After 38 games, Reggina and Ascoli have actually managed to get promoted directly, and Ascoli in particular deserves a lot of respect for that. After that it's much closer and places 3 to 8 now go into the playoffs, luckily we can count ourselves among them. In the cup, after a strong success against Torino against the larger club from Turin, Juventus our run was unfortunately over. The complete season review comes after the results from the playoffs, which are still pending for us and will decide the entire season for us. We're ending the regular season with a strong run, so I'm confident going into the duel with Brescia.

The first game in the play-offs was against Brescia, against whom we suffered one of our last defeats in the league. So we wanted revenge but went into the break 0-1. After a proper speech to the team, Bulatovic scored the equalizer less than 30 seconds after the restart. It went into extra time and we scored the winning goal in the 120th minute, but it was ruled out for offside. I braced myself for the penalty shootout, but it was game over! Due to our better position in the league, we automatically won after 120 minutes! In the semifinals we met what is probably the strongest squad in the league, Bologna. The semi-final is a return game, if there is a draw after 90 minutes after goals, the team that was ahead in the table wins again. Spoiler alert: It wasn't us this time. In the home game we took a 1-0 lead after less than a minute and just before the break Bruma headed in after a corner kick to make it 2-0. I thought I was in the wrong film because we were clearly the worse team! The team struggled but were still tired from the game against Brescia and still managed to go into the second leg 2-1. In Bologna we fell behind early on and had to deliver this time, in the 31st minute our goal-getter Quintana made it 1-1. The long season was in the bones of the players and the game didn't seem to end. Musa Barrow made it 2-1 and with it the equalizer, which should cost us the next round this time. Now the rule that saved us against Brescia hit us and the dream of promotion was shattered! These results showed once again how close the top teams in this league are to each other. We will now see what the board is planning and whether we are a part of it or whether our journey continues.

Top 3 Players

Season Preview 2027-2028

We are staying in Salerno for another season and trying to get them back to the top tier of italian calcio. This transfer window has been a lot calmer for sure, but still some changes were made in the squad, the goal is to keep the core together and aim for a promotion this year. 

Pressure is on a little more this time, as the board and the journalists expect us to improve and finish above relegated teams like Bari, Spezia and Cremona.

Player departures

This time we spent more money than we made and there a 3 major losses for our team. Jeffrey Bruma already signed with Olmypiakos in the winter for this summer window, after that he stepped up and became better than Briancon (who also left), best-rated player Lukas Klünter wanted to make some cash in his last years, so he went to Al-Duhail, while Filip Stankovic was promised he could make a move, when a team bid 1.8 million Euro for him. The goalkeeper we got for 250k from Inter the season before has proven himself and now went to Lazio to make the next step in his career. Velkov and Quina were never able to make an impact in the last season, so they found new teams as well.

Player arrivals

There is a lot of talent joining our squad for the 27-28 season and I would say that we were able to compensate the three big losses with the arrivals of Mwene, Papetti/Marcelin and Müller. We also got a good back-up for both Full-Backs and with Corbu and Maldini some skillful players for the wings. Michael Smid from the Czech Republic was bought for the future, but he he will probably be a day one starter for us.

Tinelli and Cozzolino from the U18 completing the new guys this window and we are ready to push for promotion this time, let´s get this done!

It is not going well for us…. We are currently 10th place in Serie B, which is not enough for the board, so they called a meeting to determine our future at the club. We told them to trust the process, which they accepted for now and gave us a chance to proof ourself in the next games. The last loss against Cittadella was a really bad game, just after we´ve beaten the relegated team from Cremona 4:1 away from home. We are a team full of surprises, maybe too many ;-) In other news we got a job offer from Championship site Preston North End, which we tunred down, because of the bad position and worse wage budget. Especially being in this position atm, we will keep looking for other jobs…

After just one more game, a 2:4 in Venice, the board's patience was already at an end. We couldn't convince them anymore that we are the right coach for Salerno. Even before we were released, we sent off some applications and received an invitation from Palermo, which actually hired us immediately after our release. Now comes a brilliant FM story because we had to play against our old club from Salerno in the second game and less than a week after being hired. As fate would have it, we won the duel 2-0 ;-) In winter we will examine our squad more closely, but we have little financial means for new signings.

Season Review 2027-2028

CAMPEONES, CAMPEONES, OLE, OLE, OLE! 
After a catastrophic exit in Salerno, we got revenge twice with Palermo and almost got promoted in our old stadium. Only on the last matchday were the two promotion places given to us and Lecce, while Pisa is the sad third. We had to vary our formation a bit until we found our tactics, but in the end we managed to win the title with a mix of 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1. 
In the end, Salerno ended up in a super disappointing 13th place and even missed the play-offs, my successor Marco Giampaolo was also unable to lead the team to success. In winter, Filippo Melegoni was the only important player who was signed for 1.3 million euros, but he was a regular player for us right away. We're also going into Serie A next season with a small budget, which will present us with a big task, so the task in the summer is now to get a competitive team together and keep up the class. Almost 6 years after the start of our career, we have finally arrived in one of the top 5 leagues!

Top 3 Players of the Season

Our Central Defender Antef Tsoungui from Belgium was the best rated player of the season with an average of 7.15

With a rating of 7.13 right-winger Christian Capone is our second best player of the season, but already signed a contract with AEK Athens in summer

Besides Capone there is only one other player, who played all 40 matches this season, it is Ball-Winning-Midfielder Jacopo Segre, who got a rating of 7.07

Season Update 2028-2029

The season prediction was quite devastating, we were predicted last with 2000 - 1 odds winning the title. The biggest problem was our financial ability, because we didn´t get more money after the promotion, wge got less. So starting into the off-season, we were already overspending money for our squad. I honestly doubted that we can make this miracle (staying in the league) happen, but we could partner up with Manchester City, which was a major help for the transfer window, because there was literally no money to spend for more players. After a good start with a 0:1 loss to Roma and a win against Sampdoria, we had two streaks of 5 games without a single win, but have somehow beaten Ascoli, Lecce and Empoli, as well as our two promotion buddies Venezia and Lecce. We also drew Inter at home, which was a huge surprise for sure. These wins against direct opponents at the bottom of the table were clinical for our current position after half of the season is done. 

Transfers

As mentioned, the 4 free loans from our new partner ManCity were super important for creating a decent squad, because they all are playing an important role for us. 18 year old welsh player Warren Perry as inverted-winger being probably the most important of the quartet. Goalkeeper Ronnow is the only player we actually paid a tranfer fee for. We sold a lot of unused our youth players, but also some starters like Capone or Di Mariano, because they were just too expensive.

Season Review 2028-2029

We are staying up, we are staying up! Undoubtfully a season with a lot of negative moments, but there was never another target than keeping Palermo in the top flight. Our both opponents, which promoted with us last season went down without a chance, followed by Torino coached by Olivier Giroud. Before our 16th place there is only space for Empoli and so we are not far away from relegation in the table, but still managed to stay 11 points clear. Only 4 wins in the second half of the season were enough, but might be not next time… This season there will be no Top 3 Players listing, because we have not player with a rating better than 7.0, in fact the best player is our Goalkeeper with 6.79, a fact that shows even more that we have not been great and just got the job done, nothing more. With more and more reputation and an expiring contract at the end of the season, we´ll have to figure out, if Palermo is big enough for us, or if we have to make the next step in our career. Having ticked off Lion and eagle, the probably two most common animals in world football, it becomes more and more difficult to find a good club for us. Let´s see whats left in the zoo shop for us ;-)

Season Preview 2029-2030

The new season begins this week with a cup tie as usual. We will face Bari in the 1st round, before heading to Ascoli for the first matchday in Serie A. Afterwards we will host our Ex-club Salerno, which finally promoted last season and actually have better odds than us, how ironic ;-) 

Again we will face a tough challenge, even if we have a slightly bigger budget this time. We took a look around on the job market, but there was no better challenge tbh, so we extented our contract in Sicily for another year. 

Transfer

As already mentioned in the comment before, we got our old friend from Simba back and after 5 seasons in Tanzania Zini will have his chance in Europe playing for us.

I desperately looked for a Goalkeeper, a Left Full-Back and a Striker, which we could sign all and even more, feel free to have a look at our new signings for the 2029-2030 campaign:

Season Update 2029-2030

It´s not going great…. Only 3 wins after 20 games is the result of tactic and budget problems. Only the win against Ascoli pushed us over the line one more time, but this time it will be much much harder to keep us in Serie A. Palermo needs to give us the bag next summer, or we are leaving 100%, maybe even before…. 4 goals for Zini is not enough, but he is not only one not scoring goals. Our offense is an major issue, because we just scored a terrible amount of 12 goals so far. I recently changed our tactic again and we will now play positive with both full-backs going further up-front trying to help the two wingers. This modification of our game could be the last try to save the club and our job….

We quit!

After almost 4 years in Italy, we quit our job after 8 consecutive losses in the league. We tried different tactics, but after 29 games I don´t have the confidence to hold this team in Serie A any longer. The favorite for taking our old job is no one else than Clarence Seedorf. Pretty much shows our standing after 8 years as a head coach.

We will try to find another challenge in another country, our first job interview has been at Union Berlin, let´s see if we can get this job, or go elsewhere :-)

Season Update 2030

Touchdown in Miami and we´ll face many new words and rules immediately. Salary Cap, Draft Allocation, Trades, General Allocation Money?

If you are doing a MLS-Save without preparing properly, you will fail. This league / franchise is something different and hard to come by at the start. Still we are having troubles finding animal related badges we didn´t had in our career, but the flamingos of Miami were quite unique. 

As hard and complicated it is in the US, it´s also something else: Extremely fun! In the last months of this save I kinda lost it in Italy, because things were extremely hard and the board won´t help me in any possible way. Here in Florida, I`m starting enjoying this Journeyman again and doing it big time! 

We made a major impact to this franchise from the start and put them in 2nd place of the Eastern Conference, while winning 6 out of 7 MLS games. Again, we sacrificed some cups to keep our players healthy. In no other league squad management is so important than in the MLS.

Transfers / Trades

The best thing about the US are the trades for me, even if I did not take part in any Draft so far. To gamble with your Draft allocations or the GAM is super fun and we could get some nice new players within the MLS. 

Our best player is an old friend from Salerno, where we got him on loan, maybe you remember him:

Bulatovic with still only 23 years of age is one of the stars of the league and being hunted by clubs like Tottenham.

This was our first major trade from St. Louis City and Guevara is our starting playmaker

As we traded away our veteran right Full-Back, we traded for also 23 year old Alexander Ventura from Peru as a replacement

On central defense we could trade for veteran Jack Maher from Philly, who became vice-captain of our team

Season Update 2030

After our first regular MLS season we finished 4th place in the Eastern Conference and making the 1st round of the playoffs, where we will face St. Louis City.

Sadly Bulatovic got injured pretty bad and is still listed on the Disabled list, so he will not take part, which is a hard hit for our team.

Season Review 2030

We are losing in the Eastern semis to 1st in the regular season Atlanta…. In the end Nashville takes home the MLS Cup against New York. We will come back stronger in 2031!

In the CONCACAF Champions League we barely made the round of last 16 before Los Angeles FC and will face UNAM Pumas from Mexico in February.

The next major update on this savegame will be about the draft in January 2031, we have three 1st round picks, so let´s see what we can do with them.

MLS Super Draft 2031

With the 1st overall pick we took Jeff Delass from Connecticut 

With our 2nd pick we got Left Full-Back Christian Beason

With the 3rd pick we got a Right Full-Back from Peoria City

And then we drafted another Left Full-Back (because we are in desparate need) from Boston Bolts

Next up from Chicago City SC: Méssan Alaza

Our 6th pick is Jehú Osorio from the brilliant College Team Thunder Bay Chill, please just take a look on this badge, I would love to manage them!

Last pick this Super Draft from Western Massachusetts is the huge Central Defender Julian Olla

Season Preview 2031

With the 2031 MLS Season ahead, we look not that bad before the start and being predicted in top 3 with Philly being THE favorite to win the MLS Cup this year.

Losing 5:3 in Mexico, a 2:1 win back in Miami against UNAM Pumas was not enough to make the quarters in the Champions-League.

After grabbing a few good prospects in the Draft, we also managed to get some good players in, that will start right away. We traded a few picks and some GAM to get James Balagizi for the offense and Darrhyl Mc Manaman as new Left Full-Back.

With Marcel Sabitzer we got a real veteran from Al-Duhail SC for just 135k.

Our new season kicks off with at an away game at Columbus Crew, let´s get it!

Season Update 2031

We made the Play-Offs again, even if it´s just the 5th place after a season like a rollercoaster changing between 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3 back and forth.

None of the players from the draft are starters, but they are good back-up players for us. So is it worth getting Draft Allocation or trade them for good players? 

I would say: Both. Because you will need to meet some regulations of the salary cap, which will be hard without the draft, nevertheless, these players won´t get you to the next level in the MLS, you´ll need to spend some of you Allocations to get star players in. I would say we have a good and well balanced team and squad without any superstars, but being sustainable and are a Play-Off Contender every season. If we really want to go all the way and win the cup, we should be more aggressive I would say after the regular season and put our future on the line. 

In the end we lost our 1st rounder at New England 3:0 and are out early again. 

It still was a cool experience managing in the US and finally getting familiar with all the rules, which makes me wann come back for a long-time-save in this league.

Aas this is a Journeyman and our contract expires, we will pack our things and look for our next destination!

Season Update 2031-2032

Welcome back to Europe and to the Netherlands!

We are heading to the provincial capital of Friesland, the beautiful city of Leeuwarden.

The origin of the club's emblem is the coat of arms of the House of Cammingha, a Frisian noble family and contains a red deer, our newest zoo member of this Journeyman.

We are taking over the club in the lower regions of the table, but still a decent number of points clear to the relegation zone, which our board wants us to avoid.

We did hell of a job so far, taking SC Cambuur to the 7th place within reach of Europe-Playoffs and a amazing cup-run so far, beating Ajax away 3-2 after over-time, just after winning 1-0 in Rotterdam 3 days before. 

We came from a league with countless regulations to a league with almost none. because there are no restrictions that limits us. Furthermore we sold our best player Morgalla for 12 Million Euros to Hertha BSC, which is HUGE for us and gave us the opportunity to improve the squad even more. 

To be honest I´m already thinking of staying long-term here, because we can actually build something here.

so will the end goal be with a club like chelsea or Juventus or a national team like england?

I won´t sign for a national team and just focus on club football, but it will be a good team to win the CL with. As I already took a team with a lion, Chelsea is out for me and Juventus do´nt have an animal related badge, so they are out as well :-D 

Could be Tottenham or Valencia for example ;-)