Football Italia: Season 5 – High Hopes for a bright future

Season Five: High hopes for a bright future

As I play through the first few games of the season, I decided to put to use the hours of PlaygroundAI work before this save, ensuring that the D’Anzi from his playing days looks different to when he took over and now, at 40 years old. What is more, I decided to take a short break from playing to look through the leagues and re-immerse myself with all things Italian football. My love of calcio has meant that I’ve visited these shores in pretty much each edition from FM05 onwards, as, from what I remember, my CM experiences were somewhat different and involved Diablo, Freddy Adu and Orri Frey Oskarsson! I looked through the teams playing in the Prima Categoria – the seventh tier – and found teams like Fano and Chieti, who I remember facing off against in previous years. In the sixth tier is Pistoiese, who played Serie B football at the start of the century and started the 23/24 season with a ninety-point penalty as, in real life, they’re out of business again. This is like a Championship team falling to the Vanarama North or South in the space of fifteen years. In the Eccellenza, two tiers above, I found the new Lanciano team – once a Serie B side – as well as Castel di Sangro, where this story very nearly started and only didn’t as I was unsure whether I’d have enough playing time to get to this kind of level to make my statistics and player development stuff properly worthwhile!

Back at Messina, Braschi was subject to a huge big from Saudi Arabia and, with only the free transfer window open – and free transfers available to sign at any time – nomadic striker Marco Tumminello joined us. He’s a journeyman but has scored across most levels of Italian football and his experience will be useful. The biggest thing, for me, is that the financial support, to the tune of €2.13m next year alone, will set us up for a great opportunity to build a bit more heavily towards a Serie A squad. Before I reach the promised land, I want to secure the strong, Italian spine and compliment that with players who are ready to make the step up with us, rather than needing recruiting over what will always promise to be a mad summer! However, that is, at least, ten months away, and my focus must remain on the now and not just the next!

The biggest change here is the role of Lucenti. Whilst still a DLP(s), he’s worked hard over the last six months and has added the ‘Comes Deep For Ball’ trait to his ‘Wants Ball Into Feet’ and ‘Plays One-Twos’ meaning that he is very much the hub in our central build up. His deeper position in the earliest part of our transition puts him into space and allows him to take the ball either facing our goal or the opposition’s, depending on the intensity of their press. However, when we move forward, he resumes his position in the double pivot and box shape continues, ensuring that we have the overload in the centre that has been really important to us. An injury to Ciurria means that, currently, we have no fit left wing backs at the club and might need to re-evaluate how we play given this news!

The season started in a way that reminded me why I cannot bank on prize money! We faced Serie A Frosinone and I smelt an upset. With 1.41xG to their 0.03xG, where their only shot of the game didn’t hit the target to then bow out on a penalty shootout defeat – with my purposeful choices of Verre and Ciurria taking penalty four and five, given their vast experience – was heartbreaking. The league season then kicked off in the hardest possible way, playing two of the relegated sides first. 2.17xG to Cagliari’s 1.87xG (which included their penalty) means that a 2-1 defeat, particularly so late in the game and for such a soft penalty, felt like daylight robbery. We then backed that up with another xG win against Cremonese but couldn’t find the goal in a pretty dull affair.

Following that, we’ve not played a team who finished in the top half of our league, as seen on the season planner, below:

Therefore, despite the strong performances, including a big derby win over 9-man Catania, these results were pretty much expected. Next month will see us play a plethora of teams who finished up and around us last season, including a Cesena side we beat in the playoffs. That being said, their current positions this year are not as strong as I’d have expected, with SPAL sat bottom of the league and Brescia struggling, too.

With significant pressure on Lecce boss Lamberto Zauli, their game against table topping Verona will be a big one for us as well. I am happy with our lofty position here but don’t expect it to necessarily look this way by the time we have progressed to close to Christmas as the game against Lecce in December makes that most significantly harder, given the start that ex-midtable sides Verona and Salernitana have had.

– – –

Arana | Moraga | Owusu | Biagioni| Tedesco | Gambardella | Kouakou | Nicolini

A note from an unexpected mentoring change reminded me that, post Catanzaro tie, I had twenty days before our Cesena fixture and I really need to sort out the individual training plans for my most talented youngsters. These star ratings are not everything but are good indicators of who needs time put into them to develop a lot, meaning that I don’t see captain and vice captain duo Lucenti and Bellino here – they are just honing their skills and ensuring they get high quality playing time, good morale and consistently high level coaching.

With no money prior to our lovely new Saudi friends, I was unable to properly staff the youth coaching ranks but will spend significant amounts of time now getting adverts out for and using some elements of searching – keeping it as realistic as I can by searching for those within the Italian game etc rather than specific attributes – to build the coaching team, ensuring that those not within my first team have the best opportunities.

I will then assess their attributes creating the rolling P/R/D and additional focus areas with monthly notes to track their progress.

– – –

Lots to do and lots to be excited about! Forza Biancoscudati!