And I can say that with authority, because we are the champions. How are we the champions, when we’re not even halfway through the season? Keep reading.
Let’s do this McKinsey-style, to bring some discipline to the lives of all the English majors in the audience.
Serie A
Through 18 games, we’re undefeated outside the San Siro, but we’ve done badly enough inside the San Siro to be stuck in second place. On the first day of the season, we went down 0-3 to Inter in a 1910 Derby that had me throwing hair dryers in the locker room—even though statistically, it was a fairly even match:
Later in the fall, we lost 0-1 to Milan thanks to a late goal by Francismar, who is now 186 years old and kept alive mostly by spare car parts and surgical tape, and yet who still knows how to score when he is left completely unmarked on a corner kick by every player on the opposing team. Hair dryers were turned on, hot air was blasted, Conair products were thrown. Directly into the hot tub in a few cases.
Anyway, we’ve spent most of the season lodged uncomfortably behind Inter, like Robin on the Bat Pole, in second place. Here’s a chart of our league position through 18 games:
But I’m trying not to worry too much, as we’re on pace to score more goals, concede fewer goals, and earn more points than we did last season, and it’s a good sign if you’re improving in every meaningful category on a championship season, right? Outside the Milan city limits, we’ve been virtually untouchable (four goals conceded in 16 league matches), and we’ve at least gotten all our Milan trips out of the way at this point. So there’s reason to be optimistic. Though if we do lose the title to Inter as a result of dropping the first game of the season, I will…let’s just say the quantity and wattage of the hair dryers that are brought to bear on our end-of-season wrap-up meeting will put Naming Rights Park at grave risk of being the Inferno after all.
The Champions League
We were the top seed in Group A, where we were drawn with proud Ajax, respectable Bayer Leverkusen, and nonessential Beitar Jerusalem (who actually featured a former Pro Vercelli player, Islam Bar Moha, a semi-regular staple in our Serie C1 promotion year). We lost the first game to Ajax at the AmsterdAm ArEnA (sorry if I’m bungling the vowel capitalization, kind of), but won the rest of our group games by a combined score of 13-1 and finished first in the pod.
As a reward for this feat, we were handed Barcelona in the first knockout round. That would be the same Barcelona who’ve beaten us in every game we’ve ever played against them, the same Barcelona who effectively knocked us out of the Champions League three years ago by defeating us twice in our group, the same Barcelona who can make the heart of our stoutest player flutter just by expressing a vague interest in him. This should be fun. Though possibly only for Barcelona.
The Coppa Italia
Because I know you care about the Coppa Italia: We’ve played one Coppa Italia match so far, and our youth team, or “Diaper Dandies,” managed to procure a 1-0 win that puts us through to the quarterfinals, or “Elite Eight.” The win was against Siena, or “Siena.” It was awesome. Baby.
The Club World Cup
I was excited about this tournament. It’s not every soccer competition that gives your fans the right to say their team are “world champions” while everyone else in the world rolls their eyes and makes faces at each other. So even though it was a massive distraction and an exhausting trip halfway around the world, we were bursting with optimism on the flight to Mexico City. We were fighting for the right to make overblown claims about a tournament whose exact importance everyone is confused about, and we were going to enjoy it.
Our first match, in the semifinals, was against the New York Red Bulls, and we struck a blow for product-placement sanity by beating them 3-1. Dogan missed a penalty in the third minute, but Contini scored twice before halftime to give us a 2-0 lead. New York pulled one back in the 50th minute, but David put an end to their quaint fantasies with a header in the 78th. It came down to reality, and that was fine with the New York Red Bulls, because they’d let it slide. The New York Red Bulls didn’t care if it was Chinatown or on Riverside. They didn’t need any reasons; they’d left them all behind. They were in a New York state of mind.
In the final, we faced Mexican powerhouse Club América. This was a tough draw, largely because the Estadio Azteca, where the match was being played, seats 105,000 people and is the home stadium of Club América. Without getting involved in a lot of complex analysis, the main thing we had going for us in this situation was that Club América aren’t nearly as good at football as we are. And that turned out to be important. The Mexican fans made a lot of noise, but we had 67% of the possession and won 2-0 on goals by—once again—Contini and David.
We won this minor tournament, and we are now the champions of the world. Deal with the cognitive dissonance.
Players
We may only be in second place and facing grim prospects in the Champions League, but our new signings have actually been terrific. Emannuel Sylla, our new goalkeeper, has kept 16 clean sheets in 21 appearances and only conceded eight goals. Dmitry Kozlov, our new striker, has 10 goals and four assists in 18 starts. Alessio Capuano, our 20-year-old right back, is now rated as a wonderkid and has played well in his 20 matches for the club. Fábio has filled in in three positions and looked good in all of them. Rafael Avilán, our new midfielder, hasn’t quite lived up to my hopes for him, but he’s still averaging a 7+ and completing 80% of his passes. I don’t have much to complain about.
Among our more familiar players, Teixeira has been the biggest disappointment, not because he hasn’t played well but because he’s spent most of the season injured and hasn’t really gotten a chance to play. He has four goals in six appearances.
The most exciting players have been our youth projects Paolo Martini and Riccardo Caprioli. Martini, at 20, has continued his astonishing rise and is now probably one of the 25 best players in the world:
Here he is two and a half years ago, just so you can see the strides he’s made:
Caprioli isn’t quite on that level, but he has the highest average rating of any of our defenders and has been extremely consistent in his 18 appearances:
So: there’s a lot to like about our season so far (the world championship, our defending, our overall league record), but also a lot of battles left to win before we can say the season was a success (passing Inter in Serie A, getting through Barcelona in Europe). I’m not planning any major signings or sales during the January transfer window. We have what we need at the Naming Rights; now it’s up to us to put it to good use. Just hope our loss on the first day of the season doesn’t bring back the ghosts of 1910 right when we were on the verge of laying them to rest.
Read More: Football Manager 2009, Pixel Dramas, Pro Vercelli
by Brian Phillips · June 22, 2009
Hah! Red Bull choke even in football manager. Can you flip the “Fire Agoos” switch to “on”?
if only the stadium had a more insightful name, the Bianchi Cassache might’ve been more enthused to maintain their spotless record…hehe
Well, since our record in all meaningful matches at home this season is 12 wins, 1 draw, and 0 losses with 26 goals scored and 3 conceded, I think we can roll with the lack of insight.
That is a lot of hair dryers! Given the penchant for long hair on your team, what is this doing to morale? Martini and Caprioli seem happy, but did the new additions do nothing to hurt morale? Do you foresee things getting sticky if/when Teixiera comes back?
The hair dryers aren’t so much for the players as for my ability to act like Alex Ferguson when the chips are down. (I also keep a bottle of Amicable Grouse and an iPod full of bagpipe music on hand for different situations.) Actually, I think the only player who uses them is Mejdi Cherif:
But since he obviously uses all of them, all the time, maybe it evens out.
No real morale hit from the new signings, somewhat to my surprise. I don’t think Teixeira will be a problem because he doesn’t have the stamina to start every game anyway, so alternating with Kozlov will be what he’s already used to. They don’t get along, but as long as overall morale is high I don’t think it will matter as they never play together and thus won’t bring their conflicts onto the pitch.
I anticipate some highly comic “overly tense high five on the touchline when one player comes on for the other” moments, though. Here’s hoping.
Whoops—Mejdi Cherif just got a haircut:
I guess he must read these comments…
Wow, that is a beautiful head of hair. I have had two crushes on two different girls in two different centuries (this one and the last, to be clear) with pretty much that exact hair cut.
I’ve been wondering how I’d feel if you took second this year. Your quick rise to dominance means that many fans have to be thinking two or three-peat, and if you are merely one of the top clubs, that is somehow a let down. Do you try to tamper down expectations a little, or is the reward all the sweeter if you embrace the pressure?
Wait, which haircut? The “titan of velour” or the “pixie of lacrosse”?
On expectations: obviously when you’re playing for your third straight scudetto you’re going to have a hard time posing as an underdog, so I’ve been trying to project confidence while still making the season seem like an uphill battle. Whenever I’m asked who’ll win Serie A, I say “Pro Vercelli,” but whenever I’m asked about Inter or Milan, I always rate their chances fairly high. It’s a balancing act, because with a good portion of the team, the main challenge is to keep them from getting too cocky, but we also have a number of very young players whom I’m trying not to scare senseless.
I don’t think he needs a hair dryer for the new one, and it is a bit boyish for me. His female fans must be disappointed. I do like the hair cut realism, though. I can’t wait until avatars start shaving logos into their hair.
Brian, you make this game seem way too easy. With ten games to play in my second season with Crewe, I was in 1st place in the Coke League One table by a point. Cue injuries to not one, not two, but FIVE of my key starters, and after getting two points from my last seven matches, I scraped sixth place by goal differential. I managed to win the playoff, but I had to re-load my game to do it. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of another season in League One. I now feel guilty.
How do you make it seem so easy? Sigh.
Are you playing with the 9.3.0 patch? It’s slightly more realistic with respect to random waves of multiple long-term injuries.
It might also be worth checking your training intensity and turning it down a few notches if it’s at the high end of “medium” or above. Training probably isn’t producing huge benefits with the sort of well-meaning clods you’re probably stuck with at Crewe, but too much will definitely make them more at risk for injury.
Ultimately, the best way to protect having seasons destroyed by injuries is to buy depth, but the only way to get to the point at which you can do that is to be patient. It took me multiple years to get Pro Vercelli out of every lower league we went through on the way to Serie A. This season, had I not had a spare €20 million lying around to spend on a world-class striker, we would have been toast, as our previous world-class striker (Teixeria) has only played six games due to, you guessed it, injury.
Patience, depth, sensible training schedules, and being careful not to start players whose condition is under around 95% are your best strategies, but even still you’re going to wind up losing 3-0 to your fiercest rival on opening day, forcing you to spend all season wedged in second place behind them, then draw one of only three teams in the world that you actually fear in the first knockout round of the Champions League, leading to the very real possibility that the only title you will successfully defend is the UEFA Super Cup. This happens to everyone. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
EDIT: By which I mean: If I make it seem easy, believe me, I don’t experience it that way…
Thanks for the tips, Brian. I’m sure it wasn’t as easy as you make it seem here for the purposes of narrative, especially losing 3-0 to Inter in a game in which you were at least their equals.
I haven’t patched at all; the 9.3 patch wouldn’t install properly for me on my mac, and I gave up after trying to slog through the maelstrom of fail that is the SI support forums. Maybe I’ll try again, because my training is at the border between light and medium (during the season, anyway). The 95% bit is interesting; I’ll have to keep an eye on that. Anyway, on to the Coke Championship.