FM and Me
I have a love-hate relationship with FM. It can be beyond awesome, and it can also be insanely cruel to people like me who don't know a ton about that football thing. The depth and complexity also presents a fairly massive challenge. Actually successfully completing a FM career would be akin to the 'holy grail' of sports sim achievements for me, but well, I've never remotely come close. Prior to this game I'm on right now, I never completed two years in one.
My only half-decent attempt was also published on this forum, with FM11, here:
FM 11 -- From Humble Origins ... - Front Office Football Central Some good fun was had there but I quit halfway through the second season(for no good reason, it was more frustrating than I think it should have been, I was actually getting better).
So for that reason, when I started this game I didn't post about it right away because I didn't want to be 'that guy' who joins the throng of FM dynasties that come around every World Cup, posts six times and abandons it. Great way to tick off readers in my opinion.
I'm starting this now because, well, it's time. I'm almost four calendar years in, and have every intention of seeing it through, whatever that ends up meaning. I hope this proves enjoyable to read, I'm having a lot of fun with it.
The Setup
My goal was and is to make as realistic a career as possible. My personal experience with soccer is that I was a pretty decent defender and goalkeeper in youth league and then gave it up for basketball. That's it. So the bottom rung on the FM setup, 'Sunday League Footballer', is hideously overqualified.
Editor time. After some testing I ran into some limitations, because you can't start lower than being a head coach somewhere, and there's a minimum level below which clubs won't even talk to you. Experimentation showed that level to be a little over half of what you start at with the 'Sunday League Footballer' setting, so that's where I began.
I recreated myself as accurately as possible in the profile, and loaded leagues from all over the world. I don't start with the intention of staying with the same club, how long/short a time I stay in one place will depend on what events happens in the game. This way I have potentially lots of choices, and could end up anywhere.