1. Breaking my silence
My club in Football Manager 2020
Here we are, another year, another Football Manager arrives, are you ready to waste many hours of your meaningful life once again?
Football Manager 2020 will hit the shelves on 19th of November and even with less spare time it’s always one of my preferred hobby, last year I wrote eight articles on my blog about the game, mainly regarding its tactical aspects, always trying different formations with different clubs.
This year will be different, I want to focus on a single club, through good times and bad and obviously reporting back on the blog about how it goes.
First of all I need to pick the right club and like last year I’m going to write about Italian football, if you’re a loyal fan of calcio then you could find something for you here.
Three clubs, one career
Looking for a club I immediately thought about a serie C team, Italian third tier is a difficult league that could keep me busy in the months to come.
In serie C, or Lega Pro if you prefer, there are three divisions with 20 clubs per division fighting to gain promotion to serie B.
Initially I put together three names: Sud-Tirol, Pro Vercelli and L.R. Vicenza.
The last one is a big name with a glorious past, they fell from grace after a 2nd place in serie A, when a young Paolo Rossi scored 24 goals in his serie A debut season, a UEFA Cup Winners cup semi-final (lost to Chelsea) and a Coppa Italia win; after many financial problems last year a new owner (Renzo Rosso, 10th richest man in Italy and founder of Diesel, a well-known brand in the Italian fashion industry) arrived and rebuilt the club from scratch, now they’re a solid squad with a good chance of being promoted.
In 1983 a sixteen years old Roberto Baggio made his debut in professional football playing for Vicenza in serie C1.
Sud-Tirol are a young (founded in 1995) and ambitious club based in Bolzano, they’re the northernmost professional football club in Italy and the only one in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, where people with different cultural backgrounds, mainly Italian and German, live and work together.
They’re renewing their tiny stadium, named after Roman general Drusus, adding more seats, to be ready for a promotion to serie B.
Their training ground is a little gem at this level.
Last but not least there’s Pro Vercelli, a well known fallen giant in calcio, with their seven league titles from 1908 to 1922, after those years the club started to decline and those glory days are nothing more than sweet memories.
They played their last Serie A season in 1934–35 when their star striker Silvio Piola left Vercelli and joined Lazio, since then they’ve been playing mainly in serie C and serie D, at the end of 2013 they were finally able to bounce back and got promoted to serie B, but after a terrible season they were demoted to serie B immediately.
Current owner Massimo Secondo talked several times about his intention to leave but no serious offers arrived so far, so they started 2019–20 season with very low ambition, escaping from relegation looks to be their main goal with a squad full of unknown youngsters on low wages.
Three different clubs that offer different challenges and motivations to play, all of them are really tempting, but I think this year could be the right time to have a proper Pro Vercelli save and bring the lions (“i leoni”) back to their former glory, I’m charmed by this club club who ruled football in Italy from a small town and afterwards fell down into lower leagues obscurity, seriously risking to disappear.
Football changed a lot in the last 100 years, could Pro Vercelli come back to their previous brilliancy?
The Manager
Some FM players employ an alter-ego manager in the game, fictional or real, I was considering the idea to do the same this time, but Pro Vercelli board did that work for me, appointing Alberto Gilardino as their new manager they created a great opportunity for a riveting story.
“Il Gila” will be my in-game counterpart, so I’ll keep him in charge and we’ll become the same person for this journey.
The former 2006 Fifa World Cup winner was surprisingly appointed when he had just finished his Coverciano course to become a football manager, few months after the end of his career as a player in serie B for Spezia.
A difficult job for a novice.
The Stadium
Named after Pro Vercelli greatest player and Italy legend, Silvio Piola stadium is a tiny, but good for Lega Pro, stadium with 5500 seats and artificial turf, it’s used for home games since 1932.
I’m going to write more about Pro Vercelli when the full game will be out, meanwhile keep visiting this blog and remember that sharing is caring!
See you at the Silvio Piola stadium!
