Pentagon Pursuit | Part 1 | Introducing An Epic Global Challenge

“These days, it seems like every man and his dog thinks he’s capable of being the next Pep Guardiola.” That was the opening line from the thesis that Robaato Rasamu (ロバートラサム) had proudly presented to the advisory board at The University of Tokyo Sports Science Initiative a few months ago.

Now, in June 2023, the thesis – which analysed the evolution of soccer and questioned why popular media sources were so quick to laud over modern obsessions like “passing out from the back” – had clearly gone down an absolute storm. That’s because it wasn’t just the university’s advisory board poring intently over Rasamu’s work.

In fact, the relatively small office on the Komaba I Campus was packed with representatives of sports clubs across Tokyo, from the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team, Sun Rockers Shubuyta basketball side, Black Rams rugby team and NEC Blue Rockets volleyball club to the FC Tokyo, Tokyo Verdy and FC Machida Zelvia football teams. These representatives were frantically flicking through Rasamu’s clearly revolutionary words, reading the thesis while throwing amazed glances in his direction as he quietly sat in the corner of the room wondering what on earth was happening.

Eventually, the muttering and oohs and aahs were ended with a hushed silence. Rasamu’s mentor and course leader Nagao Shizuka stood up and walked over to Rasamu with a huge beaming smile, shook his hand, and announced to the gathered attendees: “Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the new revolutionary mind of Japanese football, Robaato Rasamu.” That prompted a rapturous round of applause, and Rasamu was soon surrounded by leading voices from Tokyo’s top sports organisations desperate to pick his brain.

The event went on for a couple of hours and, by the end of it, Rasamu had business cards of managing directors from every sports club in Tokyo desperate for him to join their club. He could easily join these huge companies in a variety of roles, from a recruitment analyst and assistant manager to even a sporting director. But Rasamu, buoyed by confidence thanks to the adoring words of these leading individuals, had a far more grandiose and ambitious new career in mind.

Introducing The Pentagon Pursuit

Robaato Rasamu had grown up obsessed with all things sports-related. His father was a Brazilian who moved to Japan in 1975, met Robaatu’s mother and stayed in Japan. He’d worked as an engineer in the city of Nagoya, around two hours east of Kyoto and five hours west of Tokyo, but his weekends revolved around sports, especially his beloved Nagoya Grampus Eight. So as a youngster, Robaato had religiously watched the flourishing J.League spearheaded by his idol Gary Lineker. He’d also regularly tuned in to global football, with a particular fascination for big continental trophies like Europe’s Champions League and South America’s Copa Libertadores.

Despite this obsession and growing up playing football, baseball, tennis, golf and basketball, Rasamu knew his talents were more academic than physical. His early career had focused on several areas of research, including sports science and performance analysis, contributing to a wide range of papers before his most recent really got his name out there.

But it was Japan’s success at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, defeating Spain and Germany before being knocked out by Croatia, that really piqued Rasamu’s fascination. Indeed, one of the most prominent people to contact him on the back of his thesis was the national coach Hajime Moriyasu, with whom he had a long conversation about footballing philosophies and the art of modern football. And that discussion had inspired Rasamu, armed with an arsenal of knowledge about the beautiful game, to bring his talents into the managerial space. And he had one hell of a mission in mind.

Rasamu wasn’t content with simply trying to become a Football Manager. Despite not even attending a coaching course or playing a single professional football match, Rasamu wanted to win all five of the biggest continental trophies available. His mission, as an unemployed football manager with zero qualifications, was to first find a job then manage on every continent and win:

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
South America’s CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores

To achieve that aim, the countries available for Rasamu to manage in are:

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

Rasamu’s ideal situation would be to begin his managerial career in his native Japan. That said, he was a bit of a polyglot, speaking Portuguese, English, Spanish and a little Zulu and Korean, so he was open to working abroad and honing his managerial skills elsewhere in Asia. The most difficult first step would be to convince a club to take on an unemployed manager, regardless of how intelligent they may be and how intriguing their football philosophy.

But with the full version of Football Manager 2024 now playable, we started up a brand new Pentagon Pursuit career. I selected all the Asian and African leagues, added players from every continent to give us a huge database of more than 123,000 people, and created the manager profile of Robaato Rasamu.