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 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 - 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:

Retirement and 14/15 season summary

Even though he was not the most pretigious player in the team, he still had a great impact on the team.

Here is the season summary, just to finalize the 14/15 season. Supposedly, we were the overachieving team of the UNL season.

Season 3 is done, and despite my short summary of it, was a very exciting one. I had few expectations from the team, since this was our debut, and they surpassed all of them. In our first season playing the top league, we managed to come out in 5th place, certainly not a small feat.

It did not surprise me to see Minato as the top team either. This is a team that came out of League 2, in the first year, to rule. They have been doing well all from day one, getting first place in the second league's first year with 64 points. Even then, they were a strong team. In the second year they took the UNL title, just like they did this year. Minato has definitely been a well managed team with some of our big stars. They will likely become a difficult challenge in the future. Just as a side note, Minato was also in the "Champion's cup" this year, however they were only able to get 4 points in the group stage, where At. Madrid and Man. City moved on.

Anyway, enough of the Japanese club,here are the results from this season. As can be seen, we had a strong start, with a "no loss" spell for a while, an OK mid season and a shaky last stretch.

In terms of what players were successful, here are some stats. Special attention to our own Konan, who has been extremely effective so far for our side. His average ratings so far have been 7.22, 7.46 amd 7.51 this last season. A very strong carreer so far

In terms of awards, this is what we have:

Player of the Year:
Haris Seferovic (Minato)
Georgy Dzantiev (Minato)
Davide Chiumiento (Clube Paulista)

 Goalie of the Season
Esteban Andrada (84 Munchen, 6.9avg)
Benjamin Siegrist (Kobenhavn, 6.99avg)
Swen Konig (Minato, 7.05avg)

Defender of the Season
Gaetano Berardi (Clube Paulista, 7.61)
Giordano (Clube Paulista, 7.58)
Timm Klose (ASS Riga, 7.58)

Midfielder of the Season
Nicusor Stanciu (La Pichard, 7.24)
Fabian Frei (Minato, 7.49)
Sekou Sanogo (Celtic Tigers, 7.51)

Striker of the Season
Dzengis Cavusevic (Celtic Tigers, 7.51)
Axel Cedric Konan (Heidelberg, 7.51)
Marco Schneuwly (Anatolia SK, 7.34)

Playmaker of the Season
Georgy Dzantiev (Minato, 7.73)
Yohandry Orozco (Kobenhavn, 7.18)
Florian Berisha (Geneve FC, 7.22)

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Haris Seferovic (Minato, 8.08)
Georgy Dzantiev (Minato, 7.73)
Davide Chiumiento (Clube Paulista, 7.47)

UN's Goalscorer
Haris Seferovic (Minato, 34G/11A)
Dzengis Cavusevic (Celtic Tigers, 22g/2a)
Nico Abegglen (Clube Paulista, 21g/6a)

***

Of course, here are some more stats about my team.

The UN Cup this year was won by Minato as well, after beating Kobenhavn (1x0) in the final, along with Beograd (3x0), Kalevipoeg (3x1), London United (2x0), Terror Australis (2x0)

Finally, just for curiosity, here are the results from Division 2 (league)

 

MKD - Transfer history and season summary

A couple more pieces of stats from the 2012/2013 season:

Daniel Powell was voted the player of the year again for us, despite having a lot less goals this season.

Our best eleven this time around were:

GK - David Martin (6.94 in 42 appearances)
CB - Gary MacKenzie, Kevin Feely (6.82 in 18 apps)
FB - Calum Angus, Adam Chicksen
DMC - Michael Mutzel
MC - Jay Spearing, Antonio Tomas
FC - Rafa Jorda (7.04 in 38 apps), Dean Bowditch, Daniel Powell (7.02 in 47 games)
Others - I. McLoughlin, W. Brown, M. Gecov, G. N'Daw (6.98 in 15 games), D. Larsson (7.35 in 14 apps), D. Lewington, C. MacDonald

We didn't tecnically achieve much last season on paper, however I do feel that MKD did use the last year to build upon what was started during our promotion from League 1. This last season we finally got down our core team and strategy, and I really feel that we can actually get far this season comming up. I honestly think we can get promoted to the EPL this time around as long as we maintain our form and add a few new strong players to our team.

I never posted my transfers from the first two seasons but I think a lot of interesting moves did happen. Most remarkable was the fact that we were able to snatch the Right Full Back Kyle Naughton from Tottenham for 1.6M when they offered him out. We played Kyle for a good number of games and he ended up with a 6.9 average for us. He drew attention to himself and due to a contract clause he was snatched by the Wolves later last season for our largest transaction of all time, 3.3M for Kyle, which did help us maintain our finances in check a bit more.

MKD - 2011/2012 Other results

Just for anyone curious about how the other leagues panned out, here it it. EPL -> Brazilian league -> Championship -> Italian league -> Spanish League

MKD - Promotion to npower Championship

 Season 1 is done, and our MKD won not only a promotion but also the title. Here are some of the stats for this season. First the table and fixtures

We had quite an exciting team as well and here are some interesting stats from our players. Notably, Daniel Power was the league's top scorer with a wooping 37 goals, followed by Francois Zoko (32, Carlisle United) and Iain Hume (28, Preston). Preston actually had a really impressive season in my 2011-2012 season, they not only did well in L1 but they managed to get to the final of the FA Cup after beating Newcastle on the semi final and Wigam in the Sixth round. They lost the final to Manchester City 3x0, but boy they showed some heart there.

Other interesting stats... Daniel Power had the best rating of the L1 with 7.51, followed by Preston's Iain Hume (7.48) and MKD's Mauricio Risso (7.35). In terms of assists Stephen Quinn took 1st (19, Sheffield United), followed by Antonio Tomas (18, MKD) and Dale Stephens (15, Charlton). MOM winner was Francois Zoko (14, Carlisle), Iain Hume (11, Preston) and Daniel Powell / Shefki Kuqi / Nathan Eccleston (8, MKD / Oldham / Brentford)

Milton Keynes Dons - new FM12 carreer

All the talk about FM13 has made me very eager to play FM again. I thought I'd be able to wait for FM13, but turns out I couldn't, so I started a new game managing Milton Keynes Dons from the English Npower League 1. I decided to go with MKD for a couple of reasons:

1. They had a reasonably sized stadium
2. They were not as low league as my previous games
3. They were located in a more prosperous region than some of the other teams I was considering

I will have to come clean to start with... In this game I have cheated a little. By that I mean that I edited so that MKD has a sugar daddy and so that I wiped all the debt off of the team before I joined. Problem? This will just make my financial situation a bit better in this game, which may help me stay motivated and play more than a couple of seasons. Well let's see how it works out.

Also I'm not going to updated the blog on this game as much just to see if I can get further by just playing through. In the beginning I might just do a few reports every season to mention how things are going, however not until I have a pretty solid thing going on, I will post more details on this career.

FIFA11 - Tottenham Career mode

So this is the first time I play a career mode further than a couple of seasons on FIFA 11, I thought maybe people would be interested in seeing what kinds of trades you end up getting and how the teams start to look after a several seasons.

I chose to play Tottenham Hotspurs for this campaign, I had never play with them before and since they were doing fairly well this year in real life I decided this could be an interesting team to play with in the EPL. Right now I'm on the 2014/2015 season and I'll just give a quick overview of my career so far.

On my first season I did sell quite a few of my players. I found the spurs have A LOT of players in their squad and since I had no intentions of playing half of those reserves I just cashed them in. The biggest transfer fee I ended up receiving was only 1.9M for J. Livermore. On that year I was looking for a good striker. I found my team was fairly balanced overall, but the spurs lacked a bit of attacking power and flair for my taste. Defoe was quite a bit of fun to play with, but Crouch is a very situational type player. I wasn't a huge fan of Pavlyuchenko, and only played him sometimes. Van der Vaart is also a quality player but he was often my choice in substitution for my attacking minded midfielders so I couldn't really rely on him as a striker all the time.
Luckily Milan was selling Alexandre Pato, which happens to be one of my favorite strikers in the world. I was able to buy him for 39.4M, and he scored a fair number of goals right away. I think that season Defoe ended up being my top scorer though.
2010/2011 season (28/12/9 - gf65/ga23)
EPL - 6th
FA Cup - Final
League Cup - Round 4
1 MotM award