Career 1K Challenge - Atlético Madrid - Ilaix Moriba - *Completed*

[DoneHisCruciate]

4 hours ago, StuartM said:

Doris and Rodrigo seem to be the Peter Taylor to your Brian Clough, well done and I look forward to seeing what comes next!

High praise indeed. Thanks StuartM.

I hear they are looking for a story idea for a semi-sequel to The Damned United..

 

[broodje kip]

Wow nice one mate. I’ve just read through all. Great career.

[DoneHisCruciate]

12 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Wow nice one mate. I’ve just read through all. Great career.

Thanks! It's been a really fun one to play.

[DoneHisCruciate]

Season 15 - 2035/36 - The one with another shot at international management

It was announced on the radio this morning that Boubacar Barry had been sacked by the Guinean FA as the team had failed to qualify for the World Cup.

So, I played it cool.

I didn’t apply for the job until four minutes and 33 seconds later.

(Four of those minutes were spent wrestling the phone off Rodrigo who thought he was being hilarious.)

The Guinean FA were delighted to wish me back on board and expressed a desire to never meet Doris again.

And, Moriba went on a rampage in his first game back for his country:

The season was business as usual:

Spoiler

Moriba loved the idea of scoring 1000 goals for Atlético and attacked the season with renewed vigour:

Spoiler

Edited March 9, 2022 by DoneHisCruciate

[DoneHisCruciate]

Season 16 - 2036/37 - The one where the second honeymoon is just as good as the first

It was time to turn our attention to the African Cup of Nations once more. The squad were super excited, and they were acting as if I was managing them for the first time again.

The results kept going our way and we found ourselves in the semi-final against Tunisia.

Tunisia tend to beat us easily so it wasn’t a surprise to be 2 goals down after 9 mins. I took our goalkeeper off and discovered that in his excitement he had buttered his gloves instead of his toast this morning.

Then the lads turned it around in impressive style:

On to the Ivory Coast in the final.

Once more we found ourselves 2 goals down and I had to take the goalkeeper off again. Goalkeepers have an annoying habit of forgetting how to stop shots at the most awkward of times.

Luckily the lads pulled off another comeback with Moriba getting the winning goal.

We were African Cup of Nations winners again!

Moriba got injured again this season and at his age the ugly red arrows don’t tend to go away. Still, at 34 years old he put in a good season.

And, he broke 200 goals for Guinea which I was overchuffed† about:

†(Carlton Cole ©2011)

Spoiler

**There’s a quirk in the game where the player history has now lost all the seasons before 2022/23. The game/goal totals are no longer correct.

I’m a bit worried that I won’t get to see the 1000 goal stat in his history if it loses more seasons next season. At the moment the goal count is wrong by 47 goals for me and 3 for Barcelona B.**

The rest of the season was good:

Spoiler

[DoneHisCruciate]

Season 17 - 2037/38 - The one where is scores is 1000th goal for Atlético Madrid

On the 22 September 2037 Moriba netted his 1000th goal for the club in the 10th minute of the game against Las Palmas. Fittingly it was at home in front of over 97,244 people.

The emotion got a bit much for Rodrigo and he started crying. I have to admit I had tears in my eyes as well. But that was because Doris had just punched me in the arm in celebration.

Interestingly this season Moriba's aggression seems to be inversely proportional to his pace. The slower he got the more angry he got!

Father Time is not a nice strike partner in the game of football.

Inevitably he got his first red card. I suspect it was less violent conduct and more being incredibly late in a tackle:

The team also got FMMed by Malaga:

Not that it mattered as the season was a clean sweep:

Spoiler

At 35, Moriba still broke 50 goals for the season:

Spoiler

**There’s a quirk in the game where the player history has lost all the seasons before 2022/23. So the game/goal totals are no longer correct. At the moment the count is wrong by 47 goals for me and 3 for Barcelona B.**
***At least I got to see the 1000 counter roll over on his player history.

[DoneHisCruciate]

Season 18 - 2038-39 - The one where he retires or does he?

With one year left on his contract the buzz about the club was whether Moriba was going to retire at the end of the season.

Rodrigo and I decided that we should let him make the decision and sat down to see if he was ready to hang up his boots. Surprisingly we persuaded him to keep playing:

But when we came down to discussing a contract he refused to talk terms:

Rodrigo reckons Moriba’s still a bit upset about the goat incident. *sigh*

There’s a real prospect he’ll be off on a free at the end of the season or worse agree terms with someone else. I’ve instructed Doris to intercept any offers Barcelona might send in his direction.

Still, we had the African Cup of Nations to defend this year and we felt we were unbeatable. That is until we met Algeria. It turns out the reports of their demise in 2022/23 were wildly inaccurate.

What’s worse they wanted revenge for the mauling we gave them back then and got it in the semi-final:

We bounced back to win the game nobody wants to play:

Which moved Guinea up to the 23rd spot in the world:

Another good season for the team:

Spoiler

Another solid season for Moriba at 36 years old. But the real question is what will he do next?

My Magic 8-ball says "Fabrizio knows but isn't telling".  I think it might be broken.

Spoiler

**There quirk in the game has now lost all the seasons before 2024/25. So the game/goal totals are no longer correct. The count is wrong by 163 goals for me and 3 for Barcelona B.**

 

[DoneHisCruciate]

Season 19 - 2039-40 - The one that never ends

Moriba left on a free in the summer.

(Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash)

It didn’t seem right that he might finish his career at another club so Doris did a great job in persuading nobody else to offer him a contract.

I then sent Rodrigo to tell Moriba that Amazon were planning to make a documentary at the club. This inspired him to sign back on:

He only found out later that the documentary is called "The most important person at any club -  the Tea Lady."

I honestly have no idea how Doris got them to make it.

We decided to celebrate re-signing Moriba by going on a glitzy pre-season tour. I got Doris to modify the team bus so that we could put all of Moriba’s trophies and awards in a display cabinet at the back. We figured we could show the kids at the games everywhere we went.

Unfortunately Doris’s first attempt at modifying the bus went completely wrong. In her enthusiasm she obliterated it.

She was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

(Photo by Yosh Ginsu on Unsplash)

Anyway we got a new bus and fitted it out beautifully. The trophy display was truly something to behold. The lads were in great spirits as we wound our way through the Italian Alps on the way to the first friendly.

They were cavorting around the bus like idiots.

I’m not known in managerial circles for being a disciplinarian and I let it go. I guess that was a mistake.

The driver got distracted as we were going around a bend and the tail end of the bus skidded off the road. We were left balancing precariously on the side of a cliff.

The lads were up the front with me and Moriba’s trophies were down the back almost pulling us over the edge.

“Hang on a minute, lads,” I said. “I’ve got a great idea.”

“Err… err..”

                        ***********************************************

Note from DHC:
 Moriba could easily get another 40 or 50 goals this season or maybe his stats will fall off a cliff so badly that he has some horrible ratings.  Maybe he retires before the first game or goes on to dominate for another few seasons.

You can imagine it anyway you want to.

I decided I didn’t need to know. Another few goals won’t change this challenge and it seemed fitting that his last game for me was winning the Champions Cup against FC Bayern.  

At 36, he scored two goals, had a rating of 10 and was the man of the match in that final. That seems the perfect point to stop such a brilliant career.

Over 18 seasons he scored 1102 goals for Atlético Madrid and 226 for Guinea for a total of 1331—-that’s 45% of the goals that my teams scored.

Moriba exceeded my expectations for this challenge and I really am overchuffed† he managed to score over 1000 goals for one club.

In the end I was also pleased that I managed Guinea. I can’t imagine I would have done so if I hadn’t taken on this challenge. They also performed far better than I ever expected.

A big thanks to anyone who took the time to read this and follow along.

                        ***********************************************

Final Manager Stats:

Spoiler

Moriba’s awards and achievements:

**the 1 adverse is my sacking by the Guinean FA

†(Carlton Cole ©2011)

[StuartM]

You deserve to be overchuffed with this one, best read of the season so far I'd say and spectacular results too!

[DoneHisCruciate]

50 minutes ago, StuartM said:

You deserve to be overchuffed with this one, best read of the season so far I'd say and spectacular results too!

Thanks mate

[MatiasDFS]

This is like when you finish a really good book .

Please post your next career! same as @StuartM, best read of the year.

[Rob]

Awesome.

[DoneHisCruciate]

Thanks guys.

16 hours ago, MatiasDFS said:

Please post your next career! same as @StuartM, best read of the year.

I doubt I’ll be doing another long career for a wee while. 🤪

[shosky]

It's been a really interesting career. I enjoyed every bit of it. Thanks for entertaining us.

[smoggy90]

Congrats mate, fantastic career!

[Uncleseekx]

Is there a rule in this forum that says no one should share their 1KC challenge tactic cause y'all never share them. Nice results though