Football Manager 2024 – potentially the final version of FM as we know it – is almost upon us, which means it’s time to start thinking about the saves, adventures, and experiments we want to embark on for the next 12 months of virtual management. Again, my FM plans may be hindered by life, as I’ve been considering going back on the road to travel in Asia, Oceania and beyond in 2024.
On FM24, it’s taken me a little while to work out what my initial main save will be. I will kick off the new game in familiar(ish) surroundings, and had been planning to begin the full game by revisiting one of my favourite game saves. But that may be changing. Additionally, one of my big missions on FM24 is to not manage in the Premier League (bar potentially reviving our Bottom At Christmas experiment for a third series) because it’s boring.
FM24 Beta Save: Gli Azzurri
It’s become customary for us to begin the Football Manager lifecycle with a Beta save in Italy. This year, I considered breaking that tradition but, not to fret, we are heading back to Italy when FM24 launches.
I had a few options in mind in Italy, including my suggested Italian side Benevento Calcio. However, I like to start the game with a team that’s not right at the top but also isn’t too much of a challenge, as proven by previous Beta saves at Milan, Sampdoria and Roma. With that in mind, it was a toss-up between Fiorentina, who I think will be fun to manage on this game, and Empoli, who are putting together an interesting squad built around young prospects.
And the team I’m going to go with is Empoli. This decision was based on the performances of their homegrown prospect Tommaso Baldanzi, who became a really decent player on FM23, at the Under-20 World Cup in the summer and signings like Matteo Cancellieri and Filippo Ranocchi (both initially on loan). With that in mind, I feel like Empoli is a good fit for my preference to strengthen clubs built around youth development. However, they’ve also added some interesting names to their squad like right-back Bartosz Bersyzynski and midfielder Viktor Kovalenko.
I expect this to be a far greater challenge than our previous Beta saves, especially considering the awful start they’ve made to Serie A in real life. They lost 7-0 to José Mourinho’s Roma a few weeks ago and lost their first 4 matches. So I can see it being a fairly long-term project (if we keep our job during the Beta period).
FM24 Main Save: The Pentagon / El Pentagono
This is one of the most renowned challenges among FM players and I think it could be more popular this year with the addition of Japan’s J.League. And, if the Saudi leagues are also playable (which seems unlikely), that will only add to the prospect.
The Pentagon Challenge requires you to win the biggest continental trophy on every continent: Africa’s Confederation of African Football Championship (CAF), Asia’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Championship, Europe’s Champions League, North America’s Confederation of North, Central American & Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) Champions League, and South America’s CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores. I’ve never attempted this challenge before, but this could be a good time to do so.
My initial idea was to start the game as an unemployed manager with minimal badges and experience then attempt to work my way to the top of the world, just to make it an even tougher challenge. However, with the addition of Japan to FM24, a fun approach could be to start in Japan’s third-tier J3 League, start by targeting the Asian Champions League then spread my wings across the world. Additionally, this adventure needs a snappy name!
For further context, the playable leagues we’d need to use to complete this challenge are, for the moment, the following:
Asia: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea
Africa: South Africa
Europe: All 35 European countries available, but realistically England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain
North America: Canada, Mexico, USA
South America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay
This obviously throws up some significant challenges. Namely, winning the CAF with a team in South Africa. There’s also the looming prospect of managing in MLS at some point, unless we go to Mexico. Then, of course, there’s the challenge of having all these leagues loaded – so I’ll need to decide whether to prioritise specific continents or just load up all the leagues to start. And for context, loading all the leagues above with a large database (plus adding in Japan) would feature 98,990 players with a 1-star estimated game speed on my decent Razer gaming laptop.
Additional FM24 Save Ideas
Like all FM versions before, I have some other save ideas up my sleeve and, undoubtedly, other options will come to me as the game cycle continues. For example, our SAF Challenge on FM23 came from a chat with other bloggers in the FM Library Discord channel. But ideas I have in mind include:
Aventuras Americas II
For a long time, I’d planned for my main save of FM24 to take us back to the Américas reviving the adventures of Robinho Lazaró. In FM22, we embarked on an epic adventure across North and South America then into Europe and back again, which saw us managing well into our manager’s 100s. But for FM24, I wanted to expand the limits of the game.
The idea would be to open up the entirety of North and South America as playable nations, using the FM Editor to unlock all the countries across the two continents. And, according to Wikipedia, that would expand Aventuras Américas from 9 countries to 60 – with 47 in North America and 13 in South America. But how many of those countries actually have football leagues to activate remains to be seen.
The mission would be to win every top-tier title across North and South America and attempt to become champions of both continents. However, I do have major reservations about this plan as 1) it may be difficult to create the database in the Editor and 2) modded databases are a massive risk in FM. From experience starting a save in Africa on FM23, the leagues often have bugs, the finances tend to be a nightmare and it can create massive, slow game files. So there’s a big chance that this doesn’t happen on FM24 and we leave South America to FM25.
For Sparta!
One of my suggested sides in our 24 Teams To Manage On FM24 guide was Scottish League 2 new boys The Spartans. The club’s name writes its own series title but also offers an intriguing opportunity to manage in Scotland, which I’ve not done since our Roth Raivers adventure on FM20. So at some point, I would like to run this as a one-club series in which we look to lead The Spartans through the Scottish football system.
One idea I had in mind for this save was to only sign players with high ratings for aggression, bravery, determination, positioning, stamina, strength and work rate to truly build a team worthy of the moniker Spartan Army.
Rise From The Ashes
I’m not sure I’ve ever managed outside of Serie A in Italy but the other day I discovered a lower-league save that sounds like a fascinating challenge. Pompeii, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Campania region of southern Italy, was once a thriving, wealthy Roman city. But a catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. saw smoke and toxic gas spewed 20 miles into the air. The city and its 10,000 residents were obliterated overnight as the streets of Pompeii were hit by surges of ash, rock, and toxic gas travelling at 180mph. The city was forgotten about until 1748, but excavations have revealed the events that occurred nearly 2,000 years ago.
More than a million people now live in the cities surrounding Mount Vesuvius. And Pompei itself now has a football team. FC Pompei was founded on 1 August 2022 and, as far as my limited Italian can decipher, it’s managed by Diego Maradona Junior. FC Pompei plays in the Italian fifth-tier Ezzellenza Group A, from which 36 teams are promoted into Serie D, including 28 division winners, 7 playoff winners, and the Coppa Italiana Dilettanti winner. As a result, it’s not playable on FM24 but, in FM23 at least, there was a custom database available that unlocked this tier. With that in mind, I think taking the reins at FC Pompei would be an unusual, entertaining and, dare I say, explosive challenge.
Scandinavian Build A Nation
I’ve never managed in Scandinavia / the Nordic region on any version of Football Manager and I want to put that right. I think a Journeyman save where you aim to win every title across the Nordics – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – could be fun, but I’m also mulling over the idea of doing a Build A Nation save. The most likely place to do this save would be in Norway, where lots of clubs have good facilities and youth recruitment, and I’m leaning towards taking charge of Vålerenga. Another option could be to take control of FC Midtjylland as part of a Danish Build A Nation challenge.
I’m sure more ideas will come to me, especially if the Aventuras Américas save seems a little too ambitious, which I’m fairly certain it will be. But for now, these are the main ideas I’m working with.
Who are you looking forward to managing on FM24? And what do you think of our save plans for the game?
Football Manager Addict 