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Career Kiwis Flying High


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This year I’ve had a lot of enjoyment from battling it out in international competitions. (The World Cup Winner Badge probably kickstarted that.)

Which got me thinking about getting a small nation up the World Rankings and giving them a shot at winning the World Cup.

And, seeing as I tend to neglect my hometown team in FMM, I decided to go with New Zealand as the nation.

At the start of the 22/23 season they are ranked 117th in the world. The aim is try and get as close to that number 1 spot as possible. And, of course to win the World Cup.

I’ve only loaded Australia for this career and will be managing the only professional kiwi team—the Wellington Phoenix, who play in the Australian A-League.

I’m a few seasons into this so will post a recap about how it’s going so far.

Edited by DoneHisCruciate
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NZ Job

At the start of 22/23 New Zealand isn’t manageable. I’m not sure exactly how many players a nation needs but there wasn’t enough. So the first task was to sign every academy  kid each season until I could nab the New Zealand job.

That took until season 7 in Sep 27 (by then there were 10 pages of kiwis in the player search):

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With the help of all the young kids I was bringing through my predecessor had lifted NZ to 94th:

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As for moving up the World Rankings it’s all about training up the academy kids and hoping a big club comes to sign them. The more quality players out into the world the better. 

Facilities 

The Phoenix starts off reasonably well with 3 stars for youth and 3 stars for training facilities. By season 3 I’d gotten the Youth up to 5 stars and a season later so was the training. (I had gotten plenty of cash from selling players and by season 3 I wasn’t buying players anymore anyway—the team was being filled from the academy.)

Staff

The bigger problem was staff. It seems not many people fancy coaching in NZ. (I’m not sure if I would have had better luck if I’d loaded more leagues at the start.)

In the end I had to persuade a couple of old players to hang up their boots to get a defensive coach and a scout. Both have poor aptitude so even by Season 9 I still don’t have a fully gold staff:


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What’s worse is a couple of gold ones are nearing retirement age and will probably decline back to silver soon. So, this will be an ongoing battle.

Domestically 

Wellington Phoenix are a quirky club in a quirky competition. Firstly they are registered in the Oceanic Confederation but play in an Asian Confederation league. Which means although there is a continental competition (the Asian Champions League) for the winners of the A-League, the Phoenix are not allowed to play in it. 

The next quirk is the A-league has a cup competition but it starts during pre-season when teams are meant to be playing friendlies 🤷‍♂️ Which also means the second round of the cup normally clashes with an international friendly —by season 7 my entire first team squad is normally away on international duty😂

The last quirk is there are only 26 league games followed by a couple of knockout rounds. 

All in all it makes for a quick season to play for me but not a lot of game time for the players.

Domestic Results

Nothing exciting here. I have to keep the Phoenix job so I have to dominate domestically. The challenge is to bring through the young players at the right time but honestly I don’t need top notch players to do well here. I’ve done 8 seasons so far:

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(incidentally Wynton Rufer is probably New Zealand’s best export for football.)

World Cup

New Zealand do have an advantage of being the big fish in Oceania after Australia switched to the Asian Confederation a while back. So qualifying for the World Cup is straightforward. (But I suppose it does mean I’m always one FMM’d result from getting the sack..)

However the World Cup is the only place NZ is likely to pick up World Ranking points. They don’t have another major international competition to play in where they face off against higher ranked teams.  So, success has to happen here. I just hope the National FA don’t get grand ideas as we get better.

And the reason for this recap is we just played our first World Cup:

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Getting to the third round was a decent effort.

At the moment the team is competitive but could be better in the midfield and I really need some quality fullbacks to come through the academy. By far our weakest positions.

And the ranking has moved to 70th:

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Hopefully I’ll be back with another World Cup update at some point—hopefully the National FA don’t get too ambitious..

Edited by DoneHisCruciate
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World Cup #2

We haven’t really been getting any world class players through the academy but the friendly results have been showing that we can go toe-to-toe with most teams.

The squad also feels like it has a bit of depth to it now. And, this is the first World Cup where the squad is made entirely from academy graduates. 

But we faired pretty much the same as last time:

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The highlight being battling back against Brazil (ranked #1) to win in extra time. But the cost was some tired players for Egypt. Plus by that stage we’d lost three strikers to injury.

Domestically 

Business as usual:

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Manager

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World Ranking:

We’ve made a bit of head way getting up to 52nd and at least I haven’t been sacked yet!

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Edited by DoneHisCruciate
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Great effort mate, this is going to need some serious persistence! Bit of a different challenge to your last!!

Have you spotted any cool regens? I'm told that nationalities can switch around, otherwise any favourites?

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Yeah, a bit different 😜 I can’t remember the last time I’ve stayed at a club for 10+ seasons.

I have to admit to not looking for regens. I’ve just been focusing on academy players. I think it would be cool getting it done with kids that come through at Phoenix and are released into the wild when I can’t progress them any further 😁

 

 

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World Cup #3

It’s been a lean few years of youth development. Nobody of real note coming through. It’s also been surprisingly difficult to get better clubs interested in the players who I need to move on to a better level of football.

Anyway back at the World Cup and we got drawn in an awful group of Holland and Uruguay. Holland beat us easily. Uruguay beat Holland. And, we managed a blow out win against Uruguay. So we squeaked out of the group on goal difference:

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We beat Denmark in the second round and did what we always do by losing the third round:

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Bit of a stinker there, and it’s doubly annoying as we have beaten Tunisia before.

The worryingly thing is quite a few of our best players will retire before the next World Cup. 

But for now we move up to 37th:

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Domestically 

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