FM 2020 Journeyman Story: One More Turn — Introduction

Gabriel’s Diary

Duesseldorf, December 18th 2017 — Starting the Monday hungover. I can’t remember what happened in the past few days. Likely, I tried to get high again, to get away from the things that happened in the past few months. And oh, I can still remember those. Found a note from Amelie dated last Friday. She won’t let me come over to see the kids for Christmas. Bad influence and her parents don’t want to see me. The worst thing about this: I’m not even feeling bad about the news. Maybe I should just leave for good.

[Note to self: I’m not pondering suicide. So if anyone reads this after I die a cruel death — it was murder!]

While the hangover lifted, I started feeling the urge again. Break away from this place that has so many memories of a not so distant past. Flee before I lose all of my sanity. Started browsing the web. Found a cheap flight to Sydney leaving Dec 25th. Apparently, people are too busy celebrating with their relatives and won’t want to fly on Christmas. Suits me well. I will go to the end of the civilized world, and then even further. Find some Pacific island where nobody knows me or asks questions. Do some honest work. Clear up my mind. And most importantly: never ever ever ever kick a ball again.

An Introduction of Sorts

Hi everyone, I’m BjoernsFM and discovered my love for blogging about my FM career last year when I followed Swedish Tax Assessor Sigurd Hansen on his path to glory in the Swedish leagues. For FM20, I am planning to do a single save over the course of the whole year. This won’t work without things to aim for and I therefore started looking for a challenge. I’m therefore going to aim for the Hexagon Challenge.

The Challenge is simple: start out as an unemployed manager with Sunday league reputation. Go on to win the 6 major continental cup competitions: Oceanian CL, Asian CL, African CL, NACL, Copa Libertadores, and UEFA Champions League. Due to its nature, this challenge will take some time and involves moving clubs every now and then, so it is technically also a journeyman challenge.

House Rules

Just moving clubs and ticking off competitions sounds a bit boring on its own. I am therefore spicing things up a bit with sub-challenges.

1. Achievement Hunter: The wonderful Lutterworth Fox outlined 45 achievements he’s going to aim for in his Haugesund save. Those are not necessarily identical with steam achievements, but rather cover all areas of the management play. I intend to get as many of them as possible as well. This may extend my stay at a club as sometimes I’ll have to just stick around for the achievements.
2. Nation Lock-in: As I said, this is a journeyman through all continents and thus I will be moving on. However, instead of just winning the local Champion’s League and moving on, I am restricting myself to a country until the point where I have won the country’s top division as well as at least one cup competition. This again may mean I’ll be spending more time at a club or in a country.
3. Random Addon: Lending another idea from Lutterworth’s last year save (which unfortunately isn’t online anymore). For every club, I’ll randomly add one of the following requirements:
   • Director of Football: The DoF takes over all transfer activity and contract extensions. I remain in charge of hiring and firing the DoF though.
   • Youth: I’m only allowed to sign players until age 23. I may extend contracts when they get older, but I’m not allowed to sign older players myself.
   • Nation: I may only sign players that are considered home-grown in the current nation. If there are foreign players at the club, they may run their contracts out but cannot be extended.
   • Tactics: my main tactic will have a special focus. This can be the use of one of the more uncommon roles (like Wide Target Man, Libero, or Secundo Volante), or the use of a specific tactical framework (like strikerless or 3-in-the-back)
   • Free Reign: no additional rules. I can do as I please.

My manager alter ego this year is Gabriel Ameobi. Gabriel was a right-winger last year in my stay at Schalke and helped me win five consecutive Bundesliga titles. Now you may ask: Why is Gabriel starting out with Sunday League experience? — Apparently, certain things happened after I left Schalke and Gabriel today is a vastly different human being than he was at his footballing heights. I will share more of those details with you along the way.

That’s all for now. Write to you soon!