Atalanta BC mixed it with the big boys of Serie A and finished just outside the top half in their first season in the top flight. And the club's board backed manager Roberto Lombardi by agreeing to his requests for improved training and youth facilities, youth recruitment and junior coaching over the summer of 1996 (2025).
Atalanta secured an immediate return to the best league in the world by blowing away Serie B with over 100 goals and points. But they faced a big step up in quality if they were to meet the board's objective of surviving in Serie A - which wasn't helped by a poor financial situation.
Heading back 30 years in time, Atalanta have just been relegated from the greatest league in the world, Italy's Serie A, and are red-hot favourites to be promoted at the first time of asking. To achieve that aim, the club took a massive gamble by turning to a rookie local football lover to deliver a change in fortunes - Bergamo-born coach Roberto Lombardi.
Growing up in the early 1990s, some of my earliest memories of "getting into" football news and watching football were formed by Channel 4's Football Italia. We'll celebrate that with new series in the 1994/95 database for FM24.
Despite only losing once in the first half of the 2028/29 Serie A campaign, Empoli FC found themselves trailing leaders Napoli by five points. But there were certainly shoots of optimism at the young side's improving fortunes against Italy's traditional big boys.
The old FM24 goalkeeper injury curse hit Empoli FC hard and curtailed their push for a maiden Serie A title in 2027/28. But that disappointment aside, we'd built an exciting young squad in Tuscany and the club was very much on the up.
Europa League champions Empoli FC were flying high, heading into 2028 sitting 2nd in Serie A and with the Champions League knockout stages tantalisingly close.
These were exciting times at Empoli FC as we'd established ourselves in Serie A, were beginning to challenge some of Italy's bigger sides, and were edging towards the latter stages of the Europa League.
A massive summer turnover had worked very nicely as Empoli FC sat pretty in the top half of Serie A heading into 2025. Any risk of relegation looked long gone, given we were 19 points clear of the dropzone.
Empoli FC enjoyed a season of overachievement in our first season of the Football Manager 2024 Beta, as we led them to an 11th-place finish. Those achievements were all the more impressive considering most of our squad was considered Serie B players, and most of them were on loan.
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