It takes a long time for your reputation to catch up with your performances unfortunately. If you're starting out in the lower leagues you're talking dozens of seasons before it'll catch up. For example in my save we're the 19th ranked league reputation wise in Europe, I've pretty much consistently made the Champions League group format for the past 9 seasons in a row, we've even made the Quarter Finals twice and the Last 16 three times but we're still only a 3* club. I will say though it will eventually start to increase, all you can really do is continue to be as successful as possible and make sure to take up any opportunity to sign high rep players/staff if the opportunity comes about.
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