally bring some needed improvements.

FM 23* Catania Season 7 -2029/2030 The bookies didn’t really trust us to stay up after our majestic last season. We were projected to finish 16th. Given that the Juventus B team was predicted to finish last without any odds, we might as well be one of the 3 or 4 worst teams in their eyes. The tradition is over, Curci didn’t get an offer from Chievo. But Esposito really wants to leave the club. We settled on a 5 million price. This preseason we have sold our first player. It wasn’t anyone who played a lot of minutes, but one of our young talents, Cocuzza. He went to SPAL for 200K plus 50% of the next profit. He was the start of our intake 2 years ago. We went out of our way to give him first team minutes ever since, but he hasn’t improved. He even got worse. Given that Tortelli is close to the first team, is younger, with better CA and personality I decided to sell Cocuzza and prioritize the development of Tortelli. The season started very painfully. Bologna demolished us 5 0, with very unfortunate xG. But it was a good season. We never feared relegation, apart from the first round. There were ups and downs, bad and good streaks, and 4 separate postponements against Venezia. But we survived in the Serie B our first season. In the end we finished 13th. Mostly thanks to the 7 game winless streak towards the end of the season which saw us slide from 9th spot. Very happy with our first season. With a bit more luck, especially with injuries maybe we could have finished higher. The youth preview looked as amazing as it always does. It promised a total of 6 A level prospects, including a much-needed goalkeeper and two midfielders. The actual intake was worse and a lot different in terms of the positions, probably the most different we had so far in this save. I got 4 elite talents, all 4 with 1.5 star CA and 5 star PA; right and left fullback, center defender and central midfielder. I really like the look of Marco Cali our future ball winning midfielder. Spawned with absolutely brilliant mentals for that role as well as quite good physicals. The 13 passing is a nice touch. Wish the 9 tackling was higher and really hoping that the balance personality is on the higher end of ambition and professionalism, unlike the 5star balanced prospects of the past. Nobile is an unathletic CD with brilliant technique and tackling. If I didn’t get Cali in the same intake I would turn him into a BWM. Finally a player with high ambition, first 5 star ambitious player since Vicedomini in the first season. Hoping he makes the same impact. Marini is a left back who can also play higher up the pitch and also the golden boy of this generation. Wish he was taller and could jump higher, but once again very impressive mentally that are hard to develop, except for work rate and his technique is an incredible 15. Fine with the Mercenary personality, had success developing players with that type, especially in Merthyr Town. Left the worst for last. De Carlo looks like a very raw full back with a bad personality, Low Determination. How low is that determination? 2. Yeah. But on the bright side 3 out of the 4 might have good chances to develop into. Time will tell. Esposito was once again our leading goal scorer this season with 14 goals, which is nearly double his xG of 7.8. Our leader in terms of average rating was once again our DLPD Vicedomini with 7.11. The 6 assists that Lubishtani had this season were the most by any player this season. Fausto Savoia won the u19 Player of the Month for October and November, and January. Esposito won the same award in February, March and May. Esposito overtook Sarao as our all time league goalscorer. The previous record was 62 goals. He also won the best u19 player of the Serie B, popularly called “Scopigno”. This season as many as 6 players were called up to their respective national teams, with Lubishtani becoming our first regular senior team national with Kosovo. Players selected in the Team of the Month were Luongo and Mora. Both once.

Congratulations @naterr. Truly a fantastic achievement. I'm a sucker for these obscure footballing nation type of saves and it looks like you completely transformer football in India.

Curci is your typical cerebral Italian defender, like Baresi or Nesta.

FM23 Catania - Season 6 – 2028/29 This save has an annual tradition. At the start of the third consecutive season, Chievo trigger Curci’s release clause and he turns them down. We keep our best defender for one more year at least. The sly bookies had high hopes for us, ranking is 3rd in the season preview. Just before the season started, I got a message in the inbox that I never gotten before. Mind you, I have been playing this game for 15 years. The message said we developed a new rivalry! Due to similar season finishes and only 1 draw in 13 games, we are now considered fierce rivals. It was a long and hard battle for most of the season with Consenza and Virtus. We were on top for most of the season, but they would jump us on the occasion. 4 games to go, after we drew against Consenza, which left us with point lead, I was very optimistic. Our last 4 games were against the bottom 3 teams and Virtus at 3. Last game, point ahead and we go and trash Virtus 6 1, both teams doubling their xG. Consenza drew in the last round, so we finished champions with 3 points. After 6 seasons we are going to Serie B baby! The success this season nearly doubled our average attendance record from 640 to 1091! But that wasn’t the most important end of season news. Curci extended his contract for 4 more years! Impressed by our run to the title, Bologna and Torino both offered me the job. We had our worst youth preview yet, but it was still pretty promising. It said that we were expected to get 7 A rated players, 3 of whom were strikers. No goalkeeper or central defender in sight so far. The intake itself looked a bit disappointing. We have gotten 4 elite talents. La Casio is the only elite talent that isn’t 5 stars, but 4,5. He has the best personality of the bunch with professional, with sky high determination of 19. Expect him to terrorize defenses with his pace soon, maybe even next season. Tortelli isn’t slow like his name would refer. He is the second coming of Cervoni, just starting out with a better personality. Giuliani is another high prospect who is unambitious. Had so many in this save. Will try to fix it with tutoring, but so far, I have only succeeded with Cervoni. The last elite kid is Minoti. He is a fickle person who can play everything in the defense, but also has marking 5. Not that promising all in all. There is potential, but even with all my staff having high professionalism, I still get intakes with dogy personalities at the top. But hey, at least those three 2-star prospects are resolute. I managed my 200th game this season. Esposito was the best goalscorer in the league with 28, helped by 9 penalties. This scoring prowess led him to be called up for the U20 World Cup for Italy. Vicedomini was our best rated players for the second season in a row with 7,39. Our left full back on attack and best crosser Lubishtani lead the assist charts with 10. Impressive. Can’t remember the last time I had a full back with double digit assists. Cervoni won the u19 Player of the Month for August and March, Esposito won it for September, January, and April. When it comes to the Team of the Month, , Lubisthani was named four times, , Luongo trice Boccia was named twice like, Lorenzini, Savoia , Vicedomini and Esposito, Zadi was included as well. The Team of the Year included Luongo, Lubishtani, Lorenzini, Boccia, Zadi, Mora and Esposito. Esposito and Savoia were featured in the Italy u18 team. The plans for next season are to play a bit more solid, try and survive in the second division. Hopefully we can give minutes to some of ours 5-star kids. There are 5 or 6 of them who are around the first team. If the results go our way, they should see 20+ games each.

Just a question of luck i think. I had my first 15+ penalty taker in my 23rd season of my Merthyr Town save.

I set the role and individual training myself for every player. I praise/criticize every single week zealously. I tracked CA improvements few a few seasons in my Argetina save. Kids with the right personalities improved up to 35CA per year. The club had average training facilities, with most coaches being aorund 3 star. But if the personalities arent right there is little you can do.

You can use the ctrl+p function and save it as a HTML file. , but you need to have a view that shows every single attribute.

I was shocked when I saw him. Cant wait to give him first team football next season.

FM23 Catania - Season 5 – 2027/28 Season five for Lee Ingram in Catania, but he is still as pale as a Welsh foxtail. People are holding is in higher regard this season, they think we will finish all the way up in 10th! After two years of missing the playoffs, I think it would be a nice change to finally reach that goal. The season started with Curci asking out. I agreed on a reasonable price with him, but he kept rejecting the other clubs. He is also rejecting our offer for a contract extension. Two years remain on his contract. He is our CA leader and by far best defender, really hope we get him to sign a new contract as soon as possible. Our own start of the season was great. We had a 10-game streak without losing. That was our best run of form. The middle had a lot of ups and downs. WE also finished the season with 10 wins 1 draw and 2 losses. In the end we finished 3rd, which is our highest placement of the save so far. In the playoffs we demolish Gubbio, but only won 3 1 on aggregate. In the next round, the quarterfinals, we played Pescara. First game was away and an even affair, which they won 1 0. We played a great first 30 minutes of the return leg, completely controlling the game and leading by a Cervoni goal. But Vicedomini got a red card, they managed to equalize and that finished our promotion chances. The return leg against Pescara broke our attendance record. Over nine thousand people came, which earn us 130K on gate income alone. The terrific youth previews just wont stop. This time we were predicted to get 9 A rated youngsters. The intake itself was a bit different. We only got 6 elite talents, and only half of them had a 1.5 or more CA. But at least there were a few new nationalities in the mix. Chiarion is a well rounded DLPD with good attribute distribution. Grasso is a very explosive winger with a good personality but can’t really dribble. Bledar Daci, our first Albanian regen, has incredible attribute distribution for his role. Most regens struggle with heading, his is 19, along with 14 anticipation, 13 in balance, jumping reach and strength. Very excited by him, could be an epic specialist. Macaluso is a raw fullback, but tactically well endowed. El Amrani is our first Moroccan kid. A well rounded athlete who can play as a striker and both wide forward spots. Worried about his personality, low crossing means he is better suited for a central role. Very happy to see a prospect like Caiati. While he is still only 1 star CA, he is a fairy professional player. I lack depth at CD, really hoping he can reach the first team in a year or two. Reginna stole one of our kids once again, this time Michele Perini left. And a day after that I signed a new contract. Guess the board doesn’t mind. Both of our facilities were downgraded due to technological advancements. Thanks tech bros! Esposito is still our only youth national. He keeps being featured in the u19 squad. Mostly coming off the bench but has also started two games. Cervoni has won u19 player of the month for August and February (also Serie C team of the month). Mora won it as well but in October and March. Vicedomini has had two games with over 200 completed passes. Cervoni was our leading scorer with 19 goals. Vicedomini was our best rated player with 7.32, also had 6 assists, a fine number for a DLPD who doesn’t take set pieces. He shared the assist title with Federico who had six as well. The plan for next season is to hopefully finish around the top. If we keep this team together I really think we have a shot. There are five 5-star potential kids with 2-2,5 star CA in the senior team. The goal is to give each as many minutes as possible. If we are in the lead, all five subs will be the five of them.

I have gotten a message like that a few times, but never got sacked. It usually ends up with you getting a message from the new chairperson that they are impressed by the level of support you have at the club and that they have decided to keep you at the helm.

FM23 Catania - Season 4 – 2025/26 Like last season, we were predicted to finish 13th, but with worse odds, 20-1. It was one of the most frustrating seasons I have ever played on football manager. There were so many games where we missed a lot of chances and our opponents were infallible, tripling their xG or worse. This game against Cerignola was the start of the trend. Games against Francavilla, Monopoli and Foggia weren’t any better. Deep sigh. In the end we finished 12th, a spot above the projection. I was our worst season both offensively and defensively. It was a fantastic year to poach our academy kids. Venturi went to Reggina. Martziale went to Perugia. Cortinovis and Soave went to Palermo. Seriously considering putting a restraining order on the club, they spend too much time around our kids. Just hope none of them is close to the clergy. My staff was poached as well. My very good and trusted assistant manager went to Trento to be their new manager. Cosenza picked our u20 assistant manager Ukra as their new manager. The youth preview was once again terrific. We were promised 9 A rated prospects, a third of them central defenders, one position I am severely lacking at the moment. The intake was as good as advertised, nine elite talents. I will go more in depth on the very cream of the crop. Terracciano is a very mentally impressive defensive midfielder. Gualtieri is a very well rounded, slightly more technical than athletic wide attacker. Picasso is a central defender/left back with a very poor personality. Cocuzza looks like the best of the bunch. My assistant thinks his best position is that of a winger, but to me he is a clear Deeplaying forward, like Esposito. None of them have brilliant personalities. Hoping for the best. Really think the three excluding Picasso could go far, maybe even be Serie B level players. Andrea Vicedomini is turning into quite the deeplying playmaker for our team. He had an incredible number of passes against Arzachena this season. I got my first job offer of the save, from Padova. Nice to be noticed by others, even if I am tied down for good with Catania. Esposito was our leading scorer this season with 11 goals in 37 games. Horrible Lubishtani was our best rated player with 7.12 Chiarella was our leading creative force with 8. Hoping for internal development next season. Cervoni and Esposito are starting to look like a good striker partnership. Vicedomini is improving. Finaly have a goalkeeper who is more than 2 stars. Hopefully we can get back into the playoffs and that we have more luck than the disaster class of this season.

FM23* Catania - Season 3 – 2024/25 Somma and Ferrara stayed true to their word and both left the club after their contracts expired this season. Those were out two best defenders. The fact that they left, combined with most of our legacy players getting in years, meant that we had a much weaker squad than in the previous few seasons. The season preview pegged us all the way down to 13, with a 13-1 chance to win the league. Lots of bad omens to start the season. But unlike my goth ex, I am not into numerology and horoscopes. We pushed on as a team. A lot of ups and downs, good and bad streaks. In the end, we finished just slightly above the predicted 13th place, on 11th. Our defense is good, just under a goal a game. But our offensive firepower needs a lot of improvement. Hopefully Cervoni and a young lad I will mention later in this post will help with that next year. We had a spectacular intake preview, which I forgot to screenshot. There was 10 or 11 promised A rated players. In the end we got seven of them, four of whom were 5 star prospects. Calogero Matrone is an explosive, hardworking, team-oriented winger. Romano Baldaccini is an athletic and very brave and team first ball winning midfielder. Sadly, he has a bad personality, unambitious, with extremely low determination, that of 2. He will get mentored and hopefully be balanced in 2 or 3 years. Esposito is the leader of this golden generation. While unathletic, he has the technical and mentals to become a very impressive DLF. Good personality with 18 determination as well. Migani is a very raw central defender, but has one of the worst personalities -casual. Hopefully mentoring will help, but I am very pessimistic. Casual and Slack were always improvement killers in every YAC save I had. Cervoni broke the youngest goalscoring record in the Serie C cup. He was just 15 years and 348 days old when he scored. This game against Taranto was also the lowest attended game I ever played in 15+ years in FM. An incredible 11 people showed up. There were more people on the field than off it, twice as many! This season saw my avatar Lee Ingram manage his 100th game. We were short on strikers towards the end of the season, so I gave a few games to Esposito. So, with 15 years and 176 days he is your new youngest Serie C goal scorer. The two defenders weren’t the only ones who left. Our coach Marchio decided to move to Consenza. Palermo was at it again, poaching our academy kids. They took Sorentino. Reggina took Bellani. Our Youth recruitment is now at exceptional level. I do not dare improve junior coaching, the club is losing money, only around 200K. Want to avoid repeating a mistake I made with Dulwich Hamlet in a previous unsuccessful save. Our leading goal scorer was Mora with 12, mostly coming on as a striker or right wing. Rapisarda was our best rated player with 7.12 Boccia was our most creative player with 8 assists.

the club must have been stacked with high potential players. IRL its financed by Andy Bara, a top Croatian agent. They already sold a few players to big clubs for a lot of cash, including Mika Faye to Barcelona last season.

FM23 Catania - Season 2 – 2023/24 The off season was rough. Two of my starting central defenders said they weren’t interested in resigning with us. This season will be their last for the club, most likely. Our star starting goalkeeper was making noise about leaving. I finally settled on letting him leave if someone played 1,5 million for him. I thought I was safe, but it turned out I was not. After rejecting like 15 offers that didn’t even reach a million euros, Paderborn swooped in with a 1,8 million euro offer which the board accepted in a heartbeat. So a few weeks before the start of the season, we were downgraded from a 4,5 star to a 1,5 star goalkeeper. Players weren’t the only ones who looked for greener pasture elsewhere. My DoF left for Venezia. My head scout went to Citadella to become their HoYD. This lead the media to drop us in their preview, from fifth to eight. I wasn’t expecting much. My only hope was that the improvement of some players would improve our offensive output which would mitigate our worse defense. We started the season brilliantly. 8 game streak with 6 wins and 2 draws. After 17 rounds we were first, with only a single defeat. Late November and early December we broke our consecutive wins record, winning 6 straight. The highlight of said streak was an absolute demolition of Savoia. But Catanzaro and Pescara were always breathing down our necks. Both teams built incredible defenses, neither slipped above 0,5 conceded goals all season. As the new year came, so did our fortunes shift, we were less surgical on both ends. Round by round we started to fall behind the two teams I mentioned earlier. The worst moment was the match against Turris, a 2 2 draw where they had a whopping 0,11 xG. We didn’t start losing, but there were more draws than wins and that ultimately cost us the promotion. We finished 4th with a record 73 points. In the playoffs we skipped the first round, demolished a team from the C/B league and lost on penalties after that. The Youth Preview was a mixed bag in terms of letters, but it still promised 4 elite talents, a fullback, a CM, a striker and AMC. When the youth intake came it was a bit different. There were 3 elite talents, striker, MC and left winger. Cervoni is very impressive mentally and physically. I am training him as a Pressing F on Attack with special focus on shooting. I also moved him to the senior squad right away so I can mentor him with Giovinco, who is fairly ambitious. I usually don’t mind unambitious, but in the case of Cervoni, the determination is low as well. Bruschi is an nonathletic CM on attack, very technically gifted but not much else. Fabbri is fast and has a bit of technique. He is also the only elite with a good personality. Given the improvements it is a bit of a letdown. But maybe a season or two is needed for the upgrades to take full effect. Zadi the Ivorian Newgen from the holiday season is our first youth international, starting to feature in the Ivorian U20 team regularly since September this season. Based on our good form, and the money we got from Salah’s transfer, we managed to get quite a few improvements. We improved the youth recruitment three times, going from average to excellent . Our junior coaching was improved once, going from average to adequate. All these boosts started to catch attention of neighboring clubs, so our academy player Alessandro Masiero was poached by Palermo. Plan for next season is simple, give as many games as possible to our 4,5 and 5 star kids.

The way one sets up the save is also important. My laptop isn't all that great, but I always load the nation i play in as the only league. I load a lot of players, similar to how Second Yellow Card sets his build a nation saves. Takes a minute or two to go through a week and the match I have on max speed and key highlights in 2D unless its an important game. The match takes around 3-5 minutes. So in a hour i can easily go through a month and a half or two. The less clubs in the playable leagues the faster the progress as well. Argentina and Croatia are excellent parallels. In the first and second division in Argentina there are over 60 clubs in total. So in a given day you can be simulation 30 games at worst. In Croatia, there are 22 clubs in total in the top two leagues and on a week to week basis there are less matches that need processing, which leads to much faster progress.

FM23* Catania - Season 1 – 2022/23 Like Kevin Durant in 2016, I have chosen the hardest path. He joined the Warriors, and I joined Catania for my new YAC save. There are numerous reasons why I picked them. They are just a boat away from my last unsuccessful save with Jadran Luka Ploče in Croatia. Catania was once a good first division team in Italy. But then came 2022 and bankruptcy, which sent them all the way down to the fourth tier. They have great training facilities, good youth ones and their junior coaching, as well as youth recruitment are average. They also never won a major trophy, which we will hopefully change. The squad itself looks pretty good. There is a core of 11 starters and a 3 or 4 talented pieces of the bench which could improve. Our two best players were Salah, a goalkeeper, and Sarao a veteran target forward. Salah looks impressive given his age and our level. Hoping he stays our No1 for at least the first five or six years. This made me very optimistic about our first season. We were also predicted to finish quite high -seventh. The team had absolutely no staff. So, I roll up the sleeves and started hiring. Like in the previous two saves, I opted for a high professionalism only staff. I can’t believe how easy it was to find staff who had the right level of professionalism but also the level of quality needed. From day one, or two, we had average or better coaching for every category, with 17/20 training facilities. Never been more pumped and enthusiastic for a save! I was even reunited with my DoF from my Deportivo Armenio save and signed former French international William Gallas for 20K a year. Must have fallen on hard times, the poor bloke. We played brilliant for most of the season. We had multiple streaks of 5+ unbeaten. Always around the top, but never on it. There were hopes and opportunities to claim the throne, but we simply couldn’t snatch it. The worst one of all was this game against Trapani. After that horrible Fmed result it kind of sent us in a downwards spiral, losing most of our last 10 games. In the end we finished seventh in the league. In the meaningless playoffs we passed the first round, but lost in the second The youth intake preview was, to quote Larry David, pretty pretty good. It promised at least six elite prospects, none of them playing the same position. Ideal for this type of save. The actual intake gaves us 4 elite talents, with 5 top talents. Like the American educational system ill only focus on the elite kids. Alberto Mora can play striker and AMR. He is a very dribbly boy with good off ball movement. Will train him as a Inverted winger on attack in the MR role so he gives us more options. Stefano Curci is an unathletic but very mentally savvy defender who can cover both DC and DR. Going to train him as a Central defender since we lack depth there. Vicedomini is a very raw prospect with a bit of technique passing and decisions. Squillante is both slow and weak but has a very impressive technical and mental make up for a deeplaying forward. Hope the 3 fickle of them have a good level of professionalism. Manuel Sarao was out best goalscorer, getting 18 in 36. Michele Somma was our best rated player with 7,24, which lead him to the Team of the Year and Defender of the Year Giovinco was our best creator with 10 assists in 41 games. My plans for next season are to repeat the success of the current one. Keep developing the newgens that are close to 2 stars and hopefully keep our squad, especially the goalkeeper. Using the avatar of my legendary Welsh goalkeeper from my Merthyr Town save, the same one I used for the Jadran Luka Ploče save.

Got sacked in the fifth season in Croatia after finishing last in the league. The board wanted us to finish in the relegation playoffs, I failed by five points. Most frustrating season I can remember. Had 3 starter caliber players in my u19 the whole season, but couldnt play them due to the u17 rule. Still havent figured out what my next save will be.

FM23 Jadran Luka Ploče - Season 4 – 2025/26 It was a record-breaking season, but for all the wrong reasons. We managed to survive, but by a record low number of points. Rudeš, the team who got relegated this season was absolutely awful, and apart from a short burst of form were never close to jumping us. We finished the season 9th. We were around 7th or 8th during the first part of the season, but we really fell apart in February, going on a 8 game losing streak. We bounced back late to secure 9th. We were in the relegation playoffs against Varaždin. It was a breeze, idk why but they hardly had any players with good sharpness. We drew away and won resoundingly at home. If we were lucky in the first part of the season and the second part was how things really could be, I really think our fifth season could be our last in the league. We were a 1000-1 to win the league and our form showed why. The big 4 of Croatian football demolished us multiple times. We have conceded 8 and 7 goals once and 5 goals multiple times this season. We made some money thanks to the 1,2 million euro per year tv deal. Not enough for upgrades, but its nice to have a financially stable club. We rented another stadium this year. The one in Zmijavci wasn’t up to standard so we moved to Imotski this season. I was offered a job by Gorica and Lokomotiva this season. To ward of suitors my board offered me a new 2 year deal. Due to no real upgrade options at HoYD I added an DoF to my staff. He is much better than everyone else at judging ability and potential. He is also a true Professional personality, similar to everyone else on our staff. Its high professional or bust if you want to join this club. He produced an astounding preview, promising 8 talented players. He not only delivered, but we got 11!!! Elite talents. It would be too much to post all of them, so I will only focus on the two best. Antonini Šiljić is a naturally fit, brave and precise tackling defensive mid. He also has a fairly professional personality. With 2 stars now, I expect him to be 3 stars by the time he is 17. Second starlet of this year’s intake is Vencel Spajić. A very talented deep lying forward with impressive bravery, flair and determination. Only plan for next season is once again, not get sacked. Our best mid Žderić left on free and joined a second division team. Things are looking bleak.