The Nationalist Challenge

The British Steel Challenge is a massive challenge, requiring you to start at the bottom doldrums of Lower League Management and conquer every trophy in the UK and Ireland with only UK and Irish players. The Nationalist Challenge on the other hand is similar but simpler. It’s a challenge which can be taken on anywhere, with any league and no minimum requirements for success. There’s no league table or points scoring for this challenge, it’s a challenge to you, to see if you really have national pride.

The basic premise is this: you can only buy players from England (although the challenge could be taken on with any nationality). Personally I think the most fun is to be had with a big team, managing Chelsea, Man Utd or City sounds easy right? All the money you could hope for. Buy any player you want. But not in the nationalist challenge, now that you can only buy players from England you’ve got to be a lot more clever. If you take over City who are you going to play up front? You probably can’t ply Rooney and Wellbeck away from United, but what are your other options? Defoe and Crouch aren’t getting any younger and what hope do you have of conquering the world with Danny Graham and Gabby Agbonlahor? This is the beauty of the Nationalist Challenge.

The Rules

1. You do not have to manage one of the big things. This is just my recommendation. I rarely take on a career where I actually get to sign the players I watch on Match of the Day each week; I’m usually in the lower leagues dealing with misfits and rejects. So this is a nice opportunity in which signing Stewart Downing or Michael Dawson becomes a real possibility.


2. You do not have to manage in England either. I’m very intrigued to see what effect a completely English side will have on the national side when they’re all playing with each other week and week out, but the same experiment could be had with any other nation. Can you finally turn Sweden into world beaters by creating a fully nationalist side? I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot!


3. Okay the actual rules. From day one the only players you can sign must be English (or whatever nation you’re choosing). You can’t sell one foreigner and just replace him with another. Each time you sell off an overseas player, that’s one less contaminating the ethnic purity of team and you should celebrate this fact.


4. Although I’m not doing so myself you may be inclined to set yourself some specific rules as to how many foreigners you can use each season. While my personal inclination is to get rid asap you may take the following recommendations under consideration:

• Season One – No restriction on how many foreigners you can use but you can of course only sign English Players
• Season Two – Only 5 players on the pitch can be overseas at any point. The rest must be from your home country, this includes when making substitutions mid game.
• Season Three – As above but the number reduces to 3
• Season Four – By now you should have completely purified your team and no foreign players should appear in any of your starting line ups. If any are still lurking around, perhaps you can’t get rid of them, then let them rot in the reserves. They’re not going to play for this pure and nationalist team ever again.

5. Dual Nationality Types – The question may arise as to whether you can sign players with dual nationality. If you use the player search to search for English players you’ll often come up with likes of Lewis Holtby who plays for Schalke and is a registered international for Germany. It’s up to you, but personally I think you should restrict yourselves only to players eligible to play for England.


6. Staff – Another question that may arise is whether you should restrict yourself to only English staff as well. Again it’s up to you, but I say go for it, it can only add to the purity of your team.


7. Objectives – Really the only objective is to keep your job and keep winning trophies. There’s no way to “win” this challenge. It’s just an interesting game to play, both in terms of the types of players you’ll need to be signing and the long term effects on your chosen nationality.