[FM24] The Italian Job - Returning the Golden Era (Serie A - Parma)

The Italian Job - Returning the Golden Era (Serie A - Parma)

I first caught of glimpse of football back in the Golden Era of the Serie-A, where fantastic footballers graced the league, and several clubs were highly competitive making it the league to watch and be the place to be.

For whatever reason, over time this has diminished to a state where it’s safe to say the league, its players, reputation and competitiveness wasn’t quite as it once was.

For me a couple of clubs particularly always stand out to me that have fallen by the wayside, being Parma and Sampdoria – the two clubs I’ve been interested in playing a long-term save with.

But I’ve decided to try and make the career last a good while, I’ll either be watching games in comprehensive or even in full.

And for that reason, I figured I’ll start straight off in the Serie-A with Parma, a team that perhaps aims in this very first season to stay up, in the hope the club can solidly progress thereafter. 

If I get sacked, I can always re-add myself at Sampdoria! 

FM24 Match Engine / Game Details

-I am using the FMT version 1.1 (HF1) which I’m really happy with the overall balance / how it plays. 

-I will not use the broken 424 / 4231 shapes through the entirety of the save. 

-I will also create my managerial character based on recommended starting reputation / badges at Parma, as I intend it to be a one club save.

-I also have my own tactical ideas, of which I’ll be basing my main style / approach on. 

The aims of this Career:

-To make Parma a highly competitive Serie A club again, and then attempt to win them their first ever Scudetto and first ever UCL

-To make Serie A the highest reputable league in Europe

-To bring in the very best players in the world to compete in the Serie-A

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Career / Progress Log

Domestic Trophies

Serie A: 0
Coppa Italia: 0

Super Cup: 0

European Trophies

UCL: 0

UEL: 0

UECL: 0

My Football Philosophy

Inspiration

Seeing football over different periods, I guess it has evolved over time. The managers having greatest influence over my styles are Pep, Jose, and Klopp.

Although the late 90s / early 00s will always be the period I had most love for the game, as with how football has progressed, I’ve had to modernize my own ideas to keep myself up to date with the requirements of modern day football.

As a result, I have a very balanced approach to games, and would say I am most aligned with the way Jose manages – balance and flexibility being key, and finding different ways of winning games when inferior to the opposition. 

But at the same time, the high / aggressive counter-press is a must have in the modern day, because a team geared to playing this style is very difficult to stop. And in that sense, I’ve also employed part of Klopp’s style.

My Plan A

So the above has led me to strike a balance between Jose and Klopp approaches, where although I may have a Plan A only approach, this approach has several approaches all into one Plan. Aggressive from the off and try to gain an advantage, and then manage the game smartly from that point onwards.

But the most important aspects of my ideas, is being able to counter-attack effectively from both in the opponents’ half and deep within our own.

I attempt to achieve this by aggressively pressing the opponents higher up strategically in particular areas of the pitch, creating opportunities for fast counter-attacks from within the opponents half – to then be naturally less aggressive in other areas, with the team then capable of retreating back to our 18 yard box, and being well positioned to launch more direct and/or quicker transition counter-attacks instead from deep.

Requirements

Implementing this requires a lot of tweaking / in-game management. But also requires players that have a lot of well-rounded qualities. 

They need the physicality to press effectively and in some games, for longer durations. To the need to be composed with the ball, with high intelligence on the pitch and with the ability to defend well & concentrate out of possession too.

I have always been a cheque book manager in FM – knowing that money is needed to buy such players capable of carrying out my plan.

This will be one of the difficulties at the start with Parma, as their squad is one that will struggle with the quality at the club at present. The aim will be to survive in the first season, hoping good recruitment will then be the gateway to moving the club in the right long-term direction.

Shape

-My formation is an asymmetrical one, which I would best describe as a 424 / 4231 / 4411 hybrid. 

-My more aggressive approach will be closer to a 424, with the 4231 a more controlled approach, and a 4411 my more pragmatic & park the bus ones.

Season 1 - Preseason

Transfers In / Outs

Although it has been very quiet on the transfer front, it was my intention to firstly weed out players I don’t believe will play any part of my system, identify the areas I could recruit players on a free for, and most importantly build the first steps to a good club infrastructure. 

This for me, was sacking a lot of staff members that really had poor attributes. I must have spent between 1 and 2mil GBP in compensation from just sacking staff. So this is really where my transfer budget has gone.

I was able to find a lot of good staff members to then fill our coaching, scouting and medical departments. This is now at good level, one which can rival the top 6 clubs. I also decided to bring in Rafinha (the ex Barca Brazilian AM, also named Rafael it seems) into the club, to play the hybrid SS / AM role that I have in my system.

That said, he will likely be backup to Bernabe who I want to train to hopefully become a natural in the AM slot (he’s only accomplished at present). He’s at a good age with time to develop, and perhaps if he performs well, I will be able to sell him on for some much needed cash to reinvest in the team. 

The two players I’m trying to get rid of but can’t at present, are 34 year old SC Duric and Osorio at CB. Osorio was someone that could have done a job, but with us having loans in for this season and my inclination to give our younger CBs a chance to develop, trying to cash in on him seems the right play at this time.

Board Objectives

Avoiding relegation is the aim of the board, and looking at my squad is my objective as well too. It’s not a squad filled with great depth, and a few bad injuries could cause us a problem. So taking this into account, if we are able to avoid any stressful relegation scrap by the end of the first year, it will be a success.

I’m also really pleased to see the board’s intention to build a new stadium as an objective. Our current stadium isn’t such a large capacity, and being able to hold a larger number of our fan base will be important to generating us much needed revenue which will only help grow the club longer term.

Squad

Here is my squad that will start off my first season at Parma.

Coppa Italia – R1

Parma 4 – Reggina 0

My first competitive game for Parma, and also in our home dugout. What a great opponent to face to, being Reggina in the cup – the club’s most fierce rival currently competing in Serie-B.

It was a really pleasing first game, as with the ball we were purposeful (which is how I like my teams to be), and also without the ball, we were defensively solid.

Reggina had more of the ball this game, but we coped with what they had to offer where we threatened both on the break, but already showed we could be a handful from set pieces this year, where Valenti grabbed a brace both from these situations.

Getting the better of Reggina is one of our supporter objectives, so with a great team performance against rivals where it is of great importance to do well against, already gives me some credit in the bank before our first league game which is in a week’s time at home to the new kids on the Serie-A block, Como. 

Serie A (GW 1 of 38)

Parma 4 – Como 0

The start in our quest for survival in our league campaign. Como were our opposition in what promised on paper to be a tight and quite an important early match between these sides.

We got the early advantage, but for the rest of the first half we were having to defend extremely well without the ball, with Como amassing 72% possession by its end.

It was important that we got the second goal of this game, and fortunately we did this just before the hour mark. It was at this point they appeared to lose their discipline, and with the need to chase the game we picked them off, scoring two late goals after the 83rd minute giving us a very comfortable 4-0 score-line victory.

If Como made use of their high possession count especially in the first half it could have been a very different game. But the second goal for us was the killer for them.

Serie A (GW 2 of 38)

Monza 0 – Parma 1

Our second league game of the campaign saw us come up away against Monza. The home team were slight favourites going into this one, but after our win last week I was optimistic we could come away with a result.

We started off the game very well and had the first few early chances of this game, but poor finishing let Monza off the hook. They then started to come into the game and had some chances ourselves but our keeper Suzuki made a few decent saves to keep things square going into HT.

The second half, we struggled to really get going. Neither side were looking that threatening, but the home side did have more of the play and looked the more likely side to make a breakthrough. I then made some subs on the hour and had used all five available by the 78th minute, hoping someone could make an impact and swing the game in our favour.

And it was to be Rafinha that made the difference, putting in a great free kick delivery which was met at the back post by our Argentine CB Lautaro Valenti in the 84th minute.

We then played out time extremely well for the remaining minutes, with Monza not looking a threat with our side showing a good degree of composure keeping the ball well, with the game eventually ending in a tight 0-1 away victory for us.

Although at times we weren’t playing so well in this game, the boys did extremely well to grind out a narrow win and being able to win these tight games is going to be important this year if we are to remain our Serie-A status.

The result leaves us top of the league after 2 games on goal difference – one to keep for the scrapbooks!