WARNING: I'm playing through team viewer on a potato laptop with my game running on my home PC so screenshots are bad.
Some bad results near the end of the season led us to drop to 3rd position but we managed to get back to 2nd and gain promotion through playoffs. We beat "Hrvace" 5-0 at home in the first leg of the promotion/relegation playoffs and lost 2-6 away in the second leg for a total result of 7-6 result for us.
We lost 5-2 in the semi-final of the cup against Rijeka, arguably one of the top 3-4 teams in Croatian top-tier.
And on to the next season 26/27. I wasn't paying attention to match selection rules which say that the team must have no more than 3 non-EU players in the first 11 and must have at least 3 U21 players in the first 11. I signed a bunch of over 21 non-EU players and spent my wage budget, even went over wage budget and as a result I couldn't select all of my good players in the first 11 and even had to select some youth players from our terrible youth academy every match.
Despite all that we managed to avoid relegation, finished 7th out of 12.
According to xPTS we should have done better but it is what it is. We need to start converting our chances in front of goal.
We managed to break a few records in Prva Hrvatska Liga:
1. Worst discipline 102 yellow cards and 5 red cards 2. Most goals scored: 74 in 33 matches 3. Highest scoring match: 7-3 win against Dugopolje away.
In the cup we got trough the preliminary round but in the first round we were drawn against the best club in Croatia, Dinamo Zagreb. We managed not to embarrass ourselves and only lost 2-0 against Dinamo.
There have been rumors of a takeover since the first season and this season it finally happened. Fans trust collected 22K euro and bought the club which was 170K in debt.
They didn't remove me from my position as manager. I am a club Icon already because of three promotions.
The new chairman already announced plans to build a new stadium and is looking for investors.
When I took over the club was playing at a 500 people capacity stadium (non-seated) and the Prva Hrvatska Liga rules demand a stadium with at least 1000 seats so the previous chairman rented a stadium in Bjelovar which is 20Km away from the club hometown Sveti Ivan Žabno.
Now we prepare for a new season(27/28). We need to sign some good U21 players for the first team and avoid non-EU players. Our wage budget got increased from 6.5K Euro to 9K Euro and I released some players who were not good enough on a free transfer to free up some wage budget.
We're in January 2026, 21 out of 30 league matches played.
In October last year the board and the fans have finally decided that it is no longer too early to judge my impact on club vision.
Players complain all the time but I never talk to them, I always click "Decline" to have a conversation and most of the time they let it go after a while. I didn't notice any negative impact of ignoring them all the time. We're getting good results on the pitch and that is what matters in football.
I also don't talk to media at all. There is nothing to gain by all those press conferences and repetitive questions and answers. Correct me if I'm wrong, if there is some benefit to it.
So I mentioned good results; most of the time we are at the top of the table except for two short dips to second place.
Both times we lost the "6 point match" against the 2nd place team and swapped positions with them.
Here is the current league table:
This is also our first year participating in the Cup and we're in the semi-final. We knocked out two teams from the top division. Slaven Belupo in the First round and Šibenik in the quarter-final.
Our squad consists of 72 players, most of them are not receiving weekly salary but in the current transfer window some players that I have signed have asked for a weekly wage. We're progressing.
Here is what is going on in the leagues that are simulated:
After another 5 matches things are looking better. We are in 4th place but if we take a look at the league xG table we should be first. I expect to keep getting good results.
And looking at the table I noticed that Bjelovar who took our best player on a free transfer is actually in the second league, not in top tier like I said earlier. I think the names of the leagues are weird because I used one editor file for "Real league names" and another that adds 3rd, 4th and 5th league to Croatia.
Here are the league names in Croatia in my save:
The 4th league is divided into 5 subleagues and the 5th league into 21 subleagues (21 is the number of counties in Croatia if county is a good translation for "Županija"
There are playoffs for promotion into a higher league but I won't go into too much detail now.
The release of FM26 has reignited my passion for playing Football Manager so I decided to start a new save in FM24. I will skip FM26 and maybe buy FM27 when they iron out all the issues.
For the new save in FM 24 I downloaded some editor files which add playable leagues in some European countries surrounding Croatia and started a game with top tier leagues from 18 countries plus Croatia down to 5th league.
You can join the game if you'd like but I did not set the game to continue automatically so you won't be able to progress if I'm not behind my PC to play and I don't know how often will that be. You can join and browse the game data if you'd like, I think I'll keep the PC running and online most of the time. Game name is "Balkan and others open server"
The team I have chosen is NK Tomislav-Radnik (Sveti Ivan Žabno). It's nearby IRL and it feels great playing a local team.
By the time I'm writing this I've already finished 2 seasons so I'm writing about the first 2 seasons in retrospective.
In the first 2 seasons we've had 32 new signings and I'll explain why:
1. We're an amateur team and it costs me nothing to sign a new player 2. Players like to join teams with strong squads so every signing that is above my squad average ability increases the number of players that are interested in joining us creating a snowball effect. 3. I'm roleplaying as a scumbag and I don't care if players complain about not playing enough
Te tactic I'm using is PERFECT STRANGERS 42112 WIWBA P107 EF which produced amazing results in the first season leading us to league win and a promotion to 4th league. You can find it here: Perfect Strangers
I'm also using AzureV3 set pieces which can be found here: AzureV3
FM Arena attribute testing section also helped a lot, I've been filtering all known players by pace and acceleration attributes and only signing the fastest ones. Generally wide players and strikers have around 2 attribute points higher pace and acceleration so it's good to also filter by position and lower the expectations for central defensive and midfield players.
After the promotion the board was asking me do I want the club to become semi-professional. I said yes of course and now in the second season we have to pay our players, not weekly wage but only per match appearance or per goal (bonuses).
Bookies are rating us as the 9th team despite just being promoted. They are giving us 34.0 coefficient to win the league (I don't do fractional odds but I guess this is 1:34)
In the new season we had only 28 signings because I've reached my "wage budget" even though I don't pay wages, only bonuses.
The players that don't play enough complain all the time but I always "decline" to talk to them.
I also don't do media talks. I consider it a waste of time. I don't want a season to last longer than the real world season.
In the January of 2025 I got an offer from Turkish top tier team but of course I declined. I'm more loyal to the club than I am to the players in this save.
I won't be signing so many players and treating them like they're disposable once I get to the top league, it's just a means to an end.
The second season went well with only 2 draws and 3 defeats. The players relaxed after we were crowned champions and we lost 3 of the last 7 games.
The board and the fans are only giving me a B- rating on my performance as a manager despite leading the team to an unexpected promotion.
Good news after the end of season 24/25, we are going to start charging for tickets. Finally some income. The club overall balance is red and it keeps going down ever since we became semi-professional and started paying bonuses to players.
That's it for now and I'll keep taking screenshots of interesting things in the game and posting here. We're going into a new season full of expectation. Next thing to do is sign some fast players with better "Current Ability".
Some bad results near the end of the season led us to drop to 3rd position but we managed to get back to 2nd and gain promotion through playoffs.
We beat "Hrvace" 5-0 at home in the first leg of the promotion/relegation playoffs and lost 2-6 away in the second leg for a total result of 7-6 result for us.
We lost 5-2 in the semi-final of the cup against Rijeka, arguably one of the top 3-4 teams in Croatian top-tier.
And on to the next season 26/27. I wasn't paying attention to match selection rules which say that the team must have no more than 3 non-EU players in the first 11 and must have at least 3 U21 players in the first 11. I signed a bunch of over 21 non-EU players and spent my wage budget, even went over wage budget and as a result I couldn't select all of my good players in the first 11 and even had to select some youth players from our terrible youth academy every match.
Despite all that we managed to avoid relegation, finished 7th out of 12.
According to xPTS we should have done better but it is what it is. We need to start converting our chances in front of goal.
We managed to break a few records in Prva Hrvatska Liga:
1. Worst discipline 102 yellow cards and 5 red cards
2. Most goals scored: 74 in 33 matches
3. Highest scoring match: 7-3 win against Dugopolje away.
In the cup we got trough the preliminary round but in the first round we were drawn against the best club in Croatia, Dinamo Zagreb. We managed not to embarrass ourselves and only lost 2-0 against Dinamo.
There have been rumors of a takeover since the first season and this season it finally happened. Fans trust collected 22K euro and bought the club which was 170K in debt.
They didn't remove me from my position as manager. I am a club Icon already because of three promotions.
The new chairman already announced plans to build a new stadium and is looking for investors.
When I took over the club was playing at a 500 people capacity stadium (non-seated) and the Prva Hrvatska Liga rules demand a stadium with at least 1000 seats so the previous chairman rented a stadium in Bjelovar which is 20Km away from the club hometown Sveti Ivan Žabno.
Now we prepare for a new season(27/28). We need to sign some good U21 players for the first team and avoid non-EU players. Our wage budget got increased from 6.5K Euro to 9K Euro and I released some players who were not good enough on a free transfer to free up some wage budget.
In October last year the board and the fans have finally decided that it is no longer too early to judge my impact on club vision.
Players complain all the time but I never talk to them, I always click "Decline" to have a conversation and most of the time they let it go after a while. I didn't notice any negative impact of ignoring them all the time. We're getting good results on the pitch and that is what matters in football.
I also don't talk to media at all. There is nothing to gain by all those press conferences and repetitive questions and answers. Correct me if I'm wrong, if there is some benefit to it.
So I mentioned good results; most of the time we are at the top of the table except for two short dips to second place.
Both times we lost the "6 point match" against the 2nd place team and swapped positions with them.
Here is the current league table:
This is also our first year participating in the Cup and we're in the semi-final. We knocked out two teams from the top division. Slaven Belupo in the First round and Šibenik in the quarter-final.
Our squad consists of 72 players, most of them are not receiving weekly salary but in the current transfer window some players that I have signed have asked for a weekly wage. We're progressing.
Here is what is going on in the leagues that are simulated:
BTW is there a limit on uploads here?
And looking at the table I noticed that Bjelovar who took our best player on a free transfer is actually in the second league, not in top tier like I said earlier. I think the names of the leagues are weird because I used one editor file for "Real league names" and another that adds 3rd, 4th and 5th league to Croatia.
Here are the league names in Croatia in my save:
The 4th league is divided into 5 subleagues and the 5th league into 21 subleagues (21 is the number of counties in Croatia if county is a good translation for "Županija"
There are playoffs for promotion into a higher league but I won't go into too much detail now.
Our best player left for Bjelovar who are newly promoted to top tier.
But there are some good news, the league signed a new TV deal! Oh what will I do with all the money?
This is how we lined up for the first match. I know you don't know any of the players, it's Croatian third league.
We played well, had higher xG but lost anyway.
Enough for today, we'll learn from this and come back stronger.
The release of FM26 has reignited my passion for playing Football Manager so I decided to start a new save in FM24. I will skip FM26 and maybe buy FM27 when they iron out all the issues.
For the new save in FM 24 I downloaded some editor files which add playable leagues in some European countries surrounding Croatia and started a game with top tier leagues from 18 countries plus Croatia down to 5th league.
You can join the game if you'd like but I did not set the game to continue automatically so you won't be able to progress if I'm not behind my PC to play and I don't know how often will that be. You can join and browse the game data if you'd like, I think I'll keep the PC running and online most of the time. Game name is "Balkan and others open server"
The team I have chosen is NK Tomislav-Radnik (Sveti Ivan Žabno). It's nearby IRL and it feels great playing a local team.
By the time I'm writing this I've already finished 2 seasons so I'm writing about the first 2 seasons in retrospective.
In the first 2 seasons we've had 32 new signings and I'll explain why:
1. We're an amateur team and it costs me nothing to sign a new player
2. Players like to join teams with strong squads so every signing that is above my squad average ability increases the number of players that are interested in joining us creating a snowball effect.
3. I'm roleplaying as a scumbag and I don't care if players complain about not playing enough
Te tactic I'm using is PERFECT STRANGERS 42112 WIWBA P107 EF which produced amazing results in the first season leading us to league win and a promotion to 4th league. You can find it here: Perfect Strangers
I'm also using AzureV3 set pieces which can be found here: AzureV3
FM Arena attribute testing section also helped a lot, I've been filtering all known players by pace and acceleration attributes and only signing the fastest ones.
Generally wide players and strikers have around 2 attribute points higher pace and acceleration so it's good to also filter by position and lower the expectations for central defensive and midfield players.
After the promotion the board was asking me do I want the club to become semi-professional. I said yes of course and now in the second season we have to pay our players, not weekly wage but only per match appearance or per goal (bonuses).
Bookies are rating us as the 9th team despite just being promoted. They are giving us 34.0 coefficient to win the league (I don't do fractional odds but I guess this is 1:34)
In the new season we had only 28 signings because I've reached my "wage budget" even though I don't pay wages, only bonuses.
The players that don't play enough complain all the time but I always "decline" to talk to them.
I also don't do media talks. I consider it a waste of time. I don't want a season to last longer than the real world season.
In the January of 2025 I got an offer from Turkish top tier team but of course I declined.
I'm more loyal to the club than I am to the players in this save.
I won't be signing so many players and treating them like they're disposable once I get to the top league, it's just a means to an end.
The second season went well with only 2 draws and 3 defeats. The players relaxed after we were crowned champions and we lost 3 of the last 7 games.
The board and the fans are only giving me a B- rating on my performance as a manager despite leading the team to an unexpected promotion.
Good news after the end of season 24/25, we are going to start charging for tickets. Finally some income. The club overall balance is red and it keeps going down ever since we became semi-professional and started paying bonuses to players.
That's it for now and I'll keep taking screenshots of interesting things in the game and posting here. We're going into a new season full of expectation. Next thing to do is sign some fast players with better "Current Ability".