Career Rossoneri Toffees - A Goaltopia Attempt - The End

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to my latest career which will hopefully be a long one. I’ll announce the challenge, the chosen club and players and then explain how the idea came about. Credit to @Woody for coming up with the title and the reasoning will become clear later on.

 

Challenge

I’m going for the Goaltopia Challenge which was created by @FuddledFox and can be found here. In basic terms; we’re to go for goals with up to four players of our choice at any club of our choosing. I decided to go for four players in the end.

 

Club - AC Milan

 

 

Players

 

Dominic Calvert-Lewin

 

Richarlison

 

Rafael Leão

 

Daniel Maldini

 

 

The Idea

Everton started this season in fine form and the two forwards in Dominic Calvert-Lewis and Richarlison were performing rather well as a duo which seemed to make me want to use them for something on FMM. I’d tried a few things but never settled on anything and just kind of left it. FMM21 then came out and I still had the idea and was planning on adding a third player to the mix at Everton and going for goals out of the three of them. It was in my mind but I had my doubts as with them both starting at 23 on the game I just felt that by the time I could get Everton up to the domination level, the two would be late twenties and practically finished so I shelved it again.

I completed the Bruno challenge not long ago and ended up using a system with a diamond midfield and two strikers which just teased me as even though the roles were a million miles out, it reminded me of the great AC Milan side from the mid noughties under Carlos Ancelotti so another link there to the Everton boys. You can see where I’m going here as I then thought that taking them to Milan might be a good idea as the league is a bit weaker and no disrespect meant to Everton but Milan were almost definitely going to be the slightly easier job.

I needed a third player and I knew that signing the two boys from Everton would take up a good chunk of our initial budget so I decided to look at players already at the club. I saw Leão who is a great player who is a couple of years younger than the Everton boys so he looked like a good choice. I also noticed Daniel Maldini who just so happens to be the son of club legend Paolo Maldini and his natural position is at the AMC position which is perfect for my system so I had a conundrum in trying to decide which one to use. Maldini was a bit too young at 18 I thought which pushed me to Leão until I had the idea that it might be a good idea to use the two of them and just go with a foursome. With the versatility of the four players I felt I could just rotate them into the three positions and it would help with fitness and injuries. Also, the differing ages of the players appealed as I’d have the two Everton lads just arriving at the peak years, Leão who is just through his youth days and should be about to come of age and Maldini who is a pure youngster who I can develop.

I was all set but just needed a title so I asked a few members and @Woody was straight in with ‘Rossoneri Toffees’ which was perfect. Rossoneri means ‘Red and Black’ in Italian and is one of the clubs nicknames so essentially we’re looking at ‘The Red and Black Toffees’ which is again, perfect.

 

Thank you for reading and I’ll be back later so we can see how the boys got on in their opening season.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Ian

[Rich]

This sounds like it’s going to be a fun one Ian, good luck, looking forward to seeing how it goes😁

Leao turns in to a monster btw, been great for me in a couple of careers this years version.

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by RichD

[George Traistă]

I've used Maldini few times, always as a loan from Milan as I didn't had the money to get it. Everytime he was perfect, scoring and assisting. I hope he will develop nicely and do a great job. 

Forza Milan! 

[Rob]

I love this idea. Nice player selection and a proper club to boot too. 

[hhooo]

Looking forward to this. I've had trouble getting Richarlison to do much of anything, and I think he's way overpriced. Eager to see what you can coax out of him! 

[Woody]

Best of luck my friend 👍

[Ian]

3 hours ago, RichD said:

This sounds like it’s going to be a fun one Ian, good luck, looking forward to seeing how it goes😁

Leao turns in to a monster btw, been great for me in a couple of careers this years version.

 

Thank you Richard, I’m hoping it will be fun and I just had to do something with DCL and Richarlison so regardless of how it goes, I can at least clear that out of my head. If they’d both been 24 then I could’ve done the peak years challenge which would’ve been good but they’re too young this year. Next year though that could be an option with them.

Leão looks like he’ll be the best out of them all in a year or two. My plan is to retrain him to the AMC position and primarily play him there at least for the first few years. They can all probably play either up top or at AMC apart from Richarlison but even he could probably do okay at AMC so it gives us a good opportunity to rotate them around. Just have to see how it goes I guess.

2 hours ago, George Traistă said:

I've used Maldini few times, always as a loan from Milan as I didn't had the money to get it. Everytime he was perfect, scoring and assisting. I hope he will develop nicely and do a great job. 

Forza Milan! 

Thanks George, I’ve always been aware of him but never used him and wasn’t sure that he was an AMC so it was a nice surprise to see that he was. I’ll try to develop himbut he’ll be sub for the most part of the first year so guess it’ll depend on injuries as to how many minutes he’ll get but he looks good and I’m sure he will be brilliant in a few years.

2 hours ago, Rob said:

I love this idea. Nice player selection and a proper club to boot too. 

Thank you Rob, the differing ages appeals to me so it should keep me very interested. I like Milan too as a club as they haven’t been great over the last decade, they seem to be coming back in the real world but in game there’s a job to do to bring them right back to the top. I do like Italy as many on here know and find the league to be somewhat similar to Spain in terms of strength but I also find that you don’t seem to get the truly massive budgets that you do in some of the other top leagues so need to get the squad building right.

2 hours ago, hhooo said:

Looking forward to this. I've had trouble getting Richarlison to do much of anything, and I think he's way overpriced. Eager to see what you can coax out of him! 

Thank you Hhooo, yes I never really see much of him on the game as the years go by and I did find him the weaker of the two when I tried them both at Everton. DCL is great and always seems to perform so it’ll be interesting to see how Richarlison does.

1 hour ago, Woody said:

Best of luck my friend 👍

Thanks Woody and thank you for the title.

[broodje kip]

Great choices Ian. I love Maldini he always performs great for me. Hope he does for you too. Good luck!

[Kanegan]

The king of Italy returns. Great choice of players. In fact, I was thinking of using DCL and Richarlison for my Inside Forward DT but their age put me off. Will be watching this closely. 

[FuddledFox]

Nice selection of players and I’m sure they will do great things for you.

[Ian]

11 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Great choices Ian. I love Maldini he always performs great for me. Hope he does for you too. Good luck!

Thank you Lord Danish, hopefully he’ll develop well.

9 hours ago, Kanegan said:

The king of Italy returns. Great choice of players. In fact, I was thinking of using DCL and Richarlison for my Inside Forward DT but their age put me off. Will be watching this closely. 

Thanks Kane, it was around the time when I did my IF DT that I had the first idea to use them too. DCL usually always performs well I’ve found and I feel like he may be better on this years game after his great start to the season in real life. Hopefully Richarlison will also do good.

1 hour ago, FuddledFox said:

Nice selection of players and I’m sure they will do great things for you.

Thank you Mr Fox, I feel like I have a system where most of the goals go to the three positions but whether there’s enough goals or whether I can keep the squad right throughout is the question. We’ll see.  

[Scratch]

Hmm... Nerazzurri Toffees might have been better! 😄 Although... remind me again why you're going for the Everton (of all teams) connection? 🤣

Nah, this looks like it will be a great to follow. I haven't used any of the players, apart from Calvert-Lewin in one save last year and he didn't work out at all. So I'll be real interested to see how this goes. Good luck, I'm sure you'll get a massive score!

 

[Ian]

7 hours ago, Scratch said:

Hmm... Nerazzurri Toffees might have been better! 😄 Although... remind me again why you're going for the Everton (of all teams) connection? 🤣

Nah, this looks like it will be a great to follow. I haven't used any of the players, apart from Calvert-Lewin in one save last year and he didn't work out at all. So I'll be real interested to see how this goes. Good luck, I'm sure you'll get a massive score!

 

Thanks Scratch, I usually find DCL to be pretty good for me but I’m not so sure about Richarlison so I’ll be interested to see how he does. We’ll see how it goes I guess.

[Ian]

Season 1

I always find that first seasons can be a bit strange and especially this year with the heavy fixture schedule so I was just hoping for the best here to be honest. It ended up being a mixed affair and I’ll try to explain it all as best as I can.

 

Transfers

Signing the two Everton boys took up a good chunk of our transfer budget so I didn’t get the chance to do as much squad rebuilding as I’d ideally have liked to with just a few players coming in. You can see it’s just the two challengers, Milner, Coulibaly, Pizzi and Darder arriving to hopefully strengthen us enough to get through the first season in okay fashion so we can then make more changes going into next season.

Spoiler

 

This was my preferred lineup going into the first game of the season and it’s not a bad side but it’s the centre of midfield that I just wasn’t happy with. I was happy to be able to use Kessié though as he always comes up in my searches but there’s something that always puts me off going for him for some reason so being forced to use him here is just the job. I really like the two wide players and both are young so all we need is a couple of better backup guys and we should be sorted there with any luck but this season Milner should be a good option on either side, plus he’s a great guy to have for mentoring the youngsters as he’s quite the model professional.

 

Team Performances

We didn’t have a particularly great opening season as all we could muster was a third place finish, also failing to win the domestic cup as our neighbours Inter knocked us out in the semi and to rub further salt into our wounds they also pipped us to second place in the league on head to head. We did win the Europa League though beating some decent teams on the way to the final where we beat Sevilla in a closely contested match.

Spoiler

 

We started the league season poorly and by around December time we were around mid table but the thing was; we’d been doing very well in the Europa League games with our challengers kind of filling their boots so it was very mixed. The board were disappointed in me though so we had to improve in the second half of the season and we did as we went on a great run until the fixtures really piled up in May and we just couldn’t cope unfortunately. We were never going to catch Juve but second place was looking good until we had an awful run of results towards the end of the season and had to make do with third.

 

This was our team at the half hour stage of the Atalanta game during the tough run and you can see the condition of the whole squad really so it was a struggle. I’ve found this year with the schedule, you just have to go for it and hope things fall into place. I’ve had saves where it has all went smoothly and others where it’s a struggle and this was the latter but we got through it and I’m pretty certain we’ll have a stronger side going into next season.

 

Manager

Spoiler

 

Challengers

Rafael Leão had the best season of the four as he scored 40 goals in 58 games, DCL contributed 36 in 59 games, Richarlison added 27 in 57 games and youngster Maldini struggled as he could only score 5 in 54 games. I do feel like I have to defend young Daniel a bit here though as his return doesn’t tell the full story as he was usually the sub coming on late on in games and with the other three not suffering many injuries he never really got the chance to shine. I do feel he’s just not quite ready to excel in this system yet but he should get there you’d think and he’s bound to play more minutes next year as you’d expect at least one of the boys to suffer the odd injury here and there. There were only a few short injuries this year so I won’t bother with the screenshots.

Spoiler

 

All of the players improved a bit as you can see below with a before and after shot of each player. Leão looks like he’s going to be very good indeed and I’m very confident that Maldini will develop into something pretty great too. I think Richarlison may well end up as the weakest player but as long as he can contribute 20-35 goals a season I’ll be happy enough with him.

Spoiler

Calvert-Lewin (Before/ After)

 

Leão (Before/ After)

Richarlison (Before/ After)

Maldini (Before/ After)

 

Score

Season 1

Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 36 goals in 59 games

Richarlison: 27 goals in 57 games

Rafael Leão: 40 goals in 58 games

Daniel Maldini: 5 goals in 54 games

Total: 108 goals in 228 games

 

Final Thoughts

It was a mixed season where we struggled at times but now it’s out of the way we can really start to build from here as we should be able to properly shape the squad going into next season.

 

Thank you for reading.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Ian

[broodje kip]

Great first season Ian. The squad looks good too.

[Rich]

Very good first season that Ian, I find like yourself fixtures stack up first season and it’s basically just getting through the first season. I’m sure next season you’ll smash it.

[Kanegan]

Very good season. The Treq role has been immense this year so Leao outperforming the others is no surprise. 

[FuddledFox]

Those are some good goal totals from Richarlison, DCL and Leao. It’s a shame Juve are still ridiculously OP on the game but it gives you a good target to aim for next season along with all the goals.

[smoggy90]

Great start mate, some good players to use for this challenge.

[Rob]

As always a difficult first season, but one dealt with effectively. No doubt season 2 will be a barnstormer and then everything else after will get even better. Great start.

[Ian]

14 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Great first season Ian. The squad looks good too.

Thank you Lord Danish.

14 hours ago, RichD said:

Very good first season that Ian, I find like yourself fixtures stack up first season and it’s basically just getting through the first season. I’m sure next season you’ll smash it.

Thanks Richard, it was a struggle at times. Early on we suffered draw after draw in the league and weren’t well positioned at all but we were doing well against the poorer Europa League teams so I kind of prioritised those games for the challengers goals. Could’ve done with a a couple more decent central midfielders I think and we’d have coped better I reckon.

12 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Very good season. The Treq role has been immense this year so Leao outperforming the others is no surprise. 

Cheers Kane, Leao seems like he’s going to be great, hopefully Maldini can step up to a similar level later on.

7 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

Those are some good goal totals from Richarlison, DCL and Leao. It’s a shame Juve are still ridiculously OP on the game but it gives you a good target to aim for next season along with all the goals.

Thank Mr Fox, they were very strong and well out of sight from fairly early on really but hopefully once we get the squad right we’ll get the last laugh.

5 hours ago, smoggy90 said:

Great start mate, some good players to use for this challenge.

Cheers Smoggy, yeah, they’re a good bunch and the different ages kind of appeals. Hopefully I can keep them all happy.

5 hours ago, Rob said:

As always a difficult first season, but one dealt with effectively. No doubt season 2 will be a barnstormer and then everything else after will get even better. Great start.

Thanks Rob, I’m hoping for an improvement next year with the players being better and the schedule being somewhat easier but we’ll just have to see as we won’t have the easier Europa League game. I’m looking forward to the squad rebuilding now with a decent budget and I have a few players earmarked including those two nice wide players who play for Atalanta. We’ll see what we can do.

[hhooo]

Atalanta always has good wide midfielders hanging around. Which ones are you going for? Hateboer? Gosens? 

[Ian]

28 minutes ago, hhooo said:

Atalanta always has good wide midfielders hanging around. Which ones are you going for? Hateboer? Gosens? 

Yeah, those are the two I’m hoping for. They’re peak aged and the two I’ve got now are still pretty young so it should be a nice blend.

[Woody]

Thats a very good start fella.

Some nice 1st season signings too, i like Darder.

[Ian]

5 hours ago, Woody said:

Thats a very good start fella.

Some nice 1st season signings too, i like Darder.

Thank you Woody, I like him too and he’s good value for money for a top team.

[Kanegan]

1 hour ago, Ian said:

Thank you Woody, I like him too and he’s good value for money for a top team.

Darder has been golden for me whenever I have signed him in 2021. Even now in my DT career, he is performing brilliantly. 

[broodje kip]

7 hours ago, Woody said:

Thats a very good start fella.

Some nice 1st season signings too, i like Darder.

 

1 hour ago, Ian said:

Thank you Woody, I like him too and he’s good value for money for a top team.

 

28 minutes ago, Kanegan said:

Darder has been golden for me whenever I have signed him in 2021. Even now in my DT career, he is performing brilliantly. 

Sounds like a great player. I’d like to try him soon.

[Scratch]

Good start mate. Second season is always better, so I'm sure it's all up from here. Hope Maldini gets some game time, though it can't be tricky to manage that if your other lads aren't getting injured! 

[Ian]

2 hours ago, Scratch said:

Good start mate. Second season is always better, so I'm sure it's all up from here. Hope Maldini gets some game time, though it can't be tricky to manage that if your other lads aren't getting injured! 

Thank you Scratch, it is in my mind that perhaps I could try a formation to get the four of them on the pitch at the same time occasionally. I mean not always but at times we possible could manage it and it may help with Maldini.

[Ian]

Hello and welcome to the next update of this goaltopia career. I completed season 4 the other night and I’m rather keen to catch up so I’m posting two seasons at once today to at least get us to the beginning of season 4.

 

Season 2

I made a few more transfers this season but it certainly wasn’t wholesale changes as the squad was somewhat ok I thought and we just needed a few higher quality players to hopefully kick us on. I ended up signing the two wide players from Atalanta, Can who offers good versatility, a couple of backup strikers, Merino who looks like a decent midfielder and a couple of new keepers as both Donnarumma’s left. I would’ve probably kept the younger one even though I’ve never been that keen on him but he wouldn’t sign a new deal.

Spoiler

 

We had a much better club season this year as we won everything and have the final of the CWC to play as soon as we switch over to next season. We weren’t incredibly dominant though as we dropped a good few points in the league and we didn’t just sail through the cup rounds as you can see by the fixtures below. I’ll leave out the competition screenshots as unfortunately we’ve suffered that bug whereby all of the scorers are mixed up, I’m thinking it may be because of the CWC making the season more fuller than usual but can’t be sure. It was fine the first season though and I can already confirm that it’s been fine in every other season we’ve done so far, so looks like it could well be linked to the CWC.

Spoiler

 

The boys had a brilliant season this year and the extra CWC games really helped them as they scored many more goals than they did in the opening season. DCL led the way with 50 in 56 games, Leão was just one behind with 49 in 60 games, Maldini then came in with 26 goals and Richarlison managed 23 to give us a season total of 148 goals. We had a few injuries this year but nothing major and we’ve never had a period where two of the boys have been out at the same time so we’re getting plenty of time on the pitch for our challengers. Richarlison and DCL were the only injury victims out of the four this year but DCL’s injuries seemed to coincide with the international breaks so it worked out ok for him.

 

Season 3

We went into this campaign in fine spirits after our great season last time out. I was very confident and was hoping we’d be able to perform at a similar level this year so we’ll see if we could.

I felt the squad was pretty strong and most were at a decent age so I didn’t make many signings with just Jack Grealish, Rodri and a load of youth graduates coming in. It’s the first time I’ve ever used Jack and a lot of the appeal was his versatility as he can play anywhere in midfield and both wide positions, plus he’s very good and even better than I thought he would be if I’m being honest so I can highly recommend him.

Spoiler

 

We won everything again but like last year it wasn’t a perfect campaign with a good few poor games. We beat PSG comfortably in the CWC final as soon as we switched over to the new season. The European Super Cup turned out to be a bit of a classic between ourselves and Juve as we battled out a 4-4 draw and ended up winning the penalty shootout. Atalanta won’t be liking us at all after we beat them 4-0 in both the domestic cup finals and we met Juve again in the Champions League final and this match turned out to be a nasty affair but we came out on top in the end.

Spoiler

 

Unfortunately this season was a bit frustrating for our challengers as they just couldn’t hit the heights of last year and it felt like that was going to be the case from early on in the season if I’m being honest. It was DCL and Leão who suffered the biggest drop offs and similar to last season it was Richarlison who suffered the worst with injuries but it certainly wasn’t a bad season in that regard and we still haven’t had two of them out at the same time. Anyway, DCL hit 39 goals, Leão managed 37, Richarlison contributed 24 and Maldini scored 19 to give us a total of 119 for the season. A bit frustrating really after last year and can’t even work out why in truth, although it was the year when the World Cup was played during the season so I’m clinging onto hope that that may have contributed to it. It felt like more goals were going to other players and in particular to Jack Grealish but I have looked into the numbers properly. We’ll just have to see what happens next year I guess.

Spoiler

This was probably the highlight game this season, mainly because it was pleasing to get such a big win and we really haven’t had many of those yet.

 

Manager

Spoiler

 

Score

 

Spoiler

 

Season 1

Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 36 goals in 59 games

Richarlison: 27 goals in 57 games

Rafael Leão: 40 goals in 58 games

Daniel Maldini: 5 goals in 54 games

Season Total: 108 goals in 228 games

 

 

Season 2

Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 50 goals in 56 games

Richarlison: 23 goals in 50 games

Rafael Leão: 49 goals in 60 games

Daniel Maldini: 26 goals in 59 games

Season Total: 148 goals in 225 games

 

Season 3

Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 39 goals in 54 games

Richarlison: 24 goals in 50 games

Rafael Leão: 37 goals in 58 games

Daniel Maldini: 19 goals in 54 games

Season Total: 119 goals in 216 games

 

Overall

Dominic Calvert-Lewin: 125 goals in 169 games

Richarlison: 74 goals in 157 games

Rafael Leão: 126 goals in 176 games

Daniel Maldini: 50 goals in 167 games

Grand Total: 375 goals in 669 games

 

Final Thoughts

A brilliant season two and frustrating season three but that’s just how it goes I guess. The bulk of the goals are going to the three players in the system so I’m reluctant to change much tactically so we’ll just keep things as is and go again in season four.

 

Thank you for reading.