About this time last year, I would have been quite happy if I had never played Football Manager 2024 again. Six months later, and whoops… I’m about to celebrate a decade at Nacka FC!
In case you missed it, Nacka enjoyed a fantastic climax to their first ever season in Sweden’s top division. A top-four finish means that we can look forward to playing in the Conference League qualifiers in 2033!
But before that, it’s time to make plans for our second Allsvenskan season. Can we build on last year’s successes, or is reality about to bite us in the backsides?
ELECTION 2032
2032 had drawn to a close, and Nacka FC were celebrating an incredible first season in the Allsvenskan. We had finished 4th, earning ourselves the bronze medals. Yes, you read that correctly.
In the Allsvenskan, medals are awarded to the top FOUR teams – not just the top three. The champions obviously get the gold medals, but the runners-up are awarded large silver medals, 3rd place get the small silver medals, and 4th take the bronze. This is a tradition that dates back to the early days of the Swedish football championship. So now you know!
Now, there was one hot question on Örnana fans’ lips. Who would be the club’s new chairman?
With Michel Persson stepping down after a single three-year term, there was plenty of competition to succeed him. Of course, boardroom elections don’t matter on Football Manager because every candidate is basically the same (insert obvious joke about British politicians here). All you need to know is that some bloke named Patric Norberg is our new chairman.
Would this new chairman provide the funding for a new stadium? Alas, not yet. We’ll be playing in the 1,000-capacity Fisksätra for at least one more year…
…and this is becoming a real problem. We’ve sold 874 season tickets for the new year, and with 50 seats reserved for away fans, that leaves us with only 76 tickets to sell on matchdays. We desperately need to move into a bigger ground.
Of course, the Fisksätra is far too small and primitive for UEFA competitions. Fortunately, we’ve now been assigned three alternative venues in the Stockholm area, which we’ll use for our Conference League matches in the summer. One of them is the Friends Arena – the home of AIK and Sweden’s national team, which can host up to 50,000 spectators. Imagine the gate receipts!
I had better luck upgrading our facilities. Patric wouldn’t budge on our ‘fairly basic’ Youth Recruitment, but he did invest some more money into Junior Coaching.
He also spent a little over £800,000 on new training and youth facilities. Work began early in the new year, and it would all be finished by the start of May. We now have Basic youth facilities, and our training facilities are now Adequate – yes, ADEQUATE!
Slowly but surely, we’re building ourselves into a proper top-flight club.
WINTER TRANSFERS (SO LONG, ZIANI)
There was more upheaval this winter, as several lower-league heroes moved on. Playmaker Finlay Neat and winger Noel Wall were sold to GIF Sundvall for a combined £60,000, while Yusuf Aksoy, Kudret Fırat and Ayoub Hussein all left on free transfers. We also said farewell to a true club icon…
Furkan Öztürk – Nacka’s, ahem, ‘greatest’ youth product from the past decade – has finally been released. The 21-year-old defensive midfielder now plays for Enköping in Division 2, which pretty much sums up his actual ability.
It was also the end of the road for our legendary left-back Elias Ziani. Though Ziani technically had four separate spells at Nacka because of his ill-fated moved to Täby, he was present on every step of our journey from Division 2 to the Allsvenskan.
But after making 222 appearances in eight years at the Fisksätra, Elias was no longer needed. He now plays for B.93, where he is doing the rock lobster in Denmark’s third tier.
That leaves Hadi Noori as our new longest-serving player, with the defensive midfield workhorse extending his contract for a seventh season. Vice-captain César Gamarra is also staying put – finally agreeing a new four-year deal after a big-money January move failed to materialise.
Unfortunately, we were not able to hold onto another of our star players… and you probably know which one I’m talking about.
Yes, our Mozambican starboy Nasser Mutambe has gone. Loads of top Scandinavian clubs were circling around Nasser, and we eventually agreed a deal with FC København worth £140,000 plus 50% of any future profit. A few days later, Bodø/Glimt triggered his £150,000 release clause – with no sell-on clause, obviously.
Luckily for us, Mutambe decided to join København. We got a little less money up front, but this deal could make us millions in the future if he blossoms into a superstar. The signs are very promising – Nasser’s transfer value has shot up to £15million, and he was named on the NXGN 2033 wonderkids list (coming in at #49).
We’re now making a habit of importing talented young players, developing them, and then selling them on for profit. But what does the future hold for our first two winter signings?
Like the animals on Noah’s Ark, our foreign recruits tend to come in two by two – and here are a couple of 18-year-old Iranians from the KIA Football Academy. I’m confident that dribble wizard Mohammad Rasoulzadeh can replace Mutambe and become Nacka’s latest right-wing sensation. ‘Raz’ is more natural on the left wing, but obviously I’m retraining him.
I also brought in Mohammad Alipour – an attacking left-back who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee (probably). He’s already a senior Iran international, and he definitely has the drive and determination to become a key man for both club and country.
Next on my shortlist was a new long-term goalkeeper – and after scouting several players, Marc Popów was the one who stood out. The 28-year-old Pole is resolute, consistent, enjoys big matches, is pretty comfortable on the ball, and doesn’t really have any glaring weaknesses.
He cost us £50,000 from Ruch Chorzów, but that’s a small price to pay for a quality operator. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Popów’s backup will be the equally resilient Elton Fischerström Opančar, who warmed the Hammarby bench for many years. And just in case a meteor strike wipes out both our new keepers, we still have 35-year-old David Olsson knocking around as cover.
After a successful loan spell from Stabæk, I was delighted to re-sign defensive midfielder Stian Røren on a permanent deal. Røren didn’t come cheap – costing us an initial £250,000, potentially rising to £350,000 – but his strength and aggressive tackling make him an ideal shield for our central defenders.
He’ll be backed up by another defensive midfield hardman in Sweden Under-21s starlet Robin Reinholdsson, who joins on a season-long loan from champions Djurgården. The carrilero role will be filled by another loanee – the well-rounded Allen Smajić, who suffered relegation with Landskrona last year. Let’s hope that isn’t a sign of things to come.
Before the transfer window closed, I brought in former AIK winger Elias Mohammad to give us more depth out wide. I also signed the veteran deep-lying forward Javi Puado, who scored over 100 league goals for Espanyol. The 34-year-old Catalan was costing us £2,000 per week, but I was sure his off-the-ball skills would create us more chances…
…until he broke his bloody collarbone, ruling him out for the first two months of the league season. This prompted me to sign ANOTHER centre-forward – taking the flamboyant Ronnie Paulsson on loan from Örgryte.
SQUAD REPORT
Whisper it, folks, but that might be the last transfer window where I make sweeping changes to the first-team. (Regular Fuller FM readers will probably disagree.) Our Allsvenskan squad is really taking shape, with most of our regulars now tied-down to long-term contracts.
I’ve also added our players’ homegrown statuses to the squad overview. We must name at least nine homegrown players in an Allsvenskan matchday squad. When we enter the Conference League qualifiers in July, we’ll need to register at least four ‘Trained at Club’ players – and another four who were trained in Sweden.
So far, our only senior ‘Trained at Club’ players are inside-forward Bar Benitah and winger Aron Gauti Lárusson, who’ve both been here since they were 18. Now in their early 20s, they’re not quite regular starters, but they’re certainly capable of chipping in goals or assists when needed.
Our two Egyptian princes will both become homegrown in June – just in time for the Conference League. Attacking midfielder Hazem Reda has just returned from a loan spell at Superettan champions AFC Eskilstuna, and after a strong pre-season, he is ready to serve as the understudy to our goalscoring midfield captain Daniel Ulvestaf.
His compatriot Ahmed Fouad, meanwhile, has been kicking up a stink. After losing Mutambe in January, I really didn’t want to lose Fouad as well, so I rejected several offers from the Eredivisie’s top clubs. As you can probably guess, Ahmed wasn’t too chuffed.
So now our top scorer from last season is looking to leave. Fouad’s contract runs until 2035, so I’m not desperate to sell him if I can help it. But if his miserable attitude turns into miserable performances, or he starts to ruin the club atmosphere, I might have to think again…
In terms of tactics, I’m sticking with the high-pressing counter-attacking system that brought us success last year. I did experiment with playing an inverted wing-back on the right to give us another midfield body when we are on the attack, but… er… it didn’t go well. We got beaten 1-0 by a third-division team in pre-season, it was that bad.
So while we can’t pull off positional play like Manchester City just yet, I have made one significant change. We now have a couple of adept sweeper keepers who are comfortable with the ball at their feet, and who are prepared to rush out in case anyone breaks our high defensive line.
We’re probably not serious contenders for the title, but it’s encouraging that the media don’t see us as rank outsiders anymore. They project us to finish 12th, which is in line with the board’s expectations to avoid relegation.
Personally, I’d be happy with a top-half finish, though I’m not necessarily aiming for Europe again. Swedish clubs have struggled in continental competitions lately, though there will still (just about) be five European places on offer for the 2034/2035 season.
At any rate, we will definitely be in the 2033/2034 Conference League qualifiers when they kick off in July… or will we? If we could win the Svenska Cupen, we would be ‘promoted’ into the Europa League qualifiers instead. Surely we couldn’t pull it off, right?
CUPEN
Having been given the top seeding in a favourable Cupen group, this was meant to be the year that we broke through and reached the knockout stages… and so it proved.
First up, we swept aside third-tier FC Stockholm with five goals from five different scorers. The best of them came from 19-year-old debutant Kazimierz Grzegorczyk – a speedy Polish right-winger who joined our youth team last year and has been making rapid progress. Kaz wasn’t quite ready for the Allsvenskan, though, so I later loaned him out to continue his development.
We then overwhelmed Oddevold to set up a group decider at Elfsborg, where a draw would be enough to win the group. Despite trailing 1-0 at the break, a resurgent Reda scored his second goal in as many games to level the scores. After surviving an Elfsborg onslaught late on, we secured the point that we needed.
At the sixth attempt, we had finally progressed from the Group Stage and into our first Cupen Quarter Final. Naturally, our reward was to be drawn away to Malmö… and that was where our run ended. Though Ulvestaf gave us a shock 1-0 lead late in the first half, Malmö showed their greater quality after the break to win 2-1.
In fairness, Popów had been utterly brilliant – making several top-drawer saves to keep the deficit down to one goal. Perhaps Marc might be the super shotstopper we’d been looking for!
Of course, our new saviour pulled his groin just five days before the new Allsvenskan season. For God’s sake.
UP… AND DOWN
Talk about a dramatic start!
At the end of a topsy-turvy Stockholm derby against AIK, two of our new signings combined for a 92nd-minute winner. Paulsson provided the finish, but check out that assist from Rasoulzadeh! This lad’s gonna tear up the Allsvenskan if we can keep him fit…
OH, YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
Despite our ongoing injury problems, we managed to stay unbeaten through our first eight matches. Despite a run of frustrating home draws against Elfsborg, Kalmar and Värnamo, we continued to execute our counter-attacking game perfectly on the road. I was especially satisfied with a 1-0 victory at last year’s small silver medallists Halmstad, even if our hosts did have a player sent off after just three minutes.
Meanwhile, Fouad had channelled his transfer frustration in the right way – scoring five goals in his first eight matches. All of a sudden, the ambitious Egyptian was now happy to stay at Nacka!
Our other star performer was Alexis Fonteneau, who’d suddenly turned into a beast at set-pieces – and an unexpectedly good ball-playing defender. Emílio Chamboco‘s crossing ability gave us a potent weapon at left-back, and our new goalkeeper Popów hit the ground running after his return from matches.
After eight matches, Nacka were in 2nd place – only behind Malmö – and had the last unbeaten record in the Allsvenskan. Happy days…
…and then we lost our next four matches.
It all started off at home to Örgryte. They took the lead, we equalised. They took the lead twice, we equalised twice. They took the lead three times, we equalised three times.
Then they took the lead for a FOURTH time. We could not equalise again. I hate FM sometimes.
Three days later, there was injury-time chaos at Hammarby. At 1-0 down in the 93rd minute, Paulsson scored what we thought was a game-saving equaliser.
Then we got Football Manager’s classic ‘super-long highlight after the goal’, from which Hammarby inevitably scored again in the 95th minute.
Finally, in the 97th minute, we won a corner – from which centre-back Rasmus Andersson deflected Elias’ long-range shot into the net! Alas, Rasmus was offside, and we were denied the latest of late draws. I hate FM sometimes.
After another home defeat to Malmö came a spectacular meltdown at Norrköping, leaving us down in 9th by the mid-season break.
What the hell happened there, you’re probably asking? It would be easy to say “my tactic stopped working” or “the luck modifier reset” or even “I need to sign yet another goalkeeper”.
I just think we got complacent after our unbeaten start, and Örgryte ruthlessly exposed our high defensive line and skinned our wing-backs. That loss burst our bubble, then our defence had another stinker at Hammarby, which pretty much destroyed our morale. We were not in a good state to seriously challenge either Malmö or Norrköping – two teams who are still much stronger than us both technically and mentally.
But it’s important to take stock. We’re 3rd on Expected Points and 5th on Expected Goals, and we’re still okay at converting our chances. I just think we need to strike a better balance between attack and defence – and we have to cut down on loose passes as well. It might be a good idea to either slow down our tempo, or stop playing too many risky through-balls.
And let’s be realistic. We’re probably not going to be relegated [famous last words], but perhaps we should expect some form of ‘second season syndrome’. A solid mid-table finish – ideally in the top half – remains the target. Anything more than that will be a bonus.
It’s just as well the mid-season break has come now. We’ve now got a few weeks to work on some tactical adjustments, rebuild our confidence, and prepare ourselves for our first ever crack at Europe. It’s unlikely we’ll be in the Conference League for a long time, but gosh-darn are we going to be there for a good time!
Please come back next week, when Nacka FC make their long-awaited debut in the Conference League.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to ask my Head of Sports Science why we keep getting so many bloody injuries!
Fuller FM 