Career Vulpis Rex Latinus Europa - Italy✅ France?

[FoxD]

 

 

Back in 2021 I completed the Germanic Europe Challenge breaking the most goals in a season record in Belgium, Netherlands and Germany with different strikers.

 

My plan after was to then go after the Latin Europe Challenge and so here I am giving it a go.

The challenge premise is simple. Break the individual goal scoring records in Italy, France, Portugal and Spain in that order. Each record has to be completed with a different striker and I cannot use any regens so I have to complete the challenge before all the real life strikers get too old.

The original challenge from @BatiGoal can be found here.

 

An important aspect of the challenge is I must complete the nations in order starting with Italy then France, next Portugal and finally Spain. This means I need decent jobs to show up at opportune moments when I’ve completed one nation.

 

Anyways no messing about with this and we are straight in with Italy.

 

The original challenge from Bati has Higuain as the record holder with 38gls but I checked and actually Ciro Immobile broke that record with 41gls in the 2017/18 season for Lazio.

 

My club choice was Juventus but what I didn’t realise was they aren’t actually in Europe this season which I thought might be a hindrance. That said the target is 42 goals so just over a goal a game with just league games and hopefully a decent cup run. Hopefully having a lot less midweek games will actually help me keep my chosen striker fit.

 

My Main Man

I decided to go for Dušan Vlahović because he is a good striker for one and I also don’t need to spend any money on a new striker and so can improve the squad instead.

He isn’t world class but got better as the season went on and is decent enough to score plenty of goals with the right service.

 

Getting him service was the aim with my business in the transfer market. Obviously the Juve squad is decent for Serie A and with no European football to worry about we didn’t need a huge squad.

A few players were surplus to requirements and made exellent “pawns” to tempt other clubs into making deals for players I wanted. The “umed” and “ahed” about Chiesa both either as being my goal scorer or keeping him as a creative player. In the end I decided he would steal too many goals or moan if he’s on the bench so he went to being in a creative .

 

My main focus was to get in wingers as the Juve squad is built for a wingback based style. In came Johan Bakayoko from PSV, Galeno from Porto and Christian Pavón from whatever Brazilian team ATM are. I also signed an AP to provide creativity in the middle of the park and a CB who was a little more of an all round footballer than we already had.

 

Spoiler

 

Tactics wise I went for an attacking 4-3-3 with the aim of getting as many balls into the box for Vlahovic as possible whilst hopefully also being relatively solid at the back so we can win plenty of games.

 

On the whole the tactic worked very well although I’m sure only competing in the league and cup massively helped. This meant players stayed fit and I was able to field my strongest team most games.

The tactic isn’t perfect though but what it did was it suited the players I had and what I was looking to achieve.

It didn’t all work to plan as we crashed out the cup with just a semi after Fiorentina did us 2-1 over two legs.

 

The league went like a dream though as we dropped only 15pts all season and only conceded  10 goals as well. We weren’t prolific up front with 67 scored but the main idea was to get goals through Vlahovic only so being so defensively sound  neat we didn’t need to score loads of goals anyway.

 

 

Vlahovic Performance

 

He started slowly I suppose or at least by FMM standards as he chugged along at a goal a game for the first few months. As the team settled though he started to up his rate and his 42nd and record breaking goal came against Roma with 8 matches of the season still left.
 

 

His best performance came when he knocked 4 past Bologna in early March.

 

It was lucky he had a “purple patch” through the season as even before that Roma game his form had dropped off a cliff. As you can see he only scored 3 goals in his final 10 games of the season.

 

This was because he decided he wanted to leave and I couldn’t afford a new contract for him to cheer him up as he was demanding £300k a week.

 

That left him with a total of 44 which was enough to break the record though as just fractionally over a goal a game.

 

 

I could have stayed at Juventus and waited for a job in France to come up but instead I decided to resign and wait it out for a job. Mainly because I didn’t have the motivation to play another season at Juventus so I wanted to power through some time and get going in France.

 

Player Stats for the Season

Spoiler

So that’s Italy done and next we head to France to try and beat Zlatans record of 50 goals in one season.

[brendvn]

This is a cool idea, I think I’ll try it out as well. I think the most important way to beat Messi’s record would be finding a player who

a. has good enough aerial/strength to score from corners

b. has good enough shooting/technique/SP to be a free kick taker

I’ve noticed that this year’s FM has made set pieces extremely lethal, especially with superstar set piece takers like Ward-Prowse. 

[FoxD]

13 hours ago, brendvn said:

This is a cool idea, I think I’ll try it out as well. I think the most important way to beat Messi’s record would be finding a player who

a. has good enough aerial/strength to score from corners

b. has good enough shooting/technique/SP to be a free kick taker

I’ve noticed that this year’s FM has made set pieces extremely lethal, especially with superstar set piece takers like Ward-Prowse. 

Yep agree with all that. A while till I need to worry about Spain but the key will also be one of Real or Barca deciding to get rid of their manager. In France I don’t think I necessarily need to manage PSG to beat the record but Spain I definitely need to get a job at one of the big boys.

[StuartM]

Fantastic start Mr Fox

[Harinderbrar5900]

Best of luck 

[FoxD]

On 23/12/2023 at 09:33, StuartM said:

Fantastic start Mr Fox

 

On 23/12/2023 at 10:02, Harinderbrar5900 said:

Best of luck 

Cheers lads

[Rob]

Lovely start Fantastic Mr

[FoxD]

 

 

Having completed Italy in season 1 with Vlahovic bagging 44 goals to take the record I had resigned from the Juve job in order to find a job in France. Of course my hope was for PSG to sack there manager and for me to get that job but they were doing well and weren’t in any mood for a change.

It took until December for a reasonable job to come up and that was at 12th placed Rennes.

 

It’s a better job than it looks by the league table as they are in the Champions League after a 3rd place finish the previous season. They are also offering me £42m to spend on players in January and with a decent enough starting squad I back myself to push them up the league given the amount of football left to play.

 

 

They have a couple of decent strikers in Gouiri and Kalimuendo and I’m going to give them both a chance to prove themselves.

 

My focus is of course on next season as I won’t beat the record this season now unless a miracle happens and one of my strikers bangs in over 50 goals in the second half of the season. I spent money in the transfer window with the focus on more creativity in the team ready for next season. I didn’t yet buy a striker for next season as I want to see how it goes with the lads at the club.

 

The players I actually bought are under the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

My hunch about the squad was right and we flew up the table in the second half of the season finally finishing 4th which was enough for Champions League. Would have preferred Europa in all honesty as more goal potential but it should help the bank balance.

 

We also made the cup final but in the end Brest was best.

 

We had a quick reunion with my old club in the Champions League and I showed them what they were missing.

 

 

What is a worry is despite results being good no one showed much promise in front of goal. Neither Gouiri or Kalimuendo proved to me they are the players to build the squad round next season so I will have to go out and buy someone.

 

 

 

First Full Season

My man of choice for the striker role was Everton striker Beto.

 

He cost me £11m plus striker Yildirim going the other way which looks an absolute bargain to me.

Players Out

Spoiler

 

My main focus was on the central midfield area in the summer with most of the money being spent there. I also used loans to improve my GK as well as an extra CB, winger and RB.

 

Spoiler

 

I was pleased with the squad and felt we had plenty of quality and it was an ok season but perhaps not as good as I expected. We simply couldn’t get near PSG as we kept dropping points with silly draws and loses all through the season. Much of this I put down to my focus on the main challenge of this save and so I was trying to get goals through Beto and limited others scoring. That’s great but if Beto isn’t firing or is being nullified as happened we then dropped points as no one else was scoring regularly.

 

We did finish second though so it wasn’t an awful season.

 

We went out to Bayern in the Champions League narrowly.

 

Marseille did for us in the French Cup.

 

One bit of fun though was my GK scoring at a corner and showing that it can actually happen. Call me cynical but I was dubious whether a keeper would actually ever score.

 

This meant we won no trophies this season even if it was an improvement for the club that stung a bit for me.

 

The Main Man

As for Beto he did his job perfectly setting a new French record of 58 goals in the all competitions for the season.

 

 

 

Only his back up Kalimuendo managed double figure goals which proved my point that I had almost too much focus on just Beto scoring and that harmed the team at times.

Player stats

Spoiler

 

I have completed the job in France though but I would like to at least win a trophy before I head to Portugal and the next leg of challenge. I can’t mess around if a good job does become available in Portugal though and so I will keep an eye on the job market and if Porto, Benfica, or Sporting are looking then I will be applying.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Rob]

Love the options you had in season two. Well done Fuzzy.

[FoxD]

On 12/01/2024 at 16:36, Rob said:

Love the options you had in season two. Well done Fuzzy.

Cheers Rob

[StuartM]

Great progress Fox, love it that your keeper scored. I switched that option off after conceding from the half way line!