WhiteCat33

@Anners Happy to help I almost got Rangers though, literally 3 points off the relegation playoff! Hope St johnstone make some massive transfers in the summer now that they survived the season. How many seasons do you think till they top the league wagebill and transfer expenditure? Did your losing streak coincide with the start of European matches, cause first year in the CL getting hammered every week would explain things. What a tasty intake with 2 Professional Attackers with almost maxed out PA! I'd have to think at least one will pan out for you at this point in the save, probably both for at least squad-level players. Any Player screenshots to share?

I'll be interested to see how your HOYD pick turns out going for a different priority. I've been tracking the data in my Barbados save to see how things developed. Granted its in a ultra minor nation but even with fairly professional and model citizen HOYDs over 40 years I still have about 25% unambitious and 20% balanced. Before I switched to a MC HOYD it was about 15% Fairly professional. I'd be surprised if you end up with more than 40-50% unambitious over time, which sounds high but if there is a base chance of about 25% then it's not nearly as drastic of a drop. Where I'd think you'll notice it most is the lack of fairly professional players, but until you have good facilities development is questionable anyways. I agree on the foreign player theory, it's much more pronounced in tiny nations but the number that turn out stars seems far higher than ones who fail especially from dominant nations.

What an update! Congrats on the first title and that great sell-on. Hope your board is kind and allows you to upgrade all your facilities. Still amazed how crazy the Scottish league has become for you. Love seeing 5 different champions in 6 years with both old firm teams in the bottom half of the table. Did St Johnstone get a Tycoon or something? Now you just have to get Celtic or Rangers relegated for some true chaos!

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2063 Season 41 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: CHAMPION This was by far the worst we've done in the league since very early in the save due to the combination of: congestion, injuries, awful scheduling & an improving domestic league. This culminated in us actually having to secure at least a draw on the final match day to win the league, which we did to set the unappreciated record of fewest points by champion: 52. Cup Performance: CHAMPION Quarter Final happened right at the peak of the craziness I detailed above and of course we couldn't win the game in regular time so added a 120 Min fixture ontop of everything. North American Champions League: RUNNER UP Caribbean Zone: We did well enough here to move on. The Tycoon takeover at New-Club in Martinique is still going strong and they have become the regular entrant for the territory. Caribbean Playoff: Mount Plesant was a difficult foe, but we overcame them! NACL Knockout Match Reports Due to screenshot limits here are all the match reports for the Knockout matches NACL 2nd Round 1st Leg Away @ Chivas 2nd Leg in Barbados NACL Quarter Final Leg 1 – Away at Mazatan Leg 2 - Home in Barbados NACL Semi-Final 1st Leg Home in Barbados Semi-Final Return Leg NACL Final We have to go away to Mexico to face Toluca NACL Tournament Tree: With the exception of being in the bottom half of the tree (thus slotted as the away side in the final) we had a very good draw this year with 2 lower-end Liga Mx sides and then a Costa Rican team. Toluca are not one of the historically best Mexican sides, but they are on an ascendency right now. NACL Trophy Winners In the 41 NACL competitions in this save only the first one was won by a non Liga Mx side. While there have been some MLS and Costa Rican teams in finals the NACL has been exclusively Mexico's this save. Very clearly Monterrey and America are the dominant clubs, with Santos Laguna being IMO the 3rd hardest to face (there are many seasons they knocked us out). I included a column of Wins in recent 10 years because it shows how there are new rising teams from Mexico that historically were not successful in the NACL with 6 of the past 10 trophies going to teams other than Monterrey and America. Squad: CA Player List: Excel Graphs: CA Player Averages: You can see how big of an issue striker injuries were for us due to the fact that no striker managed to get 1500 minutes in the league. Again, this data is missing NACL matches due to how the season works. if you look at 500M strikers you can see how poor the quality was compared to our defensive players. Player Highlights: There are four 17-19 year-olds that I have my hopes resting on becoming our next generation of stars. Rhy Jackson is the most critical as he should become our next star striker to become Clark's replacement soon as he's up to 30 now. The others give us a CD, DM & AMR all of which have a starter who is 27+ currently. Transfers: Nothing notable, just tons of loans. Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: No milestones Club Improvements: Board has no ambition and won't agree to anything. Can't wait till someone buys them out, hope its not harder because the club got floated on the stock exchange. Youth Academy: HOYD: No Change Youth Intake Preview: Another good Preview! Youth Intake: Looks Promising! We even got a wild foreign combination I would never have guessed: Dutch Indonesian Top 3 Players: Personalities are on the poor side sadly, but hopefully can be fixed with mentoring as we got a good amount of potential & current ability in this group. Excel Tables: Barbados National Team: Gold Cup saw Barbados face off against all Central American teams + Aruba. Seems they were just not quite good enough getting edged out 2-1 by both Honduras and El Salvador to get knocked out. Wouldn't say it was a bad performance but not particularly impressive either. Second half of the year sees Nations League B matches where Barbados should be able to win their group and become a true yo-yo team between the A & B Nations Leagues. Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Caribbean International Performance: Gold Cup Jamaica & Haiti made it out of their groups and were both knocked out by Runners-Up Honduras. Barbados losing 2-1 doesn't look so bad now when compared to the other Caribbean nations. Barbados Clubs CA: With how close our season was this year I felt it was worth exporting the first-team squads of the other competitive clubs in Barbados. My spreadsheet has the ability to add up to 20 "Opposition" teams, so I added the 4 best Barbadian teams in: BDFSP, Weymouth Wales, Compton & Notre Dame. What you'll see is these teams are mostly made up of players in the 80-90 range of CA with just a couple star players over 100 CA-WF. These stars are finally giving us some domestic competition especially defensively as the AI managers tend to prioritize offensive talents over defensive ones. Summary After another season as nearly-men I figured it was time to post the updated trophy table. As I mentioned in the post after our loss I am fairly optimistic for the next few seasons. We finally have a good generation of younsters who are being developed properly at the club. The step that will happen this summer is to ship off a huge amount of 23-25 year old 2* Squad players who can all be replaced by 16 year olds with significant potential. Hopefully we can get a few gems out of these very rough stones to begin to mount regular challenges in the NACL!

I know its linked to reputation, I was just stunned when this happened in 2060: The shocker to me is how big of disparity there is between the cup winnings and the league winnings as well as how the league winnings didn't change materially when the cup went bezerk. The League reputation has been stable for a good decade now at 3rd in North America. The change might have been the Cup becoming the #1 Cup competition in North America, which is bizarre to me. Not sure how it does that over Mexico. Also, to note is how high low-performing nations cups like Martinique and the DR have become. Perhaps these cups are overweighted? Not sure how that part works in your DBs. The current state has the US Open cup down at #13 and dropping, which to me doesn't make much sense. I do have a USA LL modded DB enabled, but I'm not sure if that effects the US Cup at all. I wish IRL the BFA spread the money out, but unfortunately all the money goes to the victor. Would have been helpful for developing the league earlier. Now the clubs have finally built actual stadiums and are getting over 1M a year in sponsorship revenue, which is finally developing the other domestic club facilities. I'm proud to say I can fit over 10% of the Barbados population in my Stadium! Its amazing how far these low sponsorship values get you in Barbados when the running costs for these clubs is so low.

@Daddy Applaud your Belgian dedication. I still remember how bummed I was when they broke the finances there as I love all the quality players you get in Belgium. I'm sticking out Barbados from a similar mindset. Also: How did they know!?! I keep the game up on a secondary laptop during the day to play a bit here and there so the idle time in my save has gotten disgusting.

@Daddy @glennuk thanks for the optimism, I need it after that resounding defeat. The team is super thin right now especially offensively so an ill-timed injury can derail it. I'd say we have 3 more seasons with this group as we have a large 27-30 year old cohort of starters. Thankfully we have a number of U18 players right now so our depth will improve each season. Hopefully our next chance we will be drawn as the home team instead of having to try and win in Mexico.

Well that was embarrassing... What happens when your team has 1 Star striker and he's out injured + you play away at a packed stadium:

Could this be the year!?! We actually got a very reasonable opponent, but that's what happened last time and we have to play the game away to them in Mexico Wish me Luck!

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2062 Season 40 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: Cup Performance: BDFSP really showed up in the cup, with what I consider the true cup final match early in the 3rd Round. Our GK came up big in the shootout with 2 stops, but it was a nervy game that saw us claw back both of their goal advantages. I thought we had lost it when they scored in the first minute of ET, but C Clark and A Lloyd combined again in the knick of time in the 118 to take us to penalties. North American Champions League: Another year to forget in the NACL, but that's not surprising. We have a ton of 16 - 19 year old players right now so the consistency just isn't there on both ends of the field. The only senior part of the squad is the midfield right now. Caribbean Zone: We lost 3-1 to Humble Lion early on and it basically meant the end of our run. They caught us out defensively with balls over the top and runners through our CD line that just didn't organize well at all against this team. NACL Tournament Tree: Familiar faces this year advancing deep into the tournament. Nice to see St Louis City get to the QF and Costa Rican side Herediano. Squad: CA Player List: Excel Graphs: Lots of rotation combined with how the NACL resets before the end of our season so the stats are never included in my exports means there are no 1500M players. I could change the value, but really I'm more interested in the rotational development right now with so many young players. Not much to say here about the graphs other than we are still not rebuilt yet and are well off the strength of the 2059 NACL Final squad. Optimistically we are 2-3 seasons away from returning to that caliber assuming our strikers develop. Player Highlights: I'll focus on the youngsters right now as we have a large number who have been featuring in the squad this year as we are in the midst of a massive rebuilding effort at the club. 16 & 17 Year Old Players: Player Screenshots Rhys Jackson - The attacker I am most excited with right now. Even with a neutral personality he is developing well and putting in good performances from the AMR-IF position. Azarel Howell - CD who started Casual, so mentoring is critical for him to have any chance of being salvaged. I've gotten him up to Low Determination & Level Headed, so he's moving in the right direction mentally, but hasn't improved his ability much. Tajio Stoute - A major injury meant he never played competitively for us and has only just in the final month of the season begin to play youth games again to regain fitness. Didn't lose too much CA from the injury and still has potential. You can see the Youth Managers are playing him as a WBR and AMR due to lack of depth so he's gaining some positional knowledge. Renaldo Harewood - Mentoring hasn't improved him yet, but he's done well enough as our 3/4th choice DM right now. Rondelle Grant - In the rotation for our back 3, he has the best jumping reach of our current developing CDs which I value highly. Sadly his skill & mental attributes really haven't improved as much as I hoped. Even though he's fine, I'm disappointed as I was hoping for a 12/13 attribute player instead of a 10/11 one. Tajio Williams - Like Grant above he is another disappointment whose personality has downgraded from Ambitious to Fairly Sporting and hasn't really developed his physicals at all for us. I'll probably send him out on loan when he turns 18 to see if that helps as being in our rotation obviously isn't. Kayne Vickers - With Jackson above, this is the other youngster I'm actually happy with. Even without speed his 12 long shots and good (and developing) mentals has seen him play very well for us as a DM-SV. 18 & 19 Year Old Players: Player Screenshots Rakim Brathwaite - One of our starting CDs he seems to reach what my coaches think is his potential already at 19 which is disappointing. Like Grant he has less than ideal technical skills defending, but is better mentally while lacking the jumping reach. Raheim Highland - Our best developing youngster is unfortunately our GK. I've done my best to get him some rotational game time to develop and it seems to have worked. We have a 32 year old backup GK who I've loaned out for 2 years now to give Highland at club development. However, at this level of skill he's good enough to move to some of the better clubs in the Caribbean on loan so I think next year or two I'll flip it. Nicoli Smith - A rare player I kept down in the Youth team I just promoted him and will see if he works for a more AMR-IW set up Transfers: Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: Club Improvements: Relocation to our 30k All seater stadium is complete! Still haven't notched enough rep for the next Youth Facility upgrade, nor any progress convincing the board to give us foreign affiliates. Financially due to the cup giving us 10Million every year finances are a distant memory. @V50 I know you changed how you did finances for this years file but figured its worth noting that around 2060 The Barbados Cup winnings went from the 1.5-1.8 Million it had been for a good decade directly to 10 Million. Youth Academy: HOYD: No Change Youth Intake Preview: Good Preview Youth Intake: Top 3 Players: Excel Tables: Quality is back down to what we have been seeing most seasons, so its possible we just had a 3 intake Golden Generation. Only improvement really is determination here, with drops in Ambition and Professionalisim with the drop in CA this year. Barbados National Team: 2061 Brutal year for Barbados with a failure to qualify for the WC by being soundly dominated in the WCQ Group phase. This was combined with a poor showing at the Gold Cup. 2062 A breather year now after the pain of last year. Back up into Division A of the Nations League the draw was favorable for Barbados with Haiti and Costa Rica. Don't see any chance they win the group, but its plausible that they can beat the drop over Haiti. Note they played Costa Rica in the WCQ and failed to score in either match. Road View Internationals: With a lot of young players right now you can see we have a lot of young internationals and more U20 players than usual. Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Caribbean International Performance: World Cup Qualifying: Jamaican & possibly Haiti will be headed to the World Cup. Gold Cup: Both Dominican Republic & Trinidad & Tobago got handedly eliminated in the QF. Honduras might have another Golden Generation as they advanced over USA to the final. Statistics Manager: Personality Changes: Something I didn't expect has been happening with the infamous (lost us the NACL) R Hoyte's personality, that I've only noticed with the tracking: Summary This is a frustrating part of the save as we work to develop a new star attacker to build a formation around. This next season we should get back to advancing out of the Caribbean Group stage, but we don't have much of a chance against Liga MX sides currently. We lack a fast striker, which is pretty crucial to beating those teams. When we had Nurse and Carrilo they averaged around 14/15 on the speed attributes. All our current strikers are 13 or less, which just doesn't work to get behind teams. Combined with that, we actually have a weaker back-line aerially so balls over the top with fast forwards are a real weakness in the squad. I am adjusting the formation to a more dropping back-3 so we will see if that helps.

I've missed that feature since it left multiple cycles ago. Very cool little fix!

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2061 Season 39 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: Cup Performance: We almost blew the final going down 2-0 early, but stern talking to and subs saw us mount the four-goal comeback to keep the cup title. North American Champions League: Caribbean Zone: Worst showing for us in a long time as we didn't make it out of the group stage. Things were already dicy after a disapointing 1-1 draw at home to Pantoja and then it really ended when we couldn't defeat the Jamaican side Mount Pleasant. NACL Tournament Tree: North America got a new first time champion in Tijuana. They really haven't been strong at all this save and somehow pulled off a great run for their first NACL title. Squad: CA Player List: We've got the next generation in the top 5 with two 27/28-year-olds, two 23-year-olds and a 20 year-0ld fully eclipsing our senior three players who have lost all their speed. Should have a good 5 years with these players maintaining/improving. Excel Graphs: We are at the end of a generation and waiting for the next generation to develop so are lacking depth in the squad. In particular, we still haven't recovered our strikeforce to makeup for the retiring Nurse. For Personalitiy we see the drop of high professional players continuing (both with & without determination) and the Player Highlights: I'll just show the top 5 CA players currently in the squad as I'll save the youth discussion for the end of the post. What is notable here is that all 5 of these players are Defensive. #1) WBL #2) GK #3) WBR/DM #4) WBR #5) CD. Transfers: Only one big sale of my Vice Captain D Lloyd who was 33 and starting to slow down significantly. Without games in the NACL I didn't see the need to hold onto him longer so almost 500k from Saudi with just 1 month left in the season was worth it. Instead of selling off my squad players I loaned them again this year. Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: In career stats, Emanuele Mastrantoni is so close to 500 appearances for us and he's 34 and still one of our best DMs. If I can keep him from retiring for 2 more years he might break that threshold. Nurse sadly won't break the 500 for goals as he is retiring at the end of the season. Head Coach: Club Improvements: Still building our Stadium & no other upgrades / affiliates. Youth Academy: HOYD: Very happy with C Mighty. Something I haven't mentioned (and I feel is relevant) is I've finally been able to hold onto my U18 Manager for a long period of time and he's pretty good. What I've found out is that by choosing a Coach who is only partially good at Head Coaching there hasn't been the poaching I experienced with every other U18 Manager, which has helped E Nunez gain a ton of reputation (by wining U18 league every year) and become a very good Head Coach. Youth Intake Preview: For Once I had to do 2 screenshots to cover all the "C" Grade players in the intake. But more importantly C Mighty Promises 2 A Rated Players!! Youth Intake: Boy did he not disappoint as this was an unbelievably good intake! We struggle at this point to have even 1 Elite Talent a year, and this time we had 4 with some good Top Talents. Shame the personalities are so trash, but that's why there's mentoring. Top Players: Excel Tables: Barbados National Team: I'll add in Edit as we have Gold Cup this summer & World Cup Qualies! Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Caribbean International Performance: Same will add in edit Summary An awful performance in continental play is erased by a generational intake. What is most amazing is not only did I get the current ability & potential necessary, but they are in the positions we need the most help in! Last year we got a ST & DM-SV. This year we got a second Striker (who can play AMR), AML, 2 DMs & 2 CDs. What we didn't get (WB & GK) are 3 of our top 5 current players. Thus, *IF* I can develop this generation properly I have the possibility of a full Starting XI of players pushing the top-end of our CA. Powering through these couple rebuilding years has been rewarded!

If you want to start lower down @XaW has down to the 5th tier in his LL file.

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2060 Season 38 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: CHAMPION Cup Performance: CHAMPION Prize money exploded this year to almost 10M when it has been 1.5-1.8M for many years. North American Champions League: Caribbean Zone: We kept a complete clean sheet in an absolute domination of the group phase. Caribbean Playoff: And then the wheels fell off with an absolute disaster game in Barbados against Defence Force. Pretty embarrassing defensive performance, its where my GKs "dislikes big matches" really came to bite us. Probably didn't help that we botched a friendly between the legs due to an international break. NACL Tournament Tree: Squad: CA Player List: Excel CA Tables: Excel Graphs: New CA Tracking: Player Highlights: Transfers: Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: No updates for us. Club Improvements: We are finally getting our Stadium dedicated after Mr. Manager! On a negative though, I can't convince the board to give me any affiliates. That's frustrating because both BDFSP and Weymouth have managed to get European senior affiliates. Youth Academy: HOYD: He's up to 2.5* Reputation now. Youth Intake Preview: Youth Intake: Top 3 Players: Excel Tables: Barbados National Team: 2059 This Fall was Nations League B after a demotion down from the top tier. Barbados sure showed they belong up top with an impressive undefeated record in thier 6 games 2060 This year is the quiet friendly year before WCQ in the Fall. With the nations league in 2059, the team has done well enough that it's up to 87 ranking in the world! All time high for Barbados Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary I like this intake, but it will be a few years before I'm confident in our strike-force to repeat a deep run into the NACL. Otherwise, the transition to the next generation is going very well with only two 32-year-olds still in the starting lineup and then the rest of the team being 26 or younger. If our two elite talents develop properly they will perfectly replace these two old men. I found this darkly amusing:

For your save, do you need France active to join the cup, or will it work with just View Only / Not activated? And I'm assuming it works without any additional France LL enabled?

Just curious are you able to get the French Territories to qualify for the Coupe de France through your mod-files, or will that take an additional France LL database to extend the cup down? I've never really played France so have no idea where the Vanila cup starts. Saw the Bug @themodelcitizen referenced for New Caldonia in FM23, I'm assuming this is still the case in FM24 and they weren't able to fix it? Comment says it extended to Martinique.

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2059 Season 37 – Excel Tool Update To recover from our final defeat I played primarily in Excel this weekend while watching matches on the tv and finally ended up implementing CA by Position & Minutes played. I've wanted this for a while, but it required porting over my Dirty Clean of Position to get the (Repeats) side. If you want to nerd-out on excel here's a Spoiler: I was surprised to find out Our Regular starters (>1500 Min) are at 100 CA! I didn't think we were that strong. I knew we had a star GK anchoring the team, but I didn't realize how truly balanced the field players have become. We still are noticeably weaker at CD and AML than our other playing positions (5-2-3 Wide 2DM). With our recent intake we now will have 3 U19 CDs who I like the look of and still have potential, so our CDs should steadily improve for the near future. AML unfortunately we don't have strong talent in the pipeline so I will have to look into who to retrain over there as we have many either-footed right-wing players with potential. I've left space for Best XI, but that takes a lot more work to set up properly (ie to move players to secondary positions after their primary is filled by higher CA options). I've added the Unique Players Table + Full Squad CA column to the tracking export. In addition I'm adding my top 10 player basic stats (App, Goals) for both Club and Country to hopefully build an automated "Road View & Barbados Legends" set of tables. The next stage is to go back through my 36 seasons to port the data so I can build historical graphs and "best player' historical tables. I really want to see what it is about my current team that is so much better than when Carrillo was leading the line 10 seasons ago. My hunch: he was a better striker, with better offensive help but defensively we were significantly weaker so couldn't handle the opposition. It will probably be a week or two before I can have a version ready to share for those who want to use these features to track their teams, but figured it was a fun little share to procrastinate this monday morning

I was playing fm23 so I think it was part of the Timo megapack or something. Doesn't seem to be any fm24 on the forum. any simple db will work that activates the league. Just make sure it doesnt touch anything outside the nation. Quick look on steam: Timo has a Nicaragua one out https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3102970760 Kasi has El Salvador & belize https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3094717042 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087743849

I'm not surprised, just always enjoy the unique alt-nation regen clubs that appear around the world. Great work building even more depth into your Caribbean Megapack! Doing my best to stay the course in Barbados and claim that elusive YAC completion. My goal is to start a new adventure in the new year, probably with a British Territory nation with full England loaded to see how hard it is to keep players. Once I got Barbados' ranking near the MLS it actually became very easy to hold onto players as only the Middle East pressure would unsettle them.

Bummer, now I really need to lead them to a final glory! I see there is a Benfica in Barbados now! Do they generate Portuguese players by any chance?!?

I'm sure it would add some depth, but I've found just checking the "Internationals" in advanced results in most of the national teams filled with the vast majority of European based players. Something that's tedious, but would build national team depth for an international save would be to go into each Caribbean nation and check "players of national reputation". Any player declared their nationality in Europe should get loaded into the game in that situation. I've found in my save unless players start the game declared its very rare for any real players to switch to the Caribbean second nationality if the World Ranking is 100+. I've gotten Barbados to ~90 for 10ish years now and we are seeing a few of the Newgens in English League One / Championship declaring Barbados even with England youth caps. So if you wanted more of the English-variety players I'd just load all the english default leagues even as view-only to get the players into the database.

Thanks for the shoutout @V50 for my Barbados adventure! For those wanting to see FM heartbreak here's my 2059 NACL Final Defeat: Having played a couple long saves (30+ Seasons) in the region I have some recommendations for game setup for those starting a save in the Caribbean for the first time. All these Recommendations are based on playing the FM23 version of this Megapack: Make sure to check the advanced options for "international players" and "all players at topflight clubs " for North America. If you don't, most Caribbean leagues you don't load will be empty of players. To make double sure you can also add the regional Caribbean option or any specific nations you aren't loading. Either load a Caribbean topflight as playable or don't bother activating it. Like the above I've seen view only not actually provide players like you see in Europe. If you want a Strong Caribbean Cup Load the Top Caribbean Nations: Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, & Haiti Load all the '2nd Rung' Caribbean Nations (start with top teams professional): Barbados, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, & Martinique. Then if you have the computer power you can add some of the other stronger generating Caribbean nations like Guadeloupe Curacao, Antigua and Barbuda. Also consider the South American nations in CONCACAF: Suriname, French Guiana & Guyana. If you want a stronger NACL: I would add a database for Costa Rica + 1 additional Central American Nation. This will make it so you actually have a chance of not playing only Liga Mx teams in the NACL. Don't forget about the Canadian Premier League. They have good facilities and some money and will keep medium-level teams that can be great for transfers/loans as well as providing a rare upset in the NACL. Should be obvious, but you absolutely need MLS & Liga Mx as playable. Mexico will dominate the NACL as the AI sucks at transfers in the MLS In advanced options I would also go into the USA specifically and select loading players into the USL championship as it will help the MLS with more domestic players to pick up when they inevitably mess up international transfers. If you want European Transfers: Activate Netherlands & France Top Flights as Playable as well as England Champ+Premier. There are a lot of British, French & Dutch second nationalities in the Caribbean and if you generate a high potential one and you want to truly fight to hold onto them you'll need these leagues playable for realistic transfer pressure. A plus side is these nations will also generate Caribbean youngsters

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC 2059 Season 37 – BFA Digicel Premier League League Performance: At the end of the season I rotated the squad before the Gold Cup International window and we lost a game! Any other save that would be no big deal, but it ended our 252 Game Unbeaten Streak! I'll have to play until 2071 to have any chance of setting a new record... What is also notable this season is that the new club stadiums are bringing funds for some better squads, with Weymouth Wales doing the best right now at building a balanced team. BDFSP have some great star attacking players, but failed to sign any good GKs and have poor defenders so will need some help to plug that hole. Raheim Highland from our last year intake is actually looking half decent, so hopefully loans will work for his development next year when he signs a professional contract. Cup Performance: North American Champions League: Considering my painful 1-0 defeat in the NACL made the post of the day yesterday, I think most of you know how this competition ended. If you need another look at FM crushing dreams: My Post. The other Caribbean Zone: We won our first 3 games convincingly so that we had secured qualification by the 4th game against Defense Force. Because its 2 yellows = suspension, I then pulled any card-carrying players for the final game and our weakened squad just managed a 1-1 draw in our final game. Caribbean Playoff: In Jamaica Clark got a 4' goal to give us the lead, and in a game where we totally dominated them we couldn't manage to add to his tally. Hosting them in Barbados we saw the same story play out with a 5' goal from Clark. Caribbean Zone Matches & Friendlies I haven't talked about the friendlies much, but with the super short 22 game seasons & the scheduling of the NACL these are a crucial part of our season. From the End of the season to the start of preseason we played 19 friendlies! With our Full 3* Reputation any clubs Touring North America during their preseasons will agree to come to Barbados. This year I went for an eclectic mix of foreign opponents with CFR Cluj, Ulsan, Club Brugge (2x), Al-Itthiad, SC Freiburg, Antwerp, Charlotte FC (2x), & Besiktas. We lose about 20-50k per friendly, but with 15M in the bank money is no longer an issue at the club. While I only have North American leagues active, I made sure to check the boxes for International Players & clubs in continental competitions, so all the European teams & Ulsan were full of players, albeit not fully fit / training properly. The Saudi / UAE / Qatari clubs tend to only have 8-10 players. NACL 2nd Round We Drew Monterrey who are the 3x defending Champions of the NACL, and 19x (14x in the save) Winners. Headline: Road View, down 4-1 to champions Monterrey 5 minutes into the 2nd Leg, pull off a miraculous 3 goal comeback to force the penalty shootout which they win! GOALS: https://imgur.com/a/mC95TST ; Match Reports NACL Quarter Final Next up was another fantastic side in America, who while haven't won the NACL recently, have recorded 15 Finals appearances in my save winning 9. Headline: Road View blow a 2-0 lead in the final 10 minutes in Mexico, to mount yet another 3-goal comeback in the return leg to win the tie! GOALS: https://imgur.com/a/yyyCdqK ; Match Report NACL Semi-Final We then were rewarded with another tough Liga MX side in Tigres de la Uanl. Unlike the other two, they have failed to win a NACL in our save but have made it to 4 Finals. Headline: Road View yet again fail defensively in Mexico, but backup GK leads the Bajan Magic in what is becoming a trademark comeback team on home soil! GOALS: https://imgur.com/a/qRpYAXE ; Match Reports NACL Final Well, we all know how this went. Today's Headline: Heartbreak for Road View as a 105' Error by R Hoyte gifts Atlas the NACL Trophy. Match Report. Goal is in link at top of section. NACL Tournament Tree: Squad: CA Player List: Excel Graphs: Player Highlights: Transfers: Just some Loans this year. Best XI: FM Screenshots: Excel Tables: Head Coach: I’ve made the top 20 list of all time greatest North American Managers! This list is topped by the current Monterrey manager who has won the NACL with them 5 times, and once with my nemesis Atlas with a bunch of Liga Mx wins to total a staggering 1851 Points… I’ve got some ground to cover eh? Club Improvements: With our success (and consistently sold-out stadium) I finally got the board to agree to build us a new home that looks to be 30k initial capacity, which should be fantastic. I’m building the stadium not for more money from gate receipts but to build reputation to hopefully unluck foreign affiliates (and Youth Facility Upgrades). Our current stadium is about 20 years old now that we expanded from 5k all standing to 15k seats + 5k standing. Youth Academy: HOYD: Youth Intake Preview: Youth Intake: Top 3 Players: Excel Tables: Barbados National Team: While Barbados made the Gold Cup proper (and naturally messed with my Cup squad), they got bounced hard by Mexico in the Quarter Final Road View Internationals: Barbados Main: Barbados Youth: Summary What a heartbreaker of a campaign in the NACL. I would be shocked if we repeated it anytime soon as we are very light now on striker depth with Nurse turning 34 this summer and becoming a more domestic player and a number of our replacements still under 18. But who knows anything is possible!

I'll detail it in my write-up when I finish the season (as I did full commentary for these NACL games), but every single one of those earlier round victories were absolute miracles that we won. Monterrey for example had won the NACL the past 3 seasons. We had literally everything roll our way with Away Goal advantage, botched penalties by the opposition, clutch VAR decisions both to allow our goals and disallow ours. It was a true fairy-tale run. What is so crushing here is the Atlas team is the one we should have had a realistic chance of beating, and its the only one where we didn't have the Barbados Island Magic to create something truly spectacular on the return leg. For if we can do it again: it will (as always) depend on if we can discover a new wonder-talent in our intakes. In particular, we only have 2 more seasons on our most important player: Emanuele Mastrantoni the unbelievable Italian Segundo Volante who is the true engine of our midfield and irreplicable. As always in the Caribbean I will play him until he decides to retire, so maybe I'll get him to 36. Thankfully everyone retires from the national team around 30, so it's easier to keep them fit in the later years.

He was Inconsistent when he started, but mentoring and success has eliminated the negative though he hasn't gained the positive. He also has light positive Big matches. I'm pretty sure it's the two player-traits of "Tries long range passes" + "Tries Killer Balls" combined with in my tactics having selected "Counter". Those 3 together with him actually being smart, got him to attempt such a wild ball in the hope of catching the opposition on a break all the way down the field. I saw multiple highlights with my CDs in a very similar situation and their decision was always to kick it out for a corner or if possible a throw because they knew they sucked at passing. He unfortunately for me is actually a good player, so thought he could do something he really couldn't. Any other season he would have been substituted earlier as he was on a yellow and had a mediocre game, but of course this year my star WB-R R Holder i hyped up last year damaged his Achillies on the first day of pre-season putting him out for 4+ Months after he was insturmental in our Caribbean Phase campaign. He is just now returning to training, but is weeks away from any match action. This meant I either played R Hoyte, a pure attacking Right Winger, or one of the 2 16 year-olds I got in the last intake. While of course it's infuriating in the moment, why I keep coming back to this challenge is the fact that you actually have these kinds of dificult managerial decisions in this challenge especially in tiny nations as I can't sign free Colombian children to have a bench full of perfect substitutes to fulfill any issue.