ASEC Mimosas - Ivorian Talent Conveyor Belt

[Dirk Nowitzki]

  

ASEC Mimosas - Introduction

After being inspired by Dale and Nick to start a save in Africa for the first time of my FM career, I decided to travel to Ivory Coast and take over ASEC Mimosas, the famous talent factory. I will try to utilize the youth setup to bring ASEC back to winning the African Champions League, which they managed to do once in 1998. ASEC Mimosas play their games in the Stade Félix Houphouet-Boigny in Abidjan with a capacity of 45,000 people, and the stadium is currently being renovated so it becomes an all-seater for the Africa Cup in 2023.

Competitions
ASEC play in the MTN Ligue 1, the Ivorian top flight that features only 14 teams who will play each other twice. Whilst ASEC is the biggest club in the country and the board expects me to win it, SO Armée are the current league holders and need to be dethroned. Our biggest rivals, Africa Sports, have slipped a bit recently and haven't won the league since 2011, after which they never finished higher than 4th. Domestically there is the Coupe de Côte D'Ivoire and another useless cup that I removed to make place for more continental games. Those of you who follow the Your Game Discussion Thread may have seen that I created 4 regional continental cups, for North, Southern, West and Central/East Africa. Each cup contains the 64 teams that finished highest in their respective leagues from that specific region. The number of teams can be seen here.

There are 8 groups of 8 teams for each cup, and teams from the same country can not be in the same group. Only the team that finishes first proceeds to the next round, so it is actually not that easy to qualify for the knock-out stage. There are some big differences in strength between leagues, so holidaying to test the cups thaught me that losing just one game can already hurt your chances a lot. The 8 group winners will then play a knock-out stage on neutral grounds (a selection of the largest ones in the region), so each knock-out round is only one game. At the end of the season, all regional champions play each other in a semi final and final, to determine the winner of it all. Besides this, The African Champions League and Confederations Cup still exist, and are both more reputable than the regional competitions. Given that ASEC is already the biggest club in the country, I hope that the continental side of things will keep me interested for a long time.

The team
The ASEC squad is not that strong but certainly has enough depth as the first team squad consists of 29 players. All of them are on expiring deals though, so I get to shape the squad to my likings quickly. Since I mostly plan to rely on players coming through my academy I'll likely keep most of them around for a bit though. I will use a tactic I created at Palermo and is actually made for world class players, but it produced great results and beautiful football so I hope this translates well to African football too.

Expectations
The board expects me to win the league, which should certainly be doable but with only 26 games there is not much room for error. The cup is deemed unimportant and the board also hasn't put too much importance on the newly created West Africa Challenge Cup, but they expect me to reach the quarter final. In the Champions League demands me to reach the group stage, which is done by winning two rounds of qualification games. This will be a hard task given my bad luck in the draw, but more on that in the next post.

[ttgb]

Good luck and those kits are cracking

[mrcool]

Jun 17, 2020 9:15:23 GMT Dirk Nowitzki said:

  

ASEC Mimosas - Introduction

After being inspired by Dale and Nick to start a save in Africa for the first time of my FM career, I decided to travel to Ivory Coast and take over ASEC Mimosas, the famous talent factory. I will try to utilize the youth setup to bring ASEC back to winning the African Champions League, which they managed to do once in 1998. ASEC Mimosas play their games in the Stade Félix Houphouet-Boigny in Abidjan with a capacity of 45,000 people, and the stadium is currently being renovated so it becomes an all-seater for the Africa Cup in 2023.

Competitions
ASEC play in the MTN Ligue 1, the Ivorian top flight that features only 14 teams who will play each other twice. Whilst ASEC is the biggest club in the country and the board expects me to win it, SO Armée are the current league holders and need to be dethroned. Our biggest rivals, Africa Sports, have slipped a bit recently and haven't won the league since 2011, after which they never finished higher than 4th. Domestically there is the Coupe de Côte D'Ivoire and another useless cup that I removed to make place for more continental games. Those of you who follow the Your Game Discussion Thread may have seen that I created 4 regional continental cups, for North, Southern, West and Central/East Africa. Each cup contains the 64 teams that finished highest in their respective leagues from that specific region. The number of teams can be seen here.

There are 8 groups of 8 teams for each cup, and teams from the same country can not be in the same group. Only the team that finishes first proceeds to the next round, so it is actually not that easy to qualify for the knock-out stage. There are some big differences in strength between leagues, so holidaying to test the cups thaught me that losing just one game can already hurt your chances a lot. The 8 group winners will then play a knock-out stage on neutral grounds (a selection of the largest ones in the region), so each knock-out round is only one game. At the end of the season, all regional champions play each other in a semi final and final, to determine the winner of it all. Besides this, The African Champions League and Confederations Cup still exist, and are both more reputable than the regional competitions. Given that ASEC is already the biggest club in the country, I hope that the continental side of things will keep me interested for a long time.

The team
The ASEC squad is not that strong but certainly has enough depth as the first team squad consists of 29 players. All of them are on expiring deals though, so I get to shape the squad to my likings quickly. Since I mostly plan to rely on players coming through my academy I'll likely keep most of them around for a bit though. I will use a tactic I created at Palermo and is actually made for world class players, but it produced great results and beautiful football so I hope this translates well to African football too.

Expectations
The board expects me to win the league, which should certainly be doable but with only 26 games there is not much room for error. The cup is deemed unimportant and the board also hasn't put too much importance on the newly created West Africa Challenge Cup, but they expect me to reach the quarter final. In the Champions League demands me to reach the group stage, which is done by winning two rounds of qualification games. This will be a hard task given my bad luck in the draw, but more on that in the next post.

Good luck with this will be following with a great deal of interest 

[hokster]

Very excited to see this. I've had some cracking C&C games in Africa, including one with ASEC/Cote d'Ivoire.

[Dirk Nowitzki]

ASEC Mimosas - Early endeavors

Champions League
There are no teams that enter the group stage straight away like in Europe, but instead two qualifying rounds have to be survived in order to qualify for the 16-team group stage. There appears to be now seeding, and the only limitation for the draw is that teams from the same country can't meet. In the first preliminary round we drew Soumba FC, who didn't show much resistance and got hammered 14-0 over both legs. In the second round, however, we had one of the worst possible draws in Moroccan runners-up Raja Casablanca. In Marocco we were the better team but struggled to create quality chances, and lucked our way to a 1-1 draw on a late penalty. Back in Abidjan we took care of them surprisingly easily, and qualified for the group stage! We got drawn into a group with Zamalek from Egypt, Sundowns from South Africa and Tanzania's Simba. I'm curious what we can do against the Egyptians and South Africans.

Other competitions
We have been doing great so far, as can be seen from the schedule. In the league we have been perfect so far, and the only domestic cup game came against a second tier team.

SPOILER: Click to show

The only minor blip came against CO Bamako, who in typical FM way scored from their only shot on target. This may be a very costly loss for us though, since we now depend on them to lose a game. Goal difference is decisive when teams are on equal points, so hopefully one of the non-terrible teams in the group beats Bamako, while we win our remaining games and score enough goals to advance.

We now have 3 weeks off, 2 of them are down to an international break but I should have placed one of the games from the West Africa Cup here.

Thanks for all the good luck wishes! I'm doubting whether I should have taken over the national team as well, but I may still do that later on when the regens start to take over and I can hopefully fill the squad with ASEC youth graduates.

[dalenichol]

Excellent Dirk, I'm so glad you decided to start this save and that you decided to post about it. I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out, and I really, really love your idea with the West Africa Cup. If I wasn't 6 seasons into my save in Burkina Faso, I'd have used this file!

Also, those kits...where did they come from? They certainly look like a Chaodck special, but I'm not gonna lie, they're a little arousing.

[Dirk Nowitzki]

Cheers Dale! I made them myself actually, played around with photoshop a bit and I really like them! Unfortunately the away kit has not been used in any game yet haha.

Yeah so far the West Africa Cup has been really fun! Given that only one team advances there is almost no room for error, which is good because some teams are really weak. The file is certainly not perfect though, for example I should have scheduled the group stage games a little differently. Turns out that I have one in the November international break, which is suboptimal and it somehow doesn't get moved. There are also no registration rules but I believe most African countries have pretty strict rules (at least the ones I checked) for foreigners, so I don't think that will matter much. In Ivory Coast for instance, only 6 of the 35 players you can register can be from another country.

How many countries do you typically load for such a save? I now have 26 competitions from 20 African countries, although some are on view only and there are only about 30k players in the game. I'm thinking if I should add some European countries to help find some coaches that aren't completely terrible. They may be more likely to poach my good youngsters away then though, looking at you PSG...

[dalenichol]

Oh nice, you've done a cracking job with them, I really like the little artistic touches on the away kit too.

Still, even with those hiccups, it seems like it's adding what you wanted it to in terms of extra matches and some competition, and that's the main thing!

I've got about 20 nations loaded, purely from African countries. I've also considered adding a couple of European nations, and it probably wouldn't do you any harm. Your good youngsters will most likely get noticed when they start breaking into different areas of the national time. I used to find quite frequently that I'd begin to lose players to Europe once players started to break into the national set up and particularly after big tournaments like AFCON of the youth equivalents of AFCON or the World Cup.

[chaodck]

Jun 17, 2020 20:35:20 GMT dalenichol said:

Excellent Dirk, I'm so glad you decided to start this save and that you decided to post about it. I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out, and I really, really love your idea with the West Africa Cup. If I wasn't 6 seasons into my save in Burkina Faso, I'd have used this file!

Also, those kits...where did they come from? They certainly look like a Chaodck special, but I'm not gonna lie, they're a little arousing.

Nah man, I'm not near that good with the background textures (don't even know where to get them from, I mostly do abstract things with brushes as patterns are a no-no for me). Terrific job with the kits Dirk!!!

Really interesting save concept as well, I'll follow with interest!

[Dirk Nowitzki]

Thanks guys! I like the design of them but they are nowhere near the quality of yours, Chaodck. For the second and third kit I just used these simple pattern brushes.

I've made it to January yesterday night, will write it up soon.

[Dirk Nowitzki]

ASEC Mimosas - 2019-20 Midseason Report

I have made it halfway through the season so it's time for a little update!

We are still flying in the league, but at the same time we can't afford to get complacent since San Pédro is not too far behind. In the West Africa Cup we still need to hope Bamako loses to someone, in which case we would be the frontrunner to advance. The East End Lions from Sierra Leone have a cool name but were not that cool on the pitch, so we are set in terms of goal difference. I am pretty surprised how much of a fight we can already put up in the Champions League. The game at Zamalek was pretty even and a draw was a reasonable result, but I feel like we were the better team against Sundowns. Simba is pretty weak and will likely lose all games. So we are still very much in the race for everything!

Off the pitch I have extended most of the contracts of players used in the rotation with a year to keep the core of the team together, but we have a golden generation coming up so hopefully some players that can be used straight away come through!

[mrcool]

Great stuff! West Africa Cup is going well, I feel you will pip San Pédro for top position, The League looks good surprised to see Africa Sports doing average.

[Dirk Nowitzki]

ASEC Mimosas - 2019-20 Season Review

So yeah, let's start with this:

I'm not really sure what to think, I mean, it's great to win the Champions League but it comes early and I was expecting and hoping for more of a challenge. Also because we didn't exactly luck our way out of the remainder of the group stage and on our way to the final. Anyway, we qualified for the Club World Cup as well now so it will be fun to see if we can also overcome PSG.

In the league we were on our way to a perfect season, until our fierce rivals Africa Sports saved themselves the humiliation of that happening. We also won the cup by beating USC Bassam 4-1 in the final, but this had no priority for the board.
The West Africa Cup was a different story, and shows that it's pretty hard to win this one. Early in the season we lost to CO Bamako because their only shot on target went in, and they went on to win the rest of the games too which eliminated us from the cup. Africa Sports were crowned the first ever winners of the cup, but then got beaten in the semi-finals of the Africa Cup Finals by eventual winners TP Mazembe.

Fixtures

Youth Intake
This is obviously one of the most anticipated days of the season, especially at ASEC, and it surely didn't disappoint! Here are all the players. Constant Bamba and Willie Dié will get game time in the upcoming season, but easily the best of the bunch is Wilfried Camara, who is easily the best center back at the club already and will be an amazing player. He also has a professional personality, but I'm afraid this will get worse since my team leaders have crappy personalities.

So some of the goals of this save have already been accomplished, which worries me a bit for the longevity of this save. I really want to win the cups I created though, and that may turn out to be harder than expected since you can't afford mistakes. In the group stage conceding once was already enough to get eliminated, but everything that comes after it also consists of just one-legged rounds so it's easy to be surprised by other teams.

[mrcool]

Wonderful stuff. Great Achievement

What Leagues are you running and Database size?

[Dirk Nowitzki]

Thanks! I run a large database with 26 competitions from 20 African countries. This includes the strongest leagues (South Africa, much of North Africa, Congo, Zambia) and some of West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Guinee). Some of them are on view-only.

[dalenichol]

Dirk, stop this right now.

It's taken you one season to achieve everything I've been trying, and not even come close to, in 6. Stop.

Also, well done!

[chaodck]

Great job so far Dirk, seems like the custom competitions are working like a charm, tough luck against Bamako though (that word reminds me so much of World of Goo, what a great game). Camara looks amazing mate, that's exactly the kind of newgen I'd be looking for my save down the road, I'll be sure to manually scout ASEC haha, what's his personality looking like? The League seems like a walkover and winning the Champions League right away might steer away some interest from the save, keep at it and remember the long term goals. Keep it up mate.

[Dirk Nowitzki]

ASEC Mimosas - 2020-21 First Part

So I have carried on for now because I want to win the cups I created, but this weekend the idea of starting in the French Ligue 2 with many African leagues loaded and only signing French and African players played in my head.

The schedule for this season is pretty weird and very front-heavy. The Africa Cup will take place in January so we only have 2 games in that month, but it seemed like they were all moved to the first half of the season. February will be busy but for now the months of March, April and May have a grant total of 6 games planned. I'm at the end of November now and half of the league games have been played already, so this seems like a good moment to write an update.

Starting off with transfers; ES Tunis came in for loads of my players, including young star Wilfried Camara, who got unsettled but I refused to sell him before even playing a single game for the first team. Some others left, but they were easily replaceable because they weren't all that good.

Roland Diomandé and Ibrahim Koné came through the youth intake of Ivorian clubs, and our superior spending power allowed me to snap them up. Both of them already feature regularly in the first team. Parfait Guaiagon was signed after Agbegniadan was unsettled by Tunis, and since he was already 30 years old I let him go and replaced him with Guaiagon. He starts from the left, although he is better from the middle, but he is needed on the left since we don't have much options there. Brahima Ouattara came in to don the Mezzala role. In the summer the board also approved upgrades to the facilities, which is great.

We are on a roll again this season, except for losing the Super Cup against San Pédro after dominating the game with 30 vs 4 shots. Just one of these games...
The league is going very well and we are perfect again at the halfway point, and this time we also seem likely to advance in the West Africa Cup. The CAF Super Cup between the Champions League and Confederation Cup Winners (Wits from South Africa) was also won. In the qualifying rounds for the Champions League we got lucky and first drew Elect Sport from Chad and then Vipers SC from Uganda.

The draw of the group stage is less favourable and will see us square off against teams from Algeria and Tunisia, so that should be a proper challenge!

[Dirk Nowitzki]

Jun 21, 2020 18:45:32 GMT chaodck said:

Great job so far Dirk, seems like the custom competitions are working like a charm, tough luck against Bamako though (that word reminds me so much of World of Goo, what a great game). Camara looks amazing mate, that's exactly the kind of newgen I'd be looking for my save down the road, I'll be sure to manually scout ASEC haha, what's his personality looking like? The League seems like a walkover and winning the Champions League right away might steer away some interest from the save, keep at it and remember the long term goals. Keep it up mate.

Haha World of Goo doesn't ring a bell for me! Yes Camara is amazing, the vultures already came in for him and got him unhappy, but they backed off and he is happy to stay for now. His personality is professional, I have made him the back-up captain already in the hope that he will become a team leader early on and spread some of this goodness to the rest of the squad. Scouting ASEC is certainly a good idea, although in my experience they hardly ever produce any regens when you don't have the league loaded.