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Parma Calcio 1913 > Serie A


Kris.

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Fancied doing another FM thread after quite enjoying my Bath City save in last years game - although that one came to an abrupt end when the save got corrupted. A much different challenge this time, though. I've downloaded a database which opens up a couple of extra tiers in the Italian footballing pyramid to get Parma as a playable club. No January transfers have been added as far as I'm aware.
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Name: Parma Calcio 1913
Nickname: I Crociati (The Crusaders) / I Gialloblu (The Yellow and Blues)
Formed: 1913 as Parma FC. 1930 as Parma AS. 1967 as Parma FC. 1970 as Parma AC. 2004 as Parma FC. 2015 as SSD Parma Calcio 1913. Hmm.
Ground: Stadio Ennio Tardini (22,352 capacity)
Division: Serie D - Group D
I've been wanting to play as Parma in this years game for a while, but haven't even played the game itself in months as I was finding the list of long-term injuries made it unenjoyable, whether that's been fixed in some way or not I've no idea, but not putting off this save any longer.
For anyone who doesn't know, Parma were in Serie A last season, but finished bottom and were relegated to Serie B. Well, they would have done, but they went bankrupt and reformed, so now start over again in the 4th tier instead - Serie D. The overall aim of the save is to drag Parma up to Serie A, and ideally, win the top flight of Italian football. I'll pretty much be copying the write-up format of my Bath save, so expect a lot of detail :lol: . Although I think I'll find it hard to top the season with Bath which got us promoted to the Football League for the first time, when we won the league despite finishing level on points with two other sides.
Season 2015/2016
So the expectations of the board is to get promotion, which at this level means finishing 1st. No play-off's. There are a few age requirements that need to be met in terms of the match day squad, but I'll get to that later. The media are predicting a first place finish as well, so no pressure at all, then!

Board Expectations

League: 1st

Serie D Cup: Not interested

My Expectations

League: 1st

Serie D Cup: Win

Transfer Budget

£107k

Wage Budget

£27.5k

Wage Budget Remaining

£252

The board aren't interested in the solitary cup competition we'll be competing in, but I'd quite like to win it as I imagine that once I'm promoted to Lega Pro, I won't be coming back to Serie D! Transfer budget and wage budget are surprisingly decent considering the level I'm at. The amount I have left for wages - not so much. The club actually have £12m in the bank, so I might try and twist their arm in to giving me a little extra for wages, but that might end up making this easier than I'd like.

I don't think I'd survive the sack if I didn't win the league, so this might end up being a brief save! The club have arranged 8 friendlies so far, with the toughest opponent being Austria Vienna, followed by Heracles, so I'll go a little run through the squad etc, then my next update, likely tomorrow morning, will go through my first results in charge and any signings I make. So...

First Team Squad:

IYbhlxG.png

Not the worst squad in the world, but not great. Alessandro Lucarelli will comfortably be the best CB in the league, having taken the drop with Parma from Serie A, despite the fact he's the oldest player in the squad at 37. More average players than good, but I should be able to make it work. Yves Baraye is the clubs top scorer IRL, so hoping he's just as good in this.

Now, Serie D has some age requirements for the match day squad that I touched on before:

There must be at least 1 under-20 player in the first 11.

There must be at least 2 under-19 players in the first 11.

There must be at least 1 under-18 player in the first 11.

Seems a bit much to me, but there's 6 players under-20 in the squad, 4 of whom are 19, along with one 18 year old and one 17 year old. There looks to be a few decent young players in amongst the under-20 squad, so shouldn't be too much of a worry.

Think that'll do for this update. I'll spend the rest of the night whilst the CL games are on working my way through pre-season and will get a follow up post done tomorrow.

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Season 2015/2016: July 2015 - August 2015 (Pre-Season)

Transfers:

I actually had a pretty decent squad for this level, so I didn't foresee me making many changes, maybe just one or two to bulk out a couple of positions. I had some age requirements to meet for the starting 11, so I was only really looking at players under-20, although in the end I had to settle for one at 17, one at 21 and one at 22.


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Dejan Stojanovic is a Macedonian U21 International Goalkeeper who I brought in from Bologna as my two Goalkeepers were only 17 and 18, of which one was an U21 Internationalist with Latvia, but neither were really ready to be playing every week, so Stojanovic was brought in a season-long loan, with Bologna picking up his wages. The other two came in on season-long loans from Milan, again the parent club picking up the wages. Johad Ferretti is a 21 year old Algerian right-back, who was signed mainly because I didn't have a right-back! He's had a couple of loan spells in Serie C, so he already had some first-team experience, and at a higher level, too. Manuel Locatelli is a 17 year old playmaker who has been capped at U19 level for Italy. Not only the youngest of my signings, but the highest rated one as well. Going by the report from my assistant, he's the best central midfielder at the club! So that was it for signings, with only two competitions to worry about, I should have a big enough squad to cope with any injuries/suspensions.


Friendlies:

I had a lot of friendlies arranged, although one of them away to Spezia ended up being cancelled as it clashed with a cup game they were involved in (I think). A bit of a mixed lot...


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3 wins, 3 draws and 2 defeats. The win over Heracles being the highlight obviously, although I don't think any of the results were particularly bad, even the defeats. The draws with Austria Vienna and RKC were very good and even the draw at Catania, who play in the level above us, wasn't too bad. Cacereno are at a similar level to Catania, but in Spain, so a defeat wasn't a huge surprise, and obviously I would have expected to get pumped by Hoffenheim from the Bundesliga.


Other News:

Not much else to report, other than we bagged 8,000 season tickets which isn't too bad. I also noticed as well that we're paying back something like £250k a month in loan repayments to cover the debts of the old club, which will be paid every month for the next 20 years until the remaining £47m of debt is gone. Great.


September 2015 - December 2015:

In my Bath save I normally broke down the season month-by-month, but in all honesty, it's been a breeze so far that there isn't really much detail that needs to be gone in to, so I'll just cover the results and tables for now up until the winter break in December.


Serie D:

So we're at the halfway point I guess as we've reached the brief winter break of around 3 weeks, starting the week before Christmas, up to the 10th of January. Our results so far in the league have been good to say the least.


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17 wins and 3 draws, completely unbeaten in the league. The ten straight wins were pretty good, with a fair few of them being pretty convincing, as well as there only being one game I haven't scored in. It might seem slightly unrealistic to be unbeaten at this stage with a new club in a league I've never managed in before, but IRL Parma have played 8 games more than I have in this, and are unbeaten at the top of the league themselves. I didn't imagine the first season being that challenging, as sticking a full-time club with a £30k-a-week wage budget in to a league with semi-pros wasn't going to be the hardest thing to overcome. The challenge really starts when I'm promoted in to the senior leagues and have to start building a squad myself, with the bank balance decreasing at a fast rate due to the loan repayments, therefore reducing the kind of budget I'll be able to work with as well.


Anyway, after 20 games then, the league table look as follows:


6Czt5QK.png


Yeah, there's not a chance I'm not going up. A pretty impressive goals for/against column, too. The only really achievement here would be going the season unbeaten.


Serie D Cup:

Just one cup competition at this level, thankfully. The imaginatively titled Serie D Cup, which involves all the teams from the NINE Serie D groups, so it's still a pretty big competition. I got a bye to the 2nd round, where this happened:


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Seems a little harsh letting them in IMO. No, it's of course the famous Argentina Arma from Serie D, group A! A huge 288 supporters turned up for the game, which is still 120 above their average.


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So we're in to the Semi-Finals. Yay. It's not been particularly difficult, obviously. Ravenna are the only team we've faced from our own league group, where they're second bottom. Lecco who we face in the SF, are 11th in their group. Should be breeze, particularly over two legs.


Squad Stats:

Last but not least for this update, a quick look at the stats for the squad so far, arranged from highest average rating, to lowest.


0VbJ5LZ.png


Pretty much everyone whose featured has done well, although it would be hard not to when you've only failed to win 3 games from 24. Daniele Melandri is my star striker in my 4-4-1-1 formation. 24 goals in 24 games in all competitions. In the league he's scored 21 in 20, averaging a goal every 82 minutes, which is a full 30 minutes better than anyone else. He's played the last few years in Lega Pro/Serie C and scored goals, so he was always likely to bag a few at this level. My two wide players are Yves Baraye (L) and Francesco Corapi ®, and they've racked up 23 goals and 18 assists between them. My 3 signings have all done well. The youngest Manuel Locatelli has a few goals and 6 assists, as well as 6 MOTM awards, which is pretty good going for a 17 year old. Goalkeeper Dejan Stojanovic has played in all but 2 games, and has 13 clean sheets. Our right back Johad Ferretti who we got from Milan is our top assister with 12, and he's even got himself a couple of goals. Doubt I'll be able to afford any of the 3, even when we go up as they're all under contract IIRC. Would definitely go back in for another loan deal if possible, though.


So that's it for the first half of the season. Apologies it hasn't been very interesting so far! Will hopefully pick up once we're promoted. Next update will be once the season is over.


:)

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You sure about no playoffs? In real life teams 2-5 go into playoffs as do the Serie D Cup Winners

There are play-offs, but not for promotion. It's a little bizarre. This is from the wiki page for this years Serie D:

"Teams placed between second and fifth in each division enter a playoff tournament after the regular season along with the Coppa Italia Serie D winner, runners-up and best semi-finalist. The tournament provides a priority list for entry into the Lega Pro in the case of bankruptcy."

So if you win it, you'll only go up if a team in Lega Pro does a Rangers.

Seems like a bit of a waste getting the loan players in when yer strolling it like that. Not be better playing yer own youngsters?

Well when I signed them, I wasn't imagining it to be this easy! I suppose when I reached the point I did in the update above I could have started bringing in some of the youth players, but was quite set on maybe going unbeaten by this point. I did change it around a little towards the end of the season, though.

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Season 2015/2016: January 2016 - June 2016

Transfers:

Didn't sign anyone or let anyone go in the January window, would only have been a waste of a wage bringing anyone in.


Serie D:

So we topped the league at the winter break, without having lost a game in any competition as yet. I did consider playing even more youngsters than I was already being forced to, but the opportunity for an unbeaten season doesn't come along very often, so I decided to go all out for that. The results for the second half of the season were as follows:


ki4UGl6.png


Unbeaten! Quite pleased with that. 14 wins and 4 draws to end the season. Only two of those wins were by less than 2 goals as well. Highlight was probably boosting the coffers somewhat of Villafranca Veronese, who were averaging 80-something before we turned up, bringing in a crowd of 813. Only 6 of their other 18 league games had more than 100+, and the highest of those was 111. A breeze until the end of the season. So the final table was like this:


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So the 3-1 win on the final day not only pushed us past 100 points, but on to 100 goals as well. It probably goes without saying that out of all the 9 Serie D group winners, we picked up the most points. Taranto who won Group H, only lost 1 game, and went unbeaten from mid-December until the end of the season. Venezia had the second highest points total of the other winners with 93. On to Lega Pro!


Serie D Scudetto:

One thing I forgot to mention before, was in addition to a team winning each of the 9 groups, at the end of the season they all go in to three groups of three, play each team once to see who will progress to a two-legged semi-final, with the best runner-up completing the final four alongside the three group winners. The final is over one leg and determines the overall Serie D champion...


7wMcZiZ.png


Which was us! Two fairly routine wins in the group stages, the 1-0 came after playing the last half hour with 10 men. Venezia as I mentioned won the second highest amount of points in the regular league season after ourselves, so was quite looking forward to seeing how we got on against them. As it happens, we drew 4-4 on aggregate, with them being the only team to score 3 against us in a competitive game all season. We led the 2nd leg 2-0 inside the first 5 minutes, but got a center-half sent off with 20 minutes to go and they scored two goals in the last 5 minutes to get level. They then went in front before we equalised, then beat them 4-3 on penalties. Gozzano in a stark contract to Venezia, finished with the second lowest points total of all the group winners. A total that would only have seen them finish 3rd in our group. It was another routine victory and we were the overall champions of Serie D! Only one competition to go..


Serie D Cup:

At the point of the last update, we were getting ready for a two-legged semi-final against Lecco who at the time were 11th in their group.


4O1zyw3.png


We dealt with them no problem and went on to face Gelbison of Group I who were sitting 3rd bottom of their group, hardly a difficult tie, which we obviously breezed through, meaning we've won a treble and gone the whole season unbeaten! Lecco incidentally had a great second half to the season only failing to win 5 games (1 more than us), and ended up moving up from 11th to 2nd. Gelbison survived the dropped and finished 13th.


Squad Stats:

As before, all players sorted by average rating, from highest to lowest.


uNGQDY1.png


Right sided wide player Francesco Copari was comfortably the highest rated player after scoring 15 goals with another 15 assist on top. Daniele Melandri was my (and the leagues) top scorer and was only 1 goal way from averaging a goal a game over the entire season. 43 goals in 38 league games for him, averaging a goal every 78 minutes. Vito Falconeri of Altovicentino was the second-highest with a goal every 110 minutes. Yves Baraye was the 3rd highest rated player with 33 goals and 18 assists. He was the second top scorer in the league with 25. So my three most attacking players - lone striker and two wide attackers, scored 97 goals between, which is 75% of my total goals for the season. The three of them got 44 assists collectively, too. Also worth mentioning the three loan players I signed: Manuel Locatelli the 17/18 year old who ended up with the second highest rating over the season, Johan Ferratti my right-back who assisted 31 goals and Dejan Stojanovic who kept 25 clean sheets in 44 games. Alessandro Lucarelli, our soon-to-be 39 year old captain who played every single game is retiring at the end of the season despite having a year left on his contract. :bairn Will be trying to tie him down to coaching role or something, though. He's been at Parma since 2008.


Team stats after our first season is:

Played: 50 | Won: 42 | Drew: 8 | Lost: 0

Scored: 128 | Conceded: 31 | GD: +97


So the next update (Tonight or Tomorrow) will be at the end of pre-season before we started our season in the third tier. We've got 11 players leaving (including loanees) and another retiring, so there is going to be a lot of transfer activity in the summer which will make next season more interesting and challenging.

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Apologies for the delay in another update, moving house next week so I've been a little pre-occupied!


Season 2016/2017 - July 2016 - August 2016 (Pre-Season)

Expectations & Budgets:

So we're now in Pre-Season ahead of our first season in Lega-Pro. Obviously we're going to be one of the biggest teams at this level again and expectations from the board will match that. We lost £3m overall last season, £2.9m of that came from debt repayments, so our budgets for the coming seasons were a slight surprise...



Board Expectations


League: Play-Offs (2nd-4th)


Serie C Cup: Not Interested



My Expectations


League: Play-Offs (2nd-4th)


Serie C Cup: Semi-Finals



Media Prediction


1st



Transfer Budget


£7.2m


Wage Budget


£86.5k


Wage Budget Remaining


£58.7k




That transfer budget is ridiculous, as is the wage budget. The transfer budget is pretty much every penny we have, so I'm not really going to touch that. The wage budget isn't an awful lot of use either. Once you go up to Serie B you can't pay a player more than £4k a week, so I can't even really bring in a lot of expensive free transfers or loans to make up for the lack of transfer fees I'll be paying. And from what I've seen when looking at bringing in out of contract players, some are looking for a huge amount due to what we can technically pay. So we're kind of limited in what we can do, I guess. The media are predicting us to win the league, although we're joint favourites alongside Cittadella with the bookies.



Transfers:


First of all, you'll notice Alessandro Lucarelli isn't on the out list, as he agreed to postpone his retirement for another year! Which will still make him one of the best defenders at this level. With quite a few going out though, we had to bring in a few more players compared to last season.



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Brought in a couple of players in on loan again who we had last season as well. Johad Ferretti and Manuel Locatelli from Milan who were both terrific last year. Another few loans seen Marko Dabro (ST), Kevin Mercado (ST) and Federico Dimarco (LB) all come in from Serie A clubs. The two strikers will likely be backup to Melandri unless he fails to impress at this level early doors. We only play one up front, so those three should be enough. Tommaso Morosini (CM) joined after leaving Virtus Bergamo, who had finished 4th bottom in their Serie D group, but was a standout despite being surrounded by shite every week. He's rated higher than all of our other CM's apart from Locatelli, so he'll go straight in to the starting XI and improve it, too. I tried to bring back Stojanovic from Bologna, and although a bid was accepted (loan), he turned us down, so we turned to Andrea Seculin (GK) instead, who had just left Chievo, although he'd been on loan with Lanciano in Serie B. So we're getting a player with experience at a higher level. We also signed Antonio Cotticelli (GK), although I should probably say re-signed, as we'd initially let him leave after his contract ran out. I struggled to find a decent backup, so I decided to just bring him back. He should do fine at this level if required. Felipe (CB) was to be our last signing, and the only player we paid a fee for. Not a huge one, one we could even have managed last season with a much smaller budget. Felipe is actually a former player who had his contract terminated during Parma's last season in Serie A, where he then moved on to Inter. He didn't really make it there, so moved on to Udinese who only played him twice, so now he's back with us! We'll have the best CB pairing in the league, which is pretty good going. In terms of outs, nothing major. All players out of contract who weren't good enough to step up a level.



First Team Squad:


We've got a decent looking squad IMO. We've managed to keep the core of last years team together, all who should be perfectly fine at this level.



NOnyOxc.png



Much like last year, a mix of great players, good players and some average to shite ones. More good than bad, though, which will see us able to put out a strong side if everyone is fully fit. Looking forward to seeing how Locatelli and Melandri especially, cope with the step up from last year. If they struggle, we'll struggle. The starting XI will likely be:



Seculin


Ferretti Felipe Lucarelli Dimarco


Corapi Locatelli Morosini Baraye


Antonio


Melandri



That means only 4 changes from our best XI last season (3 of them in defence). Those dropping out will prove to be better backup than we had last year, so we'll have a stronger squad overall.



Friendlies:


Not quite as many games as last season, thankfully. A lot easier in terms of opponents as well.




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Great results. Five wins, 20 goals scored, just one conceded. Can't argue with that. A good pre-season all round in terms of results and ins/outs. Quietly confident of meeting our objectives and hopefully getting promoted. We start our proper season away to Giana Erminio, who finished 15/18 last year, so a relatively easy start. Forza Parma!


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