Reiver's career save.

[Reiver]

Meet Yannick Monteiro. Born in Quebec to Portuguese parents, he took to the loved sport of his parents, preferring the dance of football to the brawl of ice hockey. He played in Quebec as a kid and impressed enough to get into Toronto FC's Academy upon it's opening in 2008, and playing for the Canadian Youth National Teams all the way to under-16s. When he was 18, he had offers to attend both American and Canadian Universities as an athete, but he turned it down for a chance to study in Portugal and hopefully start a football career in Europe. He enrolled in University in Lisbon and trialed for several local clubs - the big two in the capital as well as Belenenses didn't even bother to look at him (that's what happens when you don't even have an agent). He ended up playing one season for Oriental, down in the third division, where he impressed despite the club's midtable finish, and there was some interest from teams the division above when his knees disagreed with him on a game with friends.  Even after surgery and months of rehabilitation, his knees were never the same. He still played but now at amateur level, while working in a call center during the day, saving up money and studying to get coaching badges to stay in the game after his knees completely wear out.

The year is now 2019, and a proud Yannick just got the minimum level to coach a senior team - and a lot of CVs were sent and contacts gained through playing were called...

[fmamerican]

Allez Yannick!

[chaodck]

Yannick "Le Québecois-Lusitanien" Monteiro! Hoping to read more about this Reiver pal, best of luck.

[Reiver]

Thanks for the interest! So, a few notes about the save. The previous one was ditch when after surviving in Serie C during our first season, the new season was generated and we weren't scheduled to play any of the cups - I don't know if that's a bug with the original database or the file I was using, but considering it was the first version for FM20 of the file I usually get for the Italian Lower Leagues, I might have been from the file itself.

For this game, the idea will be a lot different - gone is the idea to limit myself to a region and to a team, which was at the same time fun but limiting. In this scenario my limitations will be different. i want this save to be somewhat of a career journeyman lower league save. I want it to feel realist, to I'm starting at the bottom of the Portuguese leagues, and only move when it feels realistic - not hoping from the Belarussian Second Division to the Icelandic third tier here. The behaviour within the clubs too - I have established my base as being around Lisbon, so while I'm at amateur teams I will not accept offers from clubs that I couldn't realistically accept without having to move home. The same with hiring staff or players, and with how the club works - if they already have a DoF I will use it, if they don't I won't, for example.

The game starts with all tiers of Portuguese football active: 2 levels of nationwide professional leagues, 1 level of mostly semipro regional leagues, and then the (mostly) amateur leagues. At this level each district (roughly the size of a shire) has it's own structure, with the least populated ones having one level and the most having up to 4 levels even divided them into groups. In this case, I will stick at the very beginning to the leagues of Lisbon and Setubal district, so we're looking at starting from the 5th of 6th tier. I started the game by holidaying for a few months so most clubs that start without a manager will get one, and started applying for positions as they opened...

[Reiver]

Carcavelos is a 23 thousand people town around 20km away from Lisbon, known for being both a sleeping town and a beach resort - great for surfing! Carcavelos is not currently known for any footballing reasons, but more than a hundred years ago, it was one of the birthing spots of football in Portugal.

In the late 1870s, submarine cables were being built all around the world to improve telegraph communications. One of such cables would go from Mumbai through the Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean, around Portugal and then to Falmouth. One of the stops on the cables was in Carcavelos, and as more and more cables were built, the company that controlled them (The Eastern Telegraph Company) had a team of English workers and engineers stationed on the then village. British engineers being British, soon they were playing cricket and football in the land around the estate the company bought to house the workers. 

At first, the Carcavellos Cricket & Football Club, also called Carcavellos Sports Club, or Carcavellos Club for short only played games between the members of the club, but later in the 19th century teams around Lisbon started appearing, having learnt the game from the Carcavellos players or from the Pinto Basto family who brought the rules from the UK. During the first decades of football in Portugal, before there were any official leagues, Carcavellos was one of if not the best team in Portugal, having unbeated runs from 1898 to 1907. At the time, their field, Campo da Quinta Nova (New Farm Field), was the best football field in Portugal, so when the first league ever played in Portugal (with teams from the Lisbon area) in 1907, their field was used for most games, and Carcavellos would emerge as the first winners, with Sporting as runner ups, and Sport Lisboa (one of the teams that would form Benfica) in third. Carcavellos would win the second league, and bolstered by these leagues, the FA of Lisbon would be formed in 1908. The team continued playing until 1914, when they stopped competing against outside teams and started playing only between its members again. There is no information I can find online as to when they actually stopped playing.

A few years later, in 1921, the Grupo Sportivo Carcavelos is formed as a multi-sports club, focusing mostly on cycling and football. This new club has never reached the levels of the "English Club", playing in the regional leagues all of their history having won the then 8th tier twice (1980 and 1992) and the then 6th tier once in (1995) and a Lisbon FA Cup in 1994. The biggest figure ever to be at the club was Damas (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADtor_Damas), who managed them before he died.

Carcavelos are currently 11th out of 16 in one of the groups of the Lisbon FA third tier, and 6th tier of football overall in Lisbon. It is the 9th of February 2020 and Yannick just got himself a job.

(Yes, CD Estrela are the phoenix club of once Portuguese cup winners Estrela da Amadora)

[Reiver]

If you've noticed that my intro has changed... it has. Just as i started playing I noticed that I fucked up my editor files and had to start again, so new team, new game.

[Reiver]

Ok, so let's look with a bit more depth to this team. It's February, there's 11 games left, and we're 11th when we were predicted to finish 7th. We're already out of the regional cup, and 20 points away from the promotion spots, so we can safely say that's out of the window. The board has asked us to be competitive in the league, and the plan for the next 5 years is to be an established team at our level, so we don't have a lot of pressure here. We need to start building for next year. So now we look at the (small) squad I inherited:

The first thing you can very quickly see is that we need a new Goalkeeper, and I already have my amazing (JPA 5 JPP 5) chief scout (and only memember of the recruitment team) looking for one. It's clear that we also need a bigger squad in general, and in some positions we could also get some better options (strikers, I'm looking at you), but some of the players that were offering to come to the club when I joined are actually very decent and I might just go for that route until we find us a goalkeeper. Now, do I think this team is good enough to make us go up next year? No. Does it have the needed base - I'd say so. There's also a few options available for us on the youth team, who are currently 11th out of 15th in the 3rd tier of youth football in Portugal just edging out in a relegation battle.

I looked at this, made a note of the 1 and 2 star players so I keep a good eye on them, and immediately promoted João Marques to the main team - he's already our third best centreback. Now, our conditions aren't the best: Basic and Poor facilities all around. The money doesn't abound either. We're not losing money, but not making any either, and have just 30k€ in the bank. We have a 500 people stadium and average attendance of around half that. That's not to say that just because we won't be able to improve our facilities in the near future that we won't be able to take advantage of them. Our Youth candidate report doesn't seem so bad,It seems like I can count on getting some decent defenders for next season.

With all being said, I've gone for my usual approach in the lower leagues - let's press them. We're all shitty players, we all make mistakes, so let's try to force the opposition players into making mistakes as close to their goal as possible. And you'll hear more about me on regen day!.