Beating Mourinho. The real career of Tó Mãdéira

At the start of a new game, in the hall of fame for Portuguese managers, Jose Mourinho, Jorge Jesus & Andre Villas-Boas have 14 domestic league titles, 17 domestic cups & 6 other club trophies between them. They sit 1st, 4th and 8th in Portugal's nationality hall of fame:



In the hall of fame for the nation of Portugal, Jorge Jesus sits second whilst Mourinho sits 10th, Villas-Boas isn't on this list:



To put in context, in the worldwide hall of fame, Mourinho finds himself third with 3001 points, behind Pep Guardiola and Alex Ferguson with 3837 and 5020 points respectively. No other Portuguese managers are found in the top 20.



The aim for this save is for another Portuguese manager named Tó Mãdéira as he tries to not only emulate these great managers, but surpass them and become the greatest Portuguese manager of all time.

Hailing from Gouveia, Tó Mãdéira was touted as potentially the best player of any generation. There were reports that he was a striker capable of scoring more goals than he had appearances in any season, he was made out to be a player that could take Hartlepool United from Division 2 to Champions League glory all on his own. These reports were found to be untrue, as there was never a real player called Tó Mãdéira He wants to correct those wrongs by turning to coaching. In his head, all roads lead back to Lisbon, specifically Sporting Lisbon, the team he supported since he was a boy.

While his ultimate aim is to become the greatest Portuguese manager of all time, his personal aim has always been to become the Sporting Lisbon manager. To even come close to becoming the greatest of all time he must first work his way up and get recognised in the footballing world as a manager, not just a cult hero player that was supposed to be a world beater. As part of his quest to become the G.O.A.T, his personal aim of taking Sporting Lisbon, or even another Portuguese club to Champions League glory is a must. Without continental success, he’ll never be mentioned in the same breath as Mourinho, Jesus or Villas-Boas.

This isn't quite your standard unemployed, no coaching badges save as I am starting at a specific club, but this is the journey of Tó Mãdéira as he travels around Europe hoping to not only emulate these great managers but become better than them and recognised as the best!

The overall aim for this save is to top the hall of fame for Portuguese managers & win the Champions League with a Portuguese team, hopefully one day Sporting Lisbon, but if that happens that’s not the end goal, the end goal 2 fold, as noted above I want to top the hall of fame for Portuguese managers, and then top the worldwide hall of fame.

I’ve got no set in stone rules for this challenge like if I win something I must move on, I do want to manage in as many of the leagues I have loaded from the start however, and if I think I can get another job at any point in the save then I will go in for it, I do have some other aims I want to achieve during all of this. To top the hall of fame is going to take some serious competition wins, so the other aims for this save in no particular order:-

Become favoured personnel at 3 clubs
Become a club icon at 2 clubs
Become a club legend at 1 club
Become a club legend at Sporting Lisbon
Win at least 3 of the 'top' European leagues (Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1). As each of the men listed above have won 14 league titles, this aim can be 3 Bundesliga titles for example.
Win either the Europa or Champions League with a team that came runners up in the save
Win the Champions League with Sporting Lisbon

As well as this there are a couple of teams I’d like to manage during the course of this save. The below list won’t become anywhere near achievable without some success. So in no particular order the teams I’d like to manage are:

Sporting Lisbon
Either of the Milan teams
1 of the Moscow teams (CSKA, Dynamo, Lokomotiv, Spartak, Torpedo)
AZ Alkmaar
Real Madrid or Barcelona
Gouveia (If you know, you know )

If you followed my previous attempt at this challenge, found here, you’ll see I encountered a game breaking glitch around 7 seasons in, here’s hoping this doesn’t happen to me again and this was the reason I was actually contemplating not getting FM20 at all, fingers crossed.

This is the story of an enigma, a cult hero, a never-was-but-actually-was a great player that sets out from Gouvia but a pup, and hopefully one day, returns a lion!*

Join me on my journey, man.


*Pun intended, as Sporting Lisbon’s nickname is the Lions…..

Drawn me straight in! I'm excited for this one, lets go!

Cheers man, glad to have you on board

For those who don’t know who Tó Mãdéira is, he was literally the stuff of wet dreams.

Back in the glory days of Champ Man 01/02, 17 year old me thought I, and I alone had stumbled across the best player the footballing world had ever seen. Much to my dismay, my other Champ Man friends playing the game at the same time had also discovered this absolute monster of a striker. Any time he was on the pitch, you were guaranteed at least 1 goal from him, he was immense. He had it all, pace, positioning, finishing, technique, balance the lot, and do you want to know the best bit? At the start of the game he would cost you no more than 300k from Gouveia, an unplayable Portuguese team. Hell even after a couple of seasons, if he was still there you could buy him for roughly the same amount, but if he went to someone else you’d be looking at forking out a lot more. But for me and my Champions League winning Carlisle United, York City and Palermo sides of Champ Man 01/02, there was nothing sweeter than seeing Madeira finds the net in flashing text on the screen. Not only was this player an absolute must, he was always your go to signing when starting a new game. As this game didn’t have any rules regarding singing foreign players, if you fancied taking a Brazilian team, or a Swedish team to new heights, you knew who to sign. This guy was the absolute nuts and it wasn’t just me and my friends who knew about him, just about anyone who owned or played this absolute monster of a game knew Tó Mãdéira. I bet back in 2002 if you typed into Google the Midas touch, hundreds if not thousands of results would just be champ man screenshots showing Tó Mãdéira scores again, or the history page of his profile showing how many goals this guys scored every season.

Players come and go, managers come and go quite often but legends, legends stay with you forever. Once I’d finished that first year of college, drank some beer, partied with some girls and spent the rest of my time playing Champ Man, I’d then graduated to Champ Man 02/03 only to find that To Madeira wasn’t there. How? Why, he’s the best player in the world, everyone knows who he is. I won’t lie, whilst I’m a big football fanatic, my only footballing love at that time was Newcastle United. Any time I’d watch a game it would be Newcastle versus someone else. I only ever frequented Saint James Park, by this time I’d not experienced an away day, anyway I digress, how could the best footballer on Champ Man not be in the new one? It hadn’t dawned on me quite yet the real truth behind this superhuman footballer, but my heartache was softened a bit by the inclusion of players like Adrian Mutu, Roque Santa Cruz, Rafael Van Der Vaart to name but a few. Whilst I’d heard of some of these players, surely the makers of Champ Man couldn’t have forgotten the legend that is Tó Mãdéira? As the hours spent playing Champ Man increased my love for the game did too, and I started taking a bigger interest in the beautiful game. I’d watch a lot of Italian and Spanish Football, I even watched my local team York City quite a few times, and as the years went on I got more hours clocked in the CM / FM series than any other game I have ever played, before I had a flash back during 1 game.

Picture the scene, it’s FM16, I’m 30 maybe 35 seasons deep into a journeyman, my Torpedo Moscow side are in the Champions League final against Porto, and then it hit me. I’ve been here before, I’ve been in the Champions League final with a nobody, with a team made up of journey men midfielders, free transfer cast offs from the top clubs and an absolute bargain of a Portuguese center forward that I signed last season, who now has over 50 goals in all competitions. It was 2002 all over again, except this time it wasn’t Tó Mãdéira, it was some newgen from the Sporting Braga set up that was loaned to me with a future fee of 50k. We called it in, and a season later Torpedo are on the brink of success. I then had to write it down, after the game I jotted down ‘find what happened to the man the myth the legend To Madiera’.

So I did. And now I wish I didn’t. For you see, for those that don’t know, Tó Mãdéira, the best player in any football manager game ever, actually didn’t exist. If you’ve read the book Football Manager Stole My Life, and if you haven’t I ask the question why? It says in there, as well as plenty of blogs and what not online, that Tó Mãdéira came about as the researcher for the team Gouveia had convinced the developers of CM that Madeira was an actual player, and that he was going to be the best thing since sliced bread. His name came about as the researcher was going on holiday, guess where he was going? To Madeira. Madeira in Portugal, hence the players nationality. It’s also said that he put the player there as an homage to his own career, or lack thereof. He never made it as a player this researcher, so he did the next best thing and not only got himself (sort of) in the game, but cult status among us, the die hards. The story also goes on to say that the devs had to remove Tó Mãdéira from the game as actual clubs began trying to find him in real life. Now for me, if I was a developer for the game, I’d want to keep him in. It’s not their fault actual football clubs want to go scouting a player based of a game, but what do I know?

So that brings us to the end of the Tó Mãdéira story. A player that touched so many Champ Manners hearts, a player that won so many trophies for us, but a player that wasn’t really a player.



Instead of starting unemployed, I am going to be starting at a 1 star rep team in Spain’s third division, group B4. This club has just been promoted to this division and are expected to finish right at the bottom. The stadium is tiny, holding only 500 fans, so the expectation is simple, stay in the division. That team is Villarrubia C.F.



The reason I’ve picked them is the league is a low enough rep to be a realistic starting point. As well as that I feel this is realistic enough as this team are expected to finish towards the bottom end of the league, and as new managers go this is a decent enough team to start off with. They’re not a ‘big’ club in the grand scheme of things, and at 1 star I feel this is a realistic way to start the challenge. I usually always start my saves unemployed but wanted to do this one this way.









This league is split into 4 divisions, anything better than staying up will be seen as a good result. Jose Mourinho’s first season in charge of a club saw him leave União de Leiria in January 2001 with them sitting 4th in the league at the time. He went onto Porto, I think he may have won something quite big with them at some point…

For me, it’s not mission impossible, just mission difficult. As long as I keep them in the league, I’m happy. A few key players are out of contract at the end of this season, but I’m not looking at renewing anything just yet, I’ll give it a few months and see where we’re at.



As far as best palyers go, Ricardo Carvalho (not that one ) is our best center half



I’ve not got a screen of the full squad, but there’s not much quality there at all, so off to the transfer center we go. I ask for recommendations, I’m not clued up on Spanish third division football much, but go in for 2 players on loan. Yannick Toure from Newcastle and Aden Baldwin from Bristol City both agree to join me on loan for this survival attempt.





With both of those transfer sorted out, I bring in some back room staff. Now in my saves I like immersion, and I love that you can take staff with you from club to club, so with that in mind I sign Imanol Agirretxe and as my coach, and make offers for a scout and physio.



My assistant tells me 4-4-1-1 on the counter is the way to go, and I agree with him. No way are we going to outplay teams, at least not this season, so this is the line up we’re going with



I may do a team preview of all the players, but really on Toure is any good at the minute.

With that the pre season is over with, got a few wins against lower league sides, now it’s on to the real thing, as the managerial career of a once world class player begins, and the question is can he hit the heights as a manager that he did as a player? Don’t know, but I’m itching to find out!





As an aside, I'll get posts up at least once a week, depending on how much time I get to play. Thanks for reading, much appreciated!

Best of luck! Should be good. Fingers crossed you avoid any bugs.

Hope so, was absolutely devastated when I had to can my last attempt

This has definitely tickled my fancy! I can't wait to see where you end up!

Thanks for the kind words dude, happy to have you on board.

I'm aiming to get the first month or so up maybe tomorrow. I should get some time on FM this week so will aim for another update by the weekend.

Great post to finally find out who Tó Mãdéira is! lets hope hes successful as a manager!

Did you ever play CM01/02? He was the absolute dogs dangly bits mate. Hopefully I can do him proud as a manager

Tó’s career as a manager started well despite starting with a tough game against the B team of top division team Cadiz. Villarrubia took a 2 goal lead in the first half and maybe thought it was game over after the second. Straight from kick off from the second, Cadiz went forward with a ball over the over top which their striker headed in perfectly. At half time I just told the tam to keep pressing for a third, which was our undoing. We got caught on the break and by the time we had regrouped, they had a player wide open to tap into an empty net. If before the game I was offered a 2 all draw I would've taken it, but to throw away a 2 goal lead is still disappointing.




Our first away game was much like our previous game, in that we took a goal lead, this time it was in the 62nd of the game, in a game that we absolutely dominated. Could we throw away another 2 goals?





Here’s all 4 of our goals from our opening 2 games so far. Some decent efforts in there I think.

https://youtu.be/iCpVEK81HQI

https://youtu.be/DpwJB8_Dzhk

But we got brought down to earth, and the frailties in the team were on full display as we went down 1-0 at home to Marbella, and 3-0 away to Cartegena, the 2 teams currently top of our division. It’s not really the losses that concern me, it’s the way we lost. Both games we were clearly second best all over the pitch, however I’m of the mindset we might as well get our poor form out the way early, and hopefully push on





As noted in my last post I made offers for 2 back room staff. First in was physio Jorge Matos followed by scout Francisco Gonzalez. Both members I want to hopefully keep with me on this journey. The physio especially looks good.







We're also drawn agaisnt UD Guadalajara in the lower league cup. A non league team, with only 1 real (not greyed out) player, surely a cut and dry win for me?



Now this is where things got good. 3 first half minutes passed and we were 3-0 up with Yannick Toure getting his first goal for us with a great header. After 26 minutes it was game over as we went in at half time 4-0. They pulled one back but we stood firm and fully deserved this win. Everything went right in this game from the off, but where has this showing come from? If this continues we may just stay up after all.



Maybe that 4-1 was a fluke result as we were absolutely battered 2-0 by Real Balompedica, and 2-0 flattered us. If it wasn’t for our keeper we’d have lost by a lot more, he should’ve been man of the match really keeping the score respectable. I;m noticing a pattern here….



Our next game saw us come out eventual winners over UCAM Murcia 3-2 in as even game as I’ve seen. Both teams went at it and on another day either of us could’ve won. We got off to a good start opening the scoring after less than 2 minutes, we did concede before half time but really, the score could’ve been 3-3 by then. Second half came and we kept at it and scored 2 quick goals to go 3-1 up. Murcia kept coming at us and pulled one back with 10 to go. We held strong and kept them at bay, by this point though they were going for long shots and nothing from then really threatened, and we got a big win.



With that comes the end of To’s first month as a manager, with a record of 3-3-2 which sees us sitting in 12th position. Whilst not looking very consistent we’re not getting thumped every week and have held our own so far. We’re obviously going to need to pick up a lot more points, but the early signs are encouraging.

Not the worst run of form, only one heavy defeat in there - all other games looked tight. Interested to see how this progresses.

An interesting save, good luck dude!

Cheers mate.

Will get an update up tonight or tomorrow.

Just as we kicked October off, I noticed my left full back and left winger are creating a decent little partnership. Nice to see this consistency from them, hopefully it translates into continuous good results





Back to league action and what another pathetic showing from us against Badajoz whose superiority shown throughout. Survival is going to be a struggle if these kind of performances don’t pick up



Whilst we lost again, it wasn’t as bad as the Badajoz game, as we ‘only’ lost 3-1 this time around. It was 2-0 at half time and we grabbed a late consolation goal right at the end that may help our goal difference by the end of the season, maybe.



But we managed an emphatic in of our own as we absolutely destroyed Don Benito 4-0 at home, and 4-0 really could’ve been 8-0 on another day. Why can’t we play like this every game?



Rounding out October we got beat 3-1 away to Real Murcia (didn’t get a screen) to bring our October to a fantastic 1 win and 4 losses that sees us hold onto 11th place, for now.





November started with a 2-0 home win over Merida where we had lead 2-0 at half time and never looked back. These last 2 games shows we’ve got something about us, so why can’t we be consistent?



We then played out a 1 all draw with Sevilla’s B team Sevilla Atletico. 1 crazy minute in the first saw us take the lead just to concede straight from kick off. We then blew a great chance as De Dios missed a penalty which the keeper saved well. Not too bad a result really, but we must keep improving.



Just like that we’re at the end of November as we had 2 more draws, a nil nil at home to Grenada’s B team and a 1 all away to Sanluqueno in a pretty even game.





Those draws mean we ended November unbeaten, with 1 win and 3 draws.

December 2019 saw us kick it off with a poor away loss, 1-0 to Algeciras, and they dominated us, they could’ve scored 6 but we kept them to 1, which may be seen as a good showing



We’re then greeted with the Brexit news, and it looks like nothing is going to change as the UK won’t be leaving the EU. This may be significant if I ever manage in the UK on this save



UCAM Murcia have done the double over us as they beat us 3-0 without even breaking a sweat. As is par for the course, we’re very inconsistent.



So after a loss we grab a win over Algeciras (no screen), then go on to lose to Cadiz B team, lose to Cordoba who are top of the league, somehow win against Sanluqueno who had 12 shots, 10 on target and we only scored from a quick break, before rounding out January with another loss, this one to Grenada B who have been worse than us and sacked their manager before our game.










I’ve not got a screen of the league, but we’re 10th heading into the final stretch of games. The league is compact and as shown with our own form, when we lose a handful of game, grab a couple of wins and we’re still in mid table. Whilst I'm hopeful we won't see a catastrophic run of form I do think we are going to survive this season. The teams below us are all losing, and if we can pick up points here and there, we should be good.



Before we finish this update, we’re being linked with new owners. The chairman at the minute says nothing will happen, but you never know. If there are new owners coming in, maybe some money may come with them, as there’s not a lot here at the minute, but we’ll see.








Next update will be the final stretch and run in towards the end of the season. Thanks for reading.

Inconsistent indeed, hopefully you'll will find some consistency soon.

Need to find some points consistantly and soon!

Thanks for your replies lads.

But I am seriously losing the will to live with the newer versions of FM.

I am never online when I play, so Steam doesn't update automatically, anyway decided to do the update last night, put FM20 on my word the fans on my laptop are going through the roof. Never heard fans rushing so loud in all my life. It's unplayable with the fans that loud. Went to the SI forum and reported it, got told to lower graphics settings even though the fans are racing when not in a match but nothing changed. This didn't happen during the beta or from when I updated to full release. I put 19 on but I'm a but skeptical about playing that due to game breaking bugs I encountered, so unless there's a fix for this, I'm p*ssed off for saying this challenge will be on hold. I've done 3 seasons, got it all typed up yesterday ready to post, but with the fans acting like they are I can't play. It's not the laptop, it's a brand new gaming laptop that I bought at the start of September, as I say this wasn't happening during beta, and I doubt the devs at SI will or can do anything about it.

Back to 17 I guess. Might start this challenge on 17 or even go back to my previous thread.

Absolutley gutted for you mate! Not sure what's going on, but I hope SI fix the issue for you asap! Really love reading your careers and hope you'll be back soon with a vengence!

Well I've reported it three times and got not response man, annoying as I can't play it in its current state. Back to 17 for the time being