My Football Manager Journey
Smoggies, Originally, this was a term of abuse for supporters of Middlesbrough FC coined by their Sunderland A.F.C. counterparts. The name was meant to refer to the pollution once allegedly produced by the local petrochemical industry, and from Dorman Long. Though, at first, Smoggie was used as a pejorative term, it has become an example of reappropriation with many people now proudly calling themselves ‘Smoggies
Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro : Part 2 The Season Kicks Off”
Welcome to my brand new save with Middlesbrough FC a club based arguably in North Yorkshire or Teeside England. So why Middlesbrough? Here is an introduction to the save, after reading @FM_Laudrup fantastic blog about Glasgow Rangers I was inspired so much so that I wanted to manage somewere in the North of England or Scotland. I also wanted to takeover a club with an infrastructure that over time will allow me to build a youth academy in the North of England that will mirror the likes of Sporting Club in Portugal who are renowned for their development of technical players and be competitive in the Premier League, but first I need to get to work on getting the club out of the Championship.
Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro (The Story Of An Italian In The North East)”
Welcome to the latest instalment of The Serpents Kiss. If you are viewing for the first time you might want to start at the beginning of my journey with Internazionale if this is the case you can click on the following text: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. So you are up to speed with the story so far with us topping the Serie A table at the halfway stage of season 2. We had also qualified for the Champions League knockout stage of which we had been given a tasty draw against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City. The January transfer window also saw one of our central defenders Milan Skriniar join FC Barcelona for a fee of £35.5m which opened the door for our two young Belgian defender’s Vanheusden and Van Den eynden to battle it out with our promising Italian Davide Bettella for a first team place. I did enter the transfer window to bring Filippo Melegoni in to the club from Atalanta for a fee rising up to £14m which I feel is a reasonable price to pay for the talented youngster.
Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (2.2) Campione D’Italia”
I am pleased to announce that thewideplaymaker will be sharing his FM writing here at fmcatenaccio. Michael decided to take a step back from his own blog and just play the game he loved for so long. During this time Michael started a career in Italy with Lazio which turned in to a story that he could not resist writing about. During this time Michael also helped me immensely to set up my very own blog space to write about my beloved Internazionale. We have formed a great friendship over this time which I have realised Michael’s knowledge of the game and Football in general. I welcome the wideplaymaker and am pretty sure you will enjoy the forthcoming series ‘The Eagle Has Landed”
Welcome back to The Serpents Kiss, the story of my managerial career at Internazionale which is well in to season two. If you are new to this blog you can catch up with the story so far by scrolling to the bottom of this post were you can view the links to the previous four posts. A quick recap of whats gone on at the Giuseppe Meazza so far: Season 1 saw us finish 4th in the table and qualify for the Champions League thanks to a solid team performance throughout the season were we played a 4-1-4-1 system. Our top four finish owed a lot to the goals of Mauro Icardi who netted 23 during the season, Icardi then demanded the chance to talk to Manchester United which resulted in a £74m transfer and me looking at ways to fill the Argentine’s void.
Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (2.1)’The Rise Of Mazzocchi’”
With season one over its time to start building for the season ahead, but to be honest I was planning for season 2 many game months ago however I did not see the departure of our top scorer Mauro Icardi leaving the club because in January he said he would stay with us providing we got Champions League football, fast forward 5 months and his head was turned by Manchester United and he declared his desire to join them. We agreed a deal worth £74m and Icardi departed closely followed by Vecino (WBA), Dalbert (PSG) and Ranocchia (WBA) from our first team squad along with a few fringe players bringing in a very welcome initial £86m that will rise very soon to over £120m with a few add ons which will be triggered after some short appearance clauses similar to Icardi’s which will bring in £16m after just 5 appearances for United.
Welcome back to The Serpents Kiss and if this is your first time viewing my blog you can get up to speed by viewing Part 1 and Part 2. Well to say my first season at Internazionale as been enjoyable would be an understatement. I am totally immersed in the save and loving every minute. In part one of the save we had played our first ten games of the season and sat comfortably in 6th position just 2 points off of 2nd place and 8 behind leaders Juventus. So I will pick the save up from the end of part 1 because part 2 was a post about my objectives for the save going forward.
Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (1.2) Season One Review”
Let me welcome you to my 2nd post of ‘The Serpents Kiss’ that is tracking my managerial career at Internazionale. In my first post which you can read here I talked about the tactic that I would be using and reviewed my first 10 games of the season. In today’s post I am going to talk about the objectives of the save, but first I would like to thank everyone who have made me welcome around the blogging scene and the feedback that they have given me.
The Serpents Kiss is the title of my FM18 save with Internazionale. I have had heaps of support over the last 12 days or so on social media platforms whilst I try to build a modern day Catenaccio system. I have to admit I have found it pretty difficult to replicate Helenio Herrera’s version but I think I am now on the road to building a defensive system that will be the catalyst of a successful tactic (fingers crossed). On meeting with the chairman the minimum expectation this season is to qualify for the Champions League.
