FC Obermais: The Lions in the Alps

[Reiver]

I've been playing FM and it's previous iterations for 20 years. I'm senior enough that I remember signing Tó Madeira and Maxim Tsigalko in my saves. I'm also a fan of the oddities and the different, and if it wasn't for the coming of the modern editor, I probably would have lost interest in this game a while ago. The editor created a whole new world of opportunity - now I could play in San Marino, or I could take a Liechstensteiner team up from the lower levels of Swiss football, trying to win the World Cup with Albania, or even create a brand new nation a see how well they could do. It was when I first tried to play a game creating a new nation that I first played a FM game in Tyrol, and for some reason the football teams in the area (and the amazing beauty of the area) stuck to me, and I have followed the football in that area ever since.

FC Obermais is the perfect team to do what I want in this save. A late arrival to the game of football, they were only formed in 1972, the local team of the Obermais neighbourhood in Meran. Just next year they would play in the leagues for the very first time in the lowest possible tier, the 3.Amateurliga, at the time 7 levels before the top division. And it stayed mostly in the lower echelons of football for a long part of their career, until 2001.

That year, the board and then manager Martin Klotzner developed a plan for Obermais to consistently grow with good foundations and without forgetting its roots. And it worked. At the time the team played in the 1.Amateurliga, at the time the 8th tier. 2001/02 saw them finish 10th. Then 7th, then 2nd, then 1st and promotion to the Landesliga, which they won in their first year, followed by mostly consistent top results at the Oberliga (the highest amateur football level, and where some teams with money and prestige sometimes appear): 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 11th, 4th, a few years not as good where they went back down to the Landesliga,  but they quickly bounced up and just 3 years after getting promoted from the Landesliga to the Oberliga, they are losing their promotion shot at the semi-pro level outside the football field - more to that in a minute.

If this team were a German team, they would for sure be what they call a Kult team - despite speaking German they are not.. Despite originally being the team from a small neighbourhood of Meran, they draw the biggest crowds of all Tyrolean amateur football, even rivaling the ones of FC Südtirol. How many teams playing in amateur leagues, in stadiums that don't even have proper stands boast to have 3 different tiffosi groups? How many teams can boast to have had their first tiffosi group founded when they played in the 7th tier of football of their country? 

All because of the team's philosophy of growth. Play attractive football and don't try to overstep. Keep the same players that played in the lower leagues and improve the training, the dilligence and the commitment. Refusing to sell the soul of the team for footballing progress - in their own words: "The core of the FC Obermais team is formed by local players. The "foreigners" do not come from Milan, at most [they come] from Bozen, from Passeier, from Lana, from Ulten [other Tyrolean towns]." Their progress plan, which they write about in their website that if they do get promoted to the next level, they would perhaps hire 3 to 4 players to complement the team, but the core would always be made up of local players, and always looking after their youngsters, and should the team go back down, they would keep the players too.

And they've nearly done it. In 2018/19, the team finished second in the league, meaning they would go to the playoffs to fight for promotion. After their supporters' bus got attacked before their away game, they protested saying they wouldn't endanger their fans and lost their promotion chances when they walked out of the game. It takes a lot of integrity to take that kind of stand nowadays. And so, one more year without promotion to Serie D.

Wait, Serie D? Yes, despite me doing this write up with the competition names in German, FC Obermais plays in the Italian leagues, because South Tyrol, despite being a german speaking majority region is nowadays part of Italy. Where you read 3.Amateurliga, you could also read Terza Categoria; 1.Amateurliga is Prima Categoria, Landesliga is Promozione and Oberliga is Eccellenza. South Tyrol has a professional team that despite having great facilities, hasn't captivated the south tyrolean people - the italian speaking people, mostly internal immigrants (or descendants) root for the teams they already rooted for before, and they failed to catch the attention of the german speaking people by not focusing on the local talent (their whole first team squad only has 3 players from the region). We aim to follow the philosophy of the team in real life by limiting our transfers to players from the South Tyrol at first, and even as we go up the leagues to players from Tyrol as a whole, Austrian and Italian side, a kind of cantera in the Alps. 

[chaodck]

Terrific writeup Reiver, I'm eager to see this through, best of luck!

[Reiver]

So, one month and a new computer later, a second introductory post to provide some context and exposition. Just like in literature. First, just what/where is Tyrol? Tyrol used to be a county in the Holy Roman Empire and then part of Austria, and since the end of WWI split between Austria and Italy. Located high in the Alps, this multi-lingual region is split between Italian speaking in the south, in the region now called Trentino (after the capital of Trento; historically it was called Welschtirol, Welsch being the local word for the italian speaking people, having the same cognate as Welsh, meaning foreigner or not germanic speaker), while the north is German speaking, now split between Südtirol in Italy and the State of Tirol in Austria (further split between Nord and Osttirol). In some of the hard to reach valleys other languages have survived, like the romance Ladin in Südtirol and the germanic Cimbrian in Trentino. Together, these currently make up the Euroregion of Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino.

This is where most of my players will come from. In the North, the Austrian bit, football is definitively more developed. FC Wacker Innsbruck is known for 5 Austrian titles in the 70s, for folding in the 90s, and for the new club to yo-yo between the first and second division. It also has WSG Wattens (this season renamed to WSG Swarovski Tirol to try and gain some more local support now that they're the only local team in the top division) bankrolled by the Swarovski family, and where more clubs have reached at least the second division. It's also where the biggest Tirolean stars come from: the biggest name is no doubt Alessandro Schöpf, the Schalke 04 winger, with Lukas Hinterseer at HSV also a high profile player.

On the other side of the border, things aren't as rosy in the footballing world. This is not for lack of passion for the sport - South Tyrol play in the Europeada - a European Championship of sorts for minority groups, and they've won the last two competitions, in 2012 and 2016; there's talks of arranging a Conifa team. Local teams get plenty of local support, but no team has played at higher than Serie B (and that was in the 40s). In the 90s, local businessmen and investors founded FC Südtirol, who currently have great conditions and siphon most local youth talent (though rarely use it on the main squad) but have been unable to go past Serie C; a couple of teams have managed to survive at Serie D level, with a relegation here and there (Dro and Levico Terme from the Italian speaking side, St. Georgen and Virtus Bolzano from the german speaking side), but there's a long hitory of teams getting promoted from the amateur leagues just to go bankrupt - AC Bolzano (now part of Virtus), Mezzocorona, Rovereto, Passirio Merano, Trento, Fersina Perginese.

The best Southtyrolean football player of all time (and where I borrowed my manager's name from) is Klaus Bachlechner, who had a long Serie A career in the 70s and 80s with Hellas Verona and Bologna, and played for Inter in the year they got AC Milan relegated. No other player managed to get this kind of careers, though some have showed some promise. Joachim De Gasperi played for Cittadella for 11 years and played for Italy at under 20 level; Simon Laner also had a long career playing for Serie B teams, while Michael Cia and Manuel Fischnaller  also showed promise, being capped at youth levels for Italy (and one even playing with the Milan Primavera team) but both then had Serie B and C careers.

This is the spell I want to break - to get a team up the leagues focusing on local youth, and to get local players as far as possible, as far as the Italian national team. I predict the first season to be easy - all teams at this level are local and amateur, so I intend to start gathering the best players I can find that are willing to come my way and go up in the first season. It'll get a lot harder from then on. Throughout the save I intend to follow the teams vision of signing local, and even when I see that I need a player to get to the next level that just isn't there locally,  will only look at one place - a lot of the Italian and German immigration to Brazil actually happened from the areas under control of the Austrian empire at the time, and a lot of that immigration came from the Italian and German speaking areas of Tirol, to the point that the first Catholic Church saint to die in Brazil was actually born in Tirol, so all my marquees signings, should they ever happen, will have to come from this pool of Brazilians of Italian or German descent.

On the next post, the actual team I've assembled.

[Reiver]

2019/2020 Oberliga Südtirol Squad

Goalkeepers

Sven Kerschbaumer, signed from SSV Brixen comes to be our first choice - I wanted a better goalkeeper but he was the best one I could find that wanted to come and would be and improvement to our existing options, while Caula and Wieser will probably sit on the bench most of the season.

Left Back

Left back is actually the position in which we're worst served. Trafoier is a very decent attacking option for this level (and a good thing because I am playing with Wing Backs at the moment) that we snapped from our affiliate ASV Latsch, while veteran Rungg is way past his prime, and Pohl was hired from Partschins  more because of his versatility than anything else - he'll pop into the game from the bench a few times if needed.



Right Back

Zimmerhofer, signed from SSV Bruneck will be first choice, while regen Kern (I hate the newgen faces so I've been using GAN generated faces for the ones in my team. hence his mugshot) from ASV Tramin will be rotated in sometimes.



Centre Back

Amzingly enough, all centre backs were already at the club, no new signings here. Bernardo Ceravolo is amazing for this level - he even has 4 Serie C games under his bag for Mezzocorona (too bad they were 12 years ago). The player that he will partner with most often will be Platzer, who also has great numbers for this league, though Parise and club legend and captain Höller will also feature.
 

Defensive Midfielder

Furlan was a late addition to the squad, and is also the only player born in Trentino to be in the squad at the moment, but will be the main option to play as a DLP from the DM position - comes after being released by Trento last season, and played for Südtirol in Serie C for 7 seasons up to 2016. Felder will also feature throughout the season, even more becasue he-s very versatile and can play anywhere in the midfield, coming on a free from Bruneck.



Central Miedfielders

We have an abundance of Central Midfielders - we usually play with a Box to Box and a Carrilero to boss out the midfield. First choice for the Carrilero side is usually Mauro, coming for us after 5 seasons with Weinstrasse Sud; then the other player to partner with him will depend on decisions elsewhere on the pitch: there's a rule at this level that the match squad needs to have 1 under 18 player, and we currently have two decent under 18 players that i am willing to insert into the main team. The first one is Baar, a regen that I signed from Brixen. He has one of the dreaded personalities (Mercenary), but despite this seems to be developing nicely for the conditions I have and at this point, I'll take it until I find better. If there's an under 18 elsewhere in the field, of if Baar is playing in the DLP position, i have plenty of rotation available from Schvartz, Rabensteiner and Pichler.

Left Winger

Tappeiner is half-Ethiopian half-Italian and all star player for my team. In real life, he was capped for Italy and under 15 level but did not live up to his potential, and in game i signed him from Naturns, and I have no doubt that if he develops and I manage to keep him he'll probably serve me all the way to Serie C. Poor Hasa will probably only play when Tappeiner is injured.




Right Winger

On the other side, Ciaghi (already at club) and Orsolin (from Bozner FC) will rotate - Orsolin has the better stats but Ciaghi seems to perform above what you'd expect from him, and under 18 regen Bohlen will also feature from time to time.



Striker

Lastly, the other position where I did not sign any new player, with all 3 starting at the club. Bacher will be first choice, but Lanthaler and Amico,  who counts as under 18 will play as well.




A special note to show how much this zone is dependent of FC Südtirol: out of my first team, 17 players were formed or played at Südtirol at some point in their career.

[Reiver]

2019/2020 Oberliga Südtirol Squad

At the start of the save, we're playing in the Oberliga Südtirol/Trentino (or the Eccellenza Trentino-Alto Adige), the 5th tier of Italian football and the top fully amateur level, while also playing the Amateurpokal Südtirol (Coppa Italia Dilettanti - the Italian cup for amateur teams; first played at a regional level, then the winners of each region at national level; winner gets promoted). We play in the Sportplatz Lahn, which seats 500 and with great views of the botanical garden and palace next door. Facilities are, as expected, poor. The media predicts us to finish 5th and the board wants a top half finish in a division that looks like this:

If it looks like the teams are aligned in a very precise way, you wouldn't be way off. In the Alps, all the settlements are in the valleys, so if you follow the river Etsch (or Adige), you pass through most major towns. Going back to the league. Despite what the media predicts and what the board wants, I know we have what it takes to get out of this league at first try - there's 3 major contenders to one immediate promotion and one promotion spot, 3 dogs to 2 bones. FC Obermais, AC Trento and ASC St.Georgen.

The Pre-season was mostly against local teams at lower levels, with the exception of Servette FC - where expectedly we lost, and there were no bumps, everything went our way and we used it mostly to give the players match condition and fine tune our tactics. Then we entered the cup against neighbours St Martin/Moos, and we had a travesty in two acts, as I posted a while ago: throughout the two games, we had 48 shots against 8, and yet they won both games 2-1. At least the board saw the cup as mostly unimportant, and now we can focus on the league and getting our coveted promotion spot.

[Reiver]

2019/2020 Oberliga Südtirol September/November

After our slip up in the local cup, it was important not to let our guard down and not let it spiral to our first league games, and I am glad to say that didn't happen. We've been a bit leakier than I'd like at times, as it's most shown on our game against Anaune, where we dominated most of the game and yet ended up letting them score two goals during the second half stoppage time. The only games we were outplayed was away against Trento and then against St. Georgen. I was annoyed to lose against our direct competitor, but i have to say that result was more than fair, but I was also chuffed to bits to have won against St. Georgen scoring twice out of four shots. We seemed to have hit a bit of a goalscoring block in the last couple of games, but hopefully a few tactical switches, some player rotation and a few player talks will quickly change this.

This leaves the table looking like this:

At this moment we're right were we want, at the top end of the league, just waiting for Trento to slip up - and St Georgen seem to have had a slow start, which only means that our position is a bit safer, as our team is more than capable of seeing of the threat of Arco and Rotaliana.