Career Geordiekrispy's Continental Conquerors - Complete!

[geordiekrispy]

As I'm winding up my MSN challenge after smashing through it in what felt like record speed (I know it's not, but after the Kane & Son one that seemed to go on for ever, it's zoomed by). I was looking for my next challenge (I gave up on my Napoli one as I couldn't get my AMC going) and wanted a team challenge rather than an individual player(s) challenge and this jumped out at me.

 

Kanegan's Continental Conquerors 2021 edition:

https://fmmvibe.com/forums/topic/45777-continental-conquerors-2021-edition/?tab=comments#comment-425013

 

The first hurdle is which leagues to pick:

Asian Stage: I felt like China would be too easy to just throw money at a team and win by having just better players, and seeing as I live in Perth WA, I thought I'd pick Australia and lead Perth Glory to well... glory.

American Stage: Mexico intrigued me, but the whole way the leagues are working at the minute just plain confused me, so I think I'll be trying to get a USA team their second ever CONCAF Champions League title

UK Stage: In my previous UK goals challenge I've had moderate success with Cardiff Met Uni in the Champions League (getting through to the group stage) but seeing as everyone other than Scotland are semi-pro, it seems like too much of a challenge right now, so Scotland it will be.

European Stage: Some interesting leagues to choose from, initially I thought about Belgium, but I have a feeling that whilst the national team and individual players are very good, the league isn't great. Poland and Denmark seem like it'd be a struggle to get a good enough team together as there probably isn't enough pulling power for the really good players I'd need. Turkey just seems to be a bit meh. So I think I'll try my hand at Russia and leading one of their teams to their first Champions League winners medal.

 

 

I'll start in Australia and Perth as that's the only team I actually want to manage, given that I see some of their youth team on my daily commute, it'll be interesting if I start to recognise their faces...

Once I get the game set up and my first transfer window out of the way, I'll post an update. I'm probably going to do an update every 6 or so months (so a Christmas update and a Summer update).

 

I may still dip in and out of other challenges (badges) if anything catches my eye, as I see this one taking a while to complete.

Edited January 21 by geordiekrispy

[broodje kip]

Interesting good luck

[Kanegan]

Good luck with this.

[Rich]

Good luck mate, look forward to seeing how you do 😁

[hhooo]

Oooh, this might be my excuse to head back to Northern Ireland in 21.

 

Good luck, especially with Perth! 

[geordiekrispy]

So it begins:

 

And oh my, I really do feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew... The A-League's standard is... interesting, there's a few very good players (mainly due to certain clubs being affiliated with other much larger European clubs, *cough Melbourne City cough* and then there's the other players who all seems to be really old or really young.

I think the average age of the Perth Glory squad is over 30!

 

But... I managed to get a few decent Aussie loans in and a few decent foreign players in (one of which failed his work permit and I didn't have enough money to appeal it).

 

So as I'm not in the AFC Champions League this season I think I'll be squad building this season and seeing who the "big" clubs are, I'm going to hazard a guess they're based in Melbourne or Sydney.

 

But I think I spotted a gem in my reserves that if I get him playing a bit this season, he'll improve and be ready for when we get to play in the AFC Champions League and World Club Championship;

My plan is bring him on as a sub most games, getting him mentoring with one of the older "pros" and then hopefully he'll have a good enough squad around him to be smashing in the goals regularly in the normal season and the champions league and world club championship.

 

I'll post another update after the next transfer window, which I think is after the regular season, but before the championship ends...
I don't know the A-League is set up weird in that you play the regular season and then the top 6 teams playoff for the championship, I also have no idea who qualifies for the Champions league, so my plan is just to win everything I can

[broodje kip]

Looks very interesting here

[geordiekrispy]

Ok so Season 1 is done.
 

The Aussie season is just weird, it only starts in December, so most of the good free players have been snapped up and even then, Perth aren't exactly rolling in it, and have not great facilities...

So, these are the transfers I managed to snag (pun intended for any Aussies) this season:

Spoiler

 

 

I planned on just trying to do as well as I could and get myself in a position to push for the title and championship next season. The results over the season were pretty average, some good wins some bad losses. It felt like I conceded a lot of late goals to force the draw.

At the end of the regular season this is where I ended up, qualifying for the championship playoffs on the penultimate game which was a pleasant surprise (also a surprise to see Melbourne City not at the top of the league which shows money can't necessarily buy titles);

 

Then I had to play in the playoffs, with the winner of the regular season getting a bye until the semi-final, luckily I managed to win the Championship Grand Final with some games ending up with 3 strikers on the pitch up front to try and get the win.

 

The players were looking ok, improving a bit. But the player of the year was my 39 year old Spanish winger Castro (who was also my captain)... so I knew I needed some replacements in the break.

Spoiler

 

Popovic improved a little but didn't play that many games;

 

D'Agostino didn't play much but improved a bit too;

 

Ikonomidis was probably my best player overall for the season, getting a few Australia call ups;

 

Overall stats for the team:

 

So now I have no idea who gets in the AFC, I think I do as Grand Final winner and I know there's the East and West stages, which have a couple of knockout rounds before the group stage.

I think the winner of the regular season goes in at the group stage, and the finalists of the Championship go in at the preliminary stages. but I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out next season when the draw happens.

 

And yes, my season finished in June and doesn't start until the end of December, so I've got 170odd days before my next friendly game...

So I should be able to pick up some better league "rejects" and hopefully they'll all get work permits.

 

I also need to pick who my National Hero will be... at the minute I'm leaning towards D'Agostino, but Popovic I think will end up better. But i really don't want them to get the national call up as they won't be available for half of the games as the A-League doesn't seem to pay any attention to the international games, you just lose your better players for those games.

 

I'll update again at the end of the transfer window (which is like 75% of the way through the season in March)

[geordiekrispy]

I decided against posting an update mid-season as quite frankly the transfer windows in Australia are just weird. So with Season 2 in the bag , I thought I'd just update at the end of the "season" I say and that with speech marks as the AFC seems to span multiple domestic seasons as it only starts in Feb and runs until Oct (so it stretches over 2 A-League seasons for me).

 

Ok, so lets start with the Transfers I brought in over the year (this is from the end of the A-League season)

Spoiler

Transfers In:

Transfers Out:

 

Overall the season was a two horse race between me and Sydney FC. It came down to the last day of the season (we both were playing in the AFC CL so we had like 2-3 games in hand on everyone else and were 10 points ahead by April.

The regular season ended like this:

 

And then the Playoffs ended like this:

 

So now we have the important bit... the players. I decided to go for D'Agostino as my National Hero as he just had a little bit more going for him than Popovic right now, I think Popovic will be the better player in a couple of seasons as he is younger.

Spoiler

Squad Stats:

 

Popovic:

 

D'Agostino:

 

As you can see I was trying to rotate my team whenever I could, mainly so I had my best players ready and fully fit for the AFC CL, which I think worked out pretty well, meaning that my younger "b squad" got a lot of experience, bringing up their level (to a certain point, it's now saying that they need to play at a higher level to improve).

 

I won manager of the year (again) and D'Agostino obviously won everything in terms of golden boot player of the year;

Spoiler

 

In terms of the AFC CL, I got through the West playoffs quite easily then had what I think was a pretty tough group, but we managed to sneak through with some really random results, the players seem to be good at coming back from behind, which is weird as their work rate in the Dynamics screen is an "F";

 

I still haven't played the final of the AFC CL (which is over 2 legs) but I should be able to play that in the next few days, I'm going to leave my fixtures here so you can see how messed up this fixture list is. Essentially we've been playing non stop since Christmas;

Spoiler

 

So for the actual challenge as I've picked D'Agostino and he's the only player who actually counts for my scores, his score for me (so far is):

Asian Leg:
D'Agostino - AFC CL goals: 13 (When I actually finish playing this "seasons" CL I'll post an update)

 

edit:

I forgot to mention I started getting job offers, from Russian League teams and MLS teams, so hopefully once I've completed this leg I'll get some good offers or can apply for the big teams (if they sack their managers) with some success.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by geordiekrispy

[Rich]

Awesome season there mate, good luck for next season 😁

[Kanegan]

Great season mate. 

[geordiekrispy]

Just a quick update before the next full season update we won the AFC Champions League and the FFA Cup (whatever that is, it hadn't occurred until this season).

 

 And D'Agostino got the AFC CL golden boot, and MVP:

 

[geordiekrispy]

Ok so Season 3 is now in the bag (including the AFC CL) so here's the run down:

 

Transfers:

Tried to bring in some slightly better quality players to try and improve the overall quality, I still find that my goalkeeper and defence are the weak link, but trying I don't have a massive amount of money and can't throw around massive wages, plus the board refuse to upgrade my facilities from good/basic, so my youth intakes are pretty bad so I spent a long time trawling through all the lower league teams in Australia to try and find anyone my scouts thought would end up being decent...

Having to rely on the top league team releases is getting tough as the better players tend to want more money and better leagues...

Spoiler

In:

Out:

 

Pending:

 

We won the AFC Champions League, A-League Regular Season and Championship playoffs, again;

Spoiler

A-League:

 

Playoffs:

 

Champions League:

 

My team was apparently firing on all cylinders this year, I've started to get a couple of teams sniffing around D'Agostino (I persuaded him to stay then offered him a new contract, but I think he's maxed out now)

 

D'Agostino:

Spoiler

 

 

Popovic is still doing well even if he's not playing a massive amount of games, but he is "lazy":

Spoiler

 

I managed to get offered the England job as well this season;

 

Plus the usual offers from the MLS and Russia (I think I've had a job offer from almost every single MLS side now);

Spoiler

 

Fixtures:

Spoiler

So by my calculations my National Hero D'Agostino has a points total of:

(I'm basing this off the top goalscorer charts at the end of the AFC as it spans over two "seasons" for me)

S1 (2021): 0

S2 (2022): 19

S3 (2023): 13

Total: 32 points

[hhooo]

Nice work whipping these guys into shape. 

How is the work permit situation in Australia? They are extremely difficult to get in Korea, even for full international players. 

Any idea what team you're going to try to get to next? 

Edited December 17, 2020 by hhooo

[geordiekrispy]

5 minutes ago, hhooo said:

Nice work whipping these guys into shape. 

How is the work permit situation in Australia? They are extremely difficult to get in Korea, even for full international players. 

Thanks yeah it's been an uphill battle with some players.

Pretty much every single non Australian/NZ player needs a work permit, but there's no limit to how many you can have. But they tend to be given a fair bit, not sure if it's due to the ages of the players I'm bringing in, youngsters rather than established older players.

I've appealed so many times for players I really wanted that it's probably been my the biggest expenditure rather than the transfer price, that and trying to get my coaches/scouts/physios to complete their badges (if they fail and there's a higher badge wanting to come in the staff search, it's a revolving door here)

[hhooo]

13 minutes ago, geordiekrispy said:

Thanks yeah it's been an uphill battle with some players.

Pretty much every single non Australian/NZ player needs a work permit, but there's no limit to how many you can have. But they tend to be given a fair bit, not sure if it's due to the ages of the players I'm bringing in, youngsters rather than established older players.

I've appealed so many times for players I really wanted that it's probably been my the biggest expenditure rather than the transfer price, that and trying to get my coaches/scouts/physios to complete their badges (if they fail and there's a higher badge wanting to come in the staff search, it's a revolving door here)

My coaches have been quite good so far, but yes the appeals are basically what I spend money on. The boards have me 10m to use, but I guess I'll end up spending it on wages to hold on to players since I can't bring in anyone new. Even getting someone on loan then buying out the loan gets rejected! 

[geordiekrispy]

9 minutes ago, hhooo said:

My coaches have been quite good so far, but yes the appeals are basically what I spend money on. The boards have me 10m to use, but I guess I'll end up spending it on wages to hold on to players since I can't bring in anyone new. Even getting someone on loan then buying out the loan gets rejected! 

That's weird but I guess it's the difference between a temporary/short term visa and a permanent/longer term visa.

I wish I had 10m... I've just had 300k in my 4th season...

[hhooo]

I guess the good news is I'm keeping an army of lawyers well fed? What are wages like in the A league? Here we have young players on 4-600 a week, top earners around 6-8k/week

[geordiekrispy]

Just now, hhooo said:

I guess the good news is I'm keeping an army of lawyers well fed? What are wages like in the A league? Here we have young players on 4-600 a week, top earners around 6-8k/week

yeah it's about the same, my max wages are up 14k, but I think my highest earners are around the 5k mark.

 

Not sure if that's because in real life there's a salary cap with only certain players allowed over that limit, I don't think that's been coded into the game or not.

[geordiekrispy]

Season 4 is now done and dusted (including the AFC Finals) so here's how that went:

Who we brought in:

Spoiler

In:

 

Out:

 

Pending:

 

Ewan Steele has a release clause and other teams keep triggering it, and he accepts, but as he's an American he needs a work permit in most countries and he's only just broken into the national team, so he generally doesn't get it.

Annoyingly I had him and Ikonomidis leaving at one point and so brought in two youngsters (Tambwe & Abdesalam), then I'm not sure what happened as I've still got them both but Ikonomidis's value has plummeted where as Steele's is on the rise and now have 2 4.5 star youngsters just chomping at the bit to play...

 

What we won:

Spoiler

A- League, again:

 

A-League Grand Final, again:

 

We got knocked out of the FFA Cup in the semi finals:

And yes, that shows that they scored their only shot on target... But we also had 17 shots and only 1 on target

 

And we won the AFC Champions League again:

 

In terms of my team, they were all doing ok, not quite as well as last year, but still decent enough, this season is the first one where I've had major injuries (to pretty much anyone who can play in my front 3, usually at the same time):

 

D'Agostino did ok I suppose:

Spoiler

 

Popovic has massively dropped off in terms of goals:

Spoiler

 

I got offered the England job again, but a lot less club jobs (I'm guessing all the Russian teams kept their managers):

Spoiler

 

Fixtures:

Spoiler

 

So my totals for my national hero are:

S1 (2021): 0

S2 (2022): 19

S3 (2023): 13

S4 (2024): 22

Total: 54 points

 

Hopefully I'll only have one more season of regular football down under, then I'll be able to play the Club World Cup (and finish this seasons AFC CL) and then move on to pastures new...

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by geordiekrispy

[Kanegan]

Big jump in goals for Popovic from last season. You are doing great man. KIU.

[geordiekrispy]

Season 5 has come and gone (got to love the wife having a Christmas party to go to and the kids asleep so I can smash though pretty much an entire season in an night).

 

This was the season that the mythical FIFA Club World Cup should appear, legend has it that it is a competition that clubs around the world hate playing and hopefully put out low strength sides (especially the big European ones).

 

So how did we do? Domestically it was the usual fare: winning the A-League regular season and Grand Final (making it unbeaten this year too!)

Spoiler

 

AFC Champions League we managed another win:

Spoiler

 

The fabled Club World Cup, honestly I didn't want to move in case I jinxed it after my games in the group stage:

D'Agostino had other ideas though:

 

But his "understudy" knew what to do.

 

We managed to scrape through quarter final with the players remembering where the net was in extra time:

 

On to the Semi's:

 

Then the final:

It was a really close game that I thought we were going to lose most of the time, I think Barca dominated us and we managed to score from a corner on the stroke of half time.

 

D'Agostino still managed to get second place on the top scorer's list due to that hat-trick in the group stage:

So how did he do in terms of points?

Spoiler

D'Agostino still managed to get second place on the top scorer's list due to that hat-trick in the Club World Cup group stage:

 

Not quite as good a tally this year in the Champions League though:

 

But I think it took him a good chunk of the season to actually start scoring this year

 

In terms of transfers, a lot of my better players insisted on having release clause on and I thought I managed to put them up high enough to scare off bids... but that wasn't to be unfortunately, it's feeling a bit like a revolving door here at the minute:

Spoiler

In:

 

Out:

 

There are more transfers going out, but technically they're the next season.

 

I got my first SPL job offer this year too:

Spoiler

 

Fixtures for this "season":

Spoiler

 

So my AFC National Hero's points are as follows:

S1 (2020/1): 0

S2 (2021/2): 19

S3 (2022/3): 13

S4 (2023/4): 22

S5: (2024/5): 22

Total: 76 points

 

I managed to unlock "Superstar" achievement too after the Club World Cup:

 

Perth Glory also got a big cash injection, not sure if the two are linked or they just got a takeover as well:

 

Right now, I'm just waiting for a job offer to come in... But I have my eye on the following job that is available and I can't decide to go for it:

Spoiler

I think I'd prefer a Russian Job so I'd have some European experience rather than MLS though

 

[Kanegan]

Great job on completing the AFC Leg and a nice haul from your national hero as well. Looking forward to your next club. 

[geordiekrispy]

4 minutes ago, Kanegan said:

Great job on completing the AFC Leg and a nice haul from your national hero as well. Looking forward to your next club. 

I really don't know if I should just apply for the other job or wait to get offered one...
Plus this season is essentially a rebuilding one as I've had a lot of my best players leave on minimum fee clauses, and it just seems like way too much effort.

[geordiekrispy]

So I decided to say Oooroo to Perth, take one last trip down to the beach put some snags on the barbie, enjoy my last sunset over the Indian Ocean and then take my Ute over the Nullarbor and jump on a plane to my new team.

(I toyed with idea of putting one of my actual photos from the beach at sunset but I didn't have anything that seemed nice enough, but the colours on the photo above are legit, it's gorgeous here)

I'm going to miss this place (I can say it's a weird feeling as I actually live here and it really does feel like I'm leaving...

 

 

So this is how I left the team:

 

D'Agostino:

Spoiler

 

The rest of the team:

Spoiler

 

Popovic:

 

Transfers:

I had one winger leave on a Bosman, my best (American winger), a right back, and defensive mid, and attacking mid all have their release clauses triggered, and turned down mutltiple massive bids for some of the others (24.5mil for Tambwe from Monaco)

Spoiler

In:

 

Out:

 

Future:

 

Fixtures:

Spoiler

 

Overall I think I did ok for just over 5 years at the club;

 

I think I'll have to work on that Domestic Player Bias though (supposedly in real life LAFC have a good youth system).

 

I'll make another post when I get the new squad set up (they've already player one leg of the CONCAF Champions League qualifiers so that should actually make my job a bit easier, might have to just pick a American National Hero from their current squad though...)

 

Edited December 22, 2020 by geordiekrispy

[geordiekrispy]

So I decided to jet off to LA and see if I can prove that West coast is the best Coast (keeping this going would prove difficult as it would limit my Russian team to Zenit St Petersburg and there are no Scottish teams on the West Coast).

 

LAFC had a decent enough team and were already in the CONCAF CL knockout legs (they were runners up in the Community shield the season before).

 

They had played the first leg when I took over so I needed to be quick to pick my National Hero and get them in and on the field, so some very thorough searching and trawling through all the MLS teams and American's all around the world lead me to bring in C.J. Portillo a young stricker from Nashville. (I forgot to take a screenshot when he came in so this after the second leg of the first round in the CONCAF CL)

 

Hopefully him scoring on his debut and getting a rating of 9.0 is a sign of things to come!

[geordiekrispy]

So my national hero is picked and now the first season is in the bag, here's how it went:

CONCAF CL:

Spoiler

Easy win, really we only played like 7 games so it wasn't that hard other than it was immediately at the start of the season.

 

MLS:

This is a bit strange as you have the Regular Season, the Supporters' Shield, then the Western and Eastern Conferences & MLS Cup.

But we won them all so it doesn't really matter...

Spoiler

Regular Season:

 

Supporters' Shield:

 

Western Conference:

 

MLS Cup:

I have to say I was twitchy after they scored 2 goals in the first 7 minutes!

 

I did get knocked out of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup in the semi finals though, on penalties, with two of my front 3 missing theirs...

 

So how did Portillo do?

Pretty damn well for an 18 year old to be honest, he was feeling pressured and tired a lot (cue getting rid of the lower badge coach and getting a higher badge fitness coach in).

Spoiler

 

 

Transfers are a little bit confusing as they'd brought in some players before I got there:

Plus my screenshots seem to change in overall value (but the players don't, that's why there's so many)

Spoiler

In:

 

Out:

 

I love that the derby with LA Galaxy is called the El Tráfico, so I decided to keep a separate record of them:

Spoiler

I drew the last one of the season 0-0 and it didn't give me a separate screen and I forgot to take a screenshot of the final score.

 

I totally forgot to take screenshots of the fixtures, but let's just say there was a lot of 1-0 wins and not many goals conceded, but a fair amount scored. (I've been really bad in taking screenshots this season).

 

I also had something happen I've never experienced before... a goal given after a VAR decision! I was in so much shock that I completely forgot to save the game and then make a video of it.

 

So we come to the points section. With the winner of the MLS seemingly getting past the group stage, it'll limit the number of goals quite a bit, plus things being played in single games rather than over two legs like in the AFC.

AFC Leg Score: 76 points

CONCAF Leg Score: S1 - 5 goals

Total Score: 81 points

 

Also, can we get a LAFC badge loaded up in the "managing" section so I can put it on my profile? @Putzy @Stam I'm guessing that's one of you? Rather than a mod?

[Kanegan]

A glorious start to the CONCACAF leg with the 1st CL already in bag. Well done mate.

[hhooo]

Portillo looks like a great  centerpiece to build around. 

I had a goal given by VAR twice, and both times play restarted with only one team on the field (the other team still bickering on the sideline) , did that happen to you? 

[geordiekrispy]

2 minutes ago, hhooo said:

Portillo looks like a great  centerpiece to build around. 

I had a goal given by VAR twice, and both times play restarted with only one team on the field (the other team still bickering on the sideline) , did that happen to you? 

I don't think so, I think the kicked off as normal. I wish I'd remembered to save the game!