I’ve given it a few days after full release, but it’s time to finally get this show on the road. This will be a fairly short one, just a quick look at how I’ve set the save up and a little look around areas of the club to build a little short term to do list. I was going to do a squad evaluation, but I’ll save that for a separate post!

Save Setup

Firstly, the boring stuff!

I’m running a fully vanilla game, with the only addition (apart from graphics packs) being the Real Name Fix from Sortitoutsi. I will potentially add some mods down the line, but nothing that would affect the actual save.

I’ve probably loaded a more beefy database than I needed, with all of the North and South American nations included, plus the traditional top seven European nations. I haven’t set every league in every nation as playable, but the ones excluded are still running as view only. 

🇦🇷 – Torneo Betano – Playable/View Only Below
🇧🇷 – Campeonato Brasileiro Série A Betano only – Playable/View Only Below
🇨🇦 – Canadian Premier League Only – Playable
🇨🇱 – Liga de Primera Itaú only – Playable/View Only Below
🇨🇴 – Liga BetPlay DIMAYOR only – Playable/View Only Below
🇬🇧 – Sky Bet Championship and above – Playable/View Only Below
🇫🇷 – Ligue 1 McDonald’s only – Playable/View Only Below
🇩🇪 – Bundesliga only – Playable/View Only Below
🇮🇹 – Serie A Enilive only – Playable/View Only Below 
🇲🇽 – Liga de Expansión MX – Playable
🇳🇱 – VriendenLoterij Eredivisie only – Playable/View Only Below
🇵🇪 – Liga 1 Te Apuesto only – Playable
🇵🇹 – Liga Portugal Betclic only – Playable/View Only Below
🇪🇸 – LaLiga Hypermotion and above – Playable/View Only Below
🇺🇸 – Major League Soccer only – Playable
🇺🇾 – Liga AUF Uruguayo only – Playable/View Only Below

I haven’t included the women’s leagues in applicable nations, because I won’t be venturing into that world in this save, and don’t want to slow the game down more than necessary. I do look forward to diving into women’s football down the line, though!

I’ve also added all players based in nation, and of nationality in Mexico – for obvious reasons – and all players of Spanish nationality. The reason for the Spanish nationality is to potentially find extra players with Mexican second nationality, and I should probably have done the same with America for the same reason, but alas!

That gives us an approximate pool of 84000 players, with a ‘relaxed’ game speed. I’m not too concerned about the speed in all honesty, but if it does start to become unbearably slow then I’ll remove some of the South American nations to speed things up!

It shouldn’t really need saying, but I’ll be starting the save based on the Mexican dates, beginning in early pre-season to give myself as much time as possible to get prepared for our first campaign. I’m also playing on Real World mode, as I have in basically every save since it was introduced to the game, to give myself the most realistic start to a save possible. 

The Manager

Over the last few years I’ve liked to use a different person as my manager. Sometimes it’s a newgen from a previous save, but usually it’s an ex-player who either has links to the club or nation I’m managing in. This year, I’ve gone a little left field, but I could think of only one man to bring to life in the new manager creator.

That’s right, Santiago Muñez will be taking the reigns at Chivas! The Goal! Movies are a definite guilty pleasure of mine, and I couldn’t resist!

In terms of the manager profile, I’ve tried to tie some details into the events of the movies. Although his age is never revealed, it’s implied that in 2005, when Goal! released, Santi is a teenager. Therefore I’ve given him a date of birth that would make him 19 in 2005, and 39 now. That’s fairly young for a manager, but definitely not unreasonable and, in lore terms at least, would make respect a little tougher to earn. 

It’s also never revealed where Santi was born, but as he hopped the border into America, I’ve set his city of birth as Tecate which sits close to the Mexican/American border.

To create Santi’s attribute spread, I’ve set his playing history as a Continental Icon, with a Continental B Licence and a non-playing role as a former Youth Coach. That gives Santi a Continental reputation but at the lowest level within that bracket, which I feel is fair. 

I seem to have run into some issues when setting Santi’s personality traits. I did set the Coaching Style to be Attacking, a Developer and an Entertainer, but it seems only Entertainer survived once I entered the save. On the Mental side Santi is Driven and Convincing (see how many times he was given another chance during his Newcastle trial to back this one!)

All of that gives Santi an overview that looks like this.

Early Work

Having had a little poke around the save file before I make any progress, there are definitely some areas that need work as a matter of urgency.

Sorting the Squads

I mentioned in the introduction to this save that we have far too many players – 132 across four squads. That is insane in itself, but considering we have no transfer budget and are overspending on wages, it’s absolutely criminal. We obviously need to cut the numbers dramatically, but firstly we need to re-organise so that we at least have a workable first team squad, which is currently 63 players deep.

Contract Decisions

It seems silly to look at contract renewals considering what I’ve just said about the finances, but we come into the club with eight players in the last six months of their deal and a further five in the last year. There probably isn’t a huge amount of work to be done here, but we might need to consider moving to extend the likes of Chicharito pretty quickly if that’s the way we want to go.

Get Some Staff In

I don’t necessarily think that staffing should always be an early priority when joining a new club if you’re approaching a save with a realistic approach. Many managers will take key staff with them into a new club, but it’s very rarely a day one job to go through and decide who will stay and go across the board. 

When we have as many vacancies as we do though, I think we need to get some extra bodies through the door to support our efforts.

I’m excited to get this fully underway, starting next time out with a squad evaluation! I guess there’s just one thing left to do…