Cheating As An Amateur Team
Dominating the Amateur Transfer Market
Cheating As An Amateur Team
After spending a few years at PanSa East FC, I’ve learned a bit about the best way to conquer the Football Manager amateur transfer world.
It feels a little bit like cheating, actually — which is why I gave this video its name:
The problem is actually pretty simple. Football Manager transfers are designed to be governed by financial considerations. You can technically buy any player you like, provided that your team can afford the player’s wages, and that you are able to negotiate a price that you can actually afford.
Technically speaking, you can offer wages far above what your team can afford — but you risk going into bankruptcy. You can also offer to pay for players in installments — but you also risk running your team into financial ruin.
The Amateur Shuffle
When it comes to amateur club management, however, all those pecuniary rules go out the window. Provided that your club (or you as manager) has enough clout, you can easily convince other amateur players from pretty much any country in the world to sign with your club — even if you’ve never scouted them.
As I understand it, scouting is supposed to be the thing that prevents you from going nuts in amateur land. Sure, you could technically sign players from Haiti to play for your American Samoan team. However, you’re not going to have enough of a scouting budget to see what they are like, and your front office won’t allow you to send scouts that far away.
There is a way to overcome this in Football Manager, of course. You can just sign players sight unseen, take your pick of the lot, and then release the ones you didn’t like.
This works well. In fact, it works too well. It costs nothing to sign players to amateur contracts. It costs nothing to release them. Sure, you will take a morale hit — but if you’re playing in a league with a 9 month offseason, you can easily schedule enough friendlies to turn things around before the next season begins.
You can do the same thing with the good players on the teams you are competing with. Want to stop their star striker? Easy: just sign him.
Is it realistic? No. But it’s really effective.