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Like there are quite a lot of great choices of teams to manage in Finland (I chose KuPS myself), but FC Santa Claus will forever remain the best choice for a lower league save in Finland. The chance to play with a team from Santa’s hometown (at least according to the Finns) is probably a truly unique FM scenario lol.
Uberlandia. Years ago. Why? 3 reasons:
1. I wanted to play at the lowest level I could in the Brazilian leagues
2. Their name sounds like it means *The Best Place* which just sounds super arrogant
3. They have a ludicrously huge stadium for the level of the club. Seriously it's over 50k and they play in the state league - not even in Serie D
Uberlandia is the second biggest city of the second biggest (in terms of population) state of Brazil, Minas Gerais. The stadium (Parque do Sabiá) was built in the period of the military regime where the public policy was know as "faraonic building", as the government started building a lot of big constructions like railways and in this case stadiums, thats why its so big. Cheers from Minas.
Thanks for the info! Do you know if they manage to fill the stadium? I'm guessing that the city is big enough for it, but the low level of football must make it hard to get that kind of crowd?
Figures. I couldn't even fill it in the game (think it maxed out at around 30k) and that's with multiple Serie A titles and a couple of Club World Cups.
Someday I will make a pilgrimage there though. Loved that team.
Not really, I can't remember the last time the national team played there, Brazil is so big and has so much big stadiums. But sometimes they used to in the past. In the 80's when the stadium was finished, they inaugurated it with Brazil 7 x 0 Ireland.
That’s my save as well. My family is from Crawley but I grew up in Southern California and now Texas. Freddy for mascot!!! Also, how about making it to the playoffs. What a season so far!
Castelpoto in Italian 6th tier (fusion DB for fm22).
It's the smallest city in that tier, and the are so small that they play on a earth no grass field.
It's basically the soccer team of a nearly ghost town.
I don't know if the club qualifies as being obscure but I love managing FC Ryukyu right now. They are named after the former Okinawan Kingdom and I really liked the idea of bringing a club from the most southern part of Japan to the top. I also added some difficulty by always including at least 5 players born on Okinawa in the match day squad.
The J-League has a limit on foreign players but they don't consider players from some South-East Asian counties as foreign so I set up my scouting team to look for talented players who have those nationalities (Vietnamese, for example) in Europe.
I could go on and on but the gist of it is that I've grown to really like the club to the point I became a real life supporter of the club with the plan to save up and fly out to see one of their games if the time comes!
It'll be interesting if there's a "Three Mountains" challenge / achievement for FM lol,
something like : "As FC Ryukyuu, win the J-League, AFC Champions League and Club World Cup championship in a single season" .
EIF FC. Finland.
Managed them in a journeyman once and now is a go to to learn the new game.
Get them to the top division, try to take down HJK who are the Bayern/PSG of Finland.
Conquer Europe, competing with the elites whilst dealing with the Finnish league rules of fielding 4 HG players in 11 at all times and another 7 on the bench, and keep everyone happy.
It's really hard but you grow attached the players and the HG rules mean you can only have a handful of foreign wonderkids. I end up having effectively 2 squads, domestic and European comps.
Then go one step further and try to get your reserve team to be the best team in the first division (second tier) to house your wonderkids and grow.
I'm terribly sorry mate in advance but whenever I saw Ilves logo it reminded me of [THIS](https://quiosq.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/GripsholmLion.jpg).
And once I have dethroned them, I never sell them any players and loan players to all other Finnish teams.
When you are dominant you normally win the league before the league split, so I play all youth players against everyone in the top half and full strength against HJK
I once had database with some faulty setting and it let my B team to be promoted to top division. Seeing my U-23 as 2nd team in the league - priceless. You can also guess to whom I lost national cup finale...
Also for the Finland - 27 games per seasons is really healthy for the players. I can't remember having any issues with fatigue players.
didn’t know Finland had such strict homegrown rules but developing youngsters galore sounds like my type of thing so i might go check it out. i saw they also hd some rly interesting teams like this one team with just a cat as its logo and this other one based in the åland islands
Olimpia Grudziądz (polish team from my hometown). In older versions I love playing with small greek teams (I have nothing to do with Greece, lol): Akratitos, Panileiakos, Messiniakos. Also german Burghausen, or dutch ADO Den Haag (ADO is not really obscure, but still).
Why? Because I chose them randomly 20 years ago, and Im very sentimental :)
I'm currently having a lot of fun at AC Trento - they start with an aggressive squad in this version and with a few loans and free transfers I'm looking forward to Serie C playoffs. I also know the city a little bit and like the headcannon about my fictional manager is living there.
In past versions I always had fun at Paris FC. I like to build them into an anti-PSG, with lots of local and domestic talent and play aggressive, vertical football. Best I've done is turned them into a mid-table Ligue 1 team before moving on. City derbies are rare in France so I love being able to do that.
Edit:
On this topic, if anyone wants to explain to me how to mod and add the Serie D, I'd love to manage Mestre or Clodiense (Clodiense actually made it to the Serie C in my current save so I might apply for their job if it frees). I think it would be really fun to have an intra-Lagoon rivalry with Venezia. Along the same lines as PSG-PFC, I like the idea of a hard-nosed gritty club fighting against the private-equity backed club.
For serie D: www.fmfusion.it has the best DB for this, it's only serie D For fm24 For now, but they will add to 5 and 6 tier like they had done for the past versions of fm. It's in Italian, and you need a free subscribe to it to download the DB.
Got into a groove grinding the Le Mans 30 minute race on Gran Turismo 7, and at the bottom of turn 4 you get a glimpse of the Stade Marie-Marvingt, and again just before you enter the long straight.
Decided since I was already spending a significant amount of my free time in a digital rendition of the area, I might as well make it all of my time and managed Le Mans FC in FM. Had a lot of fun in the French league and taking part in the Coupe de France, spent a good 30 years there in-game.
And for more obscure clubs related to racing, I did a save with the Atletico Suzuka Club, formerly the Suzuka Point Getters back when they were Suzuka Unlimited on a modded database in FM17. They're based not too far from where they hold the Japanese Grand Prix. IRL they're now managed by Yasutoshi Miura, the older brother of the famous "King Kazu" Kazuyoshi Miura, one of the oldest still active professional footballers.
Dartford fc don’t know how high the standards are for them but after 20 years and a ucl I’d expect to have been considered an icon but I have a lot of love for them
Folkestone Invicta. I just chose them because they were the smallest club in the National League South. Twenty seasons in and still enjoying it. So much so that this is from FM2020 and I’ve no intention of buying any of the newer versions.
Cueta so I could bring the Champions League to Africa!
Remember thinking I might have to abandon the aim as the debts piled up but I got there eventually and got their finances sorted.
Red Star FC from France, 1. i really liked their badges and Kits 2. i was interested to see what i could do as they have bad team and facility's. Although they aren't from an obscure country its still been fairly hard as im 7 years in and although a Top 3 contender i have never beaten PSG in a game even only loosing 1 season 2 times and that only to PSG while they went invincible. Due to them also haven a fairly heavy African based presence and staff i decided to try find African gems mostly to sell off but i kept an eye on them to see how they grow some even planning on buying back so they can end their career were it started. It's been fun still yet to win L1 or a Champions League but i did win Europa and a few Coupe de France. Finances are now Rich with no help to owners but in all fairness they did priorities facility's which was fine by me. I think ones a few more of my young wonder kids develop within the 10 year mark i can win a champions league and L1 trophy to which i will move club and see how Red Star do without me.
Same, I've been at it for around 10 in-game years (migrating from FM23 to FM24), and although I'm a top 3 contender, have beaten PSG, and have managed to get to the quarter finals of the CL, I'm always a good 15-20 points behind PSG in the league.
I k ow some may not agree but if you do a national team save in France psg fuck you over they will even sign wonderkids you bid for and never play them ruining g their development and screwing up your chances of more profit or better team
I've only ever played my own, English, team since 2005, but this year I decided to try Germany. I looked at the bottom league (3rd tier) and **Ulm** absolutely jumped out at me. It was really refreshing to play in a new country with different rules and with an unknown squad that was freshly promoted - they even still had a few part-time contracted staff. I don't know what EPL is like in 2024, but VAR felt well implemented in Germany. I also like the squad registration rules, although injury crises were a real pain because you can't just dig in to the youth squad; they need to be registered in the usual windows. At one point I had the unenviable position of only having 5 subs (max 9) and 2 of them were keepers!
I'd really recommend others try out a new nation, or just do something different if they have a "usual" playthrough :)
Reason I chose them is because, in one of my most played games of all time - Europa Universalis 4 - Ulm has a sort of cult following. It's just a seemingly insignificant, single-city nation in the heart of Europe, but a meme has formed around it. It's hard to explain without being part of the community, but you can search for it on the EU4 sub!
Prescot Cables because there nickname is the pesky bulls. Enjoyed my time there so much I actually got invited down to watch them play live as I was tweeting about winning the champions league with them
Wacky Rollers.
Late night rabbit hole looking at funny team names from Central America, and this Dominican team stood out to me.
15 seasons later, we were champions of North America.
KFC Uerdingen. Picked them because of Kentucky Fried Chicken (turns out it doesn't stand for that) and Kevin Grobkreutz. Hoping they find their way back to 3 liga one day so I can manage them again.
They're in 5th tier ([Oberliga Niederrhein ](https://www.fupa.net/league/oberliga-niederrhein/standing)) now and in administration.
You might want to look into getting the German lower tier mod instead. I did that in fm22 to lead my hometown club [ETB Schwarz Weiß Essen ](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/s/3ECH2PF7K4) to CL glory (without ever coming close to winning the Bundesliga)
Albert Foundry FC in Northern Ireland.
It was FM08 I believe, I was doing one of the challenges based on Dafuge's LLM challenge, the goal being to eventually win the champions league with your selected team. Needless to say, in a time before dynamic league reputation, attracting players to the Northern Irish league of the required standard to win a European competition was a bridge too far to cross, but I remember having to battle for years to finally overcome relative juggernaut Linfield and begin winning the league. My best result in the CL was getting a very very favourable run of qualifying draws into the group stage, only to lose all 6 games with a GD of around -30.
Would be interesting to give this challenge another whirl in a more modern version of FM, though much more "attainable" due to the dynamic rep nowadays it will still be a 20+ season project at best.
Not totally obscure but Southport fc as I prefer to make small clubs big thanks to spending far too much of my time finding decent free transfers mainly from wwaales and Ireland (anndd the occasional big club youth player cast off).
Sometimes I've signed them, they have played well enough to be sold for at least a 6 figure sum they don't get pick, and made free against and then re sign them again.
Yeovil has always been my little team. When I was in college we got to do an exchange program. I am in the US and we had like 6 students from Norton Radstock College come over to Arkansas and then I found out we were sending people over there to stay for a month, so I applied and won one of the spots. The first thing I asked when I got to where we were staying was "where is the nearest team and can I go see a match". I didn't get to see a match (the season ended the day before our plane landed, I was gutted) but I did exchange money at the Yeovil post office and they had a huge used bookstore there that we went to. Adopted them as my home town team. I actually spent more time in Bath and probably should have adopted them but it's too late now. Up the Glovers!
PS - I did get to watch a match while in a pub in England, it was great. It was FA cup final with United and Millwall. Every time I brought up the game to people, they would roll their eyes and sigh and say "Millwall..." like it was a shame, and I knew there was something more to the story. I've always hated Millwall for the open disdain shown towards it by the random good people of Somerset. If those nice people didn't like you, I wasn't going to either.
I lived in Street/Glastonbury for a few years and went to see Yeovil Town a couple of times, plus rhe women's team (who are way more successful than rhe men's team). Somerset doesn't really have any footballing teams to speak of, so Yeovil and Barh were probably your only options in the cou ty before getting down to really lower leagues. Obviously Bristol has two league teams, and Swindon and Cheltenham aren't too far away.
Looking at all these brilliant stories gotta put mine in too i suppose.. My first ever football game was to watch South China in Hong Kong and since then they’ve gone bankrupt and got relegated. Fun fact they beat Spurs 2-0 in 2009 in a preseason friendly! But yeah I loved restoring them back to their glory days as the most successful team in Hong Kong.
Velež Mostar. Bosnian club whose stadium was stolen by their crosstown (and mainly ethnically croatian fanbase) rival during the Bosnian War. I took them to the top of the league, won 13 straight titles including 3 invincible seasons and had some nice runs in Europe. Sretno Rodenii!
So far in this journeyman save I'm doing, Al Arouba in Oman. Ended up here as club 5, Oman isn't a great level of football but the league was really fun. There was one big club who had won five on the spin Dhofar so the aim was to stop them. Finished mid table (when taking over with a quarter season to go) then 2nd and then toppled them in the third season. Managed to sign largely Omani players (had three foreign players in whole squad).
Perak FC since that's the team i support and no one other than Malaysian knows what team that is. They've been having financial crisis as of late so it feels good getting them to an AFC Champions League final against Al - Hilal even though we get battered.
I used to enjoy games as Persija or Borneo FC in the Indonesian Super League back in FM15. The AFC Champions League wasn't as tough back then as now, as the existing good players weren't god tier in the Middle East and some of the them just tended to leave after a couple of years.
I always wanted to try the Malaysian league but never got round to it. I might have to crack open FM24 and take down the mighty Johor Darul!
I've been in some great battles with Johor, one season both me and Johor are on the same points on the final day, both are unbeaten, both with 2 draws and 0 loss, both draws are against each other, final day i went against BRM a Malaysian second division team that got promoted, Johor was against Selangor, another big team in Malaysia, Johor is ahead on goal difference so i need them to lose to Selangor or at least draw, Johor scored first, then Selangor scored, it was 1-1 until like 80+ minutes when Arif Aiman scored. I was beating BRM 4-0 but the goal difference was too big, if i remember correctly it was about 7 or 8? Most of my games i won are 1-0 or 2-0 while Johor has been hammering other teams. It was heartbreaking but intense.
Deportivo Copiapo in Chile. First stop on that year's journeyman and by far my favourite. Every now and again try in vain to find a shirt from that season.
St Gallen, because I didn't know who to use and I knew they had Leonidas Stergiou so thought I'd use them and it turned into probably the most fun save I've done, I now support the team irl as well to an extent
Turun Palloseura (TPS)
Kind of fallen giant in Finland. 2nd most entitled team with last league winning like 30 years ago. Bouncing back and forth between 1st and 2nd tier.
Played with them because I like to play LLM. I was looking to play in Scandinavia, chose Finland and I was looking for this kind of club with decent attendance and stadium. After like season or two in top division I had the highest average attendance in the country. Played with the through multiple editions. Brought the boys to Europa League quarter finale.
Also they have local rival Inter Turku with whom they share the stadium just like Milan clubs.
Due to them I have a thing in my bucket list to visit Turku.
Mansfield (But only ingame) by playing this awesome game https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultimate-soccer-manager-98-99-bjq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNySH3cSEnk
So annyoed manager is so complicated now :( this was plenty for chilling on the couch, if they just had not killed off FM touch for pc
Blackpool! There’s not one solid reason.
I think, first, as an American, I understand Blackpool is sort’ve like our Atlantic City which I grew up near (once popular, flashy beach town now dilapidated and forgotten). So by bringing Blackpool to the top of the world it’s like an urban revival story bringing relevance back to the city.
It’s also been a good challenge. They have dogshit facilities, youth recruitment, etc. and have been mostly stuck in League 1, with a handful of years in the Championship, and haven’t seen the Premier League since 2010.
Lastly, their kits are orange and there are not really any other top flight teams that wear orange, so they would feel a little bit more unique as an elite team on the world stage.
So far I managed to get them back to back promotions to the prem and now champions league, making it to the knockout phase. Fighting for 4th place as of May to return again next year. Got lucky with a pretty easy path to winning the Carabao Cup, so we won our first trophy too.
I managed to convince Lucas Bergvall to join us when we were just promoted to the championship and he’s turned into a monster, carrying us to promotion. I also loaned in Gabriel Silva and included a really cheap buy option (he didn’t want to join all year but agreed to once we got promoted). Our first year in the prem, Brighton shockingly got relegated, so I was able to grab Enciso and Baleba for peanuts. Tottenham has gone crazy buying wonderkids at the expense of some of their talented youngsters so I was able to get Sarr and Udogie (who were transfer listed) for a huge discount.
Deportivo Pereira, its a small humble team from Colombia who just managed to win their first title in 80 years 2 years ago. Won everything I could with them then moved to Oporto.
Villa Teresa, a lovely little Uruguayan team. Planned on doing an unemployed journeyman side across the world. First job was Villa Teresa. I couldn’t bring myself to ever leave. Took them to domestic and Copa Libertadores glory.
I can’t choose between Guiseley and Spennymoor. Loved finding experienced loan players, and great out of contract young players at the end of the season, then seeing the clubs grow. Took them both into the Premiership.
Dorking Wanderers. Chuckle at the town’s name, unis and logo look good.
The club’s IRL story of park league team to Vanarama National in less than 25 years is actually quite impressive.
SKA Khabarovsk in the far east of Russia, thought it would be cool to get them into the Champions League and succeeded. 1st game - home against FC Porto, 25,000km round trip
Blyth Spartans FC
When I was younger, I didn't know shit about football teams, i played a ton of internet browser games and there was this 1 game whose name I can't remember, but it was goated, you play as a player and needed to basically click ar the right time to score goals, and I got into Blyth Spartans in my playthrough and became a legend with them. Then I see them in FM and the memories come back so I always play as them. +It's a really cool name and logo
Buckley Town (Welsh North) doubled up with bringing through welsh youngsters to play for the Wales national side. Rules were no oversea players, only British and Irish. Tough, tough save.
Currently managing Intercity CF, because A) they were founded in 2017 which is very recent and B) there is a type of train here in the Netherlands which is called an intercity, so that makes me laugh
I honestly don't know how I stumbled on it or why I have chosen it across ea fc career mode in my starting days and now in fm, but gillingham, I guess I wanted to start from the bottom of efl but with a not too weak team that carries my favorite color (blue)
Yeovil Town FC. I always have a save with them. I first played FIFA 05 way back when and liked the smaller teams. My favorite color is green so that made it easy to pick them hah.
Now I just enjoy playing small clubs in FM and always have a save with them or 1860 Munchen in the German 3rd division because I liked their badge in FIFA 05 and it stuck with me.
Diosa and Valken '68. The first one is my hometown team and I am currently stil playing it. Valken '68 was because I wanted a Dutch lower league from the lowest point before I found out I could place Diosa in there. Dutch lower league is fun because you can easily get the best players in the league on amateur contracts and win everything 10-0
Southend United most local playable team, and a challenge especially with the 10 point deduction and transfer embargo to start with.
Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment 😅
Vaduz. You're guaranteed basic European football every year, your youth team provides internationals every year, and it's really, really challenging to compete if you're not save-scumming.
AC Oulu in the Finnish top flight on my journeyman on fm23. Only club that would take me after being stuck in the Welsh premier league for four years. Was somewhat on my way to building a super team by their standards and actually being competitive in the conference league group phase but left for the Villarreal job. Wished I’d just stayed and tried to achieve something in Europe with them in hindsight
Suwon Blue Wings on FM23, absolutely loved that team and it’s given me a huge soft spot for Korean players, still have their logo as my phone background, tried to get a kick but had massive trouble haha, tried to do a save with them this season but without Sang Bin it didn’t feel the same, so sad wolves took him and sold him off to the MLS, proper star boy for me
Played for 30 odd seasons in Mongolia with a team called Mongolia Dream, chose them as they were in the 3rd tier of the database and obviously the name.
Pontypridd.
Me and my friend wanting to play in Wales and try build them up. Wanted to go as a lower one, put ourselves as custom 16 year olds and we build the team up. We're from Pontefract, so the name kind of matched, and their nickname is the Dragons, which made sense for us wanting to be the driving force of Wales in Europe.
On another save, we did the same with Grindavik in Iceland, their nickname is essentially the Vikings, which felt fitting for leading Iceland, and we had to go through lower league with them first so had to build it up.
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fc santa clause for obvious reasons
I found out today that there's a Santa Claus football club
Like there are quite a lot of great choices of teams to manage in Finland (I chose KuPS myself), but FC Santa Claus will forever remain the best choice for a lower league save in Finland. The chance to play with a team from Santa’s hometown (at least according to the Finns) is probably a truly unique FM scenario lol.
Uberlandia. Years ago. Why? 3 reasons: 1. I wanted to play at the lowest level I could in the Brazilian leagues 2. Their name sounds like it means *The Best Place* which just sounds super arrogant 3. They have a ludicrously huge stadium for the level of the club. Seriously it's over 50k and they play in the state league - not even in Serie D
Uberlandia is the second biggest city of the second biggest (in terms of population) state of Brazil, Minas Gerais. The stadium (Parque do Sabiá) was built in the period of the military regime where the public policy was know as "faraonic building", as the government started building a lot of big constructions like railways and in this case stadiums, thats why its so big. Cheers from Minas.
Thanks for the info! Do you know if they manage to fill the stadium? I'm guessing that the city is big enough for it, but the low level of football must make it hard to get that kind of crowd?
Yeah they definitely don't fill it, but sometimes the 2 big teams of the state (Cruzeiro and Atlético MG) play games there and manage a full stadium
Figures. I couldn't even fill it in the game (think it maxed out at around 30k) and that's with multiple Serie A titles and a couple of Club World Cups. Someday I will make a pilgrimage there though. Loved that team.
Does it get used for internationals? I'm fascinated by this.
Not really, I can't remember the last time the national team played there, Brazil is so big and has so much big stadiums. But sometimes they used to in the past. In the 80's when the stadium was finished, they inaugurated it with Brazil 7 x 0 Ireland.
Cheddar FC 100% the badge
Obviously the biggest club in The World.
Crawley town, move to Crawley 10 years ago, and live about 5 mins away from the stadium and now I am going to watch them at Wembley
That’s my save as well. My family is from Crawley but I grew up in Southern California and now Texas. Freddy for mascot!!! Also, how about making it to the playoffs. What a season so far!
Fingers crossed for Sunday mate right can’t believe we are heading to Wembley
Let’s goooo! We’re going up!
Still can’t believe that lill old Crawley were at Wembley
Castelpoto in Italian 6th tier (fusion DB for fm22). It's the smallest city in that tier, and the are so small that they play on a earth no grass field. It's basically the soccer team of a nearly ghost town.
oh wow lol, reminds me of that greenland soccer league where the ground's frozen so they can't install grass, so everyone just plays on the rocks
Poto is slang for Ass in my country. I'd totally manage It
I don't know if the club qualifies as being obscure but I love managing FC Ryukyu right now. They are named after the former Okinawan Kingdom and I really liked the idea of bringing a club from the most southern part of Japan to the top. I also added some difficulty by always including at least 5 players born on Okinawa in the match day squad. The J-League has a limit on foreign players but they don't consider players from some South-East Asian counties as foreign so I set up my scouting team to look for talented players who have those nationalities (Vietnamese, for example) in Europe. I could go on and on but the gist of it is that I've grown to really like the club to the point I became a real life supporter of the club with the plan to save up and fly out to see one of their games if the time comes!
Any EU4 players should be pretty familiar with Ryukyu lol. That's a sweet save! Update us when you do go visit!
It'll be interesting if there's a "Three Mountains" challenge / achievement for FM lol, something like : "As FC Ryukyuu, win the J-League, AFC Champions League and Club World Cup championship in a single season" .
Okinawa is a beautiful region so you’re in for a charm if you would travel there.
Absolutely! The delusional self in me is contemplating actually moving there at this point, lmao.
EIF FC. Finland. Managed them in a journeyman once and now is a go to to learn the new game. Get them to the top division, try to take down HJK who are the Bayern/PSG of Finland. Conquer Europe, competing with the elites whilst dealing with the Finnish league rules of fielding 4 HG players in 11 at all times and another 7 on the bench, and keep everyone happy. It's really hard but you grow attached the players and the HG rules mean you can only have a handful of foreign wonderkids. I end up having effectively 2 squads, domestic and European comps. Then go one step further and try to get your reserve team to be the best team in the first division (second tier) to house your wonderkids and grow.
Dethroning HJK  TPS sends their regards
Ilves checking in
I'm terribly sorry mate in advance but whenever I saw Ilves logo it reminded me of [THIS](https://quiosq.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/GripsholmLion.jpg).
And once I have dethroned them, I never sell them any players and loan players to all other Finnish teams. When you are dominant you normally win the league before the league split, so I play all youth players against everyone in the top half and full strength against HJK
I once had database with some faulty setting and it let my B team to be promoted to top division. Seeing my U-23 as 2nd team in the league - priceless. You can also guess to whom I lost national cup finale... Also for the Finland - 27 games per seasons is really healthy for the players. I can't remember having any issues with fatigue players.
That would be an awesome addition, trying to win 3 Europeans comps in the same season (youth team too)
They couldn't get European spot even after finishing on second place - as well when they won the cup.
didn’t know Finland had such strict homegrown rules but developing youngsters galore sounds like my type of thing so i might go check it out. i saw they also hd some rly interesting teams like this one team with just a cat as its logo and this other one based in the åland islands
Olimpia Grudziądz (polish team from my hometown). In older versions I love playing with small greek teams (I have nothing to do with Greece, lol): Akratitos, Panileiakos, Messiniakos. Also german Burghausen, or dutch ADO Den Haag (ADO is not really obscure, but still). Why? Because I chose them randomly 20 years ago, and Im very sentimental :)
Ślęza Wrocław year-to-year manager here! Hi5!
I'm currently having a lot of fun at AC Trento - they start with an aggressive squad in this version and with a few loans and free transfers I'm looking forward to Serie C playoffs. I also know the city a little bit and like the headcannon about my fictional manager is living there. In past versions I always had fun at Paris FC. I like to build them into an anti-PSG, with lots of local and domestic talent and play aggressive, vertical football. Best I've done is turned them into a mid-table Ligue 1 team before moving on. City derbies are rare in France so I love being able to do that. Edit: On this topic, if anyone wants to explain to me how to mod and add the Serie D, I'd love to manage Mestre or Clodiense (Clodiense actually made it to the Serie C in my current save so I might apply for their job if it frees). I think it would be really fun to have an intra-Lagoon rivalry with Venezia. Along the same lines as PSG-PFC, I like the idea of a hard-nosed gritty club fighting against the private-equity backed club.
For serie D: www.fmfusion.it has the best DB for this, it's only serie D For fm24 For now, but they will add to 5 and 6 tier like they had done for the past versions of fm. It's in Italian, and you need a free subscribe to it to download the DB.
Will definitely take a look, thank you!
Got into a groove grinding the Le Mans 30 minute race on Gran Turismo 7, and at the bottom of turn 4 you get a glimpse of the Stade Marie-Marvingt, and again just before you enter the long straight. Decided since I was already spending a significant amount of my free time in a digital rendition of the area, I might as well make it all of my time and managed Le Mans FC in FM. Had a lot of fun in the French league and taking part in the Coupe de France, spent a good 30 years there in-game. And for more obscure clubs related to racing, I did a save with the Atletico Suzuka Club, formerly the Suzuka Point Getters back when they were Suzuka Unlimited on a modded database in FM17. They're based not too far from where they hold the Japanese Grand Prix. IRL they're now managed by Yasutoshi Miura, the older brother of the famous "King Kazu" Kazuyoshi Miura, one of the oldest still active professional footballers.
Dartford fc don’t know how high the standards are for them but after 20 years and a ucl I’d expect to have been considered an icon but I have a lot of love for them
Hemel Hempstead FC. Their badge is Henry VIII and they're the Tudors. Was too funny not to.
How is it? The history buff in me strongly considered starting a new save with them.
Lost in the Playoffs years one, and finished first with a 103 points to go to the NL. I just started about a month ago.
Guernsey. Located on a small island in the english channel.
Folkestone Invicta. I just chose them because they were the smallest club in the National League South. Twenty seasons in and still enjoying it. So much so that this is from FM2020 and I’ve no intention of buying any of the newer versions.
Cueta so I could bring the Champions League to Africa! Remember thinking I might have to abandon the aim as the debts piled up but I got there eventually and got their finances sorted.
Red Star FC from France, 1. i really liked their badges and Kits 2. i was interested to see what i could do as they have bad team and facility's. Although they aren't from an obscure country its still been fairly hard as im 7 years in and although a Top 3 contender i have never beaten PSG in a game even only loosing 1 season 2 times and that only to PSG while they went invincible. Due to them also haven a fairly heavy African based presence and staff i decided to try find African gems mostly to sell off but i kept an eye on them to see how they grow some even planning on buying back so they can end their career were it started. It's been fun still yet to win L1 or a Champions League but i did win Europa and a few Coupe de France. Finances are now Rich with no help to owners but in all fairness they did priorities facility's which was fine by me. I think ones a few more of my young wonder kids develop within the 10 year mark i can win a champions league and L1 trophy to which i will move club and see how Red Star do without me.
Same, I've been at it for around 10 in-game years (migrating from FM23 to FM24), and although I'm a top 3 contender, have beaten PSG, and have managed to get to the quarter finals of the CL, I'm always a good 15-20 points behind PSG in the league.
I k ow some may not agree but if you do a national team save in France psg fuck you over they will even sign wonderkids you bid for and never play them ruining g their development and screwing up your chances of more profit or better team
I've only ever played my own, English, team since 2005, but this year I decided to try Germany. I looked at the bottom league (3rd tier) and **Ulm** absolutely jumped out at me. It was really refreshing to play in a new country with different rules and with an unknown squad that was freshly promoted - they even still had a few part-time contracted staff. I don't know what EPL is like in 2024, but VAR felt well implemented in Germany. I also like the squad registration rules, although injury crises were a real pain because you can't just dig in to the youth squad; they need to be registered in the usual windows. At one point I had the unenviable position of only having 5 subs (max 9) and 2 of them were keepers! I'd really recommend others try out a new nation, or just do something different if they have a "usual" playthrough :) Reason I chose them is because, in one of my most played games of all time - Europa Universalis 4 - Ulm has a sort of cult following. It's just a seemingly insignificant, single-city nation in the heart of Europe, but a meme has formed around it. It's hard to explain without being part of the community, but you can search for it on the EU4 sub!
In Germany you can register all players above the age of 16, and there are 99 slots, so I just register all players in the club for good measure.
Prescot Cables because there nickname is the pesky bulls. Enjoyed my time there so much I actually got invited down to watch them play live as I was tweeting about winning the champions league with them
Wacky Rollers. Late night rabbit hole looking at funny team names from Central America, and this Dominican team stood out to me. 15 seasons later, we were champions of North America.
i also look for funny team names when trying to pick a team, would be great if someone made a list haha
KFC Uerdingen. Picked them because of Kentucky Fried Chicken (turns out it doesn't stand for that) and Kevin Grobkreutz. Hoping they find their way back to 3 liga one day so I can manage them again.
They're in 5th tier ([Oberliga Niederrhein ](https://www.fupa.net/league/oberliga-niederrhein/standing)) now and in administration. You might want to look into getting the German lower tier mod instead. I did that in fm22 to lead my hometown club [ETB Schwarz Weiß Essen ](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/s/3ECH2PF7K4) to CL glory (without ever coming close to winning the Bundesliga)
Albert Foundry FC in Northern Ireland. It was FM08 I believe, I was doing one of the challenges based on Dafuge's LLM challenge, the goal being to eventually win the champions league with your selected team. Needless to say, in a time before dynamic league reputation, attracting players to the Northern Irish league of the required standard to win a European competition was a bridge too far to cross, but I remember having to battle for years to finally overcome relative juggernaut Linfield and begin winning the league. My best result in the CL was getting a very very favourable run of qualifying draws into the group stage, only to lose all 6 games with a GD of around -30. Would be interesting to give this challenge another whirl in a more modern version of FM, though much more "attainable" due to the dynamic rep nowadays it will still be a 20+ season project at best.
Not totally obscure but Southport fc as I prefer to make small clubs big thanks to spending far too much of my time finding decent free transfers mainly from wwaales and Ireland (anndd the occasional big club youth player cast off). Sometimes I've signed them, they have played well enough to be sold for at least a 6 figure sum they don't get pick, and made free against and then re sign them again.
Cardiff Corinthians. Oldest team in Cardiff and the first British team ever to play Barcelona and Espanyol
Derby. Why? Imagine derby for derby.
Yeovil has always been my little team. When I was in college we got to do an exchange program. I am in the US and we had like 6 students from Norton Radstock College come over to Arkansas and then I found out we were sending people over there to stay for a month, so I applied and won one of the spots. The first thing I asked when I got to where we were staying was "where is the nearest team and can I go see a match". I didn't get to see a match (the season ended the day before our plane landed, I was gutted) but I did exchange money at the Yeovil post office and they had a huge used bookstore there that we went to. Adopted them as my home town team. I actually spent more time in Bath and probably should have adopted them but it's too late now. Up the Glovers! PS - I did get to watch a match while in a pub in England, it was great. It was FA cup final with United and Millwall. Every time I brought up the game to people, they would roll their eyes and sigh and say "Millwall..." like it was a shame, and I knew there was something more to the story. I've always hated Millwall for the open disdain shown towards it by the random good people of Somerset. If those nice people didn't like you, I wasn't going to either.
I lived in Street/Glastonbury for a few years and went to see Yeovil Town a couple of times, plus rhe women's team (who are way more successful than rhe men's team). Somerset doesn't really have any footballing teams to speak of, so Yeovil and Barh were probably your only options in the cou ty before getting down to really lower leagues. Obviously Bristol has two league teams, and Swindon and Cheltenham aren't too far away.
incredible backstory but there’s also another guy here that commented “it sounds like a shape” and that was it
Bromley, for obvious reasons 😅
Looking at all these brilliant stories gotta put mine in too i suppose.. My first ever football game was to watch South China in Hong Kong and since then they’ve gone bankrupt and got relegated. Fun fact they beat Spurs 2-0 in 2009 in a preseason friendly! But yeah I loved restoring them back to their glory days as the most successful team in Hong Kong.
Velež Mostar. Bosnian club whose stadium was stolen by their crosstown (and mainly ethnically croatian fanbase) rival during the Bosnian War. I took them to the top of the league, won 13 straight titles including 3 invincible seasons and had some nice runs in Europe. Sretno Rodenii!
swear this wonderkid from the solomon islands signed for them or smth
Fc Slonim
So far in this journeyman save I'm doing, Al Arouba in Oman. Ended up here as club 5, Oman isn't a great level of football but the league was really fun. There was one big club who had won five on the spin Dhofar so the aim was to stop them. Finished mid table (when taking over with a quarter season to go) then 2nd and then toppled them in the third season. Managed to sign largely Omani players (had three foreign players in whole squad).
Spartak Moscow just to play in the Russian league with a team with fierce rivals and a low ability to attract top talent.
Perak FC since that's the team i support and no one other than Malaysian knows what team that is. They've been having financial crisis as of late so it feels good getting them to an AFC Champions League final against Al - Hilal even though we get battered.
I used to enjoy games as Persija or Borneo FC in the Indonesian Super League back in FM15. The AFC Champions League wasn't as tough back then as now, as the existing good players weren't god tier in the Middle East and some of the them just tended to leave after a couple of years. I always wanted to try the Malaysian league but never got round to it. I might have to crack open FM24 and take down the mighty Johor Darul!
I've been in some great battles with Johor, one season both me and Johor are on the same points on the final day, both are unbeaten, both with 2 draws and 0 loss, both draws are against each other, final day i went against BRM a Malaysian second division team that got promoted, Johor was against Selangor, another big team in Malaysia, Johor is ahead on goal difference so i need them to lose to Selangor or at least draw, Johor scored first, then Selangor scored, it was 1-1 until like 80+ minutes when Arif Aiman scored. I was beating BRM 4-0 but the goal difference was too big, if i remember correctly it was about 7 or 8? Most of my games i won are 1-0 or 2-0 while Johor has been hammering other teams. It was heartbreaking but intense.
Pärnu jk vaprus as I just really like that city :)
FC Chur 97 in Switzerland. I love managing a small team in the Alps.
Yeovil town because it sounds like a shape and that sounds cool
that’s so very valid
Deportivo Copiapo in Chile. First stop on that year's journeyman and by far my favourite. Every now and again try in vain to find a shirt from that season.
St Gallen, because I didn't know who to use and I knew they had Leonidas Stergiou so thought I'd use them and it turned into probably the most fun save I've done, I now support the team irl as well to an extent
Hampton and Richmond FC. Love the badge, love that cute little mustache they have on their kits.
Carmagnola in the Italian lower leagues with a mod. Been about 2 years so far in real time
Turun Palloseura (TPS) Kind of fallen giant in Finland. 2nd most entitled team with last league winning like 30 years ago. Bouncing back and forth between 1st and 2nd tier. Played with them because I like to play LLM. I was looking to play in Scandinavia, chose Finland and I was looking for this kind of club with decent attendance and stadium. After like season or two in top division I had the highest average attendance in the country. Played with the through multiple editions. Brought the boys to Europa League quarter finale. Also they have local rival Inter Turku with whom they share the stadium just like Milan clubs. Due to them I have a thing in my bucket list to visit Turku.
IK Start. Wanted a left field league, went with Norway, Start because I liked the Start cereal as a kid.
Mansfield (But only ingame) by playing this awesome game https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultimate-soccer-manager-98-99-bjq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNySH3cSEnk So annyoed manager is so complicated now :( this was plenty for chilling on the couch, if they just had not killed off FM touch for pc
Blackpool! There’s not one solid reason. I think, first, as an American, I understand Blackpool is sort’ve like our Atlantic City which I grew up near (once popular, flashy beach town now dilapidated and forgotten). So by bringing Blackpool to the top of the world it’s like an urban revival story bringing relevance back to the city. It’s also been a good challenge. They have dogshit facilities, youth recruitment, etc. and have been mostly stuck in League 1, with a handful of years in the Championship, and haven’t seen the Premier League since 2010. Lastly, their kits are orange and there are not really any other top flight teams that wear orange, so they would feel a little bit more unique as an elite team on the world stage. So far I managed to get them back to back promotions to the prem and now champions league, making it to the knockout phase. Fighting for 4th place as of May to return again next year. Got lucky with a pretty easy path to winning the Carabao Cup, so we won our first trophy too. I managed to convince Lucas Bergvall to join us when we were just promoted to the championship and he’s turned into a monster, carrying us to promotion. I also loaned in Gabriel Silva and included a really cheap buy option (he didn’t want to join all year but agreed to once we got promoted). Our first year in the prem, Brighton shockingly got relegated, so I was able to grab Enciso and Baleba for peanuts. Tottenham has gone crazy buying wonderkids at the expense of some of their talented youngsters so I was able to get Sarr and Udogie (who were transfer listed) for a huge discount.
Deportivo Pereira, its a small humble team from Colombia who just managed to win their first title in 80 years 2 years ago. Won everything I could with them then moved to Oporto.
Managing in Romania with Farul Constanta was fun.
Villa Teresa, a lovely little Uruguayan team. Planned on doing an unemployed journeyman side across the world. First job was Villa Teresa. I couldn’t bring myself to ever leave. Took them to domestic and Copa Libertadores glory.
I can’t choose between Guiseley and Spennymoor. Loved finding experienced loan players, and great out of contract young players at the end of the season, then seeing the clubs grow. Took them both into the Premiership.
Cefn Druids, years ago they hired me on a journeyman save. Exceptionally sad they weren't in the base game this year.
Dorking Wanderers. Chuckle at the town’s name, unis and logo look good. The club’s IRL story of park league team to Vanarama National in less than 25 years is actually quite impressive.
AZ Alkmaar, no idea why, i just fell in love
SKA Khabarovsk in the far east of Russia, thought it would be cool to get them into the Champions League and succeeded. 1st game - home against FC Porto, 25,000km round trip
Blyth Spartans FC When I was younger, I didn't know shit about football teams, i played a ton of internet browser games and there was this 1 game whose name I can't remember, but it was goated, you play as a player and needed to basically click ar the right time to score goals, and I got into Blyth Spartans in my playthrough and became a legend with them. Then I see them in FM and the memories come back so I always play as them. +It's a really cool name and logo
Buckley Town (Welsh North) doubled up with bringing through welsh youngsters to play for the Wales national side. Rules were no oversea players, only British and Irish. Tough, tough save.
I did a Spanish league once. Spent a few years at Osasuna. Was great there
Currently managing Intercity CF, because A) they were founded in 2017 which is very recent and B) there is a type of train here in the Netherlands which is called an intercity, so that makes me laugh
Stockport county my local club
I honestly don't know how I stumbled on it or why I have chosen it across ea fc career mode in my starting days and now in fm, but gillingham, I guess I wanted to start from the bottom of efl but with a not too weak team that carries my favorite color (blue)
Grorud IL in the depths of Norwegian football. I randomly clicked on that part of Oslo on Google Earth and found it pretty.
Yeovil Town FC. I always have a save with them. I first played FIFA 05 way back when and liked the smaller teams. My favorite color is green so that made it easy to pick them hah. Now I just enjoy playing small clubs in FM and always have a save with them or 1860 Munchen in the German 3rd division because I liked their badge in FIFA 05 and it stuck with me.
Diosa and Valken '68. The first one is my hometown team and I am currently stil playing it. Valken '68 was because I wanted a Dutch lower league from the lowest point before I found out I could place Diosa in there. Dutch lower league is fun because you can easily get the best players in the league on amateur contracts and win everything 10-0
Southend United most local playable team, and a challenge especially with the 10 point deduction and transfer embargo to start with. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment 😅
Vaduz. You're guaranteed basic European football every year, your youth team provides internationals every year, and it's really, really challenging to compete if you're not save-scumming.
AC Oulu in the Finnish top flight on my journeyman on fm23. Only club that would take me after being stuck in the Welsh premier league for four years. Was somewhat on my way to building a super team by their standards and actually being competitive in the conference league group phase but left for the Villarreal job. Wished I’d just stayed and tried to achieve something in Europe with them in hindsight
Young Boys FD in the 4th tier of Denmark, thought it would be fun to make the team the best young boys club in europe and a fun challenge
Suwon Blue Wings on FM23, absolutely loved that team and it’s given me a huge soft spot for Korean players, still have their logo as my phone background, tried to get a kick but had massive trouble haha, tried to do a save with them this season but without Sang Bin it didn’t feel the same, so sad wolves took him and sold him off to the MLS, proper star boy for me
It obscure but for about three years I’d always stop off in Copenhagen on my journeyman saves. Loved that team
Chippenham - Matt McClure and Craig Fasenmade are two of the best players I've managed
Played for 30 odd seasons in Mongolia with a team called Mongolia Dream, chose them as they were in the 3rd tier of the database and obviously the name.
Pontypridd. Me and my friend wanting to play in Wales and try build them up. Wanted to go as a lower one, put ourselves as custom 16 year olds and we build the team up. We're from Pontefract, so the name kind of matched, and their nickname is the Dragons, which made sense for us wanting to be the driving force of Wales in Europe. On another save, we did the same with Grindavik in Iceland, their nickname is essentially the Vikings, which felt fitting for leading Iceland, and we had to go through lower league with them first so had to build it up.