Daniel Evensen

Champions It feels like we just started — and we’ve already gone up as champions. We sealed the deal with a big 4-2 victory over Lion Heart in the 18th game of the season. Our win, in front of a moderate crowd of 432, clinched the trophy for us and served as the first major win of my career. It’s the first time that PanSa East F.C. have won the FFAS Senior League title since 2005. The board is simply beyond belief, as they thought the best we could hope for this season was a mid-table finish. Hopefully it will only get better from here! The Stars I’ve already talked about a few of our stars. Toa Maile will likely win the top scorer award here in American Samoa. His first half hat trick against Lion Heart puts his goal total up at 29. As I’ve mentioned before, the man in second place is Petu Pouli, who has scored 23 for second place Vaiala Tongan so far. Pouli is going to join PanSa East F.C. once the season ends in mid-November. Third in the scoring is Antonio Pouli with Utulei, who has scored 21. I’ve also got an offer in for him. Isn’t the world of amateur teams fun? Other star players include Pela Malani, an attacking left winger who overcame a few rough mid-season starts to explode as one of our best players, and Corey Nortey, a 15-year-old midfielder who managed to score 9 goals from way out there. Champions League It feels like we’ve barely started, and yet we’re already making our first Champions League appearance. We’ll be in the Oceania Champions League. I believe we’ll start out with a few qualification matches, and will move up from there if we win. I don’t think we stand much of a chance, but we can always hope. My plan is to try to get as much attention as I can in hopes of moving on to a more established club in some place like Fiji or New Zealand. It might take a while, though. For some strange reason, most people don’t tend to think very highly of football in American Samoa…

Mission Accomplished? The beginning of October was just the other day, and I had my monthly review. I was surprised by the results. The board gave me an A+ across the board, ostensibly because I’ve taken a team that was predicted to finish 5th and have led them to an undefeated season. The supporters also rated my performance as an A+, giving me an uncanny double — especially considering how early in the season it is. We’re only 13 games into the 20 game season. We’re not quite guaranteed a first place finish yet. Vaiala Tongan, the media favorites to win the whole thing and the only team we haven’t yet beaten, are 8 points behind us with a game in hand. If we’re not careful, we really could see it all slip out of our fingers. Still, it feels like we’ve already just about accomplished all we can here in American Samoa. Match Update There’s actually not much to report on as far as the matches are concerned. We had a few close ones. We barely squeaked by Royal Puma, winning by a slim 4-2 margin after a really poor defensive performance. Taputimu Youth also gave us a scare, holding back our scoring and keeping the score close. We won that one 2-1. The rest, though, has been easy. We beat Pago Youth 4-1, and then demolished Ilaoa and To’omata by a ferocious 6-3 score. Toa Maile now has 22 goals, and is once again the league leader. We’ve also been able to rest him, a luxury I initially thought we’d never be able to afford. Maybe that’s why I got the A+ ratings. Looking Ahead We received a youth intake preview a few days ago. It looks fairly promising, I suppose. It’s always hard to tell with these amateur teams. Of course, if we had another Maile on our hands, I’d be absolutely ecstatic. We might not need to focus on youth all that much, however. In these amateur leagues, players are very quick to sign on with you, and success is attractive. We’ve got a number of transfers lined up for the beginning of the transfer window, which takes place right after the season ends in November. In other words, as good as we are now, we’re only going to get better in the future. Now, I still don’t think we’re good enough to compete for the Oceania Champion’s League title, which is what our true goal is. However, if we can dominate the league and put out a somewhat decent showing in the international competition next year, I’ve got a feeling that some bigger clubs might come knocking on my door. That’s the hexagon challenge way, after all.

Wave of Success Our wave of success has continued. I’m not sure how to explain it. We’re 11 games into the 20 game season. We haven’t lost yet, have an 8 point lead on our nearest competitors (Vaiala Tongan), have a goal differential of 21, and have been simply amazing. Aside from the single 4-4 draw we manged to eke out, we haven’t been in danger of losing — or even drawing — in any other match. This is certainly not the start I was expecting when I came to American Samoa! Defense The crazy thing is that we probably owe a lot of this to our defense. We don’t really have the best defensive unit in the league. We’ve given up 21 goals, which ties us for 3rd best in that department. Of course, it could always be worse. I credit most of our good defensive form to 18-year-old centerback Pama Fetuao, an extremely consistent centerback who has worked wonders for us on the back line. Fetuao has played well in every single match he’s featured in, and recently made his debut for the American Samoa national team, helping the team along to a 0-0 draw against the Cook Islands. 19-year-old Ioane Palepua, who also made his international debut against the Cook Islands, has been our other anchor at centerback. I’ve played him in almost every single game because of his dominating presence and consistent performances. In fact, I usually cringe when I have to take him out, worried that his replacement will wind up making silly mistakes to give up the lead. Fortunately, that hasn’t quite happened yet, though it could be worse. It’s sad to say this, but I can’t really credit much to our 17-year-old goalkeeper Penieli Atu. Atu has been anything but consistent, has a bad habit of blasting goal kicks straight to opposition players, and is a player I’m looking to replace. Incidentally, Atu also made his international debut in the same match against the Cook Islands. Consistency Otherwise, we’ve been the same consistent club — good at scoring goals, stingy enough on defense, and capable of playing extremely entertaining football when push comes to shove. Toa Maile is now second in the league in goals scored with 17, only 1 behind Petu Pouli of Vaiala Tongan. By the way, I convinced Petu Poli to sign an amateur contract with us starting next season. Maybe we’ll go to a two striker system. I don’t think we’re good enough to compete in the Oceania Champions League. However, I’d be shocked if we didn’t win the league this year.

Great job! Wow — I thought I was the only one crazy enough to try a coaching job in American Samoa in FM23...

Thanks, man, and good to see you again as well! It's been a lot of fun so far, though I've been absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that we've been winning. I was expecting a much more difficult start!

It’s Not The Tactic I learned an important lesson the other day. The success we’ve seen at PanSa East F.C. here in American Samoa hasn’t tailed off at all. However, you can rest assured that it’s not because of any tactical acumen on my part. I decided to take a risk in our match against media darlings Vaiala Tongan. I was so sure of potential victory that I put out a team of older players who haven’t looked quite as impressive in training. Out went Toa Maile, and in when Han Jong-Sung, a 25-year-old Korean striker who has found himself occupying a fringe player role for an amateur team here in the islands. Afa Leatualevao was replaced by Pela Malani. Corey Nortey, our great star, was replaced by Peyton Malani. And, yes, it was hard to tell the two Malanis apart. And, well, it didn’t work. We went down 2-0 after 10 minutes, and were down 3-1 at halftime. I finally brought Toa Maile on the pitch shortly after half time, in time for him to provide us with 2 goals en route to an amazing comeback. Maile’s second goal was a beauty, an amazing goal scored as he snuck in behind the defense to level the score at 4. There wasn’t a winner in the books for us, but I’m perfectly happy with the draw. However, we can clearly see here that it’s all about the players, not the tactics. We’ve been blessed with an early golden generation. Dominance We’ve been dominant in every other match. We’re undefeated after 7 matches, and the only match we haven’t won was that 4-4 raw. Our most recent victory was a 7-2 thrashing of Utulei. It’s only looking up from here, too. The team’s weakness is defense, but we’ve got reinforcements coming in before next season begins. The biggest joy of amateur management is that you can pick up players for free. I’m not sure it will be enough to allow us to compete in the Oceania Champion’s League, but we’ll give it our best shot. At the very least, it should be enough for me to catch the eye of some larger clubs in the region. We’ve only got 20 matches overall in the season. We’ve got a 6 point lead over the second place Tafuna Jets at the moment, although they do have a game in hand on us. Our goal differential of 15 is easily the best in the country. Maile has 12 goals so far, easily the best in the league. If we can keep him healthy, we should cruise to a title. If he is injured, I’m not sure there’s a plan B.

After visiting these forums for years, you'd think I would have discovered this area long ago. Happy to be here! I've recently started a Hexagon Challenge. I'm managing PanSa East F.C. in American Samoa as my first stop. You can read more on my blog. This is the splash page for the Hexagon Challenge, in case you want to skip all the other posts. I'll be uploading every match on my YouTube page. I've created a Hexagon Challenge specific playlist if you want to skip everything else. Any feedback or comments are welcome. I'm going to refrain from posting too frequently here, and will probably only submit updates on this thread when I move from one team to another. And, yes, I am fully aware of how long this project is going to last. I'll figure I'll catch up with you normal people midway through FM25.

It's been a little while! As promised, I'm back with another save — this time one that will hopefully last for a long, long time. As you can tell from the title, I'm planning on doing a bit of hopping around. Special thanks as always goes to the editor data community, particularly those who work so hard to reproduce the game in even the most obscure countries as accurately as possible. I'm going to try to limit myself to updating twice a week, mostly to avoid low-effort posts quickly cobbled together late at night. Alas, it is around 9 PM as I write this. I suppose old habits die hard. Anyway, I'm going to try out a few different things with the posting style and will try to keep this as interesting as I can. Enjoy! The 15 Year Old Phenom Toa Maile is a bonafide wonderkid. I know that it’s strange to say that. When you think of football in American Samoa, the word “wonderkid” usually doesn’t come to mind. But it’s true. And I don’t care if the media agree with me or not. Born in El Paso, Texas, Maile gave up a conventional mainland education to go back to the islands. Rather than falling for the common Polynesian trap of playing the line in American football, Maile has shown himself to be a man of real culture, playing the beautiful game with flair and technique rarely seen around these parts. I’m happy he’s on our side. The Fickle Youth They tell me that Maile is a bit fickle. He seems to waiver from one opinion to the next, and has some problems with selfishness. Frankly, I think the kid can be as selfish as he wants. With that kind of foot, I’ll fine him if he passes. My illustrious career, consisting now of a grand total of 4 matches managing PanSa East F.C. here in American Samoa, has been a success due solely to the goal scoring prowess of that young phenom. We’ve scored 19 goals in our 4 matches, including a massive 6-3 victory over Pago Youth, the team considered most likely by the media to win the FFAS Senior League this year. We also slipped by Ilaoa & To’omata, last year’s champions, by a slim 4-3 margin. Maile has scored two hat tricks in those four matches, netting 7 goals in all. Yes, he’s that good. He might be fickle — but, seriously, what 15-year-old has a good head on his shoulders? He might be selfish — but, honestly, I’d say he can afford to be a bit selfish. What matters is that he’s a goal scorer, and a natural born winner. I just hope he can keep up the winning ways. Youth Explosion Actually, Maile might not be the best player on our squad. Attacking midfielder Corey Nortey has also netted 7 goals in our 4 matches. The two teammates are neck-and-neck for the league scoring title. And, yes, Nortey is also only 15 years old. The real star, though, would have to be Afa Leatualevao. Also 15, Afa prefers playing in the left midfield, and is easily one of the most talented players on the squad. He is inconsistent, though, and doesn’t quite have the level of ambition that we’re looking for. Having said that, when he’s on, he’s on — and the defenses in this league simply don’t know what to do with him. I don’t think I’ve given any game time to any of the players over 25 years old on this squad. And I don’t need to. We’re doing just fine with the kids.

FYI - I've discovered that the difficulty I had in using the NewGans Facepack was due to the skin I was using, not due to this editor data file. Apologies for the confusion and for how long it took me to figure this out!

That's exactly what I'm planning on doing. I might not play FM24 until FM25 is out, lol.

I'm 100% with you on this point. It would be great if my data people could tell me something along these lines. Unfortunately, most of the information I get from the data center is only marginally useful. I feel like the seeds have been planted for a great system, but that it's just not quite there yet.

I think that "save" to you means the button you push when your latest editor changes are done, haha

Sorry for missing your comment earlier! Sadly, that save fell apart - bugs in the editor data file made everything crash once I got to a certain point. And, yeah, I had a rich sugar daddy owner with a very large starting budget, playing in a league and a country with teams that had much smaller budgets. It was fun. I started loaning players out once they hit age 17. The ones that clearly weren't going to ever be part of the first team would be on loan in perpetuity. The ones who had a good chance of hitting the first team would go to the first team as soon as possible. Pretty simple system.

The answer by @Jack722 is 100% right on the money. Very well said. In contrast to his experience, I had a season a few months ago with Ingolstadt 04 that went absolutely horribly. I managed to make everybody angry by selling influential players, reacted to that the wrong way by selling even more influential players, wound up losing all confidence in the squad, and watch us lose game after game. The season actually started off pretty well, but then we went on a losing streak, capped off by a 7-0 loss to Munich 1860 that marked the end of the save. Fiddling around a little bit and messing with the data analysis page will help you out immensely. And, whatever you do, don't react to poor performances by throwing those 2 week fines around, lol. That's what caused me to lose the players completely, and wound up with me resigning in disgrace instead of waiting for the sack.

As others have said, it might be a match engine error — but, then again, it also might be a player who has certain attribute weaknesses, or even something as simple as being inconsistent or disliking big matches. You've got to be careful with this kind of stuff. Football Manager is more complex than you think. There are a lot of different variables moving at the same time, and we can't really come to a conclusion about the match engine based on a single highlight with no other context.

Going back to the actual question that was originally asked — I think there's a bug with the recruitment focus system. I've seen the exact same thing happen. The game might come up with a dozen or two recommendations, and then will simply not recommend any other new signings unless you completely change the recruitment focus. I've also noticed that the game will not recommend players under 17 years old. Now, it's true that under 17 players are much less likely to sign for your side in FM23. It's not impossible to sign them, though, and there is no reason why scouts should not be able to find a few players here or there who have high potential regardless of whether they are willing to change clubs right now. As a result, I've sent my scouts out to deliberately scout specific players. I usually have them scout any under 19 players on any national team (including youth teams). Before my Yanbian save crashed, I also had scouts going through every single under 19 Chinese newgen that I could find. Doing it yourself takes a bit of setup time, but it actually goes faster in-game than having the scouts try to find recommendations on their own. Once the system was up and going, I'd get something like 20 scouting reports a week, even when the transfer window was closed. It would be really nice if I could make more specific demands of my scouts in the recruitment focus system. For example, I can't specify that players should have a certain personality type, or should not have consistency problems, or should not be injury prone. Since there's no way to avoid scouts making big recommendations for players with huge problems, the most efficient way to scout is to simply have your scouts look at everybody possible and then sort out their recommendations on their own. I don't think FM's scouting system is awful. I just think it would be nice if we could arrange things a bit more efficiently. If there are realism concerns about knowing tidbits about consistency, injury proneness, or hatred of big matches, then make those attributes hidden. It's bizarre that my scouts can tell me certain problems about each player, and yet I can't tell them not to tell me about players who have those problems.

Thank you very much for your excellent work and for the update!

If you're struggling, you might want to check out one of the Knap tactics.

I've learned the hard way not to pay attention to those player complaints about training that come up from time to time. I don't know this for a fact, but my gut feeling is that it has more to do with professionalism levels than the training you've set up. If you change things, you'll notice over time that the same players will constantly complain about training, wavering from complaining about there being too much of this kind of training to there not being enough of that kind of training. Evidence Based Football Manager has the best information on how training actually works in Football Manager. Unlike others, he holds all other variables constant while testing. His training schedule works extremely well on FM23.

真的非常感謝你的幫忙！

Lol - wait, is that 3,000 hours in the game or in the pre-game editor?

Gotcha - thanks, @samba23, for the explanation. I think that a lot of the wage and financial issues you note in your above post are probably caused by the combination of not allowing foreign players and the extreme transfer limitations. It probably would have been nice to explain in the initial post that foreign signings simply can't take place in this save. I suspect that these transfer restrictions will likely make it extremely difficult for teams that don't have high reputation ratings at the start of the save to improve. You're basically dependent on your youth intake. It's not entirely a forced youth intake challenge, but it's really close, and it applies for all teams in the country. It's interesting because you are forced to play with players that you'd probably skip over otherwise, but it also becomes pretty frustrating when you're looking at a two-match-per-week schedule with no realistic chance at expanding the size of your squad.

Unfortunately, you'll have to contact whoever created the editor data file to figure that one out. Honestly, my guess is that they probably copied over information from files that worked with previous versions, and that a bug might have sneaked in.

I know this has been mentioned already, but your idea here is really good. That would help put a lot of this stuff in context. Of course, you want to make sure it doesn't become a meme, sort of like the system OOTP uses for the same thing...

Thanks for the reply! It's only the Pre-Season Tournaments that cause the game to exit suddenly when I try to look at the rules page. The others work fine. I'm not using any other editor data files. I believe that the players are being generated without any first nationality. Here are the first few lines from the RTF file I generated for NewGans: However, when I go through the players one by one with the game open, they show with the correct first and second nationalities. Not quite sure what has happened here. Also - you mentioned that the AI tends to not use most of its wage or transfer budget as time goes on. I think that's caused to a combination of the 4 transfer limit in each transfer window and the fact that work permits are restricted to only players with a PA of 200. Basically, the AI isn't using its entire wage budget or transfer budget because it cannot purchase players due to those restrictions.