Stories – Asymmetric

Rapid Chisinau – Home is where the heart is

So, it has come to this. Considering the timing, possibly my final long-term career in this year’s FM, after the Sparta & Artium saves have both reached a somewhat natural finish point. We managed to achieve complete domestic domination as well as reach the CL final with Sparta with a team full of academy products and we climbed our way out from the 6th tier of Italy all the way to a Europa League win with Artium, all done with Italian u21 signings only. Both incredibly enjoyable and challenging, both clubs created from scratch in their respected nations.

So, as a somewhat tangible pattern emerges, and as I quickly get bored with traditional FM saves, I’ve decided there’s only one thing I can do to motivate me enough to play FM17 anymore: a youth challenge in my home town – Chisinau, the capital city of Republic of Moldova. And yes, with a created club 🙂 Continue reading “Rapid Chisinau – Home is where the heart is”

Sparta: 15 Years of Youth, Athleticism and Discipline

Hi everyone, this is a piece I wrote detailing the squad&club achievements at the end of our 15th season with Sparta Bucharest. It’s a detailed tribute to a Football Manager youth challenge that turned out to be much more than a simple FM career….

Continue reading “Sparta: 15 Years of Youth, Athleticism and Discipline”

Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part VI.chapter one – Attacking Football and Developing a Style

Recent tactical experiments saw me focus a lot on ideas revolving around concepts on defending and the systems I’ve focused on have been a consequence of maybe too much dwelling on that, so I’ve decided to try out something new, yet again, with my Sparta Bucharest side Attacking football is a very debatable term… is it GegenPressing? is it Route One? is it Schimdt’s overloads? is it Conte’s 3-4-3? Continue reading “Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part VI.chapter one – Attacking Football and Developing a Style”

Part V: Promotion threesome in Florence

Back to back to back? Surely threesome sounds better…Not that I’d be very far from the more literal interpretations of that given my half-shaved beard and weird accent started attracting way more attention than I thought it would from the overwhelmed feminine set of supporters. And yet as inexperienced in those matters I believe myself to be, that’s hardly the most exciting thing that’s going on right now. We’ve done it! Continue reading “Part V: Promotion threesome in Florence”

Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part V – Libero Rewind

As previously promised in the Libero article and due to the fact that I get easily bored playing the same system for too long, this is my attempt to integrate the Libero in FM with a squad of overall lower quality. I’ve decided to try this out with my Sparta team, considering the presence of the highly praised Milas Ionita II amongst our ranks: Continue reading “Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part V – Libero Rewind”

Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part IV – Simplicity brings Efficience

Hello everyone and I hope you’re enjoying this series thus far. You might be wondering why I change my approaches so often, as until now we’ve had very good success with most of the systems employed. This probably originates in my utter disregard to concepts like ‘stick to what’s working’ and ‘if it’s going well, don’t change it’, when it comes to football management. The whole idea behind this series is to provide an illustration of the fact that being adaptable and flexible are some of the most important aspects of management. Given this is a youth-only save, the ‘logistic’ set-up provides the perfect scene for that, as we’re unable to buy players and have to constantly look to adapt our tactics to players that come through the team through youth recruitment. Then again, it’s an exercise in trying to prove that success can be achieved on a football pitch with different styles of football, and therefore a subtle dig to the moralists of these realms which advocate a ‘right way’ and ‘wrong way’ to play football. Before this starts looking like an ego-trip, I will conclude on this conceptual side of things and I’ll get on with the real deal: Continue reading “Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part IV – Simplicity brings Efficience”