Metropolitan Man

The Metropolitan Man:

Let's revive this alternative to the Pentagon challenge

An interesting trend has appeared in European football for decades involving the geographical size of successful football clubs, as unearthed by sports economists Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Whilst provincial clubs in the likes of Glasgow, Nottingham and Rotterdam have all claimed Europe’s greatest football prize, the UEFA Champion’s League has never once been in the hands of any real metropolitan club. In fact, no club from within the eight largest metropolitan areas in Europe have won the Champion’s League- it is time for a managerial journeyman to step forward, put his pride on the line and assume the role of the Metropolitan Man.



This picture is from Berlin, one of the cities needed to complete this challenge

The rules are simple, and the difficulty of the challenge is up to you. Whether you start as a small club from a big city and work your way up or whether you start at a big club and try to flick between cities, it’s all about the way you play your FM game. But the difficult part is simple as to complete the challenge you have to win the UEFA Champion’s League…eight times.



Start at any club that is based in Istanbul, Paris, Moscow, St Petersburg, Berlin, Athens, Naples, or Rome, and win the Champion’s League. Rinse and repeat until you have eight Champion’s Leagues on your managerial CV. There are little restrictions to the challenge; although just like with the Pentagon challenge, there are aspects that one can add to make this challenge more/less difficult.

City Slicker- start as a club in one of these eight geographical locations, and try to win all eight Champion’s Leagues without managing a club outside of those geographical constraints. This becomes harder and harder if you start to amass blots on your CV, because you’ll find that when you limit the job market to specific geographical zones, it becomes nearly impossible to be recruited.

No Dynasties- it can be tempting after you’ve won your first Champion’s League to start building a dynasty within your city, especially if you’re in one of the lesser divisions and have had to work especially hard to conquer Europe. The ‘No Dynasty’ rule means that once you won the Champion’s League with a club, you have to enjoy those news messages about how awesome you are, pack up your things and immediately resign.

List of clubs you can manage (sorted by metro population):

Moscow- FC Spartak Moscow, Lokomotiv Moscow, Dynamo Moscow, CSKA Moscow, Torpedo Moscow

Istanbul- Kasımpaşa S.K., Kartal S.K., Güngören B.S., İstanbul B.B., Galatasaray A.S., Fenerbahçe S.K., Beşiktaş J.K.

Paris- Paris FC, Paris Saint-Germain, Red Star, Racing Club

St Petersburg- FC Zenit St Petersburg, Petrotest, Dynamo St Petersburg

Berlin- FC Union Berlin, Hertha Berlin

Naples - Napoli

Athens- Ilioupoli, Kallithea, Ethnikos Asteras, Panionios, Atromitos, AEK Athens, Panathinaikos, Olympiakos

Rome- Roma, Lazio

I'm not a fan of the fact that Naples and Rome have been added. Could have in that case added Stuttgart, Valencia, Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum, Lisbon, Rotterdam ... the list is endless!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Europe

That's exactly the list I was pulling from, Cymro. The "CityPopulation.de" column since its data is the most recent. If I extend it out to 10, then the next two metro areas on the list that haven't won a CL title would be Kiev and Budapest. If you want, I could add those two and make the challenge harder.

do they have to be european cities?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population

The original intention, when this challenge was laid down years ago, was to just win the UEFA Champions League with the cities listed. If someone wants to draft up another challenge involving other regions' champions leagues, or if you wish to create your own challenge, then go for it.