renskay - Comments

Something else I wanted to share after I was checking the Ghana leagues for players to add to the database was this player who really stood out to me called Mark Kagawa.

I had never heard of him before but he looks absolutely incredible.

He was a runner up for the Ghana young player of the year award (Odartey Lamptey Future Star Award) at only 15  where the winner Abdul Aziz Issah earned a move to Barcelona. I assume this guy Kagawa must be being scouted by huge clubs too. 

San Diego FC Update

I am still working on adding players to the database, mainly US prospects but also some African talents and missing Tijuana players.

My sources are mainly transfermarkt and this excellent website I've found for US prospects called US Soccer Collective. 

This will take some time to get through these players and add their details so please have patience as the next update will not come immediately.

Since Cristiano Ronaldo Jr. was born in San Diego I'm including him too for the culture.

Transfer

San Diego FC Acquires San Diego Native Midfielder Luca de la Torre on Loan from RC Celta de Vigo.

Transfer

Anders Dreyer will move to San Diego FC to sign a 3 year deal on a designated player contract for a 5 million euro transfer fee and a 1.5 million dollar a year contract plus bonuses.

(Source)

The update for the latest signings will be delayed as I am working on adding US youth prospect to the database that are missing in this version of FM.

I will be adding about 500 players including graphics.

I have also reviewed the performances of players in the MLS over the 2024 season and given the players who performed well a boost to their CA to reflect their real life performances.

Transfer

San Diego FC (SDFC) announced today the Club has signed midfielder Alejandro Alvarado Jr. from Portugal’s FC Vizela through the 2026 MLS season with Club options for 2027 and 2028. San Diego FC (SDFC) announced today the Club has signed midfielder Alejandro Alvarado Jr. from Portugal’s FC Vizela through the 2026 MLS season with Club options for 2027 and 2028. 

Transfer

San Diego FC is set to add U.S. men's national team midfielder Luca de la Torre from Celta Vigo on loan with a future purchase option.

(Source)

I will include the transfer to the update when it's confirmed so I can set the correct future purchase price to the loan agreement.

Nice to see San Diego are prioritising signing local players from the San Diego area.

Latest Update

I've been tweaking the file to try to adjust the newgen intakes for the RTD San Diego academy and I think I've got it to a place I'm satisfied with.

The majority of newgens will now be USA-Mexican dual nationals (due to San Diego being a very Mexican city) with other newgens appearing from regions RTD scouts in West Africa and Egypt with the odd couple newgens from neighbouring cities in the US and across the border in Tijuana.

Since RTD scouts almost the entirety of west Africa and has more than just Ghanian players come through their ranks this feels like it's more accurate to how the model could work in real life.

I also didn't like that my newgens were appearing as Just American with no second nationality (even when they had Spanish names) because it's more than likely most of the players coming through RTD San Diego will be Hispanic of some sort, but mostly Mexican obviously.

The new update should resolve this.

I'd say the team is missing about 5 players to make a well rounded squad. 

Team needs a RB, Winger, Offensive minded Midfielders, Backup Striker.

If they're going to go down the Right To Dream route again like with the Boateng signing they might sign Ema Twumasi for cover at RB and give options on both wings.

For the striker it seems kind of obvious they will sign Milan Iloski from Nordsjaelland (American & San Diego native)

Transfer

• Finnish national team player Onni Valakari will join MLS club San Diego FC on loan from Pafos in Cyprus, according to information from MTV Urheilu. The parties have reached an agreement on the transfer. Valakari, 25, will travel to California to finalize his move, which is now pending a medical and final contract details. Barring any surprises, he will be announced as San Diego's new player. San Diego will pay a substantial compensation to Pafos for the loan covering the entire MLS season, in addition to which a purchase option of approximately 1.5 million euros will be included in the agreement.

(Source)

The 10-year agreement also designates Sharp as one of the club’s top-tier Chrome Club partners and includes marketing rights in both the health care and health insurance categories. A source with knowledge of the agreement said it is worth several million dollars annually and ranks in the top three among naming-rights deals for MLS training facilities. 

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/01/10/san-diego-fc-sharp-healthcare-training-facility

I think in the vanilla version Scotland has 15 regions (more than England).

This is where I was confused though because there are “council areas” which are more modern and there are historic counties.

I wasn't sure which made more sense to divide Scotland into.

Should I make it in historic counties or the council areas? I don't know which is more commonly used.

With the editor the best way to recreate another league's structure is to check the advanced rules already in the game for that league.

The MLS groups are set in the advanced editor as group 0 and Group 1 with the teams being assigned a 0 or 1 to allocate them to the correct group.

To see the MLS advanced rules, add nation rules for USA then convert it to advanced rules without changing anything in the basic rules.

I had a geography question regarding Scotland.

When adding the regions for Scotland I wasn't sure which way to subdivide things into that would make the most sense.

Does Scotland have counties like England because when I searched it up it seems that Scotland no longer uses counties.

What way do you thin would make most sense?

Thank you for the praise.

Glad I could help.

The Athletic reporting today the deal to sign Kevin De Bruyne is getting closer to being completed.

Tom Bogert reported that SDFC placed a 5 million dollar bid for Ukranian winger Oleksandr Zubkov a few days ago so I'm not sure if the Boateng move changes things on that or what.

Squad is still awaiting it's 2nd DP signing.

Transfer

• San Diego FC have acquired winger Emmanuel Boateng from the New England Revolution, the 2025 MLS expansion club announced Monday. In return for the 30-year-old Ghana native, New England will receive $200,000 in 2025 General Allocation Money (GAM).

Thanks for letting me know.

Just checked it out now.

I assumed they'd make a lot of partnerships in the area after things they've said in the media so it seems like I added quite a lot of these teams already to the affiliate list but I'll update the affiliates to just be the official ones now they've confirmed it.

Affiliate List:

• Nordsjaelland
• FC Masar
• Right to Dream (Ghana, Egypt, International, San Diego, San Diego (USL))
• Tijuana
• Club America
• San Diego Surf
• Vista SC
• Oceanside Breakers
• Nomads Soccer Club
• City SC
• North County Football Club 
• San Diego Albion
• Chula Vista Futbol Club
• Cardiff Sockers

I recall in some interviews them mentioning they would be working with local colleges (which is why I created the 3 San Diego University teams as affiliates)

I imagine in real life they'll send players there to study, fitting with the education first model of Right to Dream. 

I also made the University teams be affiliated to the Right to Dream academies so players from Ghana and Egypt will come through there too as happens in real life with the Ghana Right to Dream academy.

Transfers

• Franco Negri joins San Diego FC on free transfer from Inter Miami
• San Diego FC ( SDFC) announced today the Club has acquired the Homegrown Priority to forward Anisse Saidi from Philadelphia Union in exchange for $50,000 in 2025 General Allocation Money (GAM), $50,000 in 2026 GAM, additional incentives if certain performance metrics are met and a future sell-on percentage. SDFC has also signed Saidi as a Homegrown Player with a contract through the end of the 2028 MLS season with a Club option for an additional year.

I've made some interesting saves myself in the past where I wanted to sign player's only from Sudtirol, Catalonia, Azores, Sardinia, Brittany, and some other nations and a lot of the time before I start the save I'll create the nation for that region and then I can search for players of that “nationality".

It makes the team feel more true to the place when you can represent them better in this way with their own flag and everything.

I enjoy making these nations and sometimes it's easy to make them because the regions are already in the game to distinguish their bounds but with some I need to make entirely new regions and find out what the borders of the country/region actually are.

So this update will definitely help me make new nations a lot easier.

There are so many nations that serve no purpose in the game and I have no idea why they were included and SI don't allow you to add a single new one to their database.

Like does Saint Pierre and Miquelon really need a national team?

Thanks for the interest. 

For sure it's interesting to make new saves more unique and add an element of localism in you game.

So far I've added 5,000 new regions into the game and I'm working to sort the existing cities in the database into those new regions and then add new cities via script.

England and Ireland have been sorted into counties instead of broader regions for example and I've kept the name of the county on the name of the city so it'll be simple to search a county with a player's place of birth and find all the player's born in that county instead of having to know every city in the county to check.

When I play the game I like to try to sign local players so that helps with that.

Sorting the existing cities in the FM database is the most time consuming because I need to check each one (although for some I will sort them by coordinates only) but fortunately there's not that many for some nations.

When I add more cities I'll directly sort them into their proper region automatically so that should be a bit easier.

I usually source this data using the Wikdata query service so I'll need to collect that data in a spreadsheed and then add the information into the editor.

Transfers

• San Diego FC (SDFC) announced today the Club has signed free agent goalkeeper Pablo Sisniega to a one-year contract through the end of the 2025 MLS season with Club options for the 2026 and 2027 MLS seasons.
• Duran Ferree will rejoin FC Nordsjælland (FCN) on loan until June 2025.

Something I was uncertain on when creating San Diego FC was whether they would have a USL second team like it seems most MLS teams have, by default I created a II 2nd team to have a development squad but after listening to a local San Diego football podcast (San Diego.Futbol) they claimed that USL team would be an extension of the Right to Dream set up.

There's no real info to get more clarification but I assume if the Right to Dream academy will have their own USL team I can rename the San Diego II team in this database to something like Right to Dream (USL) and alter their kits and logo.

Sometimes it really is shocking how ungrateful the FM community can be to Editors who spend a lot of time making databases but you will see comments on your post completely dismissing the work.

Adding regions and sorting cities is a very time consuming process but I'm endeavouring to finish this project as I feel it will add a lot of texture to the game as well as making things like sorting regional leagues much simpler. Creating new nations, which usually requires figuring out the bounds of existing regions in the game to make new ones, would also be much easier.

I have an idea to include a couple newly created nations along with the region/city update along with graphics and then that can be a resource to act as a baseline for future FMs but I will also release a version without these nations.

New Nations to Include would probably be something like.

• Catalonia
• Greenland
• Somaliland
• East Turkestan
• Tibet
• Quebec
• Brittany
• Corsica
• Sardinia
• South Tyrol
• Punjab
• Northern Cyprus
• Sahrawi Republic
• Kurdistan
• Silesia
• Isle of Man
• Friesland
• Flanders
• Wallonia
• Azores
• Madeira
• Canary Islands
• Kabylia
• Etc, (I'm open to other ideas)

There are about 20 or so easily replaceable nations in the Database that would be suitable.

Sounds like that could work. Also Merry Christmas to yourself as well mate! Hope it's a good one.

I could probably do this yes.

Would you be able to provide me with a list of the players and staff members on the team?

I checked the website and it didn't seem like they have any squad images available.

Just shoot me a PM with any data you'd like me to add.

The file has been updated to include new staff and player additions as of the 20th of December.

As ever feel free to alert me of any errors in the database.

I'm sure a couple more signings will be coming in between now and January but obviously it's going to slow down around Christmas time.

All Superdraft players for San Diego have been added into the game.

The team now has 20 players! I know right. Shocking.