FM21: Jorge Mendes Challenge — Season One
Steinkelsson is back, this time in Portugal, the home of Nando’s, Sagres and Famalicão.
After spending an evening searching through various leagues on TransferMarkt I was fortunate to stumble across the team from Vila Nova. As with the majority of my saves, I often have one criteria, a young average squad age and Famalicão stood out with the youngest age in Liga NOS at 23.5 years.
As I delved deeper into the rabbit hole I found out that the club had significant potential, its owner Idan Ofer has a 32% stake in Atlético Madrid and the side from the district of Porto holds a privileged relationship with Jorge Mendes and the Gestifute brand.
These findings inspired me to create the Jorge Medes Challenge which I will adopt during my final save on Football Manager 2021.
Style of play
After conducting primary research by jumping into the DMs of a few Famalicão supporters to find out their preferred starting elevens, I opted to pull off the player heatmaps for the favoured eleven to attempt to formulate a starting point for establishing a the in-game tactic.
After scrolling through each player and looking at their attributes along with conducting the usual analysis of the squad comparison page it was clear to see that I would need to implement a possession-based game.
The initial tactic was built around the following four players which I felt would be key to the side's success;
Captain Gustavo Assunção would act as the fulcrum to the side, his ball-playing ability (Passing 15, Technique 15 and Vision 14) paired with his ice-cool decision making (Composure 16, Decisions 16) and trait of Dictates Tempo, make Assunção a formidable deep-lying playmaker.
Ruben Vinagre would provide an attacking outlet down the left flank, his stand-out attributes (Flair 16 and Dribbling 14) make him a nailed on complete wing-back.
Riccieli, the 21-year-old Brazilian has decent movement (Acceleration 13, Agility 12 and Pace 12) this paired with his defensive ability (Tackling 14, Marking 14 and Positioning 14) make the six-foot centre-back an appealing option to operate in the spine of the side.
Gil Dias, the Portuguese attacking midfielder (right) is comfortable on the ball (Passing 13, Technique 14 and Vision 13) and can dribble well (15), paired with his pace (14) and off the ball (14) make him a decent inverted winger.
Staff
Off the field, the coaching, recruitment and medical teams were all reinforced to ensure the side had all the relevant support mechanisms needed to reach its potential.
Jorge Andrade and David Villa were brought in as members of the coaching staff, both of which bringing international experience to the backroom staff which we were lacking in.
Given the parameters of the challenge, it was only necessary to bring in one member to the scouting team, this member had to have an excellent knowledge of Portugal and also a good ability to judge both potential and ability which would be necessary to recommend players on the books of Mendes at Gestifutethat.
The man for the job was José Laranjeira.
Laranjeira has excellent experience in a multitude of roles, he has historically worked at Braga as a Performance Analyst, before moving to Sporting as a scout, a position he held for six years.
Prior to taking the role with Famalicão, he was the Chief Scout with Rio Ave.
Squad Profile
What is a FM blog without a squad profile, as you know I am a massive fan of creating a squad profile to assess the forthcoming transfer window and contract negotiations.
In the above profile, I have grouped the players contracted to Famalicão (Navy Blue) and those who are at the club on loan (Gold).
This instantly had me worried for next season and had caused a mad scramble to extend the loan deals for players who have played over the average minutes.
Unfortunately, the following player's clubs have initially stated that they would like for their players to feature in their own squads in the following season;
Rúben Vinagre
Joaquín Pereyra
Pêpê
Leonardo Campana
Fernando Valenzuela
A massive concern is given the fact that all six individuals were pivotal in the team's success. Losing these players will 100 per cent strip the club of not only its depth but will see us lose a significant amount of quality.
Finances
The club is £5 million in the red, a worrying position fr both Steinkelsson and the supporters. Hopefully, the club having a front-end sugar daddy as an owner will see the Israeli businessman dip his hands into his endless amounts of wealth to help alleviate the financial problem within the club.
Staff
The club could well be in a state of turmoil as there are 16 members of current staff, including those in high profile positions whose contracts are on the verge of expiring. The key roles which we could lose are the Director of Football and Chief Scout, we are also in scope to lose out on many recruitment and medical staff.
Due to the ill-health of the finances, we do not have sufficient funds to offer them contracts which they desire.
Stadium
My initial thoughts in relation to one of the main contributors to the clubs poor financial health was the stadium.
The current stadium is the 15th smallest stadium in Liga NOS with a capacity of 5,305, this leads me to believe that as long as the team are based at the Municipal Stadium it will never be in the position to secure enough revenue to keep the side out of the red.
However, my initial thoughts were proven wrong when drilling down into the detailed team statistics in-game.
The sides average attendance is 3,504 which is 15th in the league, this however doesn’t paint the full picture and we needed to see how we were doing in relation to the average against capacity.
Looking at this we seventh in the rankings with the average attendance reaching 66% of capacity, this paired with the four stadium sellouts, which had us ranked second goes to show the stadium isn’t the problem.
The club has the sixth-highest player salary in Liga NOS, with all five of its top earners being players identified earlier as those on loan whose clubs aren’t willing to extend the deals.
Liga NOS
I am extremely happy with the outcome of the first season, we managed to finish the league in sixth place and match the media’s expectation.
Liga NOS most certainly is a very competitive league, there were only seven points that separated the top six!
The one big shock of the season for me was the fact that all of the big three (Porto, Benfica, Sporting) all underperformed, this provided an opportunity to the likes of Champions Vitória Sport Clube, Portimonense and ourselves to exploit, all three needing no second invitation.
Nine draws and seven losses across the season for Famalicão, the above run coming live on stream.
We also had another patch of six games without victory, I am going to put this down to the young age of the squad and the lack of experience on the field to see a game out.
Hopefully, this trend will disappear as the players develop,
Cup winners
The season was topped off with a piece of silverware, winning the Taça de Portugal by sweeping aside Portimonense in the final.
The outcome secured UEL football for the club, moving us out of the Conference League and into Europe's secondary competition.
FM Tactic
The tactic has evolved over the season and after reading ‘The Beauty of focus Play: Creating Overloads’ on Dictate the Game I made a few minor tweaks in the attempt to add an extra bit of attacking guile to the tactic.
Other changes across the season were to Regroup in transition, the view to this being that I wanted our side to always be defensively compact, the higher defensive line and the standard line of engagement creating a solid mid-block which once formed would make us a hard team to breakdown. The pressing intensity was set to more urgent, we would actively put pressure on the opponent, but this would only happen once the side was in shape, more of a pressing trigger methodology.
I also removed the focus on playing a shorter passing game, allowing the players to make their own choices in relation to their passing game, this was due to the fact the squad possess good mental attributes such as decision making and composure, the key central midfielders also have traits such as dictates the tempo and comes deep to get the ball.
Player of the Season
Season Two Objectives
The main objectives which were set out by the board were to conduct extensive work to repair the club's financial damage, as you can see by the above five-year plan this ould need to be achieved via signing players to sell on for a profit.
The board would also like for its reputation to continue to grow, the above method of developing players to then sell on to bigger clubs would go a long way in improving the club's reputation.
In terms of the league I have set the bar to finish in sixth place again, this certainly will be a big ask giving the fact that we will be losing a few of the key players from season one, however, I will be scanning Jorge Mendes’ player portfolio with a fine toothcomb to see if there are any younger players which I could bring in for a small fee or on loan.
The fact we have secured UEFA Europa League football for the second season is a massive bonus in terms of finances, however, in all honesty, it is a competition which I could most definitely do without, the club really do not have the depth in the side to play an additional six fixtures and I really hope that our first European experience doesn’t have a detrimental impact on the club, a frequent occurrence for smaller teams, ask any Portsmouth fan.
If you are interested in delving a little deeper into the save, you can catch me on twitch.tv/magnus_steinkelsson every Thursday night from 20:00 (GMT).
I hope you have enjoyed this post and hope to see you over in the stream, just remember to drop a message into the chat!
