FC BATE Borisov - European Underdogs

FC BATE Borisov are the main stand-out team in Belarus. They are the only team from Belarus to have ever qualified for the Champions League Group Stage, doing so 4 times. They have also won the Belarusian Premier League 10 times and have came Runner-Up on 4 occasions.

The team are based in the town of Barysaw in the center of Belarus, 44 miles North-East of capital city Minsk. They play their home games 13,126 capacity Barysaw Arena which was opened earlier this year.

BATE are the richest club in Belarus, with an estimated value of around £10.25m. They are predicted to finish top of the Belarusian Premier League. They have Great Training Facilities and Good Youth Facilities with Excellent Junior Coaching and Extensive Youth Recruitment. To progress further we will need to pump more money into our youth to bring in the very best Belarusian talent there as and to nurture them to become the best that they can be.



Alexandr Yermakovic is an up and coming young Belarusian manager. At 39 years old he has a long time to offer to the club and hopes to bring glory to the club. Yermakovic started off as assistant manager at BATE in 2008 before being appointed as Head Coach to replace Viktor Goncharenko.


I have set myself a list of Targets to achieve with BATE Borisov:

Team:
- Win the Belarusian Premier League
- Win the Superkubak Belarusi
- Win the Kubak Belarusi
- Win the Europa League
- Win the Champions League
- Win the Club World Cup
- Become the richest club in the world

Personal:
- Top the Belarusian Hall of Fame
- Top the European Hall of Fame
- Top the World Hall of Fame
- Build the best Youth Academy and Training Facilities there is
- Field a team that consists entirely of BATE Academy products
- Produce the biggest Belarusian footballer ever



Notes
I know that I have put a variety of FM14 stories up and not many have continued. This is my last FM14 story. It will go until FM15 and possibly further if it is to be a success. With the new football season comes new motivation to play FM and write stories and I have been itching to start one like this. I hope you enjoy reading ;).

I always like the layout of your stories Zap! Good luck with BATE!

Good luck

I will play a narrow 4-1-2-1-2 due to, in my opinion, the lack of quality wingers in the league. We also have an abundance of good central midfielders whom I want to get the best out of. Due to the fact we are by far the best team in the league I have decided we shall try and pass the ball around the opposition at a fast tempo, using the two play makers as main creative outputs.


Goalkeepers:
(1) Sergey Chernik - GK/ Belarus/ 24/ CA - / PA -
(31) Germans Malins - GK/ Latvia/ 25/ CA - / PA -
(35) Andrey Gorbunov - GK/ Belarus/ 29/ CA - / PA -

Centre-Backs:
(15)Nemanja Tubic - CB/ Serbia/ 28/ CA - / PA -
(6) Egor Filipenko - CB/ Belarus/ 24/ CA - / PA -
(22) Vitaliy Gayduchik - CB/ Belarus/ 23/ CA - / PA -
(38) Roman Morozov - CB/ Belarus/ 19/ CA - / PA -

Full-Backs:
(17) Maxim Volod'ko - LB/ Belarus/ 20/ CA - / PA -
(21) Denis Polyakov - LB/ Belarus/ 21/ CA - / PA -
(5) Mikhail Gordeychuk - RB/ Belarus/ 23/ CA - / PA -
(4) Filip Mladenovic - RB/ Serbia/ 21/ CA - / PA -
(24) Anry Khagush - RB/ Russia/ 26/ CA - / PA -

Midfielders:
(8) Alexandr Volod'ko - DM/ Belarus/ 26/ CA - / PA -
(14) Alexandr Karnitskiy - DM/ Belarus/ 24/ CA - / PA -
(12) Evgeniy Kuntsevich - DM/ Belarus/ 24/ CA - / PA -
(25) Dmitriy Baga - CM/ Belarus/ 23/ CA - / PA -
(7) Alexandr Pavlov - CM/ Belarus/ 28/ CA - / PA -
(16) Edgar Olekhnovich - CM/ Belarus/ 25/ CA - / PA -
(19) Iliya Aleksievich - AM/ Belarus/ 22/ CA - / PA -
(10) Sergey Krivits - AM/ Belarus/ 26/ CA - / PA -


Attackers:
(20) Vitaliy Rodionov - ST/ Belarus/ 29/ CA - / PA -
(9) Dmitriy Mozolevskiy - ST/ Belarus/ 27/ CA - / PA -
(11) Nikolay Signovich - ST/ Belarus/ 21/ CA - / PA -


Being the top team in a country means having the best squad, this I believe we have. My captain Vitaliy Rodionov and his vice-captain will be Alexandr Volod'ko. Rodionov has shown me, in the time that I have been at the club, that he is a born leader, however he lacks a bit of motivation and determination to succeed and this will need to improve. Volod'ko is a player that the youngsters look up to as he is one of our better players. He has a reserved personality and never steps out of line.

We have a good competition for Goalkeepers with 3 evenly matched players. Sergey Chernik will take my number 1 spot, however if I believe that Malins or Gorbunov have performed better in training then they shall be given their chance.

Mikhail Gordeychuk and Denis Polyakov are my best available right and left backs. They will be given permission to advance up the pitch whenever there is an attack on. I want to try and give game time to Maxim aswell so that he can improve and reach his potential.

My centre-backs are the weakest part of the team and this will need to change. Currently my best centre-backs are Egor Filipenko and Nemanja Tubic, but I have a number of players I am looking to improve this position.

I have plenty of options in Midfield and I believe that this is my strongest position and so I will be making full use of it. Alexanr Volod'ko will be played as my main defensive midfielder. He has grit and is a hard tackler. He scares the living daylights out of the opposition. I would like Karnitskiy to learn off how Volod'ko plays so that he can fill in when necessary. I will play Pavlov as my deep play maker with Dimtriy Baga starting beside him, running up and down the pitch. Sergey Krivits will play in behind the strikers in the advanced play maker role. He will need to thread balls through to the advanced forward. I want to play Iliya Aleksievich a bit aswell so that he can also reach his potential.

I believe we need another striker. Vitaliy Rodionov is an incredible striker for this league and will play very well in the advanced forward and will score goals, however he doesn't have a partner to play as a Target Man that will compliment his ability. Nikolay has good potential but is not not quite ready for first team football and I don't Dmitriy as being good enough to keep up with Vitaliy. I have a player in mind who will keep up, however I cannot name names yet.


Goalkeepers:
Artem Soroko - GK/ Belarus/ 21/ CA - / PA -

Full-Backs:
Kirill Aleksiyan - LB/ Belarus/ 22/ CA - / PA -

Centre-Backs:
Roman Morozov - CB/ Belarus/ 19/ CA - / PA -

Midfielders:
Dmitriy Likhtarovich - DM/ Belarus/ 35/ CA - / PA -
Eduard Chudnovsky - CM/ Belarus/ 22/ CA - / PA -
Alexey Dovgel - CM/ Belarus/ 18/ CA - / PA -
Evgeniy Yablonskiy - CM/ Belarus/ 17/ CA - / PA -
Evgeniy Shikavka - AM/ Belarus/ 22/ CA - / PA -
Evgeniy Zdanyuk - AM/ Belarus/ 19/ CA - / PA -

Attackers:
Evgeniy Kalinin - ST/ Belarus/ 19/ CA - / PA -

There is not much potential in the youth team and this is something I have to work on for the next generation of young players. Zdanyuk has the best potential and I will be trying to help him reach it.

Kit Release

With pre-season around the corner and the verge of a new era with manager Alexandr Yermakovich BATE's new kits were released today. The new kits will be made by Joma after the club decided to drop their contract with Adidas last year. Modelling the new kits at the BATE club shop this morning where Goalkeeper Sergey Chernik, Captain Vitaliy Radionov and Midfielder Sergey Krivets.

Home:
The new Home Kit is mainly yellow with a Unique vertical blue stripe running directly down the center. The Joma logo and the BATE logo are both placed centrally within the stripe with the sponsor in the center of the shirt.

Away:
The new Away Kit is blue with yellow pinstripes going vertically down the shirt. It also has a complex collar with a Yellow 'v' reaching down.

The first window has came and passed. This was the window for me to sort out areas of the squad that we needed to strengthen and to hold on to our best players. I believed that the current squad was easily good enough to retain the league title, however, I wanted to bring in the best players I could for the areas I thought we needed them so that we could try and push on in Europe.

In terms of Friendlies we had a very mixed bag of results, however I believe that the variety of Opposition strength and 'other factors' were to blame for that.
Transfers


First of all we let go of a lot of deadwood. I watched each of the 17 released players and decided that neither one of them had a future at the club. Kuban Krasnodar then approached me with a 14k offer for my reserve keeper Andrey Scherbakov, an offer in which I quickly accepted.

After Andrey's paperwork had gone through and he left for Russia I decided to lock down my squad and start looking towards Incoming transfers. First off I addressed my need for a good quality Centre-Back so I decided to snap up Romanian International Mirel Radoi, whom was released last season by Al-Ain, who play in the UAE. Contract negotiations went through quickly and was handed the number 3 shirt and announced to the BATE fans who were ecstatic by the signing.

After this had died down I decided I needed a new, young right-back who can offer competition. After looking around at a list of 3 or 4 players I decided to book out a flight to Dnipropetrovsk to hold talks with Dnipro over Ghanaian International Samuel Inkoom. Dnipro held me to tough negotiations and I ended up paying £700k. This was far more than I wanted to spend and also left me with no transfer kitty for the last position that I thought needed to be improved. After much thought I decided to hand a contract to Croat striker Ivan Klasnic.

Mirel Radoi is an experienced and solid Centre-Back. He holds tight to his man, however has a reputation of being over-aggressive.

Samuel Inkoom is a pacey and young Right-Back who can grow with the club.

Ivan Klasnic is a tall and prolific striker. He has lost the speed in which he once had, however still has the finishing ability in which will see him do good at BATE.

Pre-Season Results

We had a slow start to pre-season with 2 defeats in a row. In our first game against Slovakian power Slovan Bratislava we were always going to be second favourites for the game and this showed with a 3-1 defeat. Dmitriy Mozolevskiy getting our consolation goal.

We then faced an embarrassing defeat to Russian side Arsenal Tula. We should have won the game, however managed to get dominated from start to finish as we shipped 5 goals. Things needed to improve and fast.

The game against Belarus second division side SKVICh Minsk proved the turn around in Pre-Season results after we managed to put 4 past them. Dmitriy Mozolevskiy had a special game scoring a brace. Another Belarus second division side also fell to us, this time it was Khimik Svetlogorsk. Dmitriy Mozolevskiy scored in his 3rd pre-season game out of 4 to put us ahead and 19 year-old Evgeniy Zdanyuk put the nail in the coffin late on.


The PoPS had to go to Dmitriy Mozolevskiy, his goal-a-game form was very impressive during pre-season and I hope heavily that the form shall continue into competitive games.

Good start to the story Zap!

BATE (442 Diamond)
Rodionov(c), Signevich
Krivets
Baga, Pavlov
Volod'ko
Mladenovich, Radoi, Filipenko, Gordeychuk
Chernik

Gorbunov, Tubic, Polyakov, Olekhnovich, Karnitskiy, Alekshievich, Mozolevskiy

---

Life at BATE couldn't of got off to a much easier start for Alexandr Yermakovic as he sees his team lift the Superkubak Belarusi on his managerial debut. Naftan Novopolotsk put up a good fight, however could not hold on as Dmitriy Baga's goal get's the ball rolling for BATE.

Naftan started the game brightly as a run from Valeriy Zhukovskiy broke through the BATE defence, however BATE Keeper Sergey Chernik made himself big and swept the ball from the players feet. Another chance came soon after for Naftan as winger Vadim Demidovich put in a searching cross only to be found by Chernik.

After this early pressure from Naftan the game settled down to a rhythm and BATE managed to keep hold on to the ball for large periods, passing it around the midfield diamond. A corner from Krivets almost saw BATE turn that possession into a goal, however Radoi glanced his header just wide of the post and was denied a debut goal.

Naftan were starting to look ever increasingly shaky at the back as BATE mounted pressure onto their back line. Coming up to the half-way mark Nikolay Signovich won a free-kick 30 yards away from the goal in which he elected to take. He made the run up and hit a wonderful shot that was curling in to the top corner before Egor Khatkevich dove, pawing away at the ball to parry it away from the goal and taking Naftan into the break still level.

No substitutions where made at half-time, however BATE left it a lot later than Naftan to exit the changing rooms.

The second-half started as the first left off, with BATE pressing high up the pitch trying to turn possession into a goal. The deadline was finally broken ten minutes after the break when Dmitriy Baga hit a wonderful free-kick from just outside the penalty box. The ball dipped and weaved through the wall and into the top of the net, putting BATE up 1-0.

A substitution was made for both teams on the hour mark as Nikoloy Signevich came off for
BATE after picking up a slight knock and was replaced by Dmitriy Mozoleskiy. Vadim Demidovich was replaced by Dmitriy Denisyuk for Naftar.

BATE almost increased their lead near the end as Mozoleskiy put in a stunning ball to Vitaliy Rodionov whom used his first touch to take the ball away from his marker and put him into a one-on-one situation, however he could not hold his nerve as he sails the ball wide of the post.

For the last 10 minutes BATE held on to the ball well and passed it around, Naftar were too tired to do anything about it and so Alexandr Yermakovich claimed his first win (and Silverware) of his career at BATE Borisov. Yermakovich won't want to revel on this win though as he will be taking his team to Minsk FC in 3 days time for the Kubak Belarusi Quarter Final and in a weeks time is the league curtain raiser at Dinamo Brest.

Very nice start, good luck

Great victory. Obviously you were going to win but silverware is silverware.

We have got off to a really good start to our competitive games. We should be winning most our games and we have done that so far. First we traveled away to FC Minsk in the Kubak Belarusi Quarter Final. This is a competition we should win and we got off to a good start, a goal from Rodionov proved all we needed to get through to the Semi Final.

We then started our league season with a comfortable 2-0 win away at Dinamo Brest. I was very pleased to see the lads pass the ball and keep it easily and this was proven in our 72% possession. First 3 points on the board.

Our Semi Final away at 2nd Division SKVICh Minsk proved more difficult than expected. SKVICh went into the game in a heavily defensive manner and, rather disappointingly, we could only break through and score once. Despite this we are through to the final and another chance for silverware is looming over us.

With 3 away games to start the season I was finally glad to go into my first competitive home game and the lads did not disappoint. We clenched our second win of the season with a dominating performance against Shakhter Soligorsk. Although we didn't have a large amount of shots, like we did in the other games, we were clinical in the ones we did have and we were very comfortable in possession again.

Back on our travels we managed to dominate Belshina for 90 minutes in a 3-0 win. Ivan Klasnic managed to get his 2 first BATE goals today and had an outstanding game. We extended our points tally to 9 points and the squad seemed really up for trying to get the most points they can.

Derby day came up next. Home games against Dinamo Minsk usually have a good atmosphere and this year was no different with a near sell-out. My only hope was that the squad didn't crumble under the expectancy of the fans and I walked away from the game with a smile on my face as the lads finished the game off 1-0 winners. We dominated possession again and this is something that excites me.

Our excellent run could not last, however, and Dinamo's city rivals FC Minsk put an end to our unbeaten streak. They countered our possession and managed to break through our defence several times and I was disappointing to see the defence not sharpen up and on one opportunity, late in the game, they punished us. We move on from this game and won't look back, hopefully this should just be a small blip.

League Standings

Defeat against FC Minsk means that we could not jump 3 points ahead of Neman Grodno and head the table going into May. However, promising signs are showing that we can win definitely win the league and obviously that is my aim.

Player of the Month

Dimitriy Baga, my main drifting midfielder, has put his name on my first Player of the Month award. Baga was constantly everywhere and was always available for a pass. I enjoy watching him play as he can pop up basically anywhere.

Next Month...

The Kubak Belarusi final is to be played at the end of the month. A good chance for another peice of silverware early in my career, and against a team I have already beat in Shakhter Soligorsk. Our hardest league game this up-and-coming month will probably be against Torpedo Zhodino, although I expect us to win them all and collect maximum points out of May.

So far so good, a shame that a great set of results was marred by the Minsk result, a point or more would have seen you top early on but even still, showing great promise for the season

We continued our good start this month by going on a 100% winning streak. This is how I expect the majority of our league season to go and I am happy that we have really gelled under my tactics and that the team have started off so quickly under my managerial career.

This month started with an away win at Dnepr Mogilev. I was feeling incredibly confident coming into this game seen as Dnepr were sitting second bottom after only winning one game so far and losing the rest. I am not going to lie but I was quite disappointing that we conceded this game. These are a team we should be beating comfortably and to only beat them by one goal was shocking to be honest.

Next game was a great game for us. We dismantled Torpedo Zhodino incredibly easily in a 3-0 win. The players played admirably and the whole team deserved Man of the Match to be honest. Games like this show why we are the top dogs of Belarus and also give me hope that, if we can play like that in Europe, we can shock people.

We stayed at home next game against Slavia Mozyr and we impressed again. Rodionov is in the form of his life, he scored a brace against Torpedo and has now scored a brace against Slavia. The lad has already beaten his record for last season and it's not even half way through the season. We are starting to dominate a little.

We may have got complacent a little at the start of next match away at Naftan. They shocked us by scoring a goal early in the first half and it took until just before half-time to score our equalizer. At half-time I gave them a good old bollocking and they came out much better in the second and managed to grab the winner. I am not happy with the sloppy start we had to this game but I am glad that the team rallied round at half-time to save the game and avoid embarrassment.



Well I didn't expect this, 8 wins out of 9 and we are still not top of the league! Naftan Grodno are pulling something out the bag and are shocking everyone! I must admit I am starting to admire Sergey Solodovnikov a little, he has managed to turn an average squad into something special. However, I am looking forward to playing him and showing him how much he is punching above his weight.



Player of the Month has to be handed to Vitaliy Rodionov, our captain and number 9 striker. The lad has scored 7 goals in 4 games this month, I am stunned by his sudden burst of goal scoring form and he has certainly cemented himself, if he wasn't already, as first name on my team-sheet.



It's the Kubak Belarusi final against Shakhter Soligorsk next and there will be live commentary from the lads at BATE Talk FM covering this game. Hopefully I can collect my second piece of silverware so early in may career so stay tuned!

Notes
Thanks to Ziechael for the BATE Talk logo, great job!

Great month, 9 in and only 2 against. Looks like a two horse race for the title already but plenty of time for one or the other to slip up... make sure it isn't you

Thanks for the thanks, happy to help with logos, banners or anything at any time

I am proud to announce a new link up with the Dutch powerhouses Ajax! I feel that this is a fantastic opportunity to bring in some young up-and-coming stars and give them first team football at BATE for no cost what-so-ever. Ajax will also have the first option to buy any of our players, however, that doesn't really affect us. Ajax will pay us an annual fee of £60,000.

I am really excited by this link and what it holds into the future. As a smaller team we could really benefit with some products of the one of the best youth system in the world. Who knows, we may end up loaning the next Dennis Bergkamp!