FM21 | Creating Club and Country | #4 Crest and Kit

In the first episode of this series we created the nation of Bordavia, a totalitarian post-Soviet Communist nation, and placed it within Russia, enclosed in every direction. In the second episode we created a flag oozing with authority, but without Nazi references. We also decided on size and population. Not too small to grow into a decent footballing nation, but still small enough to give me a real challenge! In the third post we went through several potential directions for our club and settled on the CSKA way, making our club the Bordavian army club.

It’s time for post number 4 in this series. It’s time to give our club a name and a visual profile!

A modern CSKA crest

To create the club crest I spent hours upon hours googling “CSKA logos” for inspiration. I finally landed on a design combining the colours of Bordavia and the CSKA/Communist star, while giving it a modern feel.

This is what the end result looks like. I borrowed bits and stole others, but I’m really satisfied with the end result. I love the red/black colour combo and “CSKA” in Cyrillic looks great. I made the star resemble an “A”, which leads us into naming the Bordavian capital. I made it simple here. I took Mordovia, one of the Russian republics I used for inspiration in the first post and simply removed the “S” from their capital “Saransk”, resulting in the name “Aransk”.

The next step was to create a kit. I may be weak when it comes to creating badges, but I’m absolutely useless when it comes to creating kits. Luckily the FM community holds quite a few extremely talented kit makers. I reached out to one of them, Request A Kit, and pitched my idea.

The CSKA Aransk kit

I provided him with my newly created crest, the Bordavian sun symbol and the image below.

The instructions were few but clear. I asked for:

1. A look similar to the shirt above. As much black/Dark grey as possible.
2. The sun symbol incorporated into the shirt in some way in black/dark grey. Small pattern, large pattern, something else…

A few days went by, and I would lie if I told you I thought about this every hour of every day, but I had high hopes that the talented kit maker at least would deliver something I could use. And all of a sudden, there it was. It was black, with the sun symbol incorporated in a subtle and beautiful way. It was love at first sight.

So, say hello to CSKA Aransk, the club I’ll be managing on this FM21 adventure! I’ll leave you here, but I’ll soon be back with the two final posts, where the first one will provide a bit of a backstory and the second one covers the changes I make in the FM editor to make my series possible. I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey and that you’ll come on this adventure with me!

Addendum – A Bordavian database

Between the time this post was written and released, the interest from the community to take part in the creation process of Bordavia has literally exploded! I’m over the moon with excitement about this project and I love the fact that this seems to be shared by more than quite a few of you out there! The stories, big and small, about made up post-Soviet communist towns and clubs are just pouring in. I honestly think this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time and it has made me want to make Bordavia into something more than a backdrop to my story. Therefore, with the help of you, I have started the process of bringing Bordavia to life with the goal of creating a fully playable Bordavian database for FM21. I have no idea how quickly I will manage to do it, but as soon as the full game and the editor is here I’ll at least invest a lot of time into making this made up country as real as possible!