Note: The following is Part Two of an excerpt from the bestselling Pro: How a Small-Town Team Defied the Odds and Conquered the World of Soccer, by an unnamed reporter from worldsoccer.com, which was recently published by the Jeeves imprint of Snirp WorldSports. Part One can be read here.
CHAPTER XVIII
Day of Reckoning
Luckily for me, and possibly for Michael Dogan fans, I didn’t have to find out. I felt a hand behind me push me to one side, and Brian Phillips stamped into the room. He seemed to take no notice of Michael Dogan’s suffering, a fact that instantly changed the dynamic. “Close that window,” he snapped. “It’s February. I appreciate the Fortress of Solitude vibe, but Jesus.” Dogan meekly complied, and the manager continued. “It was bad tonight, Mike,” he said. “This stops now. I want you to get the guys together. Get them on the same page, and let two things be understood. We are not going to lose another game this season. And we are going to win the scudetto.”
“Yes. Yes, I will, boss,” Dogan said. Phillips stormed back the way he came, and I had a sense that I often felt in his presence. A sense that none of this was quite real to him, that he’d accomplished Pro Vercelli’s miraculous turnaround by treating the whole thing as a kind of crazy game. Thinking about the torment in Michael Dogan’s eyes, or about so many other moments of suffering I’d seen covering Pro Vercelli over the years—Miguel José’s face crumpling when he learned he was being sold; Carlo Saba’s slow-burning helplessness as he watched the team he’d helped to build gradually pass him by—I wondered for a moment if the whole epic odyssey had been worth it. It had brought joy to thousands of fans. But at what cost?
Phillips was right about one thing. After Michael Dogan’s closed-door team meeting in Vercelli on February 8, Pro Vercelli didn’t lose another game in Serie A. In fact, they went on one of the greatest streaks in club history, winning fourteen of their final fifteen league games (the exception was a 2-2 draw against Roma at the Naming Rights) by a combined score of 37-7. The highlight was a six-week stretch in March and April during which they went eight consecutive games without conceding, despite juggling a series of injuries to key defenders. By the middle of the spring, Roma was fading, Inter was suffering through a full-fledged collapse, and Pro Vercelli was in third, nipping at the heels of Juventus.
The problem was A.C. Milan. Pro Vercelli improved as the season progressed, finally laying to rest the Jekyll-and-Hyde act that had dogged them through most of the winter. But Milan also seemed to get better from week to week, and they’d never been inconsistent to begin with. Vito Scialpi’s boys were carving up Serie A, posting a string of eye-grabbing results. 4-0. 5-0. 6-2 against Inter in the Derby della Madonnina. Week after week, Pro Vercelli would turn in an outstanding performance, only to find that Milan had done them one better. Vito Scialpi was getting his revenge. He was proving he deserved that €450,000-a-week salary after all.
And in the end, the second of Brian Phillips’s two predictions didn’t come true. Pro Vercelli didn’t win the scudetto. They didn’t even come close. By the time they broke into second place four weeks from the end of the season—their highest ranking all year—Milan were so firmly established at the head of the pack that it would have taken a match-fixing scandal to pry them loose. In the end, Pro Vercelli finished with 91 points. That was six less than their total from the season before, but it was still an outstanding number, more than they’d earned during two of their three championship years, good enough to win the title in any of the last 10 seasons. Milan had won a scudetto with 74 points back in 2014; 91 was nothing to sneeze at. But it was still 10 points behind Milan, who became the first team in recent memory to break 100 points. “They lapped it,” as Paolo Martini tweeted.
How total was A.C. Milan’s dominance that season? Well, start with the most basic measurement, goals scored and goals allowed. For all their inner turmoil, Pro Vercelli had actually improved on their goal differential from 2019-20. They scored eight more goals (78 over 70) and conceded four more (23 over 19), giving them a +55 difference rather than a +51. That +51 had been the best in Serie A last season. The +55 was better than any other team but one this season. This year, however, Milan had improved on their last-year’s total by a shocking twenty-six goals, netting an astonishing +76. Their 96 goals scored was almost 20 more than anyone else in the league. And they had the best defense as well, allowing three fewer goals than Pro Vercelli. It was as if Pro Vercelli had added a floor to their house, only to find that Milan had bought midtown Manhattan. There was just no stopping them.
***
On April 21, Pro Vercelli crashed out of the Coppa Italia semifinals in extra time thanks to a by now almost predictable defensive lapse from the most expensive player in their history. They were out of two competitions. That left the Champions League.
Phillips and his staff began devoting their efforts to masterminding a third successive European Cup win, something no team had accomplished since Bayern in the mid-1970s. It wouldn’t make up for the sting of losing the league to Milan, and it wouldn’t make this season equal the last. But winning a third straight Champions League title would be a famous accomplishment in its own right. And it would give the fans a reason to cheer.
“You wake up one morning,” Alexander Zech told me, “and you realize, oh, dear, we have lost Serie A. That is not what we wanted to do—not at all. But what do we do then? Do we descend into the void? Do we act as though we are Mozart’s Requiem in Fußballschuhe? Or do we brush the dust off of our chests and say, yes, we have faltered, but we have still a chance to win an amazing thing? It is your life. It is up to you what you make of it.”
Having won Group A on the last day of the group phase, Pro Vercelli was drawn against Chelsea—Rafael Avilán’s old team—in the first knockout round. A tough draw, people said in Vercelli. As tough as the draw in the group stage had been easy. Avilán was having none of it. “I know we’ll take them,” he told his teammates at a birthday party for Gabriele Contini. “They have everything here” (he tapped his foot) “but nothing here” (he tapped his heart). Pro Vercelli took a 2-0 lead at Stamford Bridge behind a thunderbolt from the Ferj and a set-piece header from Caprioli. Only a cheap foul in the box by Hauk, which Roberto Font dramatized into an 89th-minute penalty, put Chelsea on the board. In the return leg, Pro Vercelli had it even easier, winning 2-0 behind a delicate tap-in from Mogi and another blast of power from the Ferj. 4-1 Pro Vercelli.
The quarterfinal round pitted Pro Vercelli against Sevilla, who had improbably managed to knock A.C. Milan out of the tournament. In front of 45,000 screaming fans at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, Sevilla’s legendary stronghold, Pro Vercelli seized a commanding lead on an Ibrahimovic header and a long-range Caprioli putback. This time, there were no last-minute penalties. The Italian side closed out their Spanish counterparts a week later at the Naming Rights, Mark Linnane’s 44th minute chip-shot giving the home team a 3-0 aggregate win.
In the semifinals, Arsenal was drawn against Barcelona and Pro Vercelli was matched against Roma. Phillips was reportedly nervous about the all-Italian encounter. It was a rematch of the Champions League final in Portugal two years before, which Pro Vercelli had won. But the small-town team hadn’t beaten their big-city rivals all season, and, as the players recalled, it was the 4-0 thrashing Roma had handed them in the Supercoppa Italiana that had been the first harbinger of the season’s decline. Then there was the matter of the clubs’ contentious histories. “Too much blood in the water under the bridge,” Phillips sighed to Riccardo Nicastro.
Senad Ibrahimovic had a different attitude. “I don’t get scared,” he told the press in the build-up to the game. “I score headers.” But the mood in the locker room was tense, and as the team filed out beneath the white-hot lights for the first leg at the Naming Rights, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. The crowd was pulsating, roaring. The ultras in the Curva di Kyle unveiled an enormous tifo depicting the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 AD. The Visigoth king, Alaric I, had the face of Michael Dogan. Some of the Roma players were visibly unamused.
Kozlov scored in the 32nd minute, whipping the ball like a slingstone from well outside the area. In the 89th minute, Roma right back Andrea di Stefano clattered Mark Linnane in the area. Michael Dogan (or was it Alaric I?) converted the penalty. Pro Vercelli took a 2-0 lead to the Stadio Olimpico.
Security in Rome was tight. There were fears of ultra reprisals, and Pro Vercelli’s planned route from the hotel to the stadium was kept top-secret to prevent the more violent groups from ambushing the team bus. Scuffles, inevitably, broke out outside the stadium, but fortunately there were no major incidents. Inside the stadium, the teams played a testing, cautious first half. Pro Vercelli was content to keep things slow and turgid, while Roma couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether to attack or defend. Finally, in the 54th minute, Kozlov padded the Vercelli lead by heading in a 50-yard free kick from Dogan. Roma rallied furiously, but two late goals from Ronaldo and Pavoni weren’t enough to close the gap. Pro Vercelli left with a 3-2 aggregate win…and a spot in the Champions League final.
Their opponent: Arsenal, who’d gotten the attention of all Europe by walloping Barcelona with a 3-0 aggregate win. 32-year-old Arsenal legend Oliver Chamberlain was in the midst of one of the greatest seasons in his career. He’d scored 22 goals in 37 matches and led an Arsenal attack that had only been outscored twice all year. If Pro Vercelli was going to redeem itself by winning the European Cup, containing Oliver Chamberlain would be Job One.
On May 20, two days before the match, the players boarded a charter flight for Rotterdam. At 20,000 feet, an argument broke out between Riccardo Caprioli and the Ferj, players who’d been at each other’s throats all season. Caprioli had been winning in a poker game against three other players at the back of the plane. Then he got up to take a bathroom break, and the Ferj decided to haze the young defender by slipping into his seat and taking over his stack of chips. In the first hand, he went all-in with nothing and lost the whole pile. The other players were doubled over laughing, but when Caprioli came back, the serious (and seriously competitive) young Italian was incensed. Dogan kept the two stars apart, but the scene was hardly a good advertisement for Pro Vercelli’s togetherness in the run-up to their most important game of the season. “It’s like, we’re here, but at the same time, we have no idea what’s going on,” Paolo Martini told me.
The night of the final, 51,176 people braved a heavy downpour to crowd into Rotterdam’s legendary Kuip. Thanks to some dedicated groundskeeping efforts from UEFA, the pitch was in good condition, but the thudding rain seemed to change the tone of the event, replacing sparkling optimism with a darker, more ominous drama. Before the match, Phillips told Caprioli to focus on nothing but marking Chamberlain. “You want to be a star?” he asked. Caprioli nodded. “Then go out there, find Oliver Chamberlain, and take it from him,” Phillips said. “He has what you want. Take his stardom away from him.” Caprioli nodded again. It was a far cry from two seasons ago, when Phillips had told his team to “win for the spirit of Vercelli.”
For twenty-seven minutes, the teams battled it out in the rain, with neither side able to take charge. Then Arsenal’s Dennis Müller found central defender Stian Hansen on a long, diagonal free kick—exactly the sort of play Dogan and Ibrahimovic had connected on for countless goals over the years—and Hansen headed it into the net. 1-0 to the Arsenal. And the rain kept coming down.
Cupping his hands to his mouth, Phillips yelled from the sideline for the team to get forward more aggressively. They were playing too cautiously, he later explained, letting the weather take them out of their game. Eight minutes later, right back Alessio Capuano went on the attack. Rafael Avilán slipped free in the center of the area, Capuano picked him out with a needle-threading pass, and Avilán volleyed it in for the equalizer. 1-1 at the half.
“The season comes down to the next 45 minutes,” Phillips said in the locker room. “It’s a question of how you want to be remembered. Maybe you’re thinking you can’t beat them. You can. On the other hand, maybe you’re thinking, we’ve been here before, we know it’s going to work out. But you haven’t been here before. You haven’t been in this game before. You have to decide to win this game, and you have to decide right now. You can do it, but you have to decide.”
Flash forward to the 59th minute. You’re Marko Ferjancic, a defender playing as an attacking mid. Rain is pounding the pitch. You don’t feel it. The crowd is a giant roar. You’ve tuned it out. At the center of midfield, you see Rafael Avilán spray the ball ahead to Mark Linnane on the left. You’re cheating forward, you’re following his run—and then he beats his man, he breaks into a sprint down the left, and you’re sprinting behind him in the center, waiting to smash the defense like a set of bowling pins. He pivots on the byline, water flying where his boot turns in the grass. He sends in the cross. The ball’s sailing through the air. You burst through into the center of the area, go airborne, feel the smack of the leather against your forehead. The keeper’s diving, but it’s too late. You can already see it’s too late. The netting twitches, the ball tumbles to the ground. It’s 2-1 Pro Vercelli, and all you see are flashbulbs before nine of your teammates throw themselves on your back.
In the 78th minute, Linnane—who’s only playing because David is injured—breaks free in the area, completely unmarked. Contini sends him a cross so perfect it’s as though there’s a rope line between them. Stop, control, shoot. 3-1 Pro Vercelli.
3-1 Pro Vercelli. Pro Vercelli win their third straight European Cup. The players are drenched, laughing, doing Superman slides on the grass. Oliver Chamberlain, who barely figured in the game, insists on trading shirts with Caprioli: “You were wearing it all night anyway,” he tells him. Caprioli and the Ferj share a hug at the center circle. Michael Dogan climbs to the top of the podium to hoist the trophy skyward, and this time, even though he’s up so high, I’m not afraid at all.
“You did it,” Brian Phillips says in the locker room after the match. “I’m proud of you. You don’t need me to tell you that we’ve had a tough season. But you know who you are. You’re Pro Vercelli, and you’re the champions of Europe. No criticism matters tonight. You’re the champions of Europe, and I want you to celebrate.”
The team is ecstatic. They’ve redeemed their season, and they’ve made sure that they won’t have to hear about Milan’s scudetto this summer without also hearing about their own European Cup. The celebration lasts all night, in Rotterdam and in Vercelli.
And I woke up the next morning thinking that was the storyline. A stumble, a return to glory. But when I stopped Phillips on the tarmac while the team was preparing to board the flight back to their victory parade in Vercelli, he didn’t seem nearly so sanguine.
“We have to get more goals,” he told me. “The 4-3-3 isn’t working the way it should. The players aren’t clicking. Too many things are wrong. We have to make changes next year.”
“Well, sure,” I said, “you’ll bring in a couple of new players…”
“No.” His voice was firm. “Everything changes next year. I’m blowing this whole thing up. Get ready.”
Read More: Football Manager 2009, Pixel Dramas, Pro Vercelli
by Brian Phillips · August 10, 2009
I don’t want to live in a world where Malcolm Gladwell is editor of SLAM.
While I’m pleased that Vercelli triumphed once again in the Champions League, I can’t help but feel shortchanged by AC Milan’s unceremonious defeat at the hands of Sevilla, which robbed us of what surely would have been the most intriguing match of the year. If Scialpi’s Milan truly wish to surpass Phillip’s Vercelli, they must now focus their efforts to success on the European stage.
Canadian inflation got a little out of hand, eh?
That or American demand plummeted…
Where could I buy “They called him Ferj”, it should be an highly addictive reading…
I fear expectations run too high for PM Gretzky to get the Loonie righted
This and the last one are the best things I have ever read on this site, ever.
This and the last one are the best things I have ever read on this site, ever
This. Also, Juventus can’t even buy a CL spot. Excellent!
Francismar = legend. I haven’t even read the post yet, but I just had to say that.
Every time I try to picture Francismar he is dressed like a conquistador.
Treasure the sight of this man. His physical stats are finally going and he won’t be long for the game:
13 seasons of his league stats (keep in mind that these exclude the Champions League, where as recently as two years ago he scored 13 goals in 12 games):
Finished reading this, and I want to echo Brian. Best installment of the Pro Vercelli chronicles, and one of the best things I’ve read on here. I had a big grin on my face the whole time I was reading this one, especially the account of the speech to Caprioli.
Fantastic stuff, although I agree that a CL final victory over Milan would have been twice as sweet.
Brian-
Thank you so much for this, it was truly spectacular… and it was the chance that a post like these two would show up that drew me back to the computer while I was on holiday in Sudan 🙂
And btw, Francismar is beyond a legend… I’d kill to have him, and his thinning-Steve McManaman-esque hair on my team anyday
David, Elliott — Well, we beat them in the semis last year, so at least they know what it’s like to fall to us in the Champions League. Though it would have been nice to repeat the feat this year, I agree.
Francismar’s “last 5 games” rating is beyond fitting.
Almost scary, when you consider that he’s a fictionalized version of Kaka…
I feel like you stole most of that Francismar quote from the back cover of a David Foster Wallace novel.
Brian, I swear, if you make this into a real book, I would pay the Canadian price for it. You’re the J.R.R. Tolkien of FM09
Aside from the website of the publisher (mmmaybe a bit over the top), this one and the last one are indeed amongst the best ever RoP writings (agree with Richard completely). (Although I’ll always be partial to the Pirlo Tuesday Portrait, I think). It is good to know that not every competition has been a walk in the park for you, Brian, given my struggles with Crewe, MK Dons, and now Leeds. That being said, yes and double goddam yes to you winning the CL again, against my beloved Arsenal, no less, (who I see STILL cannot attain the European glory). The last line made me mumble a “oh ho ho HO moo hoo haha” in my office today.
I actually tried to buy woeis.me a couple of days ago. Someone had already registered it.
The Ferj header paragraph is just outstanding, I could see it. Well done.
best. ever. congrats on another CL victory. I look forward to next year.
Beautifully written as always, but I have to say that I cannot wait for you to turn your pen (or keyboard) back to the real game.
Utterly fantastic. Love the AA Gill quote especially.
When youre finished with FM09, there needs to be a second edition of this book. I want it. Name the price.
To: Brian.Phillips@provercelli.it
From: Amare.Stoudemire@Liverpool.Co.UK
Subject: LOVE THE BOOK!
First: Yes, Bob Bradley is Manchester United’s manager now. They haven’t finished higher than 7th in the league since 2015.
I can’t tell you how–cathartic is the only word that fits–this book was to read.
Allow me to tell you why: I read this book at the beginning of the 2019-2020 season.
The year before (2018-2019), I decided it was time to clear payroll to make way for a youth movement, and I sold a number of players in the age range of 29-31 that I deemed surplus to requirements before their value began to decline. Arsenal, our main rivals, outbid everyone else by so much that I could not justify not selling them to them. All of them. The star of the Spanish National Team, a midfielder that compares with Michael Essien, a towering right back, and an aging, but incredibly intelligent defender. Total Haul was almost 100 million pounds. I spent 40m of it for someone that I thought had Leo Messi potential, a 22 year old left winger named Marco Toussaint from Real Madrid.
Judgement on the moves came quickly, as Massimo Bassi, the heir to Steven Gerrard in the midfield, picked up a 3 month injury in preseason. In the Community Shield (against Arsenal, no Less), Matteo Guerra, a striker who averaged nearly a goal a game last season, picked up a knock that would keep him out for the first three weeks of the season. Marco Toussaint was a total flop, failing to adjust to the bigger, faster, EPL.
In those first three weeks, we drew five out of our first seven league games. I was concerned. I’d had slow starts before, but that wasn’t what concerned me. What concerned me was the fact that Arsenal had won all seven. The season progressed, and things were rocky. We were in seventh going into the New Year.
I asked Mamadou Sakho, our captain and longest tenured player (he’d been with the club since he was 17, and was 29 at the time http://sports.tom.com/uimg/2009/3/3/jichao/1236045661156_26592.jpg ), to call a team meeting to address our difficulties. He reported back to me that some of the issues that had been plaguing the locker room were solved, but was concerned that he was more of a “lead by example” guy than a “lead by a speech” guy.
It showed on the field, as nothing improved. The season before, we’d won the Premiership with many of the same players, and at this point, I was simply concerned with continued ECC qualification and going as far as I could in Europe and in the FA cup. I knew that the January transfer window offered me a chance to pinpoint the problem, and I did.
Javier Mascherano, now 35, just wasn’t cutting it in the midfield and in our 4-1-2-2-1 high-pressure counter attack, his position is the fulcrum between defense and attack, and sub-par performance is just not possible. I sold Toussaint BACK to Real Madrid for 55m pounds, and then spent 30 of it on Makan Diop, a 26 year old defensive midfield from Sevilla.
Finally, the team began to gel, and as the Season progressed, we began to climb in the standings. Arsenal kept their impossible pace up, but we were soon fifth, then fourth, then fighting with Newcastle and Manchester City for second. We finished the league in second, were knocked out of the ECC by Arsenal (who else), but managed to snag the FA Cup for our troubles. The Reds had a reason to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” but for the first time, I got the sense from above that my job security was not a given.
That’s when I read Pro. That July, and I can’t tell you how incredible it was to hear a similar story told so well. I made similar moves during the transfer window, 30 Million L for a 17 year old striker was my only purchase. He’s not as athletic as he could be, but he’s got a nose for the goal that I’ve not seen in a long time, and I needed a backup striker to bring along in the coming years as Guerra ages. (Morrone, the backup, is 17, and already has 16 heading, 19 finishing and 17 positioning, I couldn’t resist). I also bought an 18 year old, Micah Richards level athletic but unskilled defender who I think I can train over time to become versatile at DMC as well.
The fans were angry at the signings. They wanted an overhaul of the team, instant gratification, and a quick fix, but I was confident my young players would progress. I was right. And this is what I want to caution you about–don’t blow up your squad for the sake of it–address weaknesses and improve where you need to, and adjust your tactics accordingly. I recommend the 4-1-2-2-1, it has worked wonders for me.
I was right to hold firm. We started off the season with an 18 match unbeaten streak, even with injuries plaguing us, and losing our African contingent (1 starting defender, 1 first team winger, the aforementioned Diop) for a month and a half due to the African Cup of Nations in January/Feb. Bassi, Guerra, and Mario Balotelli all picked up lengthy knocks–Balotelli to the tune of four months, but John Fleck, the left winger that I displaced for Marco Toussaint, was having his best season at Liverpool, finishing with 18 gls and 18 assists. To make a long story short, our team played to potential and we steamrolled all competitions, finishing with the Treble.
There was one Champions League tie, however, that I would like to share with you, as it will warm your heart. It was the semifinal, and it began in AC Milan, against your old friend Vito. In the first leg, at the San Siro, The Rossonieri went up 1-0 in the third minute, only to have Ben George, a young midfielder who is only beginning to tap into his potential, pull back an away goal in the 87th minute. Felipe Ismar, the Brazilian heir to Gattuso in every way, was under John Fleck’s skin the entire game, and it was his worst of the season, picking up a yellow in the process.
In the return leg at New Anfield, Ismar continued his hounding of Fleck, and in the THIRD minute, the Scotsman’s temper got the best of him and threw an elbow that broke Ismar’s jaw, drawing a straight red. My strategy before that had been to get some insurance and grind out a 1-0 or 2-1 win. I had to hope for the 0-0 draw and advance on away goals. I brought an extra defender on and went with a 5-1-1-2 with no striker. In the tenth minute, Milan scored off of a corner, and I have no choice to go for broke.
I brought in Simon Vukcevic, MF/LW, formerly a key player but now, at 35, a super-sub who is the definition of a good soldier and in embracing the role has still finished with between 9 and 14 goals in the past three seasons. I switch to a 4 – 1 (Mascherano) – 1 (Makan Diop) – 2 (Vukcevic on the left, Bassi on the right) – 1 Guerra up top, and cross my fingers that the crowd could be our 11th man.
It turns out they were our 11th, 12th, and 13th. In the 21st minute, Vukcevic connected with Guerra on a cross to level it, and I jump up and down in the press box before making my way to the sidelines. In the 30th minute, Vukcevic nails a curling freekick to the top corner to put us up, and I slide down to the Kop End in my Zegna suit like I am an American Mourinho. When I get up, Vukcevic is there and we chest bump. That was the photo that led the next morning’s guardian, but it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
We go into halftime, up 2-1. I tell my players that I am ecstatic with the first half. I tell Vukcevic that, in one night, he earned himself a place in Anfield legend. I tell Mascherano and Diop that they are showing Ismar, the bloodied heir apparent to Gattuso, that they are each twice the Milanese legend. As we walk back into the tunnel, I caution them to not let their performance drop.
In the second half, my Reds are looser than I’ve seen them all season, but the crowd is electric. The nervous optimism is oppressive. Vukcevic nets himself two more goals to complete his hat-trick and Guerra, not to be outdone, completes his brace. On aggregate, AC Milan falls to Liverpool 6-2, 5-1 in the second leg.
It’s the worst defeat in the history of their European competition. In the Champions league final, I beat, who else, Arsenal, 2-0, but it felt like an afterthought. We knew that we were unstoppable, and so did they.
So know, in an Alternate Universe, good old Vito got his harder than anyone could have ever hoped. And know that you’re always welcome in Liverpool. My live-in brazilian model ladyfriend is currently mastering the Liverpudlian art of boiling in all its myriad applications, specifically meats. She and Siobhan could exchange recipes while we discuss tactics. Or we could eat out. We eat out a lot.
Gordon Ramsay’s son Jack has opened his first restaurant here, something experimental called TROUGH, the philosophy behind it being “eat like the animals you are eating.” It’s very trendy, but we haven’t tried it yet, maybe we could all give it a go together.
Best as Always,
A.S.
As I wrote that, it occurred that the one thing FM09 is really missing is a multiplayer option. There is nothing I would like more.
Brian – These two posts have been the best Pro Vercelli to date, and I’m glad to see it wasn’t lost when your computer had problems.
Amare – Nice story, but FM09 does have multiplayer in the form of a network save, its how me and my friends play each other.
The network save thing is a great idea, I just can’t imagine how it would work when people don’t play at the same pace. Sometimes I’ll play regularly for a few weeks and then take a couple of weeks off, for instance. I guess FM Live is another good alternative to multiplayer, but for some reason it’s never really appealed to me.
What I’m looking for is just a one-off match, where I export my current squad from wherever in my game I am and play them against someone else’s squad from theirs.
That would be…that would be deeply cool.
It really would be. I mean… after eleven seasons or whatever I’m in, I really want to test myself against the best Managers in PFM 09, and no, that doesn’t mean Vito Scialpi or Bob Bradley (Man U edition).
Brian, it would probably be difficult for people all over the world with jobs, but as me and my friends are all still students and its summer we can get a decent amount of gaming time together – But occasionally people aren’t available and they end up having their assistant do all their things.
Amare, that would be awesome lets hope they implement that in next seasons football manager.
Speaking of fm10.. Im guessing you will stop pro vercelli when its out? Will be a shame if you do!