One of my main saves in Football Manager 2025 was going to be a youth-focused save with a Brazilian club. But, with the ongoing delay to the game, I’m not sure whether that save will come to fruition, so I decided to head to Brazil for a new FM24 challenge.
In fact, this latest adventure will see us take control of one of the clubs I was going to recommend in my “25 teams to manage in FM25” article. But to do this, I’ve downloaded the (free) SIOSI data update, loaded all the South American leagues and players, and selected the game to begin at the start of the 2024 season in Brazil. The reason for specifying that is we’re taking the reigns at one of Brazil’s most iconic football clubs, which has recently fallen to an all-time low.
Bem Vindo A Santos FC
Santos Futbol Clube is one of Brazil’s most famous football clubs, winning eight Brasileiro Série A titles, with the most recent in 2004. They’ve also won three Copa Libertadores titles, most recently in 2011, as well as two Copa Sudamericana, one Copa do Brasil and 22 Campeonato Paulista (state championship) successes, most recently in 2016. In January 1998, Santos became the first team in the world to score 10,000 goals and remains the most prolific club in football history.
Santos is also renowned for producing global superstars led by the great Pelé, widely considered the best footballer of all time. It’s also produced fellow 1960s superstars attacker Coutinho, Edu, who remains the only player to go to a World Cup aged under 17, and Clodaldo, as well as Robinho, former Porto midfielder Diego, and active players like Brazil’s golden boy Neymar, Rodrygo and Gabriel Barbosa.
Located in Vila Belmiro, a neighbourhood of the city of Santos, in São Paulo, Santos FC was founded in 1912 by three local sports lovers Raimundo Marques, Mário Ferraz de Campos and Argemiro de Souza Júnior. The trio aimed to improve the city’s football representation, and it’s fair to say they’ve probably achieved that goal in the 112 years since. The club, nicknamed Peixe (Fish) in reference to its port, Alvinegro and Alvinegro Praiano (Black-and-White and Black-and-White from the Beach) and Santástico (Fantastic Santos), plays at the 20,120-capacity Vila Belmiro and wears iconic white kits with black trim. It also has historic rivalries with the likes of local sides Corinthians, Palmeiras and São Paulo.
However, in 2023, the golden days of “Os Santásticos,” the 1960s side widely considered the greatest of all time, seemed an extremely distant memory. That’s because the great Santos FC suffered relegation to Brazil’s second tier for the first time in club history, finishing 17th with 43 points.
Our Santos Objectives
One of my inspirations for this save was MikaelinhoFM’s superb Santástico series on FM20. In this series, he went in search of “the next Neymar” by developing young stars that personify the art of Ginga or “o jogo bonito” – “the beautiful game” or playing “the Brazilian way.” I want to bring an element of that ethos into our Salvando Santos mission, focusing on homegrown talents that could be the next Neymar or Pelé. To do that, Mikaelinho focused on core values that demonstrated his youngsters’ talents:
- Join Santos at age 18 or younger
- Score at least 100 goals for Santos
- Earn 90 caps for Brazil, score at least 50 Brazil goals, and win the World Cup
- Win at least one Brazilian title
- Achieve a Ginga rating – combined attributes of Acceleration, Agility, Dribbling, Flair and Technique – of at least 90
So, while this isn’t strictly a youth-only challenge, we will implement the Ginga factor to try and develop Santos’ next world-beating homegrown talent. This is highly likely to be reliant on newgens but, in addition to focusing on our own talents, we’ll scour South America for talent to help us lead Santos back into the top tier, become the best team in Brazil and make it South American champion for the 4th time. For now, the Santos board expects automatic promotion at the first time of asking, then for us to work towards challenging for the Série A title by 2026. Which is pretty ambitious.
Getting Started At Santos
Walking into Santos, Lazaró knew he had a huge task on his hands. The club only had £1.6m in the bank, had an outstanding state loan of £87m, which is being paid off at £350k/month until 2043. It also has £1.6m in the transfer kitty, with only 15% of transfer revenue being made available, and a £253k weekly wage budget, of which it’s spending £241k. On the plus side, Santos has 20 youth recruitment, alongside 16 training facilities, 14 junior coaching and 13 youth facilities.
The best player at Santos will be a familiar name to Scottish football fans, former Rangers striker Alfredo Morelos. Other key players will be centre backs João Basso and Luan Peres, and homegrown goalkeeper João Paulo. They also had a mass of old players – so Lazaró sold 31 players for a profit of £3.3m to slash £125k off the wage budget. Slightly better news was they had a few players with potential, led by left back Kevyson and 6ft 6in centre back Jair.
Lazaró’s Santos reign began with the Campeonato Paulista Sicredi, which he treated as a glorified pre-season. They started it well as Morelos scored 20 minutes into his debut and they held on for a 1-1 at home to Palmeiras. He scored again to nick a 1-0 win at RB Bragantino and a 2-0 win at home to Santo André before bagging both in a 2-0 at Portuguesa. Their form dipped as Lazaró tested tactics and heavily rotated a pretty injury-prone team. But they finished 7th to reach the quarter final, where they saw off Sao Bernardo 2-0 then cruised to a 5-1 aggregate success over fellow Série B side Mirassol. That teed up a final against São Paulo, and Santos dominated the home leg to win 2-1 through the strikeforce of Billy Arce and Moreles before losing 2-0 away. But runner-up was a very good effort and Lazaró semi-settled on an unusual-looking 4-3-3 that, in true Brasileiro style, put a heavy onus on marauding full backs.
Huge Série B Favourites
Santos came into Campeonato Brasileiro Série B Betano as massive 1/91 favourites to achieve promotion, ahead of Coritiba (11/4), Goiás (7/2), Sport Club do Recife (5/1) and América MG (6/1). The top 4 teams in Série B are promoted automatically, but are no playoffs.
Santos’ maiden season in Série B began with a heavily rotated team suffering a shock 2-1 defeat at home to Amazonas. But the first 11 returned to thrash Operário 4-1 away led by veteran right back Aderlan’s hat trick of assists before Morelos scored the only goal at CRB. A tricky week followed, starting by entertaining Recife and battering them 5-0 led by braces from Morelos and midfielder Patrick. A few days later, they went to Coritiba and winger Lucas Braga’s goal after 25 seconds earned a 1-1 before an entertaining 2-2 at home to Goiás and a 1-1 at Mirassol. But they got back to winning ways with a wild 7-4 win over Ponte Preta, in which they led 5-1 inside half an hour.
Santos maintained their unbeaten run, including a 1-1 at early leaders Avaí, before hitting the top of the league for the first time with a 3-2 win at home to Botafogo (SP). The games continued to come thick and fast, including 9 league games in June, but Santos continued their unbeaten run, including Arce scoring twice in a 4-1 thrashing of Chapecoense and Morelos’ brace downing 3rd-place Ceará 2-0.
They reached 20 games unbeaten by defeating bottom side Opérario 3-0 in mid-June. Arce’s late winner nicked a 2-1 at home to Coritiba before Patrick’s late strike earned a 1-1 at 2nd-place Goiás. The run continued through to 30 games without defeat as Arce’s second-half goal secured a 1-0 win at home to Avaí, which saw Santos 10 points clear of 2nd and 19 points clear of 5th with 7 games remaining.
They secured promotion a week later with a 2-1 win at Botafogo (SP) and the title with a 3-2 victory over América (MG) at the start of November. The unbeaten run continued through to the final day, when they nicked a 1-0 win at Ceará – which meant their only defeat all season was on the opening day! Santos won Série B with new division records of 25 wins, 88 goals and 91 points. Striker Alejandro Villarreal led the way with 23 goals, Morelos was the best player with 13 assists and a 7.33 average rating, and Paulo kept a league-high 13 assists.
Taking Santos In The Right Direction
A surprise star player this season was Série C standard striker Villarreal with 30 goals and a 7.56 average rating in 47 games, followed by Morelos with 13 goals and a club-high 14 assists, Basso with 13 goals, Patrick with 9 goals and 9 assists, Braga with 9 goals and 7 assists and Kevyson with 13 assists in 56 games.
Lazaró’s hopes of developing the next Pelé or Neymar were given an early boost by his first youth intake at the club. It produced 4 players with 5-star potential in striker Nílton, wingers Gabriel and Luiz Fernando and midfielder Izaquiel Penchel, as well as 4.5-star potential left back Damião, midfielder Rafinha and winger Dimitri.
Lazaró had achieved his initial mission to lead Santos out of Série B at the first time of asking. He now faced a massive challenge to strengthen the side, move on a number of players who were unhappy as they’d “outgrown the club,” and be ready for the step up to Série A.
Could they kick on a level and compete back in Brazil’s top tier? Join us next Monday to find out!
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