Mauro's Journey

I have already been through the first 5 saves in FM16, from West Ham to Bari. Common for all of them, however, have been that I lost interest after the first season, even though I always hope for a long and successful career when I start the save. So I was actually thinking about taking a little pause from FM.

Then I saw the news about Mauro Camoranesi been hired as head coach of the Argentinean club Club Atlético Tigre.



Camoranesi started his coaching career with Coras de Tepic in the Mexican Ascenso MX last year, but dismissed after just 8 months.

I immediately saw the opportunity to virtually follow in the footsteps of Camoranesi. So I created him as the new boss at El Estadio José Dellagiovanna.

My own knowledge about Argentine football and Tigre are very limited. So Mauro will take over frem here, and tell you about Tigre.



Firstly, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Mauro Germán Camoranesi and I am a former Italian Argentine profesional footballer.

I have always been very fond of the Buenos Aires based club River Plate, but I started my youth carrer at Club Atlético Aldosivi. From here I moved quickly to Mexico where I played at Santos Laguna and got my nickname ”El Cholo”.

I found myself rarely more than one season in a club before I moved on, and before I in 2000 signed with Verona I had been past the Uruguayan club Montevideo Wanders, back to my homeland to play for Banfield, and once again to Mexico where I played at Cruz Azul.

I got two seasons at Verona, before I moved on to the Italian giant Juventus, where we won the Serie A in 2002-03. We also won the championship in 2004-05 and 2005-06, but was later stripped both of those titles due The "Calciopoli" scandal which also saw the club relegated to Serie B. We were promoted straight back up though, and I continued my carrer at Juventus until 2010.

It was also during my stay at Juventus that I achieved my debut for the Italian national team, and I was part of Marcello Lippi's team which won the 2006 Fifa World Cup. I has been capped 55 times by Italy and scored four goals.

After my stay at Juventus I continued my career Stuttgart, here however I only stayed for one season, as I had a strong desire to return to Argentina. So in 2011 I signed a contract with Lanús where I stayed for one season, and I then ended my playing career at Racing Club in 2014.

Since then I had a short stay as manager for the Mexican side Coras de Tepic, but I did not feel the conditions were in place for me to continue to lead Tepic. So here I am as the new manager of Tigre.

http://catigre.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/estadio-seccion1.jpg

Club Atlético Tigre is a football club from Victoria, Buenos Aires. The club is currently playing in the Argentine Primera División, and play their home matches at the Estadio José Dellagiovanna (known as Coloso de Victoria), which holds 32.100 people. The club was founded in 1902 and debuted in the Argentine Primera División in 1915. Tigre remained in the Primera División the whole amateur era which lasted until 1931 where the league turned professional, and played their first professional in May 1931 against San Lorenzo. The trophy cabinet is slightly empty though, and the club has only won 5 Primera B titles (1912, 1945, 1953, 1979 and 2004-05).

Tigre have, in the recent years had a nice success though. In the 2007 Apertura, Tigre archived some remarkable results, and the club finished 2nd, which was the club's best campaign ever in the Primera División. In the 2008 Apertura Tigre surpassed this result, they shared the 1st place with Boca Juniors and San Lorenzo, and had to play a mini-tournament in order to win the title. They ended up losing the tournement due to a poorer goal average.

Tigre have since managed to achieve participation in their first international club competition, and in 2012 they reached the final in Copa Sudamericana, where they faced São Paulo. São Paulo were declared champions, since Tigre refused to return for the second half in the second leg due to security problems at halftime.

So this was a little summary of me and the club. Next up is the evaluation of the squad.

After all the official meetings with the staff and the press, I have now evaluated the club and the squad. We are predicted to finish 13th in the league, which we hopefully can surpass. The transfer budget is close to nothing though, €196k.

The squad:

The squad contain a lot of defensive quality. We have a great goalkeeper in Javier García:



Defence:

We have a strong defensive line, even though I would have liked them to be a bit younger, but luckily, the club also have many talents in these positions.



Midfield:

The midfield gives me little more worries, since almost all the central midfielders in the squad are ball winning defensive midfielders. So we will certainly be lacking some creativity here. With that being said, I will without doubt rate Joaquín Arzura as the biggest asset in the squad!



Attack:
I am very satisfied with the attack though, as we got many different types of forwards, which gives us many opportunities up front.



I will be using the upcoming friendlies against Atlético Unión, Los Andes, Alte. Brown and Def. de Belgrano to decide on the final starting 11 and tactic. I will start from a asymmetric 4-1-2-2-1 formation and continuously evaluate and change this.

We had 0 scouts hired, so the first thing I did was looking for a new Chief Scout. I found the perfect person for the job in Dante D’Alessandro with respectively 16 and 17 in judging player ability and judging player potential and currently without a contract. Even though Dante showed interest in the job we were not able to give him the contract he wanted though.

So the hunt for a new Chief Scout continued, and I ended up finding Rubén Dolce from the 2.division team Club Ferro. After we had reached a compensation settlement with Ferro of €51.000 Rubén Dolce became our new chief scout.

The pre-season was disappointing in terms of results, but I also experimented a lot tactical and ended up with a 4-1-4-1 formation as the standard formation.



Meanwhile there came some bids on our defensive midfielder Arzura, with the biggest bid from Genoa at 3.5m which I turned down. Following this interesest, Arzura wanted a improved deal, which seemed impossible since he was already one of our best-paid players, but we managed to reach an agreemement without breaking the bank. We will not be able to sign any players in this transfer window though, unless we sell. This was a bit unfortunate, since we had just agreed with the Uruguayan right-back Mauricio Gómez, but there is not enough funds to complete this transfer now.



Finally we got a new intake of youth players, with the right back César Pérez as the most promising:

Enjoying this so far, good luck mate

thanks a lot! And good luck with your Tranmere project!

Our back-up forward Leandro Garate got loaned out to the Portuguese side Marítimo. This gave us the means to ensure José Francisco Cevallos Jr. on loan for a year, with a future fee of 850k. The former Juventus player possesses exactly the creativity we have been lacking in our midfield.

http://www.teradeportes.com/sites/default/files/images/titulares/2014/2014-05-14/cevallos_titu.jpg

José is the son of Cevallos Sr. who is considered as the greatest Ecuadorian keeper of all time. Cevallos Jr. has played most of his professional career at LCD Quito, which youth ranks he joined in 2008. He has also been a regular in Ecuador youth national teams, and it was particularly due to his efforts on those teams that Juventus loaned him in 2013, but they never made the move permanent even though they had the option to buy him. So he returned to LCD Quito, where he has played since.

Cevallos Jr. is a advanced playmaker today, though he started his youth career as a striker and his most known force is his defence splitting passes.



Cevallos became the only new player in this window, so it was a very quiet transfer window for our part.

Season start


Judged from the schedule, it looked like I would get a relatively mild first month as manager of Tigre. We would only face opponents who were predicted to be placed below us in the table.

vs. Argentinos Jrs Away 1-1 draw



It was a very close opening match at Estadio Diego Armando Maradona, where we actualy got behind in our strongest period, we had 70% of the possession in this period, but we also scored when Argentinos Jrs. looked to close the match. So overall it was a fair result.

vs. Atl. Rafaela Home 4-0 win



The home match against Atl. Rafaela became José Francisco Cevallos first match as starter for Tigre. It was Facundo Sánchez who stole the show again though, with a fantastic performance. I was so close to sell Sánchez for just 1M before the season start, but luckily I decided to refuse the offer from Sparta Prague.

We got the best possible start on the home ground, it was a very solid win and the only minus was the Cevallos got a minor injury and will be out for the next 4-5 weeks.

vs. Quilmes Away 1-1 draw



I think we were a bit unlucky here, and should have taken all 3 points, but we still remain unbeaten in Primera División.

vs. Aldosivi Home 2-0 win



Another very solid home win, but we lacked the effectiveness we had in our last home match against Atl. Rafaela. We got the win by a direct free-kick goal from Ernesto Goñi, and a overtime scoring from Lucas Wilchez.

...and now to an early top clash in the Primera División, against newly-promoted Sarmineto (Junín) who have won 3 out of their first 4 matches and currenly lying in 2nd place.

We have been looking good in our home matches, so I was going into this match with positive expectations. However I had a slight concern, since we had to be without our normal forward Carlos Luna, but maybe it was time for Federico González to shine.

Sarmineto quality surprised us though, and they was able to control the match early on. We were however still able to get a few good chances, and suddenly Arzura could bring us in front with a fine strike outside the penalty area after 20 minutes. That goal changed the match, we took completely control over the match from here, and Sánchez made it 2-0 just before half-time. So I thought the second-half would be just a walk in the park, but then my central defender Blengio decided to make two-footed lunge, which of course resulted in a direct red card! The match became much more equal from here on, but Sarmineto was never really dangerous, and we took another home win.


So we are currenly on a five match unbeaten run and lie now in 1st place!


This was not enough to win the Argentinian Premier Division Manager of the Month award though.



Facundo Sánchez came a bit closer to take the Player of the Month award, but had to settle for the second place. Overall a fantastic first month for me at Tigre, lets hope it can continue this way.

On a different note, Ignacio Bonadío our back up on the right back position, requested to terminate his loan and although we do not have many players to cover the right back position, I accepted his request, since we paid a high wage compared to his quality. So Bonadío has now returned to Boca.

Brilliant start to the season and the story. I've never really enjoyed South America for whatever reason, however this looks enjoyable, keep it up.

Thanks a lot Alfie! I've actually felt exactly the same way, but I saw this one as a fun challenge and I think that Mauro will come to the European leagues in the future

Our march program contained mainly opponents, which is expected to be placed in the bottom half of the table.


vs. Douglas Haig p6-5 win

We opened the month with a match in the Copa Argentina against the Primera B team Douglas Haig. The way to the 6th round was already paved, but we clearly underestimated our opponent. We got behind on a penalty and subsequently our central defender Echeverría got sent out. With 20th minute left of the match I did not have much hope, but then out of nothing we got the equalizer. After a dramatic penalty shoot-out, where we first took the lead 3-1 and Douglas Haig came back, we ended up winning 6-5 and we were through to the next round!

vs. Club Mutual Crucero del Norte 1-0 win


We played slightly better in our away match against Club Mutual Crucero del Norte compared to the Copa-match, and we grabbed a very deserved 1-0 victory, although I would like to have had a greater victory against the leagues worst defense.

vs. Club Social y Deportivo Defensa y Justicia 2-1 win


Things did not start well for us here, as Defensa y Justicia seized on an error by our defender Echeverría (he will probably appear on the bench for the next match!) and scored a simple goal for 1-0. Our midfielder Wilchez got the equalizing goal just 2 minutes afterwards though with a close range effort. 1-1 had probably been the fair result, but González clinched the winner at the 89th minute!

vs. Club Olimpo de Bahía Blanca 2-1 win


This was a top clash in the Primera División, as we occupied the 1st place and Olimpo was lying in 3rd place. Once again we got behind, this time just before the half time. Facundo Sánchez then equalised in the 60th minute.

After Echeverría had cost us two goals in the two previous matches he became the hero in this one, as the experienced centre-back clinched another late winner in the 87th minute. So fortunate that I did not throw him off after all! With 8 against 4 shots on target and 62/38% of the possesion I think we deserved this win.

vs. Club Atlético Temperley 1-0 win


For the third time in a row we got a very late decisive goal. With the match nearing its end, it was Martín Galmarini who scored, to give us the lead on the 92 minutes.

So it was a perfect month in terms of the results, with 5 wins out of 5 possible, but I must also admit that we have been a bit lucky with the very late goals and I miss some cynicism from my forwards.

We are still placed first in the league and we have even increased our lead to the chasing pack. I'm really excited about how our team will compete with the stronger opponents when we bump into them, but It also evokes a bit of horror to look forward in the calendar, since we will be meeting River, Boca, San Lorenzo and Racing Club in succession (predicted to finish as 1,2,3 and 4). Now we should enjoy the current first place, however!

This month I took revenge and won the Argentinian Premier Division Manager of the Month award – what a start as manager for the Matadores!



As this was not enough, we did the clean sweep since our 33 year old right back Martín Galmarini was named Player of the Month for March, with River's Gabriel Mercado finishing in second place, whilst Gino Peruzzi of Boca came in third.

Further news in march was that another two players Nicolás Pantaleone and our reserve goalkeeper Sebastián D'Angelo got terminated their loan contracts and they returned to respectively River and Boca. Our Wage budget begins to look really nicely, without it has affected the quality of the squad much. I might start having dreams about a new efficient striker in the next transfer window!

Another month with opponents that are expected to be placed in the lower end of the table, with one exception though. Club Rosario seems to be our toughest opponent so far.

vs. Arsenal de Sarandí away draw 0-0


Very frustrating not to win this one, since we dominated the match completely. In the 72th minute we were nearly handed the lead, when our midfielder Pelletieri had the chance to score from the penalty spot, but their keeper was able to deny him sadly.

vs. Club Atlético San Martín de San Juan home win 2-1


Back on track with a relatively easy home win here. Our experienced midfielder Galmarini opened the scoring with a close range finish after half an hour of the match, and our wide midfielder Sánchez doubled our lead with 18th minute left of the match.

San Martín got a consolation goal in the over time.

vs. Club Atlético Rosario Central home loss 0-2


Our streak unfortunately ended here, and it was much deserved. It was without a doubt the worst match we have played in this season. 2 goals in succession immediately after the break settled unfortunately the match.

vs. Club Atlético Unión de Santa Fe away 2-0 win


A highly polished performance from us here, though we needed a free kick goal from Goni to open the scoring.

We did not win any awards this month, Rosario's manager and players took them all, as they won all of their matches in April, were our painful defeat was among.

I have meanwhile loaned out our young winger Kevin Itabel to Avaí FC, as he probably would not get any first team football with us this season.

vs. Club Atlético Nuevo Chicago away 1-1 draw


This was a special match, since Nueva Chicago is our local rival. There is a special history about the two teams. Nueva Chicago played in the Primera División until 2004 were they got relegated. They then got promoted to the Primera División again in 2006, but due to a poor campaign they had to play the relegation playoff vs. Tigre consisting in two matches, which Tigre won the first 1-0 and when Tigre was leading 2-1 hundres of hooligans from Nueva Chicago stromed the field.

Nueva Chicago got later punished with a loss of 20 points for the 2007-08 season in Primera B and Chicago Nuevas stadium got closed for 20 fixtures. It cost them another relegation to Primera B Metropolitana, the thirds division of Argentina football. So it has been a long road for Nueva Chicago to get back in the Primera División.

So we were ready for a very intense match this time, and it was exactly as we expected. 12 yellow cards and 1 red card shows a clear picture of how intense the match was. We started the match badly, but got shortly after control over the match. We had many great chances to take the win here, and it was extremely disappointing that we could not utilize some of the many chances. So we had to settle with a disappointing 0-0 result here.

vs. Club Atlético Banfield home 2-1 win


Then it was time to get a visit from his old club, and the press was of course immediately out with pictures from the time where I solidified myself as attacking midfielder – oh those days!

It was a joyful reunion with Banfield, although it started bad. Not only did it rain, we came also undeservedly behind after 25 minutes, but our experienced midfielder Lucas Wilchez then equalized in the 67th minute, and just 4 minutes later he scored what proved to be a winner with a deftly executed finish. It is no wonder that there are plenty European clubs rumoured to be interested in him, although he is not a young man anymore.


Now we can look forward to a long-awaited break of two months until the next Premier División match, the break is interrupted, however, by a single Copa match. What makes the break even more enjoyable, of course, is that we are still number one in the league!