Welcome back to something a bit different!
The 10 year anniversary post taught me two things. It seems to be awfully tough to create a player of the same caliber as Pelé or even Neymar on FM20. Therefore I need to speed things up.
To give myself a chance to complete this challenge I’m playing a lot faster and I’ve decided to only release a new blog post every three seasons. It’s not fun for neither you nor me to write/read basically the same story every season. We win most of the trophies. The youth intake is underwhelming. We sign a couple of youngsters. We’re not really close to getting a player to 90 Ginga Rating. Repeat. No, that’s not the way I wanna go about this. These episodes will be fairly short, but of course I’ll look more in-depth if anything extraordinary or really interesting happens. So, here comes three seasons in quick succession.
2029 – A historical quintuple
This year gave us the worst youth intake we’ve ever had. The single player we kept, a guy nicknamed “Karate” isn’t even good enough to show you here.
The team won everything worth winning in a historical quintuple!
One of the biggest reasons for this historical feat was Kaká, a player we had signed just a year earlier from Corinthians. He developed into the world’s best player at the club, which of course didn’t go unnoticed.
The unfortunate combination of a £43M release clause and him not wanting to sign a new contract saw him leave for Man City. He wasn’t a part of the challenge to create the next Pelé since I signed him at a later age than 18, but I was still really sad to see him go.
2030 – A new Ginga Rating record
We lost the final of the Copa Libertadores to fierce rivals Grêmio, but we won the other two important titles; the league and the state championship. We continue to remain the best team in South America and the 11th most reputable club in the world.
André Luiz came through our youth intake, touted as a potential future generational player. He doesn’t really fit the mold Ginga wise (GR 63), but he certainly has the potential to become a great player.
Speaking of Ginga, we had a player reach a new record high rating.
Diogo reached a Ginga Rating of 88 this year, which is the highest any Santos player has ever had since I started this challenge. This shows just how difficult it is to reach that illusive 90 GR mark, but I’m not giving up! Diogo will probably not be the first player to reach the magical 90 GR mark though, since my coaches seem to think that he has reached his potential.
2031 – The return of legends
As the heading states, we made some big signings but we’ll start with a player leaving.
I’m pretty confident that Diogo won’t improve any more, at least not at Santos, so when PSG came in with the big money I had to let him go. The money didn’t collect any dust in our treasure chest though, as we immediately used them to bring home two legends.
Gilberto, who we had sold to Benfica in 2027 straight after he reached the 100 goal mark wanted to come home. He had impressed enough at Benfica to secure a move to Real Madrid, but during his three years there he had only started 18 games for them. He wanted and needed playing time and I couldn’t say no to his pacey dribbling skills!
This wasn’t the big move though. Remember when I had to let go of the best player in the world? Well, now he’s back!
After a falling out with new Man City manager Lukas Endriss, Kaká wanted to leave. With a treasure chest full of money I wasn’t discouraged by his £120M price tag. I spent it all in a record breaking deal that means that the we probably have the two best attacking players in the world in the same team! Kaká and Willian 2.0!
What would a Santástico episode be without Willian 2.0? Nothing, right? The boy has turned into a young man and he’s scored 170 goals in the process. In this stage of a player’s career I usually move him on to Europe, but this hasn’t been the case for Willian. It’s not down to the fact that the interest has been lacking. No, I accepted a £108M bid from Juventus for him, but he simply didn’t want to leave. He became upset and made me promise not to sell him and who am I to say no to that face!? I will focus on making him a Santos legend and maybe, just maybe he can increase his Ginga Rating from 86 to 90!? Please, pretty pretty please!
As we move from 2031 to 2032 he is actually the player with the highest Ginga Rating and none of the younger players seem to be reaching the same level. This is turning into a really long winding road…hell, I need to play even faster! Luckily for me, this has been my most enjoyable FM save ever! Oh, I forgot about the 2032 results! Well, we won the league, state championship and Copa Libertadores. Again. But as you are well aware, this isn’t about winning trophies, it’s all about creating the next Pelé!
Will we ever be able to do it!?
I’ll see you in another three seasons, I need to go smash that “continue” button!
MikaelinhoFM 