United Nations League - Season 22/23

This season was another great success. We've managed to once again take the UNL title. This is the third year in a row, and despite our great point count, we still had to wait for the very last game to be able to claim the title. In the last day of the season Heidelberg was only a single point ahead of Minato and we needed to at least do as well as them in order to lift the trophy. Well we did it after beating the Russian side, Kremlin by 1x0. The game wasn't necessarily a close one, but still very exciting. Check out the goal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx8XaCLhLvQ

 We also managed to win the UN Cup as well which was a great achievement for us, to win both of these on the same season. (check the final @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDMCKqCPeQ&feature=youtu.be ). It would have been even greater if we had won the Champions League, however, that wasn't in the card. We made it all the way to the semi-final, only to lose by 5x0 on aggregated to Machester City. We did qualify past the group stage despite having Real Madrid, Spartak Moscow and Sparta Prague in our group. We then beat Olympique Lyonnais (3x2), Inter (3x1). Even though our Heidelberg squad is strong enough to do well internationally, we still don't have a team quite at the caliber of some of the richest clubs of the world.

In terms of players, my top picks are our steady captain Antonio Jose. This 23 year old Brazillian centre back played 54 games this season, which is insane and managed an average of 7.60... He's certainly part of the reason we did so well. While Gustavo Orsi had a terrible last few months, he still managed to score 19 goals in 38 games and had an average of 7.44. Tihomir Maric, our vice-captain also did very well, scoring 21 goals in 39 games and had an average of 7.35 overall. A few other favorites of mine were the right winger Kitazawa, who had a wonderful early season which was halted by an injury in which he never really recovered completely. He still had 9 goals and 7.27 average after 30 games. The DM Robson Geraldo was another great player this season, this 20 year old Brazillian had an average of 7.27. Robertinho, our AML also had a great early season but an injury later on did slow him down unfortunately.

Below are some more stats for this season.

 

UNL: Conclusion of the 21/22 season

After such a successful campaign on out 9th season, season 10 was not quite as impressive. However, we did still get the Uniter Nations League trophy. It is our second title in a row, and this season Minato really came close to taking it towards the end. They were a mere 2 points behind with 2 games left in the season and we were to face each other. A tie would have been enough to lift the trophy, but we managed a 1x0 win at home in front of a full Midazolam Stadium with a goal by Chan Jook-Ki in the 82nd minute after he replaced Orsi. I think this game exemplifies exactly how the team was this season. We had a really strong starting 11 for the most part, but whenever we were missing a player someone from the bench would come in and make the difference.

Beyond the UNL, we also managed to win the Club World Championship, which is the cup where winners from the Champion's League face off with winners from the Copa Libertadores. As a South American I've always enjoyed this tournament but I know this sentiment is not shared everywhere in the world. Anyway, we beat the Brazillian side from Rio, Flamengo. On December 19th (2021), we won 3x1 at BMO Field in Toronto. Flamengo scored an own goal at 10 minutes and after that we exploited their vulnerabilities for the rest of the match. Ortega and Luppi were our other goal scorers, and we even missed a penalty (Al-Mazam) towards the end of the match. Flamengo managed a goal by their 24 year old striker Cesar.

In the Champion's League we did not do as well this time around, and we actually only finished in 4th place in group B (1. Bayern Munich [11pts], 2. Fenerbahce [9pts], 3. Jablonec [7pts], 4. Heidelberg [7pts]). The Champion's League final ended up being between Barcelona and Manchester City. City took the cup with a goal by Jovetic.

We also won the WU Badge against Minato after a 1x1 draw in a penalty shoot out. Exciting game. We did however do very poorly in the UN Cup this year. We won in the first round against R&R by 4x1, only to lose in the second round to the Irish team Celtic Tigers in a penalty shootout after a 1x1 tie. The cup final involved Minato (won vs Celtic Tigers in semi by 2x1 on extra time) and Inter Zagreb (won vs Amsterdam by 1x0 on extra time). The final finished with a victory by Minato by 2x0 with goals by the popular Justin Gant and the 21 year old Norwegian midfielder Jens Johan Hovde.

Some potentially sad news is that both Xavier Arellano and Javi Garcia have announced that they will be retiring. The American full back Arellan played 7 seasons with us and went on a loan last season to FC Berliner. He was still a great backup player for us but with the addition of Blanco to our team we should be in good shape for next season. The Spanish DM (35yo) Javi Garcia will probably be a more problematic loss. He came to Heidelberg in 2017 from Man City and has been a consistent starter this season despite his age. He's a solid defensive player and has been averaging above 7.1 every season since he joined us. He played 31 games in 21/22 and will certainly need to be replaced by a competent player.

In terms of player stats and awards in the UNL, our #9 Gustavo Orsi placed 4th in goals scored with 21, after Zhao Wendong (24 goals, CHN, Accra), Emil Lyng (24 goals, DEN, FC Berliner) and Justin Gant (23 goals, CAN, Minato). In terms of average rating, Antonio Jose was 4th with 7.65 and Orsi was 7th with 7.6. Great performance by our team really.

The player of the year award went to the Canadian Justin Gant from Minato, followed by our own Kitazawa and 3rd place went to Gustavo Orsi. It is quite an achievement to get 2 players in this, it is too bad we didn't get the #1 spot though. Once again Philip Hulme took the goalie of the Season award with a 7.07 performance this year. He had 15 clean sheets in 34 games. He was followed by the popular Argentinian goalie Ayala and the Hungarian Gyula Nagy, both with 16 clean sheets. In the defense, Antonio Jose took the #1 spot followed by the English player from Kalevipoeg Ricky Amass and the veteran from Minato Timm Klose who had a 7.94 average rating this season after 36 games. Not sure why he didn't get #1. Perhaps it's because he has won this award 3 times (2017, 2019, 2021) already in the past, which makes sense since he seems to win every other year. In the midfield Lars Jensen took #1 for Accra, followed by Iain Gibbs from British Columbia and Nwosu from KVC Antwerpen. Up front the young German Hendrik Nattermann took #1 with 21 goals in 33 matches, followed by Zhao Wendong from Accra and Tapoko from Praha.

UNL: end of season 20/21

This was officially our best season yet. We managed to win every competition we were involved in which includes the UN League, the UN Cup and the Champions League. It was just an outstanding year for Heidelberg. A very consistent year as you can see from our fixtures, we pretty much dominated most games and with the help of some of our long term players we've achiever much more than was expected. We finished in first with 76 points, followed by Minato with 69 pts and third place went to La Pichard with 65. I feel that I can comfortably say that at this point these 3 teams are the cream of the crop in the United Nations League. While this is our first trophy, Minato has won it 4 times now (2014, 2015, 2019, 2020). They have been an impressive side over the history of the UNL.

La Pichard has had an impressive run as well, even though they only have 1 title (2017) they have placed 2nd twice and 3rd once. Beyond that, the UN Cup runner ups, Kalevipoeg, have also won once in 2018, and the other 2 german clubs have won it once each as well (FC Berliner in 2016, 84 Munchen in 2013)

In terms of notable players during this season, the player of the year award went to Espen Moe (Minato, Norway), with Piotr Pontus (Accra, Poland) in second and Rob Tol (Accra, Holland) in third. All players under 22 years of age. The top goalscorer this season was Will Baxter, the Englishman from Kalevipoeg with 27 goals and an average rating of 7.50. Todd Thomas (AC Lombardia, Australia) was tied with Aurel Lengyel (La Pichard, Romania) for second with 21 goals each and an average rating of 7.43 and 7.34 respectively. Lastly, the top goalie of the season was Philip Hulme from Heidelberg with an avg rating of 7.05, quite a feat for our 20 year old American goalie. 2nd place went to Osigwe, which is our old goalie, quite exciting to see 2 Heidelberg players get those awards.

UNL: Conclusion of the 19/20 season

Another superb season for Heidelberg, we've managed to finish at the best position so far in the UNL and on top of that we made it to the semi final of the Champion's League and were the runners up for the UN Cup. I don't think there is a doubt that this was our best year yet.

We had a very strong season, which mainly featured a good start, where we essentially dominated in the first half of the season during 2019. I feel that Heidelberg began to struggle towards the end mainly due to the number of games we had to play and I believe the team take over that happened around April had a negative impact on the team. It was unfortunate since we may have been able to pull 1st place if it wasn't for that. Instead Minato once again grabbed the 1st prize with 81 points, quite a strong performance. Although this is not the best in UNL's history, in the 14/15 season Minato finished with 87 points and during the 17/18 season Kalavipoeg from Estonia finished first with 81 points. We were in second place with only 66 points, closely followed by Londinium FCwith 65 points. Much like Heidelberg, Londiunium have been improving over the years moving from bottom of the table during

the first 4 seasons to 11th place in 17/18, 6th in 18/19 and now in 3rd place after the 19/20 season. This is definitely a team we will need to keep an eye on for upcoming seasons.

In terms of individual players, one of our highlights is our young striker Zhao who finished the UNL seaosn with 24 goals, 2nd best after the Egyptian Islam Farouk from Londinium FC. Fabian Eiling from Norway (Bygdoy) snatched 3rd place. Zhao was also 2nd in Player of the Year following Farouk and ahead of the Brazillian winger from Londinium, Fernando Cesar. All 3 players are between 21 and 22 years of age, so we can expect that the UNL is only about to get more competitive and full of talent.

UNL: Conclusion of the 18/19 campaign pt.1

After another period without posting and for the most part playing as well, I finished season 7 of the Heidelberg saga. It was a very strong season for the team, which was really what I expected considering how we've been building the team up for the past few seasons. Heidelberg finished the 18/19 season in 3rd place, quite nice, despite the fact that we were #1 for a good while at the end of the season. Unfortunately we had a few bad games in April/May, which were likely due to some injuries and the divided effort between the UNL and the EURO cup. Overall though, I am pleased with the performance of the team this last season. On part 2 I will post more details about some of the highlights.

The UNL winners this time around was the Japanese club Minato. They have been a very strong side since the beginning of the game from what I can recall, and they came in second place last season. The French team La Pichard came in very close in 2nd place. It was unfortunate that the first 3 positions were decided on the very last day of games. Prior to that day La Pichard was actually in first and they were playing Minato and Heidelberg was in 3rd. We could have moved up had we won our match instead of the 2x2 draw but only if La Pichard had won their match. In the end Minato creamed La Pichard 4x1 putting the Japanese side in first place with 73 points and making it so that even winning we would still only clinch the 3rd spot this season.

Some of the key players this season included our Chinese striker Zhao who managed to be the best young player this season. Despite his young age and inexperience, Zhao is slowly becoming our primary forward, usually in a Target Man role. Some other important players were Svoboda, our right winger, another young player with a great career ahead of him. Our young defensive pair Kelisson Roberto and Antonio
Jose. These two are also very young and have been playing like grown ups this entire season. As I keep saying, we've had a few struggles in the last few seasons but I feel that this was the first season where our young side full of potential is starting to blossom. We have a ton of players under 22 years of age that are replacing our veterans very often that will become superstars in a season or two, putting us in a very comfortable position. The heavy scouting and emphasis on young players will pay off in the end.

Some of the surprises in terms of the UNL final standings was the fact that Kalevipoeg really dropped quite a bit from where they were in the last few years, they actually won the UNL last season and only placed 8th this year. ASS Riga also dropped big time, being one of the teams relegated this season. This Latvian team went from being on the top of the table for quite a few seasons to a complete collapse, and I'm not sure why. Beyond these two baltic teams, we also saw the Italian team R&R, the Finnish FC Suomi and the Portuguese Atletico da Baixa, all being relegated this year.  Kobenhavn and Bygdoy just missed getting relegated by a couple of points and will get to keep their UNL spot for next year. R&R were 4th place last year, which also makes it a bit of a surprise to see them drop like that. Germany will continue to have 3 teams in the UNL next year, making it the country with the most teams in the first division. I supposed if you count the UK as one nation then they also have 3 (Glasgow, London United and Londinium FC, ?or is it 4 if you count Wales too?).

UNL: Conclusion of the 17/18 campaign

After a bit of a small blogging hiatus, here is an update on my current FM13 save. I just finished season 6 with Heidelberg (2017/2018) and despite some struggles along the way I think we are establishing ourselves as a real challenge in the UN League. In the previous season we ended up not doing as well as I would like, but this time we managed to end in 6th place after spending months stuck in 7th. Although I secretly hoped for a better position, I admit the competition was fierce, and we also focused a lot in our international efforts, in particular the EURO Cup, which we managed to get to the semi final, only to lose to Liverpool by 3x2 in aggregate. Not a bad performance, which brought in some money and respect from the board. Next season I would definitely want to make it to the top 4 if I can, but that is to be seen.

I think overall I finally got the squad to find its weapon, a 41221 formation, with a fairly attacking mentality. We had a strong period when Arrua was really causing some damage to the opposition with his goals. This young player really was an asset to the team up until he asked to be traded. I was pretty upset about the prospect of losing one of my best current players and one of the players I had invested a lot into for future seasons. The one positive is the fact I managed to get over 11M for him which should help me get some new talent in the following season.

Once Arrua was out, our new Chinese youngster, Zhao Zhengbin, was given a lot more responsibility, and I have to say he delivered wonderfully despite his young age and inexperience. I have great hopes for him and unless he asks to be traded I feel he will eventually be one of our historical players, part of the team that raises the UNL trophy, or so I hope.

There were a few players I would like to highlight from this season. Starting with our top player this season, Zelimir Busic. Once again this great player managed to shine despite not looking terribly impressive when you look at his stats. Somehow he seems to always manage to deliver good performances, getting him a record number of player of the match titles, an extremely high average rating and a place in the top 3 defenders of the league this season. All of this from a seemingly mediocre 27 year old that gets paid less than 6K per week. Just shows that stats will only tell you part of the story.

Jose Goncalves once again deserves attention. This is our reliable and experienced center back, often playing with Busic. While Busic is the man in the air, Goncalves is the one I tend to rely on for most defensive needs.

Zdenek Svoboda, our right winger has also shown to be a valiable player to our club. I will say he is not as consistent as the two center backs, but when he plays well he can have a major impact on our performance. He boasts great speed and a strong crossing ability. He is still young and I have high hopes for this player in the next couple of seasons, when I expect him to really shine.

I've already mentiond Zhengbin, but he really is right now my most exciting player. This is because he is only 19 years old and he has already taken our starting target man position. While Arrua will be missed, Zhengbin really suits the lone striker role I have in my tactics better. He has great overall attributes, but his strength and aerial ability really make him a great player to have up front. This will certainly not be the last time I mention him here.

Lastly, here are some more stats I've collected from this last season... If I have the will I will analyze and post a few more number on later posts.

UNL: Frankfurt match

It's been a while since my last real update. I should be posting older information but I just played a major game for our team. This was a UNL game against our rivals Frankfurt. We have not played in 5 years so this should be an exciting game. Both our teams have changed much in the last few seasons and as Heidelberg has been really struggling in the league, a good result here would be great for morale.

 Well a good result we got. An amazing game for our side, which relied on a great presentation from Omar Al-Mazam, who got a hat-trick. He has played some 10 games so far this season, but had not had any particularly great presentation; however today he showed a lot of promise. It's the first year at Heidelberg. He is only 19 years of age, but was one of our major purchases in recent times. I think it may have been a risky move, but I think this kid will definitely be worth his $5.75M price tag.

In terms of updates of this season so far. We are doing very poorly actually. Last game was our first win, and this is what things look like for us right now.

Our saving grace is the fact that we are doing fairly well in the Euro Cup so far.

Here are some of the other players I would highlight from this season so far.

UNL - It's not as easy as they make it seem

Another season was completed and I'm actually fairly into the following season. This is what happened:

UNL - Half empty rather than half full

And season 15/16 is concluded, at least for the League games. Here are some of the major stats including:

United Nations League Table

United Nations League 2

2015/2016 fuxtures

It was an OK season for us really. 10th place in the league is actually below my personal expectations of this season. I was hoping to maintain that 5-6th spot. Anyway, part of the poor performance I think is a combination of tactics and player management. Since I used 3 different formations during my season, I required a lot of players, which are not getting enough games and are starting to complain.


I need to pick out a formation/tactic and stick to it a bit more. My mainly played tactic is the 4-4-2, which I believe I posted before. It's quite a normal setup. As you can see in the figure, I achieved a goal scored : goal conceded ratio of 1.32 (from 49/37). My 4-1-3-2 formation (the CM convention tactic) was used about a third of the amount as the 442 getting a ratio of 1.36. Finally the V 4-1-2-2-1 formation, which is the offensive tactice produced 7 goals in 6 matches, with a ratio of 1.4.In terms of goals per match, the ratings are: 4-4-2 (1.48 goals per match), 4-1-3-2 (1.36 goals per match), 4-1-2-2-1 (1.16 goals per match).

  And these are the awards for this season:

UNL - Cold March

Long while since I last posted a FM13 post, not because I haven't been playing, but mostly because I have been posting all those CK2 posts. It's crazy when you're into two games at once, it's almost like juggling two girlfriends. Anyway, to bring us up to date here are the fixtures.

As you can see I have been pretty busy, perhaps with fairly poor results for the most part, fortunately for us since the end of February we have been on a good 5 win run, which included a 3x0 win over Clube Paulista and a 3x2 vicory over Celtic Tigers. Now the real action will be my next game.

We made it to the group stage in the Euro Cup, which was my minimum requirement, I'm doing fairly poorly in the league this season, so UN Cup has all of a sudden turned into a bit of a deal. I have been fortunate, putting our team in the semi-final game against the French side La Pichard. The other game will be between two UNL2 sides: Universidad Santiago (Chile) and Reykjavik (Iceland). If we can somehow beat La Pichard, we would have a very tangible chance to win the cup, which would obviously help us financially and in terms of reputation.

Lastly, here are some stats for those who like it:

Club reputation

Club estimated values

The best players in the world

Lastly, there was a bit of drama this last trading season. We purchased a few new players including the Chinese prodigy Zhao Zhengbin (375K) from Shanghai. The Israeli striker Din Gennish (775K). The goalie we got on a free transfer, Ukranian Igor Levchenko. Finally the big purchase, Francisco Javier Martinez was purchased from Olympique Lyonnais for 3.8M. Maybe a mistake, but that remains to be seen. Raphael Bohmann was the cause for my dissapointment however. He took a contract from Geneve FC and I got none of my 1.4M back for this player. So here is a pick of me considering playing Bohmann, but deciding not to play him.

From the games shown above, this one was a fun one. A 2x1 victory over ASS Riga. Highlight was Yannis Tafer from Riga, displaying an 8.6 performance.

UNL - November was an improvement

The month of November was a slight improvement from October... at least we didn't lose any game, but I still feel that this season we have been struggling a bit. It is almost halfway through this season and we find ourselves in 11th place with 22 points (5-7-3), 17 goals for and 13 against.

In terms of players, Juan Graciano Arrua is still our strongest contributer, with an average of 7.72 from 7(1) games, including 8 goals, 2 assists and an impressive 83% passing success. Other players that should be highlighted are Jose Goncalvez, Zelimir Busic, Leo Lacroix and Dannis Gester.