First Project

FM21: Real Salt Lake in the World Super League

Structure

We’re going to start off with something somewhat unusual.

That’s right – we’re playing with an older version of Football Manager.  FM21, to be exact.

This isn’t going to be a standard Football Manager game, either.  I’m using a number of addons that will make the experience different than what you may be used to.

The most prominent of these add-ons are:

World Super League (Ultimate Edition) by DarthFurion

Legends of the Beautiful Game by DF11Faces

For those not familiar with these game-changing editor files, I’ll get into more details in the next few posts.  Needless to say, the entire experience will be different than anything you’re likely used to.

Real Salt Lake

I will be managing Real Salt Lake, which finds itself in the Major League Soccer division of League 1.

My motivation for choosing this team is pretty simple.  I grew up in the area.  In fact, I remember when the rather confusingly named Real Salt Lake first began back in 2005.  Though I was abroad during their period of greatest success (2009-2012), I still feel a tie to the team as my hometown club.

RSL in FM21 also provides a number of challenges, both in terms of personnel and finances.  This is going to be a bit harder than grabbing Manchester City and buying all the high ability players in sight.

Why Football Manager 2021?

So why play with a game that is 2 years old now?

First and foremost, I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for this version.  During the worst times of the pandemic, I found myself playing Football Manager for hours and hours on end.  Certainly, this was an unhealthy habit – however, it also made me feel a special affinity for this game that I simply never developed with the 2022 version.

Playing with an older version also allows me to make use of some of the more interesting and powerful edits and add-ons that the Football Manager community has developed.  World Super League in particular is so amazing and so much fun to play through that I find it difficult to go back to the vanilla version of the game.

We’ll get to FM23 and beyond eventually.  For now, we’re going to have a quick trip back to the past.

Goal

The purpose of this project, beyond having fun, is to try to turn RSL into the most powerful and dominant team in the world as quickly as possible.  I want to win the Premier League (much harder here than you might expect), and want to develop this team into a massive juggernaut that simply dominates.

It’s going to be a harder task than it seems, however.  And we’ll get into some of the reasons why tomorrow.