2. Forza Pro!
Pro Vercelli Club review in Football Manager 2020
Me & the beta
As far as I can remember, I never started a Football Manager save with its beta version, mainly cause I always look for the more stable version of the match engine before setting up a proper game, just to avoid game-breaking bugs.
After many years I realized that thing simply doesn’t exist, a bit late, I know.
The match engine is always evolving, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, every year it has got peculiar bugs and strong points, waiting for the Holy Grail is probably pointless.
Having said this, I decided to start my career with Pro Vercelli and see how this journey unfolds.
Club vision
- Sign players under 20 for the future
- Don’t sign players over 30
I had no problem with the second part while the first one obliged me to get some players on loan, having a budget of only 350k to sign new players.
The five-year plan
- Work within wage budget (around 2M per season) and minimum 2-year contract for first-team players
- For the end of this season, the minimum goal for Pro Vercelli is to reach the Lega Pro playoff (1st team is promoted, from 2nd to 10th go to playoff)
The same applies to the next four seasons, at least for now, this a new feature, let’s see how it works in the following years.
The squad and the players I signed
Only one player has been purchased permanently, Manuel Nicoletti, a 20 years old wingback who joined from Catanzaro for 50k.
All the other came on loan, they’re mainly hot and unexperienced prospects from Serie A clubs, I’m aware they’re short term solutions but we can’t afford anything else because of the budget constraints.
Some of these will probably shine at a higher level sooner or later, for now, their job is to help the “Bianche Casacche” to achieve their targets.
There are some intriguing young Italian talents at the club: keeper Gianluca Saro, Roberto Iezzi (wingback), Simone Auriletto (central defender), Raoul Mal and Michele Foglia, two versatile midfielders, they all come from Pro Vercelli youth team.
There are good youth facilities at the club, improving these could be vital to help our growth.
Most of my first team players have contracts expiring next season, I’ll have to wait and carefully evaluate who deserve to stay or leave, money is tight and we can’t change that.
We start our journey with a squad of twenty-three players, 22 years old is our average age.
Tactics and philosophy
After the transfer market Pro Vercelli squad have got strength (1st in the league), determination (1st), flair (1st) and composure (1st).
Looking at my players, I immediately started thinking about a 3–5–2 formation, the starting point is this tactic I created for FM19, more to come about it in another article.
In a nutshell this is a high pressure, short passing system that tries to widen the pitch to create space in the middle, where both my central attackers and the mezzala could create havoc.
An easy plan.
We all have targets, right?
I’m always in a difficult position to state what I want to achieve when I start a career.
The chances of being banal are high, that’s why this time I won’t write anything about it, a long and exciting game is all I want.
The average attendance at the Silvio Piola is really low (1000 season ticket holders), if I have to set myself a goal then to awaken the passion for the team in the hearts of the Vercelli fans would be a massive result.
Monza, owned by Berlusconi family, are the team to beat, Juventus under-23 and Alessandria two strong squads we’ll have to face in this first Lega Pro campaign.
Novara are our historic rivals, mainly for geographical reasons, we play the rice derby (derby del riso) against them.
That’s all guys, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more content!
