[FM13] C.D. Constància: Trading places

Louis O. : Fantastic win, and you above them in the table and you have a game in hand, every game's bringing you closer to survival! Great work

Unquestionably my biggest win yet.

k1rups : Each point is helping that target of avoiding relegation and the way the teams below you seem to be going I am confident you'll be okay! Great win against Mallorca. You have the bragging rights for now :p

We are lucky with the results. Even if we are struggling to win games the teams behind us in the standing are doing nothing to catch us.

gambit84 : I get into your story only now, but another story from the Segunda B on is great! And you did a wonderful job... And also your fight for staying in Liga is going well... I will be following from now on!

Welcome gambit84.
Very cool with a new reader with extended knowledge about the lower Spanish leagues.

Any comments and suggestions are highly appreciated.

New Update later today.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/CDConstagravencia_zps42f3d47b.jpg

Lost opportunity

Sorry for the delay in updates.

I got sidetracked by the summer finally coming to Norway and that I had to do some actual playing to stay ahead of the story.

I also got caught up in the story “The run of play: The Pro Vercelli Story” one more time.

It you have not read it already, don’t cheat yourself for a great story about a small Italian team Pro Vercelli and their way to world domination.

I know it’s a FM09 story it’s so well written that it’s worth a read.

I'll give it a read

Will always love this story. You have inspired me to do a spanish llm story in the near future. May I ask is it any good in Spain and will I be able to enjoy it?

I've read through this whole thing, and I think it's amazing so far! LLM challenges might actually be harder in Spain than in England, even though in England there are three more divisions.

Louis O. : I'll give it a read

Had a chance to check out the Pro Vercelli story ?

You liked it?

wellsy1498 : Will always love this story. You have inspired me to do a spanish llm story in the near future. May I ask is it any good in Spain and will I be able to enjoy it?

Thanks for the kind words wellsy1498. we can never have enough stories about the lower Spanish leagues.

You will be able to enjoy it if you have the stomach to manage a team with no transfer budget. Make sure to pick a team with a healthy fans base and with a B-team. That will come in handy when you move up the divisions.

yuttra52 : I've read through this whole thing, and I think it's amazing so far! LLM challenges might actually be harder in Spain than in England, even though in England there are three more divisions.

Thanks for reading yuttra52 and I am glad that you enjoyed it.

I don’t know about England as this is my first ever attempt to manage a team from the lower leagues. My last story (FM11) was a Napoli story.

But I agree that winning promotion from the 3rd division is a grueling experience.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/CDConstagravencia_zps42f3d47b.jpg

Lost opportunity

Just after New Year in 2020 we had our first real opportunity for a result that would have been heard around the football world.


It was a home game against Real Madrid. According to plan we got behind after just fifteen minutes on a goal by Argentina super star Lucas Ocampos.


We then managed to hang on for dear life for the remaining of the half. Just before the two teams headed for the locker-room for halftime Real Madrid’s Marcelo was shown a direct red card after a stupid two footed tackle.
That gave us renewed hope for the second half. If not hope for a win or draw, at least hope for not getting totally humiliated in front of our own fans.


The hope grew even bigger when we were rewarded a penalty after 51 minutes. Teodoro Bañares made no mistakes and the game was suddenly even at 1-1.


Real Madrid still dominated the ball for the remaining of the game but without getting the go-ahead-goal. Instead we were rewarded a second penalty with just two minutes left on the clock in Nou Camp d'Inca.


Bañares had been substituted with an injury (again) and we needed another player to take the penalty. Forward stepped 21-year old right defender Cihan Polat. He had never scored on a penalty in a competitive game.


He stepped up to the ball and........

Blasted it off the right post and back inn to play.


Two minutes later the game ended in a draw. I would of cause have sold the game for a draw when the day started but now it was a huge letdown to only get away with the one point.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/52C_zpsa900d9e1.jpg


With the transfer window reopening it was also time to look back at the purchases I had made to start the season. It was a depressing showing. I had spend most of the €8 M that the board made available to me before the season started and had very little to show for it. Most of the players we had brought inn had struggled to even win a spot in the starting lineup much less being productive players.


We made just two made move this time around. After the departure of Eloy Àlvarez we were still struggling to find a replacement on the ML/AML.
Jorge Prado had never again showed the poise he had the few games last season and the young German Edi Curri still looked like a hot prospect but struggled to show it on the filed.


The choice fell on a 23-year old Brazilian named Diego S Batista. His natural position was up front as poacher where he had scored 36 with 10 assists in fifty games for São Caetano the year before. But he could also play AML and I was looking for a player not afraid to move forward and support our lone striker. For a price of €300 K he was worth a gamble.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/52A_zpsc820df9c.jpg

We also decided to add another defender with the remaining money available. Lucas Hoyos was a 21-year old from Vèlez who could both play left and center.


We had now spent 9.25M on the transfer marked this season (6th most in the BBVA). That was a lot of money for a team like C.D. Constància with a total turnover for the season expected to be around €30 M. I was afraid to even think about what would happen if we were to be relegated.

Halfway thru the season we were hovering just above relegation but still on the right side of the dreaded relegation line.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/52b_zpscd1a2cac.jpg

A team in really bad shape was R.C.D. Mallorca. They had been under the relegation line for the entire first half of the season and now they fired there Russian manager Leonid Slutskiy. The replacement was the former Granada C.F. manager Juan Antonio Anquela. It was the sixth manager to coach R.C.D Mallorca since I took over C.D. Constància back in 2012.

I was never asked about the R.C.D. Mallorca* vacancy but was instead approached by Rayo Vallecano de Madrid, S.A.D and asked if I was interested in moving to Madrid. I didn’t even answer the email.


*In somewhat related news in a parallel universe called real life, R.C.D Mallorca was relegated from the LIGA BBVA this weekend. The Spanish top division will be without a team from Mallorca for this first time since 1996/97 next season.

A great update! Tough draw against madrid but hopefully Diego performs! Mid table should be the next stop

Doing well, unlucky not to beat Madrid, and I have read the start of the Pro Vercelli story, it looks good

Awesome update mate! Really unlucky against Madrid... Keep fighting and you will avoid relegation!

k1rups : A great update! Tough draw against madrid but hopefully Diego performs! Mid table should be the next stop

With only three wins in the first 19 games the main focus is still on avoiding relegation before starting to look upward.

I would love to be able to use Diego S Batista as a striker instead of playing him partly out of position at AML but I just cannot get Edi Curri to preform even if the trainers keep praising his development.

2013-06-03 05:48#108202 Louis O. : Doing well, unlucky not to beat Madrid, and I have read the start of the Pro Vercelli story, it looks good

A win against Madrid would have been so great.
I have nobody to blame but myself. I have no clue what Cihan Polat was doing on the penalty-list in the first place.

2013-06-03 06:28#108208 gambit84 : Awesome update mate! Really unlucky against Madrid... Keep fighting and you will avoid relegation!

Thanks gambit84.

Just happy we don’t have to play Oviedo.

2013-06-03 08:04#108235 Northwood :

2013-06-03 06:28#108208 gambit84 : Awesome update mate! Really unlucky against Madrid... Keep fighting and you will avoid relegation!

Thanks gambit84.

Just happy we don’t have to play Oviedo.

Ahahah! Well, you have more experience with respect to me in the Liga, so I should be happy of not playing against Constancia!

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/CDConstagravencia_zps42f3d47b.jpg

Waiting to exhale

The first one and a half month of 2020 was hugely important to us as we were going up against some of the weaker teams in the LIGA BBVA. This was curial important games for C.D. Constància. If we were to have a chance avoid relegation and stay up this were games we had to get points from.


After the unlucky 1-1 draw against Real Madrid in the first game of the year we had managed a streak of seven games without a loss. We didn’t win all the games but we had won the important games against the teams we had behind us in the standing like Levante UD, Deportivo and S.D. Ponferradina.


We now found ourselves in 13th place but more importantly we had gathered 29 points already with fourteen games to go in the season. In some years twenty-nine would be enough to avoid relegation but I guessed that another 8-10 points would for sure secure us another season in the top division.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/53b_zpseef938bd.jpg


Another positive was that we finally started to get good performances from some of the new players. Diego Batista played some good games on the AML even if it was obvious that he was more natural poacher and belonged up front.
Argentinean Lucas Hoyos were also showing some qualities on the DL.


The schedule turned a lot harder after the Levante game, starting with a home game against FC Barcelona. With ten men behind the ball and dropping extra deep we managed to hold Barcelona to just a single shot on goal.
Messi and Co might have had the ball for 71% of the time but I did not care as we had now recorded draws against both Real Madrid and Barcelona in the last month and a half.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/53d_zpsadead00e.jpg


We were unlucky loosing to Betis when they scored in the last minute but took revenge the week after against Rayo with a big 4-2 win at home.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/53c_zps78433425.jpg


After twenty seven rounds we were in 14th place but a quick look at the standing showed that there was a huge gap between Rayo in 15th place with 24 points and us in 14th place with 33 points. The teams behind us all struggled and it was doubtful that four teams would be able to gain ten points on us in the remaining eleven rounds and I finally started to exhale.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q173/Nordskov_dk/CD%20Constancia/53A_zpsb5cf1826.jpg

Great results mate surprising to see Varane now at Barca but with a line up like they have you did exceptionally well to get a draw! Excellent work and it seems safety is round the corner

Great stuff mate! Read it all throughout and it looks so damn good