'Til the sweat drop down my Balzers

[Reiver]

FC Balzers

Welcome to Liechtenstein! Welcome to Balzers, a small town of around 5000 people (still, 5th biggest in the country! Out of 11!). Liechtenstein is a weird country when it comes to football - it does not even have it's own football league. All 7 Liechtensteiner teams play in the Swiss leagues at varying levels of its football system, though they are not able to qualify for any European Competition this way - the only Liechtensteiner team that gets that privilege is the winner of the Aktiv-Cup, the Liechtensteiner Cup, where all teams from the country (including all reserve teams) play for a spot in the lowest European Competition - in short, the only way for a team from around here to win the Champions League is to first win the Europa Conference and then the Europa League, and then the Champions League, in consecutive years. And that is what I intend to do in the long run.

As of the year 2020, this is where you find all the Liechtensteiner teams:

- FC Vaduz; Swiss Super League (Tier 1), 47 cup wins.
- FC Balzers; Swiss 1. Liga (Tier 4), 11 cup wins.
- USV Eschen/Mauren; Swiss 1. Liga (Tier 4), 5 cup wins.
- FC Ruggell; Swiss 2. Liga (Tier 6).
- FC Triesen; Swiss 3. Liga (Tier 7), 8 cup wins.
- FC Triesenberg; Swiss 3. Liga (Tier 7).
- FC Schaan; Swiss 4. Liga (Tier 8), 5 cup wins.

Back to Balzers. FC Balzers, formed in 1932, is the second most successful team in the Country, with 11 cup wins out of 26 appearances in the Cup Final - despite this, they've only appeared in 6 finals in the last 20 years, and the last cup win was back in 1997. In fact, 5 of these wins came from a small period from 1979 to 1984. They also have the record of being the first Liechtensteiner team to ever win an European game, in 1993, where they played in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, defeating KS Albpetrol from Albania before getting kicked out by CSKA Sofia.

We play in the Sportplatz Rheinau, which can accommodate 828 people (I've seen pictures, and I believe it). We're a semi-pro team, with below average training facilities and basic youth facilities. We play in Group 3 of 1. Liga, the 4th tier of Swiss football, having finishted 10th out of 14 teams last year. This year we're predicted to finish dead last. The board wants me to develop players through the youth system (AH!) and to fight bravely against relegation. And for this first year of acclimatisation into the job, that is just what I want to - everything else will be a plus.

[Marshdweller]

Very keen to keep tabs on this! What a challenge!

[Robson]

As promised, you delivered the pun with your thread title. That will take a bit of beating.

[Mikey]

What an interesting challenge, really looking forward to seeing how you do with this save. Going to be a tough job qualifying for the Champions League, let alone winning it.

Guessing that your regens will be from Liechtenstein and not Switzerland? Could develop players for National Team too.

[mrcool]

Good luck with this.

[Reiver]

Nov 30, 2020 1:15:03 GMT Mikey said:

Guessing that your regens will be from Liechtenstein and not Switzerland? Could develop players for National Team too.

Yes, they are, and in the last international games I had 3 under-19 players,  4 under-21 and 3 main national team players.

[Reiver]

FC Balzers - 2020 Winter Break

We're predicted to finish dead last, 14h out of 14, with 500-1 odds of winning the league, and the board wants us to avoid relegation. I like those odds! To be fair we're doing a bit better than that:

It's a very very close league, with just 5 points separating first from 8th, and with us right in the discussion for the top spot, the one place that gives us a chance to go up - this must be one of the hardest flights to get out of, with only two teams from three groups going up after a promotion playoff. We actually started on the wrong foot, losing against Thalwil. Still, we got some important wins under our bag, against Tuggen and Linth 04, and a draw against St. Gallen U21s. Fixture list here: i.gyazo.com/b75dab827e30e266aaae01ef9069fdf8.png




Welcome to the weirdest cup in the world, where B and C teams can play against their mother teams! The way it works, teams get sorted based on their league performance, meaning that the better teams (us, Vaduz, Eschen/Mauren and Schaan) enter the competition in the quarter finals.

We were matched with our own B team, funnily enough, so if I did not go through I would be so mad! But that's not the most important thing to take from this - FC Vaduz bottled it against one of the B teams! Despite dominating the

game they couldn't turn opportunities into goals and are out! It'll be the first time Vaduz is not in the Cup Final since 1993–94; and the first time they won't be in the semis since I don't even known when. The biggest news is that this makes winning the cup and getting a spot in the UEFA Europa Conference League just became a whole lot easier - the biggest obstacle is the next game in April, against a team that already beat us once this season. Still, very very doable.

The team





So far the star of the team would be Piliukaitis, that I got after offering him a trial - Liechtenstein's Under 21s played against Lithuania and he was there without a club. The rest of the transfers came from scouts or players offering themselves up. Already in the team we had Karaaslan, our goalscoring machine, and in the back Dietrich is pulling some impressive numbers in the back! We're currently playing 5-2-2-1-2, after our first attempt at playing 4-1-2-2-1 saw us be a bit too wobbly.

and last but not least:

[Reiver]

Intake day and this is the only decent player - what do I do with this guy? I don't play with wingers - Do I change it to AMC?

[dalenichol]

Yeah, AMC or MC surely. He's got decent work rate and can pick out a pass

[Reiver]

I get to be the first one to finish a game like this: I got fired after a series of bad results resulted in the team losing faith in me...

[Marshdweller]

Dec 19, 2020 15:28:59 GMT Reiver said:

I get to be the first one to finish a game like this: I got fired after a series of bad results resulted in the team losing faith in me...

How long a series? You were doing well in your earlier post!

[Reiver]

I lost the Lithuanian AMC to FC Sion and the main goalscorer to a 5 month long injury, had a couple of bad choices while interacting with the players, which led to 6 defeats in a row - all by multiple goals. It was like watching it all unravel in front of my eyes.

[Marshdweller]

Dec 19, 2020 16:15:02 GMT Reiver said:

I lost the Lithuanian AMC to FC Sion and the main goalscorer to a 5 month long injury, had a couple of bad choices while interacting with the players, which led to 6 defeats in a row - all by multiple goals. It was like watching it all unravel in front of my eyes.

Ouch, that's painful. I hate that powerless feeling. Will you look for a new job in the same save or start completely afresh?

[Robson]

Dec 19, 2020 16:15:02 GMT Reiver said:

I lost the Lithuanian AMC to FC Sion and the main goalscorer to a 5 month long injury, had a couple of bad choices while interacting with the players, which led to 6 defeats in a row - all by multiple goals. It was like watching it all unravel in front of my eyes.

Sounds a lot like a kick in the Balzers!