TheNapalmNerd

Champions League Group Stage 6th match: Rangers (A) Only one key highlight all match. Not a good performance...

Champions League Group Stage 5th match: Athletic Club (H) Bad start as they scored two goals within the first minutes, but eventually the players showed class and came back and secured the win. We've secured first place in the group, and now the last match is all about coefficient points.

Goal 50 We've got three players in it once again this season. No Jamie Ross anywhere to be seen.

Champions League Group Stage 4th match: Lyon (H) Still not at our best, but we won and that's what matters in this one.

Champions League Group Stage 3rd match: Lyon (A) An okay comeback, but we never should have let in those goals. But it was my fault as most of the players were not fully rested for this match, and they gave a tired performance. Interestingly we've had some injuries over the season already and our depth has proven not to be the best. It's of course not ideal when you lose a striker and two wingers, but it is something that will be adressed. Huerta hasn't been playing well for some time, and the only thing he's got going is the fact that he's homegrown. We need a better third striker and another winger in january to cope. We're not ultra reliant on the transfer market. We can recall a player or three if thats the best option. I think Paul Wood and Alessandro Gori would be fine additions to the squad right now.

Champions League Group Stage 2nd match: Athletic Club (A) Lots of chances and I think we hit the woodwork three times in this one. Nice victory as Athletic are supposed to be our hardest opponent in this group.

Champions League Group Stage 1st match: Rangers (H) Dominant, and with chances to score much more. We're at the start of the season, and trying to get som cohesion in the squad right away with new duos in front and back.

End of summer transfer window: We're in september and a lot has happened to the squad that is now looking like this: We've had a bit of a clearance sale up front and got rid of a lot of strikers recently. In January we said goodbye to Mason Greenwood, and this summer we said goodbye to Higinio, Fabio Silva, Christophe Martin and club legend Benjamin Sesko. I was actually planning on using Fabio Silva this season, bbut he didn't want to extend his contract, and we didn't want to let him go on a free. At the age of 33 it was an easy choice. He had to go. ' A lot of money coming in, and aour board has also set 120M aside in reserves like last year. Only last year it was more like 400M... We've said goodbye to a lot of players from our loan farm who were never going to make it in the squad anyways. With our higher reputation and league reputation, along with better players of course, we're now making a lot of money when selling players, meaning we have a huge amount in the banks right now and are ready to spend big when chances arrive. I remember thinking I overspent on Higinio when I bought him, but we managed to save most of the money. Overall we sold four strikers (Martin, Higinio, Fabio Silva, Sesko) for about 180M. With lots of strikers going out, some had to come in as well, and the first one is Nikola Jovanovic, whom we've had out on loan for the past five seasons: He has really progressed well over the last two seasons and has conquered a spot in the starting 11. He doesn't like big matches, which is something we have to be aware about, but neither did Sesko, and he rocked the charts anyways. I had originally planned for him to either play with Alessandro Gori (out on loan to PSG) or Fabio Silva, until Real Madrid bought Silva, and we were one top striker short, so we went out and got Bernardino from PSG, as he was on the transfer List, which would help us right now, and help us in the long run as Alessandro Gori will probably get more playing time over this season (he's still competing against Haaland). Bernardino is old, so we made sure that PSG pays half hism old wages, and that we pay them if he stays here for long. Gori will probably be going into our first team squad next season. Fine player who should score lots of goals in the future. We're hoping his goal ratio in the national squad continues at club level. Other than that, we didn't see many changes in our first team squad, but we made one extra transfer for our defence: Giorgio Scalvini We're in desperate need of better defending, and when Scalvini became available, we struck a deal right away. I'm hoping we can keep him for the rest of his career as his personality is one we'd very much liek to have in this squad. With mentoring of an exciting San Marinese youngster soon coming up, we really could use a Model Professional, to take care of business. Meanwhile his presence on the pitch will also be very good as Allingham has never really contributed when playing in central defence, and he's fallen short in the big matches. He's also more of a wing back than centre, we just didn't have any alternative. Defence has actually been the place we've had most trouble getting good players in all game. With Scalvini our starting 11 looks like this: It's easy to spot our achilles. Left Back... Rusyn is doing okay, he's homegrown as well, so we want to have him in our squad, we just don't want to start him in the big matches. Alarcon can play at left back, but then we need a tower in central defence. So we're still stuck with Rusyn for the time being. Hopefully in January we can replace him in the starting 11. Camavinga is getting old and will soon be 33 years. We have his replacement in our loan farm, and both Abel Basto and Kevin Astruc are four star players in his spot. But he just plays too good to let go of him yet. And he will also be a good presence once we get Riccardo Rosti in january. The hopefully future San Marinese Wonderkid. He's just unambitious and hasn't really progressed in his first 2,5 years in the game. That will be a problem. But we hope we can train him up to be a world beater.

Champions League odds: We're currently third in the title odds for the Champions League, with better odds than defending champions Everton.

Champions League Group Stage Draw: This season I decided against showing all the qualification matches. We're at a level where we should never fail qualification, and I will only show if that happens. On to the draw: Easy draw, and I am really hoping we can take six wins from this.

We're in the middle of preseason and a lot of big things are happening at the club. Meanwhile I gazed through the national squad and this caught my eye: The only unbeaten team in the group after three matches. Did not expect that.

San Marino in Europe 2035: We've officially broken into the top 30! It's been a long way since we started at 177ish (don't remember exactly). There's no rela competition however. Most teams have gotten better, but honestly only Tre Penne have been contributing a bit. last season they came close to qualifying for the Conference League. Soon we'll be overtaking the best divisions from Poland and Sweden. An obvious consequence of our campaign this season. We should have done better. I really do believe we were looking better than Barcelona, but squashed it. With us underperforming in europe we can also feel it in the national coefficients: It's been a few seasons since we went and won the conference League or the Europa League and it really shows in the coefficient. With one less team in europe we are however bound to get a much higher coefficient in the 2036/2037 season when we only have four San Marinese teams in Europe. At that point we should really be able to mount a serious challenge to the Champions League as well, hopefully securing even further points.

End of season: We went down pretty far on competition money due to getting beaten in the first knockout round.

NxGn 2035: A few players on the list. I'm surprised at Fernandez in thrid as Salvini and Dias are much better prospects. Dias Will be a carrying pllayer in our midfield. In two years. In the list we also have Frederik Jepsen in 5th place coming in: No. 1 Ed Malyon is a player we'll be hoping to get once he turns 18. He looks absolutely ridiculous for a 17 year old player. If we can get him in our attack, we'd be set for a very long time. Then all we'd need in the future is a new defence and then we'd be able to field a strong team for the coming 10 years.

Champions League First Knockout Round Second Match: Barcelona (H) Disappointment... We had it all, end then they came back and took it all away. On paper we should be a better team than Barcelona. Next season we'll beat Barcelona, but not this one unfortunately... And with that. Our season is over already.

Champions League First Knockout Round First Match: Barcelona (A) Yeah I kinda forgot to tell that we drew Barcelona... Unlucky draw... Our defence is still a huge liability. Alarcon and Rusyn were out with suspensions, and Allingham can't carry anything in there. We still have Barcelona at home. Reports say that we have two even teams. We do have a chance.

And a few days later this happened:

New goalkeeper: Gianluca Salvini We went out and spent big on our goalkeeping department, but I've been chasing this guy for a few seasons, and this was our last shot at getting him, and having him become homegrown, so we threw all we had at him, and then we'll try to get rid of his release clause, and his wage after 30 matches in the future. For now, we're just happy we finally got him. This one could be a new Buffon. And with him we officially are no longer in the market for a new goalkeeper for years to come. Now we only have to wait for january to arrive.

Champions League Group Stage 5th match: RB Leipzig (H) Huge letdown. Looking at the numbers we really should have won this match, instead we gave everything away and ended up putting 1st place at risk. We're lucky Leipzig played against Real Madrid. We're through in first place, but we should really be much more consistent.

Champions League Group Stage 5th match: RB Leipzig (H) Obviously a match we should have won on paper, but things really didn't turn out the way we wanted. Elias Constantino in their goal played a very good match, and Hamilton saved us a few times as well.

Goal 50: Once again we have players in the list, and it is Higinio, Greenwood and Sesko. I actually don't believe this is the full picture. Jamie Ross is a much better player, and has had a much better season than Sesko at least. Jesper Müller is also one who is much better, along with Pablo Cruz. It will be fun to see the list next year. We might have said goodbye to a few names by then as well.

Champions League Group Stage 4th match: Real Madrid (H) Before the match we got this report from the analyst department, saying we're better than Real Madrid. The odds before the season said the same and it really shows how far we've come. And on to the match: We absolutely destroyed them! Not much more to say than that. In the week before this match, we've had severeal players saying they want to join a bigger club. I'm really hoping we can grow this season. We just sent Real Madrid out of the Champions League. Now all we have to do is secure first place!

Champions League Group Stage 3rd match: Real Madrid (A) What a match! Terrible defensive performance, but great comeback from all the players, and in the end we actually had a show on the post, and a goal that was rightly dissallowed for offside in the dying seconds. This match had it all, and we really did well to come back. Still on top!

Champions League Group Stage 2nd match: RB Leizig (A) A great performance, and we did what was expected. Leipzig has a dangerous squad (and even a loanee from Folgore up front), so they could easily have done more damage than they did, but we came out on top. So for now we are already on solely on top of our group, and the next two matches will prove to be very interesting as something spectacular happened in Scotland: We're already five points ahead of Real Madrid before going into two very important matches against them.