Well after a long hiatus I thought I should at least finish my time at FC Jerusalem with an official blog update. If you follow in Twitter you will remember I called it a day after 21 seasons. Probably the longest I have ever managed a single club in FM. Unless you count holidaying for many many season back on the early noughties to see what would happen. Its that long ago I cant remember, but I’m sure it was eventful.
We have just come off a Europa League victory. Our maiden continental trophy. But it is the big one we want; Ol’ Big Ears. But we will start with a recap of our domestic achievements. As ever we continued to dominate the league. We haven’t completed another ‘Invincible’ season, but have easily maintained the title each season. With an average points advantage of about 20 a season. We had one stand out season in S19, where we matched the points tally of the unbeaten season, with 100. We did suffer a couple of loses and a draw. That elusive 100% is still missing. As mentioned before, it does take a lot to achieve this. We continued to win the domestic cup in each season. And in S19 we managed to claim all of the domestic cups to complete the clean sweep I was after. A real achievement. We won 22 matches in a row in S20, which is a league record. We have been the team to beat in Israel, and not many teams get the better of us. A few loses in the league a season, but in the main we are that much better, culminating in multiple league titles. It just becomes annoying when we suffer the odd loss in the cup, although this doesn’t happen all that often either.
Our finances are head and shoulders above all other teams in Israel. At one point our bank balance was nearly £239million. We finished up at £144m. There was a bit of a spending spree will come onto shortly. Wages are higher than everyone. My biggest bug bear is the stadium. We started S18 still renting the local athletics stadium, a capacity of 10,000. We pretty much sell out every game, it would be nice to have our own, bigger stadium. Well S19 all our prayers were answered. A brand new stadium was announced, albeit to a capacity of just 16,000. I’m sure we could have made a bigger one. We are one of the best teams in Europe, surely we can fill something bigger. Expected opening date is 2041, which means it will be open for start of S22. My plan was to do 20 seasons to gain the Steam achievement of “Club Legend” for managing one club for 20 seasons. But I want to know what the new stadium will be called. So I played season 20, and then did some holidaying to stadium open day. Anyway news filtered through of the naming rights for the new stadium and “Rio Santos Park” it is!
After 20 odd seasons at FC Jerusalem, and with all the glory I have brought, I would have been slightly miffed if it was anything else!
One thing I did fail to mention in the previous post was the change in tactics towards the end of S17. As I was dominating I had a thought to go a bit old school and revive a formation and tactic from the early days, going back to Championship Manager. For those that remember, there was a formation that seemed to dominate back in the day. So I implemented this into FC Jerusalem, and it seemed to work. A good old fashioned 4-2-1-3.
In terms of transfers in S18 and S19 we signed a few Wonderkids, and Israeli youth players. We managed to get Roey Solomon back from Man Utd on loan, and club legend Flavio Henrique returned once more on loan. As our reputation increased we managed to hold onto most of our better players. Just youngsters and fringe players out on loan.
S20 was the year I decided to splash the cash. The transfer budget had slowly been increasing over the seasons but I wasn’t really using much of it. The squad was good enough it didn’t really need improving. But I got to the point, where since this is probably going to be the last season lets just go crazy and sign whoever I could. As we are still restricted with the foreign transfers I ended up just spending most of it on Israeli internationals. We obviously spent over the odds to bring them back but hey ho!
The following year S21, we recouped a big chunk of the outlay, selling £111m worth of talent. My overall transfer net spend after 21 season turns out to be £8million in profit! When you think that over half of the total spend was in one season! And that the highest transfer in-game was £206m for Mbappe I didn’t really spend that much. What I did notice was that I didn’t sign a single real life player for the entire save. We had Ross Barkley on trial earlier, and I did try to sign Haaland at one point. That now makes it 18months of playing FM without signing a real life player. So, spoiler alert FM22 will begin with a save where I get to sign some real players!
There will be a post at some point where I outline my plans for FM22. I have a few ideas, some of which are a bit extreme and I don’t think I have seen previously. But I will be buying some real life players for sure.
Now onto the crux of the save. Winning the Champions League. We have had a final loss, and a semi loss, so we need to get that elusive top title. In S18 we began with our new (old) tactic, which got us off to a good start. One loss, to Bayern Munich, in the group stages. We had a tough run in the knock-outs; Chelsea, Real Madrid, before coming up against Bayern again in the semi final. We had switched to a more defensive looking 442 for our away games in the UCL, which worked wonders in the semi. Gaining a draw away in the first leg, before an emphatic 5-1 victory back in Israel. We were now in our second final. This time against Juventus, in the San Siro.
A great performance by centre half Ben-Naim and a penalty by David saw us come out victorious against the Old Lady from Turin. Got lucky with a disallowed goal late on, and looking at the stats we probably didn’t deserve to to win. But the record books show it is FC Jerusalem who are the 2037/38 UEFA Champions League winners. The maiden title for the club, the first time it goes to Israel. And the first non Big 5 league since Porto in 2004. It is a proud moment for Rio Santos and FC Jerusalem. I bet Flavio Henrique wishes he stayed with us and didn’t choose Man Utd. The next step is to see if we can retain the title, and go one step further in World Club Cup.
S19 saw us start the UCL as raining champions. This didn’t help us with the group draw. Barcelona and Inter drawn against us. Two away loses to the big boys, but we still managed to finish in the top two. An easy first knock out game versus Hertha Berlin, a quarter final win over Man Utd and a tight semi final win against Inter saw us in the showcase game for the second season. This time we were pitted against PSG at Wembley.
A much more straight forward victory this time. A deserved victory, capped by goals from three of our star players. Flavio Henrique had returned to star for us this season, Basok has been a real important player since we signed him and Flores has been a revelation at the heart of the defence.
The summer after our second UCL victory was when we went out and splashed the cash. Could all this outlay pay off and we could dominate in Europe as well as we have in Israel. Squad depth has vastly improved and we look to compete on all fronts.
We now go for our third UCL win on the spin in S20. We started with two loses in the group against Arsenal and Milan, before turning it around to finish in the qualifying spots. Inter and Dortmund were put to the sword before a semi final tie with Real Madrid. This turned out to be an epic encounter. A 1-1 draw at home put us up against it in the second leg. Another 1-1 draw meant it was extra time. With away goals still counting in FM21 another goal would hopefully see us through. Basok struck in 1st Half injury time to see us into our third final in a row. This time we were up against our cup final nemeses of Man Utd.
No picture this time, we lost 4-0. So in two UCL finals against Man Utd we have a combined loss of 11-0. Not a great record against the Red Devils.
S21, although we were holidaying saw us out of the group stages but, lost in the quarter final to Monaco. Our worst showing in Europe since season 14. But S21 UCL wasn’t in the plans anyway.
What was in the plans for S21 was the FIFA World Club Cup. The one missing title from the trophy cabinet. We had a better group draw this time. Boca Juniors and Corinthians stood before us. Two wins, and a quarter final win against another South American side – Gremio saw us into the semi finals for the second time. We faced Man City this time. We failed miserably 3-0, which put us into the Third Place playoff again. With this cup only coming about every 4 years it would be our last tilt at the World Club Cup. Not winning it is a great shame, but I think I can live with it considering all the other competitions we have own over the last 21 seasons. PSG, again beat us to have us finish fourth once more.
The last thing we needed to do was christen Rio Santos Park, I lined up a friendly against Barcelona. 15083 turned up to see us draw 2-2 with the mighty Blaugrana.
So there it is. 21 seasons of Football Manager have come to an end. What an adventure. I have enjoyed it immensely. To take an amateur side from the fifth level of Israeli football to be one of the best sides in the world has been a great achievement. It wasn’t all plain sailing. Although once we started to progress in Europe, our finances improved and we managed to take over dominating Israel and really push Europe’s elite.
An in-game time of over 7680 days spent at one club, equating to real life of 28days, 3hours. A win percentage of nearly 70% over a 21 season career is something good. Less than 20% defeats and an average of 2.8 goals a game. A worldwide Hall of Fame final position of 10th, still quite a way behind Pep. I suppose winning the Israeli Premier League doesn’t score as many points as winning the English Prem! I did top the Israeli HoF by some way. And I think there is a glitch in the English HoF. Person with same name and birthday appears 1st, 2nd and 4th! But as I finished 3rd, ahead of Bob Paisley and Frank Lampard I will claim some sort of victory!
At least I finish as a Club Legend.
My favourite players throughout the save, Flavio Henrique, Slavi Bakalov and Amit Basok. Even though I never actually signed Henrique – he spent 12 seasons on loan! And his last decision was to spurn signing for us and join West Ham.
Other than not winning the World Club Cup, my biggest disappointment was the youth intake. As much as I tried to improve the facilities, there was very few players that came through that established themselves in the first team. From my recollection there was only one and he still remains at the club. Itsik Zahi. Classed as a wonderkid, the real issue I have with him is his preferred position is a defensive midfielder. A position that I don’t use. Mainly played him as a centre back and central midfielder. He has 41 appearances for the club aged 20. And 7 caps for Israel, although I was the manger so not sure it counts!
Now that all is said and done, I will close the chapter on FC Jerusalem. Definitely classed as one of my best saves. And there have been a few over the years. Since it is now only 4 or 5 weeks until we get to see the FM22 beta, so I will have a mess about until the new one.
Thank you to every one who has taken the effort to read any of these blogs. I really appreciate it. Next year I will try to keep up a bit more.
FM RioSantos 