Reiver

Thanks everyone! The club tickles all the right spots for me. A club with a great history, and potential, that starts low enough in the leagues that the whole dance of signing the same known players won't happen, as when I eventually get to the top the world football scene has changed, and time to give the team my touch before they get to the top.

Racing Club de France start the 2023/24 season in group C of the Championnat de France de football de National 2, the fifth tier of French football, playing against teams from the North of France (one team from Nord-Pas-de-Calais, a couple from Normandy, and six from Britanny, including the reserves of Guingamp and Lorient), 4 from the Paris metropolitan region and nearby and a single Corsican team. Only the top team from each group goes up, and there's 5 relegation spots, with the 6th from bottom playing a relegation playoff. It's a brutal system down here. The club has adequate facilities, both training and youth; and while they usually play at the Stade Olimpique Yves du Manoir (8000 capacity) in Coloumbes, they have an agreement to use the Stade Montbauron (7545 capacity, but a new stadium built in 2022) in Versailles for this season. Player wise, our current star player is Abdelrafik Gérard, a 30 year old winger formed at PSG, whose career makes him look very overqualified for our team: in 2019/20 he was playing in FK Qabala in the Azeri Top division, and before that in RU Saint-Gilloise and RC Lens. While not being excellent at anything, he has decent stats all across the board that will make him very dependable throughout the season. In defense we also have a star player in Full-back Ousmane Badji, though here we have a small problem, as he is out injured with a damaged Achilles heel tendon for the first third of the season. Not that you will recognise anyone in the team, but I'll still post the full roster:

If you list all the questionable things that could (and have) happened to teams in French football, odds are at some point they happened to Racing Club de France. From a millionaire owner trying to assemble a team of Galacticos to getting demoted multiple steps in one go once it money dried up, multiple name changes (including one to match a major international company who owned other sports teams) and mergers, including one that saw the team move 300km and a new amateur team to start in their place, stadium hopping, and more to come in my introduction. So they were Bordeaux, and Parma, and PSG, and Manchester City, and Red Bull Salzburg, and Wimbledon, all before their actual stories. In 1882, students from a Parisian school founded the multisports club Racing Club in order to improve the conditions they had to play sports. [Note, as this is the oldest sports club I can find called Racing Club, it is likely most other teams with the same name took some inspiration from this club]. Renamed Racing Club de France just a few years later, the club at first stayed away from football, and instead had a rugby team, creating their first football team in 1896, playing in the Championnat de France de football organised by 'Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques", at the time the most prestigious Parisian football competition; at the time the French Football Federation did not exist yet, and centralised football competitions did not exist yet. By 1899 the competition (which the FFF does not recognise as a precursor to Ligue 1) was opened to teams from all over France and became de facto the biggest league competition in French Football. The competition was dominated mostly by clubs that have since disappeared or stopped playing football, like Standard AC, Club Français or RC Roubaix, but Le Havre AC also won a couple of titles in the beginning of the 20th century; then in 1907 the club won their first title winning the USFSA Championnat de France, beating Olympique de Marseille in the playoffs semi finals and RC Roubaix in the final. In 1917, despite France still being in an active World War, Racing participated in the very first Coupe de France, being eliminated in the quarter finals. The team then fell off a bit, as it was the time of "amateurism", where some teams were amateur in name but not in practice, and Racing were at the time staunchly against any kind of professionalism, with the team in the 20s getting relegated to the second division of Parisian football and no longer reaching the altter rounds of the Coupe de France. This changed in the late 20s, when a new club president changed the position of the club when it came to professional players and the club hired several French international players. With this strengthened squad, Racing reached the final of the Coupe de France in 1930, losing against FC Sète, in a game they played with 10 players and an outfield player in goal after an injury in the 13th minute - this being the time before substitutions where in the football rules; Sète still needed extra time to win the game. In 1932, professionalism was finally official in France, at the same time as what is now Ligue 1 started. The club was invited to join, but as the statutes of Racing Club de France still stated that the club had to be amateur, the football section officially split from the club (while officially staying under its supervision), changing their name again to Racing Club de Paris; the club also started using their usual home stadium less (the Stade départemental Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes, in the outskirts of Paris) and playing more games at Parc des Princes, better located and with better capacity. The peak in Racing history came shortly after: the 1935/36 season, where they took home the league title, finishing ahead of Olimpique Lillois (half of what would eventually become Lille OSC) and RC Strasbourg; in the same season, against second tier team Olympique de Charleville, they scored a single goal to also take home the Coupe de France); while the team would not win the title ever again, they were close, being third in 35, and in 37 and 39; They would however win the cup a few more times: 1939 against Olimpique Lillois, one year later against Olympique de Marseille, 1945 and 1949, both against LOSC Lille. Throughout the 30s and 40s, the club cemented itself as the best club from Paris. In the 50s, things didn't go as well,, with the club getting relegated in 1953, though they bounced back up in the next season, and then they established themselves as a top half team in the top division. Then came the 60s... They started with a bang, with two second placed finishes, behind Monaco in 61 and Reims in 62, but then they crashed hard; in 63 they finished 10th and were invited to the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, where they lost against Rapid Wien, and in the league a disappointing 16th place saw them relegated. Unlike in the 50s, where they managed to keep the squad and bounced back, this time they lost most of the team, and finished 12th in the second division in their first season, and then 16th in the second season. Combining this the fact their attendances plummeted to a third of what they had in the top division saw the team's financial situation was dire, and to save the club professional status, it was forced to merge with UA Sedan-Torcy, with the new club called RC Paris-Sedan - the club was only from Paris in name, playing in Sedan, over 300km away from the capital. Just 3 years later, this new club would change their name to CS Sedan Ardennes, a name more recognisable nowadays. Racing Club de France on their hand, restarted their football section, again as an amateur team, and signed them up in the then third tier - though they got relegated to the 4th tier in their first season controlling the club again, and thei remained the amateur leagues throughout the late 60s and 70s. During these years, there were talks of potential further mergers, first in 1974 with Paris FC, that had been created in 1969 partly to fill in the void the Racing's relegation had left in the French top flight, and then again in 1977 with PSG, though they both failed. The club changed their name in 1981 back to Racing Club de Paris to show their intent to go back into being a pro team. Then came businessman Jean-Luc Lagardère, who wanted to invest in a Parisian club to rival the rising PSG. He bought Paris FC in 1982, and merged it with Racing, With Racing taking the spot of Paris FC in the second tier, and the Paris FC acting as their reserve squad in the 4th tier. Lagardère started heavily investing in the club, starting what can almost be called an attempt at assembling a Real Madrid style of Galacticos: even in the second tier, they signed established players including Éric Renaut from PSG, Victor Zvunka from Laval and the biggest name in Rabah Madjer, and in 1984 they easily got promoted back into the top tier, and once again started playing at Parc des Princes. The effort and money spent in building a start studded squad continued with the signing of French international Philippe Mahut; despiter this the club finished last and went back down. Even in the second tier, the investment continued, with two more international players joining, Eugène Kabongo and Maxime Bossis. The real investment though, came after the team easily went back up to the top tier. The club offered what were at the time some of the highest wages offered to any player to sign some of the biggest names in World football: Enzo Francescoli, Pierre Littbarski, Thierry Tusseau and PSG star Luis Fernandez; but despite the millions spent and having the highest wage bill of the whole league, the club only finished 13th. Lagardère doubled down: he signed manager Artur Jorge, who had just won the Champions League with FC Porto and added two more french international players: Gérard Buscher and Pascal Olmeta. There are stories of more players that the club had attempted to hire, like Eric Cantona. The name of the club changed again, with Lagardère adding his company name to the club, now called Matra Racing Paris, in line with the F1 team he also owned. Did it work? Again, not really. After a good start of the season that saw the club in third in winter 1987, the club ended up finishing 7th, having a crisis on the pitch, and also on the stands as playing far from their usual home crowd sizes were dwindling. The next season was even worse, with the club being saved from relegation on goal difference, losing local support and criticised by the media as a whole, Lagardère, who had invested in the club mainly as a form of raising publicity for his companies, announce he'd remove all support to the club. All in all, 300 million Francs were invested into the club by Lagardère, the equivalent to nearly 100M€ in today's money, with nothing to show for. Looking back, it was not hard to see the problems. No money was invested in infrastructures, and you had a club filled with international stars that still had to take their kits home and wash them after every game and training session. Their move to Parc des Princes, 18 km away from their previous home stadium, did not pay out, and they played for a stadium that was usually only one quarter full, and did not feel like home games. The last issue was Lagardère himself, a man with an ego bigger than Paris itself. Cantona says of when they tried to sign him that he was taken to a banquet where the waiters wore powdered wigs. Even the announcement that his role at the club was coming to an end happened in a press conference at a 5-star hotel, the kind where the daily rate for a room is more than the monthly average rate for a room in Paris. Even without Lagardère, the club managed one last surprise, reaching the French Cup final for the last time. No surprises happened in the league, where they finished 19th and got relegated. Unable to find sponsors, the club had to ask to go down to the third tier, and just 2 years later permanently lost their professional license. Since then the club has yo-yoed, mostly between the 4th and 6th tiers of French football. The one thing the club can still pride themselves on is their youth academy, which has produced players like David Ginola back in the 80s, and more recently players like Benoît Cheyrou, Jérémie Aliadière, Kévin Malcuit, Louis Saha, Steven N’Zonzi and William Gallas. It's almost unbelievable how London can have the amount of professional football teams it has, and even smaller cities like Lisbon, Athens, or Wien can handle having multiple top tier and even title challenging teams, only for cities like Berlin, Amsterdam and specially Paris to struggle to have more than one team, or just have one team period. My goal is to take Racing back to its heyday - doing things the right way: we want to be the Racing of the 30s and 40s, not the Racing of the 80s.

An update on my side: Hungary has been ready for a long time, same with Albania ( ibeleive there is just a silly bug on one of thuse we need to check before releasing it) Easy Germany is massive as I want to go as in depth as I can: as an example, East Berlin has 167 teams if we count B teams, and 125 stadiums alone.

Just as a curiosity, it wasn't. It looked like this:

The thing about having most of the hard songs right at the start is that after we get mostly easier games. We started with an easy win against Cremonese we even had the luxury of missing a penalty before scoring 4 goals. Then Ascoli surprised us, in close game wher the team that was ahead changed a bunch of times throughout the game. Then until the Atalanta game we had games we dominated easily - and in the game against Atalanta the draw was the "correct" score. Then we had the game of the season for us so far: Napoli only managed 3 shots all game. This is a team that should be up there with us fighting for Europe and we cancelled all their offensive work. i wish we could have done the same to Juventus, instead we had a close game like against Atalanta, where the draw seems fair. Then in a game where a draw or maybe a Sassuolo win should have been fairer, we took the 3 points home. Have I recently said how much I hate AC Milan? 1-0 looks like a close game, but it was like our game against Napoli, we had 4 shots the whole game, and our defense saved us from a horrible time. The game against Frankfurt was similar, except we somehow managed to score a goal and we did it first! Then against Dinamo and Celtic we had the two easiest games of the season so far, the Champions League feels like going on a roller coaster. But this means that with two games to go we have qualified. Good too, as the last two games are against Atlético and Real Madrid .

And since I forgot to include it: Only around 2000 seats more, but hey, it's a start!

New sponsor contract means new kits, this time with Joma - a company that would likely treat SSV Brixen as one of their flagship teams and actually make unique kits instead of just slapping on a template. It is not a Brixen Serie A season without having a stupidly hard beginning of the season; this time we got Roma, Inter, Torino, Lazio and Juventus as the first 5 games of the season, and while in previous seasons we had luck on our side and got points where we shouldn't have in games against the big teams, this time our luck ran out. We started the season with a very close game against Roma were we missed a penalty (saved by Bart Verbruggen) and because of that I have to say that the draw was an unlucky result for us; then we actually played better than Inter, with more clear cut changes, xG and shots, only to gift them an own goal and then only snatching a draw from a penalty in stoppage time. You can start to see the pattern: we outplayed Torino, who finished the game on 0.3 xG, and somehow went back home empty handed. The game against Lazio was the first game I can say we deserved to lose in the season, only to have a game against Juventus where the only time they had a threatening offensive play was in the first mine, and they scored it; we dominated the rest of the game but were only able to score one goal - and at this point we were 20th in the league, and 7th in the xG table... Then the Champions League games started, and weirdly enough that seemed to change our luck in the league too; it did help that the following games would be easier. We had one more game, this time against Fiorentina away where we got away with being by far the worse team on the field that day, but against Palermo, Bologna and Pisa we dominated the games and were deserved winners. This allowed us to start climbing back up the league, and I am hopeful we'll be able to continue as we keep playing against teams from the lower half of the table: Cremonese, Monza, Ascoli, Frosinone, Genoa and Atalanta are next. We started with two of the easier games for the Champions League, ones we expected points - I expected the 3 against the Ukrainians at home, and at least 1 from the Turks away, so it's been a positive edition so far - the next games are against AC Milan and Eintracht Frankfurt, and I don't expect anything against the Rossoneri, and hopefully we can steal one point from the Germans.

I think this one has easier and harder teams than the last year. 8 to 12 points? Maybe?

It is time for the 35/36 season, and for me to analyse how the first team squad will be: 1. Elias Lorenz 34. Heiko Schwabl The usual suspects here. I believe Fabian Stiegler has the potential to be better than Lorenz and is already better than Schwabl, but to keep improving he needs to play, and with loan offers from Austrian second division teams, he will be going on loan again instead of being my second choice keeper. We have some doubts here, specially at central defender. The first two choices are Kobras and Marx, but the 3rd and 4th ones are harder to choose; Bacher has retired and needs to be replaced, that one is obvious, but then there's the question of Brugarello - he has been hired as a stop gap, and I have players from my youth squads and the loan system that are better than him, but I fear that they won't develop as well if they play 10 or so games for us, when they could be playing 30 or 40 at a second or third tier team. Let's have a look at the options. 23. Philipp Kobras 3. Johannes Marx Are the definite ones for DC. Then as a replacement for Bacher I will like bring up Senoner (bringin the amount of Ladin players on the main squad to 3) Janmatî Senoner And for the last option, I am unsure whether to keep Brugarello, or calling up one of Drechsel or Aase. What does everyone think? 37. Johann Drechsel Christian Aase 35. Mattia Brugarello On the left wing side, the choices are obvious, Schnöll and the our new wonderkid: 20. Dominik Schnöll 63. Benjamin Schäfer On the right wing side, one player remains from last season and one that was loaned for the last season: 2. Thomas Lerchster Mario Marzi We had one player leave here too, Eifler, who was used a rotation player at best. We had an abundance of decent midfielders anyway, so the rest of the squad remains the same: 21. Florian Ernst 14. Maximilian Schwarz 5. Raphael Kofler 13. Lorenzo Moroder 36. Dominic Filter 7. David Falkner 22. Julius Loferer I am very much considering selling Franjo Ivanović, who was a big disappointment: spent a third of the season injured and ended up with a av. rat of 6.71, with just 1 goal and 2 assists. He will not be on this list. We are in need of right wingers, but we don't have any one ready, so we'll make do with using players that would be better as left wingers but can play on the right. We will be calling up one new kid into the first team, Frank Will, as he's no longer already very decent, he's also very versatile. I am also on the fence on whether Engelke will have enough football with us or if he should go on loan one more season. 6. Marco Sievers 9. Hannes Jarosch Frank Will 12. Simone Gnech 11. Tommaso Canavesi 17. Marco Romano Leon Engelke

I knew were were never going to catch up a Milan team that ended up winning Serie A, Coppa Italia, the Italian Super Cup and the Champions League. We did our job in the other games, but by the time we went against them they already had the title. Then we lost 4-0 and finished the game with ten players, just to add insult to injury - remember, it's not a season without Milan blowing us out at least once. Unexpectedly, we have Champions League football again though! It was a good year for Tyrolean football in general. Südtirol was unable to get promoted via the playoffs yet again, but they will have company in Serie C next season because after 4 years in a row missing on promotion by one spot, FC Obermais have been promoted into the pro leagues - which will help us a lot as they're our affiliate; our other Serie D affiliate, St Georgen, finished second, so I'm rooting for them getting promoted next season too. The fact that we're doing well in the league and in the Champions league and we haven't been making big signings, going for kids that have the potential to make it into our first team, means that we finish the season as a rich club with over 100M€ in the bank, and the board wants to expand our stadium, currently the smallest in Serie A with 12000 seats. We're not likely to spend a big amount of money in the summer either, with the only two players I'd be going for are not feasible: Hutter, now a squad player at Dortmund, would be willing to come back, if we pay him double what Dortmund pay him now (around half a million per month), while Zotz, still at tycoon backed Altach would also ask for more than double what my best players are getting paid. Instead I will be promoting from within. This also means that I can immediately start thinking how the team will be next year, which will be the focus of the next update.

Since he came through, he has started two games and was subbed in in another. Result, Best Serie A U19 Player of the Month award winner:

So we had a board takeover, and our new overlord chairman, the german Klaus Hofmann who has in the past been the president of FC Augsburg - he brought no changes to the club. On the pitch, we seem to have another season like the previous one, where we're punching above our weight with a dash of having lady luck on our side. It helped that we're on the easier run of games in the season. We started with a convincing win against Hellas Verona, where we killed the game in the first 20 minutes and then controlled the rest of the game, then against Cremonese we had a very similar game that we made needlessly complicated, as we started by being two goals up, gave up a penalty goal and only got the 3 goal that gave us serenity in stoppage time. And Napoli came along to throw us down a peg, and stop our run of 8 games without a loss in Serie A. They needed a 34 year old Kvaratskhelia penalty goal to win, but they were the more offensive team, and it was deserved. Against Frosinone was one of the instances of lady luck being on our side. a very level game, and we managed to score one more goal on a lower xG - we take those! The next couple of games were games we domianted, and deservedly got the points, and luck doesn't always run our way, as we played a lot better than Atalanta, and scored on the 75th minute just to see them equalise the very next minute. Finally against Parma and Pisa, teams close to the bottom of the league, we again deserved the points. Now, this leaves 4 games and once again a two team race for the title - us against Milan, but this time we need the Rossoneri to completely collapse: even if we win our game against them, which is still one of the 4 games, we'd need to win against Genoa, Sassuolo and Bologna (doable) and expect Milan to lose 5 points when playing against Parma, Geona and Lazio (very unlikely). I expect to finish 2nd or 3rd. It's still great, because the xG table says we should be midtable, in 9th! On an individual level, what I expected happened and Bacher, now 34 announced he will retire at the end of the season, leaving a DC hole we need to fit, but after maybe 7 or 8 rounds of negotiations, I managed to get Kofler's agent, who was asking for a new contract on 175k€ per week (when my best player is currently at 120k€ and only three players, all way better than him, are at or above 100€) to accept a 100k€ contract, something i am OK accepting. In the Champions League Knock Out round we got Atletico Madrid again, and this time we could not keep a clean sheet like we did in the League stage. And they dominated both games, they could have killed the whole game in the first leg. i am still super proud of how far we managed to go.

it even fits the current format of the squad where my left fullback is a lot more attacking than the right one so he fits like a a glove.

Well, youth intake day arrived. There's a 15 year old being thrown straight into the first team and given the longest contract I can possibly offer: