My Football Manager 16 Story #3: Guillermo, The Professional
After a few weeks, I had an excellent insight into the reality of the Spanish third division football. Empty stadiums, numerous young talents on the pitches and rapidly growing debts of the most clubs. Pena Sports made a good start, scoring two valuable victories and staying somewhere in the center of the table. My first adventure with the Spanish Cup ended however very soon, which I accepted with a big relief. Welcome to another episode of my FM16 story!
My boss didn’t care about Copa del Rey and I preferred to spare the strength of my players for the league struggle. Just in few weeks, I got the chance to once again meet the same problems with football players, that I remembered well from my past jobs. This time it was mostly about extending the contracts of two of my best players at the moment, Benat Aleman and Samuel Cardo. They both arrived in my office one day to announce that after this season they leave, because Pena Sports is too small and non-perspective club for their ambitions. In fact, it was the only Benat talking, his co-worker just listened, nodding his head from time to time. After the meeting, I knew who I need to start breaking in the first place. Damn, I’m even starting to think like my employers.
In the meantime, injured goalkeeper Guillermo Munariz recovered after a few weeks. He used his long break from football to plot revenge on his new rival, Rich Paz. Not so many days after his return my other keeper got a mysterious injury on one of the training sessions. In Pena Sports FC, even the players sometimes behave like members of gangs.
Fortunately for me and the whole team, Paz substitutes presented decent level of skills, so I didn’t have to nervously look for the return of my first choice. Instead, I was busy searching for the lost form of my team, which after a successful start completely lost it and failed to win next series of matches. Draws and losses quickly pushed the club into the relegation battle and me into the cold embraces of death. Anyway, that’s what I imagined, waiting for another call from the office of my nervous boss. Finally, the phone rang and the car with Arturo behind the wheel drove up to the front of my house.
One of my new additions to the squad – Bernardes Saraiva from Juventus FC, was even selected to Brasil U-20 team.
It was a strange conversation. Probably the strangest I had in my coaching career. My boss wasn’t angry at all. He only smiled ironically and made some remarks about my work, asking about the progress of my players. It’s hard, isn’t it Brucevsky? – he asked – but that’s how it is in Spain, a country hospitable only for tourists. After leaving the office I knew one thing, I’m not in some regular club and my employers don’t take the whole thing dead serious. Maybe Pena Sports is just a cover for their less legitimate interests? Money laundering tool? Do fans and players realize this? Once again I thought that I put my new players into quite a mess.
Speaking of them, they showed great potential and decent skills, but mostly on training. I saw them progress with every game, but that was a good sign for future and I needed miracles right now. Another draw and losses made Pena Sports fans angry and soon they started reviewing my job with not many kind words. What’s worst, their aimed some new players, believing they don’t play with a desire to give everything for the team.
The situation worsened to the point where I had to make some tactical changes. My quite brave formation was scraped to make a place for more classical one, with well-organized defense. I reduced the number of individual commands for defenders and simplified tactics. This turned out to be a bullseye because Pena Sports quickly started playing again like in the beginning. It was necessary to make up for lost points before. But how to do this, when there is no regular striker in the squad?
How will Pena Sports play in next weeks? You don’t want to miss another episode of my FM16 story!
