Kicking Balls and Shins - a lower league career.

[Reiver]

After a few games that ended up going nowhere for one reason or another, I am back for a proper lower league career game. A proper database with the whole Portuguese league system has been released, and the plan is to create a fictionalised version of myself in the game, and start applying to amateur football teams at a realistic distance from where I currently live, and then try to make all my moves as realistic as possible. I'll start by holidaying some 3 or 4 months and then start job hunting. I will also follow most llama rules (except not naming any players or showing tactics and the like, I always found those a bit silly). Let's see where this will take me.

[Reiver]

Clube Atlético e Cultural (Ahtletics and Cultural Club), better known as CAC or CAC Pontinha, are a sports club from Pontinha, a neighbourhood of Odivelas just outside of Lisbon's city limits. The team was founded in 1974, and from the beginning it has focused in forming football players - every year they host the Torneio Internacional CAC, a youth teams tournament for under 12s that teams from all over the world have participated in, including the likes of Lyon, Atlético Madrid, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Real Madrid, and many more. They have also had several Portuguese international players play in their youth teams before going for bigger pastures: players like Miguel Veloso and Rúben Amorim, for example, were playing for CAC when they were 14/15 years old. Football is not the only sport played by the team either: they also have Goalball, Tenis and an eSports team.

The team used to play at the Complexo Desportivo Carlos Lourenço, which was demolished last year to make way for a Carnival/Fair/Amusement Park kind of place. Suposedly there's an agreement for a new sports field to be built for the team (not in the game) and in the meantime they are playing in the main sports complex of Odivelas, vacant since the main team representing the city folded, 5 km away from their previous spot, usually on the second football field, with a ridiculous capacity for 200 people. It's also not very likely you'll see another future Portuguese star coming from our youth intake: we have Adequate Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment and Poor Youth facilities. At least the training facilities are average.

The team plays in the Third Division of the Lisbon FA leagues - the 6th, soon to be 7th division of Portuguese football, and fired their previous manager after having one of the worst runs of form I think I've even seen in Football Manager: Just take a look. This is how the league looks right now: 

The board hired me just to be competitive, and hopefully to turn that form around, because if I keep getting that many losses in a row, I won't last long either.

Finally, it is not an unrealistic place for me to start at all - it's the lowest league level in this district, and if I'm driving outside of rush hour I can get to their field in around 20 to 30 minutes. Next up, since I just took over the team, let's look over the team and staff!

[Reiver]

Club Elections, a Story in Pictures

[Reiver]

Youth Intake 2021

I forgot to mention our youth intake preview in my intro post:



We now have received the kids, and for once the prediction wasn't completely wrong!



Bernardo Monteiro, Raúl Capricho

At this low a level as an amateur, with the small amount of coaches and training sessions (even with the decent training facilities we have), I'm not that interested in their potential - I doubt any of them will reach their max potential playing at CAC. But I'm still very happy when the intake gives me 2 first team ready players plus 5 more that can be of use immediately.

I'm actually worried we won't be able to hold on to Monteiro for long - he came at 15 years old as the best player in my team outright. I have played a bit into the next season, as I wanted the next posts to be a wrap up of the season I took over the team and then the team after the summer transfer window once it had my identity in it, and there's already interest in him from teams two divisions above...

[mrcool]

Good luck with all this, Level 7 is the lowest i've seen someone go outside of the UK