Welcome back to the Football Manager Bundesliga Challenge where two very different football managers battle for supremacy from the comfort of their laptops. At Stuttgart, Tifo’s senior content strategist Alex Stewart tirelessly crunches data to assess and improve his newly-promoted side. At Schalke, Iain Macintosh combines loud motivational speeches with needlessly complicated set pieces in an effort to survive. Last week, they were making sense of their squads, setting up training plans and experimenting in pre-season friendlies. But there’s no hiding place now. The season is about to begin with the first round of the DFB-Pokal.
Whether Football Manager is a matter of life and death or just a welcome escape from everything right now, our dedicated Football Manager podcast – hosted by Iain Macintosh – is almost certainly for you. Listen onall major podcast platformsand of coursead-free on The Athletic app.
Iain Macintosh: I realise it’s churlish to whine about a randomised cup draw, but I can’t help but be disappointed with my lot here. While Alex is off to batter the Dusseldorf Glue Factory Over-60s reserves, I’m up against perky second-tier Eintracht Braunschweig and a cursory glance at their squad indicates that this lot might know what they’re doing.
Fortunately, I’m able to deliver a pre-match boost to the club with the £2 million signing of sound-barrier-bothering full-back Danny da Costa. He won’t start here though, we’ll let him settle in first. It’s much the same gameplan as we’ve used throughout pre-season: a simple 4-3-3 with a desire to control possession when we’ve got it and hassle them like wasps at a picnic when we haven’t. Bastian Oczipka will overlap Benito Raman on the left, but it will be far more conventional on the right, with loanee Kilian Ludewig supporting Steven “Scrabble” Skrzybski. In my first competitive match, I wish only for the avoidance of humiliation.
And my wish is granted. Eventually. In truth, we’re never really in any danger. Braunschweig’s back three is hard to break down with a lone striker, even with all those supporting midfielders, but we’re rarely threatened and we dominate possession. Shortly after half-time, Raman intercepts a wayward pass on the halfway line and roars up the pitch, dragging defenders with him. His pass to Goncalo Paciencia is delivered on a velvet cushion and is duly dispatched. We should extend our lead on several occasions, but it’s not until the 87th minute that Amine Harit, currently being converted into a Lampard-like attacking midfielder, clips a glorious first-time ball through to “Scrabble” who makes no mistake and doubles our lead. It’s a reassuring performance and a positive result. A most unlikely scenario, given my history.
Alex Stewart: Our first set of competitive fixtures! It’s always a nervous, exciting time. First, there’s some tedious business to attend to, though. My transfer-listed defender Marcin Kaminski departs for £900,000 to Fortuna Dusseldorf. The squad doesn’t have much dead weight, but he’s not going to play and it’s a little extra in the kitty. I have a quick check of team dynamics, and they’ve gone from red to green for the most part. The atmosphere is now very good, largely based on pre-season form, and my influence is growing. Team cohesion still needs some work, but this should improve.
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Our first proper game is away at fourth-tier SV Rodinghausen in the cup. Now anyone who watches German football knows the Pokal’s reputation as the world’s biggest banana skin, so I don’t take any chances and name what I think is my strongest side. Up front, Erik Thommy brings trickery, Silas Wamangituka brings pace, and Nicolas Gonzalez is a pressing machine. The midfield is anchored by Wataru Endo, with Pascal Stenzel and Borna Sosa getting forward from wing-back.
Everything went according to plan. The semi-professional side were no push-overs, playing a cagey 5-3-2 system that pinned back my wing-backs in the early stages, but a Gonzalez hat-trick (right foot, left foot, penalty) put us 3-0 up after 49 minutes. They clawed one back, but as they tired, my team came into its own. Wamangituka scored two on the break to put a convincing gloss on things. Our shooting could improve: 21 shots but only eight on target isn’t the kind of ruthless efficiency I need from a team who could be dragged into a relegation dogfight, but the patterns of play are exactly what I’m looking for. And it’s early days. We’ve navigated the first potential hiccup and it looks like I’ve got the correct players in the correct positions doing the correct things, which is really all management is, right?
Iain Macintosh: We are not ready for RB Leipzig. I mean, heavens, we weren’t even ready for Red Bull Salzburg. I am no expert on German football, but they look to me like one of those sneaky modern clubs who have clearly defined recruitment strategies based on logic and reason. Bastards. How are we supposed to cope with that sort of trickery?
I opt to use this as a sort of pre-emptive learning experience. Where are we on the road to reaching our potential? I want Schalke to always set out to play good football, regardless of the opposition. I mean, granted, we’ll react during games. I’m not too proud to go defensive in the last 10 minutes. But, I tell myself in the mirror as I try to stop my lower lip wobbling, we must have a Schalke way and it must always be positive.
Then “Scrabble” gets himself injured and I realise that we’ve got no right wingers. Yeah, we’re going to get spanked.
So close. So horribly, painfully close. Whether we deserved to be so close is a different matter. Leipzig were, by some distance, the better team. When your goalkeeper gets a 7.8, you really shouldn’t complain about ill-fortune. But as late as the 91st minute, it looked like we’d claimed a point.
We conceded early from a corner, which I take as a personal insult. But then Harit, in an echo of our victory over Braunschweig, picks up the ball on the halfway line, charges forward, releases Paciencia and we’re level. Parity is short-lived. They’re back in front four minutes later after a goalmouth scramble ends in tears. But they can’t get comfortable and we keep catching them on the break. Paciencia, who comes back for zonal marking duties at corners because he’s that sort of guy, slips one to Raman on the halfway line and, with an audible meep-meep, he’s through their lines and one-on-one with their keeper. Bang. He absolutely Geoff Hursts it into the back of the net. They think it’s all over. It isn’t though. We fall back, we switch to defence, we throw on fresh legs, but we can’t keep them at bay. They smash home their winner and our hearts are broken. But still… that wasn’t terrible. I’ll take “not terrible”.
Alex Stewart: Next up is the Schwaben Derby, apparently. I didn’t know that Stuttgart against Augsburg was a derby. I know that Augsburg, like my own beloved Southampton, have a tree on their badge, but they’re one of those teams in the middle reaches of the Bundesliga who’ve never really caught my attention. Time for that to change. The pre-match briefing describes me as “talkative”, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, isn’t the most accurate epithet. Augsburg are clear favourites for the match, despite the absences of Alfred Finnbogason and Iago. I name an unchanged side, since everyone looks fit and settled.
So, full disclosure. I actually got booted out of our network game after about 10 minutes. The joys of living in the middle of nowhere are somewhat clouded by a poor internet connection. There’s a nervous wait until I can get back on to find the result and, it transpires, my assistant (who I can only assume handled the fixture after my enforced quasi-sending-to-the-stands) managed to steer us to a 0-0. I pore over the data and it doesn’t exactly look great. We had two shots on target to their nine, only 44 per cent possession, and their expected goals (xG) exceeded ours by 1.70 to 0.51. In short, we got lucky.
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My best guess is that they played better football than we did, and for most of the game — how’s that for a tactical explainer? It’s fine, though, because we now have a chance to regroup, reset, and pick up some points agains… oh, actually, we’ve got Leipzig away and Bayern Munich at home. This might be tougher than I thought.
Iain Macintosh: Hoffenheim at home. That’s more like it. We’ve got our own fans behind us, we’ve got Rabbi Matondo back out on the right and, because of the vagaries of the fixture list, we’ve got Alex watching online. It’s always a double-edged sword, having a friend watch you play FM. On the one hand, you’re glad that someone will finally understand your frustrations, but equally, there’s no code of conduct on how the spectator should behave when you go a goal down. If they laugh, you hate them. If they say “unlucky”, they sound sarcastic. If they don’t say anything at all, the silence is damning. I don’t know who’s under more pressure here: me or Alex.
Alex says, “uh-oh”, a lot and, to be honest, I don’t blame him. Hoffenheim open up like the Dutch side of the 1970s. In three separate, rapid-fire attacks, they hit the crossbar, the post and we’re forced to clear a shot off the line. And that’s inside the first three minutes. When they inevitably take the lead, Alex goes very, very quiet. I feel like he’s come round for tea and I’ve been shouted at by my parents and it’s all a bit awkward.
But for some reason, Hoffenheim choose not to press home their advantage and my shell-shocked players have a chance to dry their eyes. On the half-hour mark, I play the last card of every struggling manager and I move to the touchline to “encourage” my perpetual disappointments. Suddenly, their little faces light up. Raman releases Matondo on the right and he drags a teasing low pass across the edge of the six-yard box for Paciencia to convert. Sixty seconds later, Raman’s in charge again. As a Hoffenheim attack breaks down, he collects the ball outside our penalty area and runs the length of the pitch before allowing Paciencia to blast home from close range. Moments after half-time, it’s Oczipka’s chance to turn creator, dribbling into the box and slamming the ball across the face of goal for, yes, Paciencia again. He’s scored a hat-trick in seven minutes. Hoffenheim are nowhere.
Next, Raman cuts in, as all good inverted wingers should, finds Oczipka overlapping and Paciencia heads home the cross. I thought we were going to get thrashed, but we’ve absolutely battered Hoffenheim. This doesn’t usually happen.
Alex Stewart: The next round of the Pokal is drawn, and no more semi-pros from the industrial heartland of Germany — next up is Wolfsburg. But first, the small matter of Leipzig away. I change my tactics slightly, to the away version of my 4-3-3 system, except it turns out that I didn’t actually change the mentality. So we go into a game against the Bundesliga’s most relentless pressing team, with huge defenders and terrifyingly good strikers, with a positive mentality. Away from home. Having just got promoted. That’s the sort of thing Iain does.
OK. Hear me out. I know it’s a little early to be getting in excuses, but honestly, this was unfair. We had 48 per cent possession, but that’s fine: we like to play with pace in transition so I’m not worried about hogging the ball.
And wow, did we play. We ripped through their wide defence, with Thommy drifting infield and Silas causing havoc. Their 5-3-2 left space in behind the wing-backs and with our wide attackers occupying the wide centre-backs, Sosa and Stenzel could bomb on. We both had four shots on target, but our xG was 0.82 to their 0.67. And obviously, that means we lost 2-0. The first was a bit stupid, with Waldemar Anton allowing Yussuf Poulsen to get in behind him for a header, and the second was just unlucky. Amadou Haidara managed to sneak in a back-post header after some pinballing following a corner two minutes into second-half stoppage time. The stats boys insightfully tell me I should be “very disappointed with the result”. And they say stats are ruining football.
Iain Macintosh: If I know one thing, it’s that you don’t change a winning team. Actually, I don’t know that. In fact, I’m told that the way to succeed on FM is to treat each game as an individual challenge, acknowledging the difference between strategy and tactics, adapting the latter within the framework of the former. But I am old and I am afraid that folksy, homespun Proper Football Wisdom runs thick in my veins. Same team. Same tactics. With the exception of Nabil Bentaleb because he’s annoying me.
I feel physically drained. Union Berlin were so resilient, they just didn’t seem to be affected by anything. Injuries? No reaction. Red card? No reaction? Deadlock broken? No reaction. It was like drinking with Scandinavian sailors. I was getting weaker by the minute and they were just laughing and asking for the special vodka and I really didn’t think I’d ever get home.
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We were playing… fine. We made a few chances, they made a few chances. We scored just after the hour, shortly after a straight red card had reduced them to 10 men, but the goal wasn’t the result of the numerical advantage. It was a vaguely hit, lofted cross from deep by Raman, nodded home from the penalty spot by Paciencia. But, hey, who cares? It’s a goal, they’ve only got 10 men, game over, surely? Nope. Union kept coming at us. I had to press pause and count their men just to make sure someone had actually left the field after the red card. It wasn’t until the 90th minute, when substitute Ahmed Kutucu “Forrest Gumped” his way from our area to theirs to smack home a second, that I could breathe easily. We’ve won. Again. How incredibly weird.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “You should have been annihilated by Leipzig, you could have been four down against Hoffenheim inside 10 minutes and you only beat Union Berlin because they were down to 10 men”, and I understand that, I really do. And you’re probably right. But piss off and let me stare at the league table for a bit, will you?
Alex Stewart: It’s Bayern next, at home. As an opening set of fixtures, playing my local derby away, followed by two of the three best teams in the league, is something of a baptism of fire. I have no ambitions for this fixture against Hansi Flick’s side other than to get through it. They are so clearly better that I just want to avoid our morale plunging off a cliff and any major injuries. Naturally, Orel Mangala is crocked before we even take to the pitch — food poisoning, of all things — so I have to rejig central midfield slightly. In comes Clinton Mola to the “mezzala” role; he’s versatile and energetic, although not the finished article by any means. Otherwise, we are unchanged.
Due to our fixtures, Iain is actually able to attend this game as a spectator and so he can testify to my incandescence with this game. Yes, we were beaten, 3-1. Two of their goals came in the last 10 minutes as I pushed on, so maybe I can take some blame for that. But their second goal was absurd — a real pinball effort where two of my defenders’ clearances manage to hit their own team-mates. We outshoot them and have a better xG. Philipp Forster’s strike for us, midway through the second half, is as good a team goal as you’ll see — a beautifully constructed passage of play that totally vindicates my approach. Even Iain is quietly impressed.
It’s not enough but, even with only one point from my first three fixtures, I am surprisingly content. We’ve got two of the toughest games out of the way, the team are playing some lovely football at times, and we’ve been a bit unlucky. Next month should bring more points and a better mood. Which is needed, as Iain seems to be doing pretty well so far, and I’m not going to let myself finish below him.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
