Football Manager is a great game, you can get play it for hours and hours and there is nothing more exciting than taking your favourite team and winning trophies.
There are many scenarios and teams you can take for different challenges though and here we look at some countries and some fairly generic scenarios to try
Scotland
You can pick a fallen giant or just simply try and break the dominance of the Old Firm but for me its take a team from the Lowland or Highland league and try and get them through the rather stupid promotion system and make them rise up the leagues.
It would be a long term project and last many seasons – you could pick one of the relegated teams from the league like Berwick, East Stirling, Cowndenbeath or Brechin.
How about one of the new lowland league teams like Tranent or one of the lower highland league teams like Strathspey. Get Gretna back in the league after going bankrupt many years ago. So many possibilities
There are also databases that exist which expand to even lower leagues
Germany
The obvious one is always 1860 Munich or one of the big teams that have fallen on hard times such as Hamburg, FC Kaiserslautern or FC Nürnberg that have been relegated.
For me its picking one of the former East German teams that have fallen on hard times and try and resurrect them to Bundesliga champions
Dethroning Bayern Munich is always a challenge, people tend to go with Borussia Dortmundor RB leipzig but a team like Hansa Rostock, Carl Zeiss Jena or Dynamo Dresden may be a real stiff challenge.
Portugal
Again the obvious one here is to try and pick a team to break the dominance of Porto, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon
Casa Pia are intriguing after being promoted after a 83-year absenc- can you keep them up, build them and win the title.
You could even take one of the offshore teams such as Santa Clara from the Azores or Maritimo from Madeira and try and take them all the way.
Another option is one of the Beleneses teams – an interesting story.
England
There are a ton of options in England that you can mange in Football Manager
Get one of the teams that were relegated from the league promoted and back in the league and climb the system
Examples would be Chesterfield, Barnet, Yeovil, Torquay – there are lots of them
Or what about one of the phoenix clubs that were formed – restore them and take them up the league system.
Good examples are Bury, Chester, Halifax, Macclesfield
A different challenge – take a Welsh team and dominate Enlish football – as an extra challenge do not pick Swansea or Cardiff
Spain
Again, there are established teams in Spain such as Barcelona and the 2 Madrid giants to try and topple
Athletico Bilbao is always a challenge due to their player rule
The Segunda is where I would tend to look, teams that have been relegated such as Alavés, Granada, Eibar and Zaragoza – some big teams down their needing a rebuild and to climb the leagues.
What about Andorra – the smallest club in the league, that would be a story. A team from another country getting promoted and challenging for La Liga, very tough with such a small stadium
Italy
For this season coming up
Keep Cremonese in the league after 26 years of absence
What about Monza were promoted to Serie A for the first time in the club’s history
Turn to Serie B to look at some of the former Seria A clubs – Parma after the financial woes of the club, Cagliari, Palermo or Genoa some big clubs in this league
First, promotion then on to Serie A to topples the Milan giants and Juventus – a tough ask.
