An International Squad
Lots of change in the air at PanSa FC
An International Squad
I made kind of an odd decision - one that almost cost me my save.
I suppose I was getting tired of the monotony of seeing the same names over and over again in American Samoa. I decided to take a look at what else was out there.
And, well, what I found kind of surprised me.
What They Won’t Tell You
What they won’t tell you about Football Manager is that you can actually sign amateur players from any country in the world.
It’s true that most players won’t want to leave your team, especially if you’re literally on the other side of the planet. In particular, players who are 18 or younger and who have little experience outside of their own youth team are not likely going to sign with some random team in American Samoa for no apparent reason.
However, it is absolutely possible to raid national teams that are comprised of nothing but amateur players. And, since the players are 100% free, there’s really nothing stopping you from signing, oh, 250 or more at once in order to search deep for the good ones.
And so it was that I started to raid the national teams of countries like Papua New Guinea, Somalia, and Taiwan. Sure, I was able to get a few players from Tonga and Samoa — but I also made sure to spend time looking in Cambodia, Djibouti, and Eritrea.
Side Effects
Now, this wasn’t a complete victory for me.
There were two problems. The first is that I tried to sign all of these players before the start of the transfer window. Football Manager didn’t like that, and kept crashing whenever things rolled over to that day.
In the end, I had to retire my manager profile and start a new one just to get the game to move forward. The game did move past that point in the end, thank goodness. This is a problem that Sports Interactive really needs to address, however.
The second problem is that I released a lot of those unwanted players into the wild. They wound up staying in American Samoa and signing with other teams.
In other words, I’ve created a league full of monsters. And I’m not sure we’re going to be able to win the league this year.