Kasımpaşa S.K.: Istanbul's Fifth Team

[Nick]

Istanbul. Not only the largest city in Turkey, and the country's economic and cultural epicentre, but also one of the largest in Europe.

Founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city grew in size and influence, becoming one of the most important cities in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as an imperial capital for almost sixteen centuries, during the Roman/Byzantine (330–1204), Latin (1204–1261), Byzantine (1261–1453) and Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 CE and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold and the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate. Under the name Constantinople it was the Ottoman capital until 1923. The capital was then moved to Ankara and the city was renamed Istanbul.

The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in and city limits have expanded to accommodate them. Arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established towards the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today.

Istanbul is home to some of Turkey's oldest, and most popular, teams but also to some of the fiercest rivalries in the world. The problem with Turkish football is that no-one talks about Turkish football. And when they do, it's rarely positive. Hopefully I can change that with this save. Even if it's just within my own little virtual world.

Galatasaray ✘

Besiktas ✘

Fenerbahce ✘

Istanbul Basaksehir ✘

Kasımpaşa ✔



Never has the phrase "a trophy cabinet waiting to be filled" been more appropriate. Four of the five teams based in Istanbul have won the Turkish Super League at least once. No prizes for guessing which team hasn't. The only trophy of note won in the club's history was a third tier title in 2006. Despite a 14th place finish last year, the club is a fairly well established in the Super League, regularly finishing mid-table but rarely flirting with the European places.

I plan on really going a bit deeper with this save than my previous ones. Whilst I was looking for some inspiration with a new save, I read back over some of my old ones (and some from others) and found they were all very results/performance based rather than how I actually play the game. The plan at the moment is several smaller updates, initially once per year, looking at my approach to:

• Club Vision
• Staff
• First Team Squad
• Training / Development
• Scouting / Recruitment
• Tactical Approach / Philosophy
• Pathway from Youth to First Team
• Club Finances

Not necessarily in that order, but close to.

[Reiver]

Surely, you mean Constantinople?

[chaodck]

Great to have you back in the game Nicko. I had a YDWAWK save in Turkey in FM 2015 with Bursaspor, spanning 10 seasons where I won around 3-4 league titles and 1 Europa League. Do they still have prize money per result in the league? I remember that was interesting and refreshing. Good luck mate.

[Nick]

Club Vision & Information



It seems pretty rare to come into a club with such a progressive five year plan. A lot of time the board want initial progress and then a year or two of consolidation. Not here. This board want clear improvement season on season, culminating in a title challenge at the end of the 2023/24 season. It feels a million miles away at the moment, which is a little scary, but I like the set plan way of doing things rather than having seasons pass by where you're not expected to improve.

I've also set myself a few initial goals, both short and long term, and I'm sure they'll be added to as we progress:

• Ensure the club has the best backroom staff in the league
• Ensure the first trophy of the save is the Turkish Cup
• Break the club's incoming transfer fee record (€10,000,000)
• Have a player beat Hakan Sukur's Super League record of 249 goals
• See one of our youth players capped by Turkey
• Finish the save with a positive head to head record against each of our city rivals

So what do I have to work with to achieve these lofty goals?

We'll play our home games at the 14,234 all-seater Recep Tayyip Erdogan Stadyumu and we pay €66.94k per year + 7% of our gate receipts for the honour. Small and homely rather than a big, brash arena. It was only built in 2010 as well, so hopefully it comes with a good expansion capacity. Our training and youth facilities are both excellent which is encouraging, but our limited youth recruitment and average academy coaching will hold us back initially. Poor data analysis facilities will be upgraded quickly and cheaply to begin with and should be maxed out before anything else.

No-one said it would be easy.

[Nick]

Jul 30, 2020 15:03:21 GMT chaodck said:

Great to have you back in the game Nicko. I had a YDWAWK save in Turkey in FM 2015 with Bursaspor, spanning 10 seasons where I won around 3-4 league titles and 1 Europa League. Do they still have prize money per result in the league? I remember that was interesting and refreshing. Good luck mate.

They certainly do mate. €400k per win and €200k for a draw. Prize money for the top six too, ranging from €500k to €5m, although I'm sure all four of those numbers will fluctuate as we progress. It was one of the reasons why I chose Turkey over the other options I had.

I'm sure I remember your save. If it wasn't you, it was another one from somewhere else. I've managed Fenerbahce as part of a career save, on FM18 I think, but it was only for three or so years so looking forward to ploughing some real time into this.

[Nick]

Staffing

Setting up your backroom team, at least in terms of basic coaching and scouting, is probably the one thing that most FM players do exactly the same: just buy the best backroom team money can buy, right? With that in mind, much of this thread will already be done by most people and should be seen as informative rather than educational.

That said, I do have a specific way I set up my coaching team in both the initial stages of the save and then against when the team is more established and I'm allowed to bring in larger numbers for increased specialisation.



A pretty bog standard starting point for any non-elite team when starting a new save. I'm only allowed six coaches, which means we'll be stretched for both workload and session quality until I can convince the chairman that we need more people behind the scenes.

In an ideal world, I'd knock up some pretty little graphics for this, but unfortunately my expertise lies elsewhere, so I'm just going to have to explain it with words. My current backroom team looks like so:

• Manager
• Assistant Manager
• GK Coach x2
• Fitness Coach x2

It's not ideal, but at the moment we need to work with what we have. I'd have liked to have split both the GK and fitness coaches into individual training units but the workload will just be too high for them.

The obvious priority:

• General coach x2

My end goal with assigning coaches is always the same and in two seasons time this page will look very different. It'll be interesting to look back and see how far we've come.

• Manager - oversees all areas
• Assistant Manager - oversees all areas
• GK Coach - Shot Stopping
• GK Coach - Handling
• Fitness Coach - Strength
• Fitness Coach - Quickness
• Coach - Defending (tactical)
• Coach - Defending (technical)
• Coach - Attacking (tactical)
• Coach - Attacking (technical)
• Coach - Possession (tactical)
• Coach - Possession (technical)
• Development Coach - general focus
• Development Coach - general focus
• Development Coach - general focus

The development coach is a role I've tried to implement in my long term saves. These coaches are ex-players, newly retired, hold a low-grade coaching qualification and have a hyper-positive personality (limited to Model Pro, Model Citizen and Perfectionist)

Also, if you haven't seen it already, this coach calculator from Oliver Jensen (@fmfutbolmanager on Twitter)

theresonlyoneball.com/2020/01/04/5-star-coach-calculator-for-football-manager-2020/

It really is brilliant and needs more attention. In fact, if you've not read his blog, there's loads of great content on there, including his FM20 save with Rennes as well as all sorts on training, set pieces etc.

[jt]

Loving this Nick. Well on board for this save

[jla]

Just read through Nick - great club choice and fantastic league. I think Turkey's a fascinating place and a very underplayed part of FM. Really like that you went with an Istanbul club too, it's a fascinating city with amazing history.

[Nick]

First Team Squad



I wasn't really sure what to expect of a squad that finished 14th in last season's Super League. What I found was a squad that was well balanced, a few positive personalities and, importantly, some quality in important places.

Six loans isn't ideal and I'll need to decide if any of them are to be kept or moved on at the end of the season. The fact that three of them are central defenders gives me an early scouting task: outline three potential centre backs.

A 26-man squad, five over 30, five under 24 meaning that the bulk of the squad is in, or moving towards, their prime. The old man of the squad, and a name familiar to all, is Ricardo Quaresma. The Portuguese may only have one more season left in him, but his flair, vision and delivery is going to be very important this season. We seem to be weakest in attack, meaning players like Quaresma, Tobias Heintz, Ilhan Depe and Aytac Kara will need to provide goals from midfield.

Gerard Gohu will start pre-season as first choice striker but he has a worrying lack of composure to go with his way above average finishing ability. I am hoping his physicality will also help. He'll need to be at his best because not even Fode Koita knows what role he should be laying upfront and Mame Thiam may well be one of the first on the chopping block.

David Pavelka is arguably the squad's best player and someone to potentially build the team around for the next couple of years. The pattern forming is that all these players are foreign players, with the aforementioned Aytac Kara being easily the best home-grown option at the club. The other problem this presents is that I can only register 14 foreign players, while we have 17 in the squad. Tough decisions to make before a competitive ball has even been kicked.

Scouting tasks (potentially subject to change):

• Central defence
• Striker
• Right midfield - direct replacement for Quaresma

[dalenichol]

Oh Nick, you always pick the right saves to get me interested.

Turkey is a great choice. I've had a few saves there, primarily with Trabzonspor and Bursaspor so I'm really interested to see how you get on here with Kasimpasa. It always puts me off how bloated the squads are with overpaid foreign players, but I guess that's part of the challenge! Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing how this one goes.

[Nick]

Jul 31, 2020 8:16:39 GMT dalenichol said:

Oh Nick, you always pick the right saves to get me interested.

Turkey is a great choice. I've had a few saves there, primarily with Trabzonspor and Bursaspor so I'm really interested to see how you get on here with Kasimpasa. It always puts me off how bloated the squads are with overpaid foreign players, but I guess that's part of the challenge! Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing how this one goes.

Thanks mate, it took a few days of research and a few failed attempts elsewhere, to settle on something that I hope is long term. Having played FM so much, for so long, it seems to get harder year on year to find the right club.

Turkey is great. Reasonably high reputation, relaxed foreign player rules, only one domestic cup, prize money per game, big potential to grow both the club and the league. It's one of those nations that rarely gets played in for some reason.

[jawzy]

Nice to see a Turkiush save in these parts again, Turkey is always fun to read, as usually atl;east in past fms, there would always be decent domestic turkish regens floating around!

[Nick]

I've put together a little progress tracker detailing the things I want to look back on over the coming seasons. It'll be filled out on July 1st every season and hopefully add something interesting, long term.

[Nick]

Training / Development

Player development has been my favourite part of FM for as long as I can remember, from the more recent 'sliders' to the fairly similar schedule based style of CM4:



There isn't much more satisfying that looking at the profile page of one of your young players and seeing green arrows all over the place. Of course, there are now two or three different ways of developing your players rather than just throwing schedules at them. The recent training discussion we had on this forum (found here: footballmanagernow.proboards.com/thread/129/training) opened my eyes to new ways of approaching training and it has been something I've been tweaking ever since. As is discussed in that thread, there's no longer one 'right' way to train and develop your players, but here is how I approach it.

Pre-Season

By now you should realise how important pre-season is for your players. This time should be about two things:

a) physically conditioning your players for the season ahead and also to get them match fit
b) increasing tactical familiarity and team cohesion via playing matches and match preparation sessions

Week One



Week Two



Week Three



I can't take full credit for these schedules, the week one schedule is the one that Hokster created in the thread above, while I've taken inspiration from that for weeks two and three. My players do very little ball work during pre-season, which isn't for everyone, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that I never get any jaded players later in the season, with a natural amount of squad rotation.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I was always a bit scared of high intensity schedules. For me, high intensity = injuries. As it turns out, football players quite like high intensity schedules and, while there's an obvious increase in injury risk, if you schedule regular recover sessions, you'll find that injuries are kept to a minimum.

Regular Season

Week One



Week Two



Week Three



International Breaks



I've taken periodisation to new levels with my schedules and the main reason for this is that players were going too long without training in a particular area and it was starting to show in their training feedback. The idea behind them is that we train hard and regularly in each training discipline, allowing for greater improvement across all areas.



Outside of attribute improvement, the next thing I'm looking at is how the schedules affect player happiness. In theory, happy players should train better. The better players train, the more they'll improve.

To keep track of how my players are reacting to training I have set up a custom view from the squad screen:



It should all be fairly self explanatory. I've found this view doesn't need to overload you with information, it just has to allow you to see the players' performance, happiness and individual focus as an overview so you can make changes accordingly.

[chaodck]

Loving the detailed yet short posts Nick, your training approach seems similar to what I'm doing, despite me being more traditional in the periodization trend with 3 strict phases, I'm not getting any complaints from the team not training certain things though except for the classic complaints of too much quickness/strength or too little quickness/strength. I don't have any regards for training happiness though that might be something I need to take a look upon.

[hokster]

Awesome writeups about your club vision and managerial philosophy so far, Nick. I like your approach to coaching setup and training a lot (and thanks for the tip on the coach calculator, that's a very nice resource).

[Nick]

First time I've seen something like this in FM before.

[jla]

My god. My head would explode.

[dalenichol]

Yeah, I'm going to chalk that one up under the category "hide my head in the sand and pretend it isn't a thing"

[Marshdweller]

Surely that's just a bit of realism padding and just means that you might see players ask for higher basic wages as they going to be taxed more?

[Dirk Nowitzki]

It seems like it only affects taxes for non-player wages, so maybe it will be harder to sign staff members.

Looks like a nice idea for a save Nick! Turkey is fun to manage in, although the player names can be a bit of a struggle to distinguish for me personally, especially if you're not very familiar with Turkish football.
Make sure you raid Altinordu of their best talents, they have a great youth set up and a 16 year old center back who became really good in one of my saves.

[Nick]

2019/20 Mid-Season Review

The media have called it an unspectacular start and, while that might be slightly true, what did they expect? The remit is to avoid a relegation battle and we're comfortably doing that at the moment, after a slow start. Three wins from our first ten games wasn't ideal, but with a new tactic, a new manager and poor team cohesion it was about as good as we could have hoped for. That run included a draw with Fenerbahce and encouraging performances in defeats against Galatasaray and Trabzonspor. I have settled on a fairly mundane 4-5-1 formation which plays to the strengths of our first XI and is as balanced and humdrum as our mid-table form suggests. I should really call it 'Cross-Bot 3000'. We lack any sort of pace upfront, so I've gone with a target man to hold the ball up and bring others into play. The result is that we have a lot of the ball in front of the opponent's penalty area, which forces us to go wide and get balls into the box. I am struggling to get anyone beyond the target man to break the defensive line, so we're always reasonably easy on the eye, but lack that cutting edge sometimes. It's not perfect, but it's working at the moment and that's all I can ask for. Defensively, I think we've been better than our 18 goals conceded, which is evidenced by the fact we've only lost one of our last seven games, and even that was a game we should have won. That run included a win against Besiktas and a 0-0 draw with Basaksehir that we really should have won.



No real complaints here. We could maybe be a point or two better off, but our results reflect how we're playing so far this season. Some encouraging signs are being shown and our current position of 10th in higher than the 14th initially expected from us. I think finishing 12th and above should be seen as a good start to the save.



We've also had a fairly unexpected run in the Turkish Cup, although that run might end now we've been drawn against Trabzonspor. We've reached the board's expectation so the pressure is now off and, with these rounds being over two legs (something I wasn't aware of previously), I might calm my interest in this competition and focus fully on the league.

We have a three week break now which is probably needed because the weather in Turkey is surprisingly atrocious. It's rained in over half our matches and been foggy as fuck too. Just need snow in January now for the full house.

[chaodck]

Great to see some in-pitch news finally Nicko. In all fairness that's quite a good start mate specially in the Cup despite a favourable draw, I don't recognize half of those Turkish clubs though, really don't remember much about my Bursaspor save, other than the fact that Enes Ünal was a force to be reckoned which for me (and as a lot of other highly touted FM kids, has become a classic FM prospect turned journeyman).
Best of luck going forward!

[Marshdweller]

Here I go, offering tactical advice again with no real tactician's pedigree to speak of...!

If you want people going past the Target Man, my suggestion(s) would be to give the Inside Forward an attack duty, or change the Box-to-Box Midfielder into a CM(A). In either case, I would also give the Advanced Playmaker a support role. My thinking being that in previous versions I have found an AP(a) to get ahead of the play and then often receives the ball with his back to goal and ends up playing backwards or square when I want through balls.

[Nick]

Creating a Youth ---> First Team Pathway



I expected very little from our first intake. With our youth recruitment level sitting at 'limited' and four other clubs, all with a better recruitment network, fighting it out for Istanbul's best young players, we were always going to be at the back of the queue this year and possibly for a few years after. With that in mind, Nejat Yildirim is the only player to come through with any kind of potential this year, but is a player that has a few standout qualities that lead me to believe that he could represent the first team in the future.

Dribbling, Passing, Technique, Determination, Flair, Vision all outweigh the worrying lack of Teamwork needed for a Playmaker role. His coach report notes that he's consistent, but also needs to work on his physical strength, which I think is a fair assessment. Early improvements are a positive, but how, and when, is he, and others to come, introduced into the first team?

Unbeknown to me before starting the save, there's no Reserve league here in Turkey. That means that by the time my young players are either too old, or too good, for the Under 19's, I'll need to think about a) moving them on or b) finding a place for them in the first team.

While I know a lot of FM players look down on it, I'm also a big fan of the loan system, providing I can find the right club for a player. Finding that right club in Turkey is a lot harder than it is in the more reputable European nations due to the Turkish second tier being low quality, in terms of the quality of football played, but also the quality of the training facilities on offer. As a general rule, I'll only loan players to club's that have at least average facilities, but that obviously varies depending on who you're managing. My general feeling with this save at the moment, in terms of getting that newgen into the first team is as follows:

16 years old - youth football, potential re-training and mentoring to be started right away
17 years old - youth football, mentoring changes should have started by now (re-evaluate if needed), assess how player has developed over first year and use 'Additional Focus' to improve any weaknesses
18 years old - player should be making good progress both on and off the pitch. Does the player look like he could play in the first team in the future? If no, potential transfer with sell on clause. Potential 6-12 month loan and re-assess.
19 years old - by this time, each player should be judged whether he'll make it here or not.

It's looks pretty ruthless when written down, but I think that 19 is a good age to have made a decision on whether a player will be good enough. I don't think I've ever sold a young player at 19 and had it come back to bite me on the ass because he's developed beyond a level I expected of him. With no reserve team, I can't horde players so the pathway between youth and first team needs to be more like a conveyor belt.

[Marshdweller]

I'm with you here, I think any player who's going to go on to do well should be first-team squad material by 19. I'm currently being driven mad by my HOYD who's out signing 2.5 star 20-year-olds when I have 18- and 19-year-olds playing regularly who are already better than his signings will ever be (he'll soon be replaced!). I've never had this haunt me either.

[chaodck]

Aug 9, 2020 18:08:33 GMT Nick said:

Creating a Youth ---> First Team Pathway



I expected very little from our first intake. With our youth recruitment level sitting at 'limited' and four other clubs, all with a better recruitment network, fighting it out for Istanbul's best young players, we were always going to be at the back of the queue this year and possibly for a few years after. With that in mind, Nejat Yildirim is the only player to come through with any kind of potential this year, but is a player that has a few standout qualities that lead me to believe that he could represent the first team in the future.

Dribbling, Passing, Technique, Determination, Flair, Vision all outweigh the worrying lack of Teamwork needed for a Playmaker role. His coach report notes that he's consistent, but also needs to work on his physical strength, which I think is a fair assessment. Early improvements are a positive, but how, and when, is he, and others to come, introduced into the first team?

Unbeknown to me before starting the save, there's no Reserve league here in Turkey. That means that by the time my young players are either too old, or too good, for the Under 19's, I'll need to think about a) moving them on or b) finding a place for them in the first team.

While I know a lot of FM players look down on it, I'm also a big fan of the loan system, providing I can find the right club for a player. Finding that right club in Turkey is a lot harder than it is in the more reputable European nations due to the Turkish second tier being low quality, in terms of the quality of football played, but also the quality of the training facilities on offer. As a general rule, I'll only loan players to club's that have at least average facilities, but that obviously varies depending on who you're managing. My general feeling with this save at the moment, in terms of getting that newgen into the first team is as follows:

16 years old - youth football, potential re-training and mentoring to be started right away
17 years old - youth football, mentoring changes should have started by now (re-evaluate if needed), assess how player has developed over first year and use 'Additional Focus' to improve any weaknesses
18 years old - player should be making good progress both on and off the pitch. Does the player look like he could play in the first team in the future? If no, potential transfer with sell on clause. Potential 6-12 month loan and re-assess.
19 years old - by this time, each player should be judged whether he'll make it here or not.

It's looks pretty ruthless when written down, but I think that 19 is a good age to have made a decision on whether a player will be good enough. I don't think I've ever sold a young player at 19 and had it come back to bite me on the ass because he's developed beyond a level I expected of him. With no reserve team, I can't horde players so the pathway between youth and first team needs to be more like a conveyor belt.

Great post! First of all Yildirim looks like a decent prospect at that stage, keep working on him and you might reap something down the road.
Shame to hear of no reserve/B league in Turkey mate, and given that I agree with the youth pathway. In my NEC save I'm trying to do something similar and it's worked pretty neatly so far specially on the competition side of things as both my B and the U-19s won their leagues last season.

[dalenichol]

I don't think it's necessarily ruthless, it's probably a very smart way to look at it and definitely something I know that I should be doing better with. I think I'm right in saying that after they turn 18, players will only really develop with game time, so if a player isn't looking like he's going to be playing senior level football, either with you or at a loan side, by that age, you need to get rid and free up some space.

I'm notoriously bad at having players in my reserves at 19/20 who could've been first team players but I didn't give them the right opportunities, so it's definitely a positive that you've identified that and are working with it already.

[Nick]

2019/20 Season Review

I think we can consider that a hugely positive first season in charge. Our chairman's pre-season concerns about relegation never really materialised and, despite a rough February, we remained fairly consistent in picking up wins to always keep us 8/9 points away from the drop zone. Our form over the last ten games was our best of the season, the football was certainly the most fluid, and that allowed us to climb and extra place or two in the table to really top off what was a successful campaign.

Our main concern was putting the ball in the opposition net. 35 goals scored in a 34 game season is largely going to be seen as a failure, but at the other end of the pitch, our 32 goals conceded was the fourth best record in the league so it evened itself somewhat. I think consistency going forward was our biggest problem. We finished the season with a 3-0 win over Rizespor and a 2-0 win over Denizlispor and also scored four against Ankaragucu, three against Antalyaspor and Trabzonspor proving we can score goals, but we also had seven 0-0 draws this season which could go either way next season.

Fixtures

Our lack of goals was my main worry when looking at the squad before a ball was even kicked and I said at the time that Gerard Gohou's lack of composure was a worry. That proved to be the case with just eight goals in all competitions this season. His understudy, Fode Koita, managed seven, but most of them came from playing out wide rather than up top. In most other situations, a new striker would be top of the priority list, but not here. We've got four defender here on loan, three of which are centre backs. Yassine Meriah and Jorge Fernandes were our two top performers this season and will both be a massive miss next season. Florent Hadergjonaj on the right put in some good performances too, so it promises to be a busy summer. The good news is that they were all on a proper wedge so I'll have plenty of room in the wage budget to bring players in.



Back on the pitch, and the Turkish Cup proved to be a welcome distraction this season. I didn't take it too seriously, and the two legged ties aren't something I'm a fan of, but we made it all the way to the semi final where a 96th minute goal eventually knocked us out. Beating Trabzonspor and Galatasaray along the way was the icing on the cake.

[Nick]

Scouting / Recruitment

I meant to do post this far earlier in the season (my scouts haven't been twiddling their thumbs for 12 months) but I was still finalising in my mind the direction I wanted to take the club. As I briefly touched upon at the beginning of the season, I struggled with squad registration this season. I am allowed to register 12 non-Turkish players each season, but we had 14 on the books. Obviously that meant two missed out, but with the large number of loan players in the squad, this was easy to do whilst also retaining the happiness of the players.

Going forwards, sticking to 12 non-Turkish players would be easy enough, but I wanted to add something to the challenge and indeed the save. With that in mind, we'll only be signing Turkish players for the foreseeable future. This rule will also apply to staff.

Normally, take more of a scattergun approach to scouting, which I'm sure most people do as well. As many scouts as my board are willing to give me and then send them out to each corner of the globe. There's an element of luck to it though, in that you need to be in the right place at the right time. With Kasimpasa, it should be easier. I just need to find the best players in Turkey.

The structure I'm looking at is this:

Director of Football + Chief Scout - Responsible for scouting individual players my scouts find. Must have the best scouting attributes at the club.
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-
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Scout 1 + 2 - In charge of looking for Turkish players in the Turkish Super Lig.
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Scout 3 + 4 - In charge of looking for Turkish players in the U19's division.
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Scout 5 + 6 - In charge of looking for Turkish players in Turkey.