I have been playing a San Marino career on and off for around a year now and have decided to document my progress. Currently i am ten seasons into the game and i aim to post updates of my progress until the blog has caught up with my progress in the game.
For those unaware the San Marino challenge involves managing both the San Marino national team (one of the worst national teams in the world only having won one game in their history) and the club team San Marino Calcio who play in the Italian football league pyramid. The aim is to use the Sammarinese regen players that come through your youth academy in order to improve the national team.
Firstly a few details about the save. I’ve been playing this save file on and off for around a year now so some of the early details from this save might be a little sketchy. I’m playing on FM2017 using the FMITA Serie D mod from the workshop which is generally good although the year start date for Serie D teams is set to the 1st of January rather than the 1st of July like the rest of the Italian league structure. This causes Serie D youth intake day to occur around the middle of September. I was already too invested into this save when i realised this problem. For the game database i have loaded up all of the top 4 tiers of English and Italian football as well as the top two tiers of French, Spanish, Portuguese and German football. Additionally, in order to boost my chances of developing the national team all Sammarinese players and teams were loaded into the database.
The tactics i use are generally the same each year i just tweak the focus of my attacks based on where my strongest attacking players are nothing fancy at all.
Serie D
In the mod San Marino Calcio start as favourites to win Serie D (i have no idea if this is realistic or not), this is fortunate as there is only one promotion place from each of the 8 leagues at Serie D level. An additional advantage San Marino has is a partnership with Cesena in Serie B which can be used to obtain loan signings. I felt it important to get up the leagues as quickly as possible in order to improve youth facilities and coaching so at this early stage i made no effort to develop the national team. In the transfer market i focused on loan signings to strengthen the team notable loan signings include Gabriele Gori and Nicola Maretti as well as free agent Jan Pahor at centre half.
This season ultimately proved to be a successful one as the league title was secured at the start of April only losing 5 games in the process and even winning the end of season cup competition the Italian Serie D – Poule Scudetto!
- Average Attendance – 252
- Biggest Win – 4-0 v Campobasso
- Biggest Defeat – 0-2 v Jesina
- Top Scorer – Gabriele Gori, 8 goals (on loan from Fiorentina)
- Top Rated Player – Nicola Maretti (on loan from Cesena)
- Player of the Year – Nicola Maretti
Best Eleven
National Team
There was only one word to describe the first year. Bad. The main strategy i have before any good regens come through is to try and boost my world ranking by playing friendlies against teams worse than mine (there aren’t many). Loading in the entire database of Sammarinese players made no impact on my line up with only Mirko Palazzi and Elia Benedettini being players of any real international calibre.
The Euro Qualifying campaign proved to be fairly disastrous as the only ‘success’ was scoring against Germany in a 7-1 defeat. Every other game was lost without scoring a goal. By arranging games against the worst teams in the world we tasted a lot more success going undefeated in three games and even winning our second ever game by beating Djibouti 3-1.
My tactics involved hoofing the ball to a forward two and playing seven defensive players in an attempt to minimise goals against.
- World Ranking at Year Start – 202nd
- World Ranking at Year End – 197th
- Biggest Win – 3-1 v Djibouti
- Biggest Defeat – 0-7 v Czech Republic
- Highest Rated Player – Filippo Berardi, 7.2
Best Eleven 
Hopefully i will be able to post more updates later this week! I appreciate any feedback as this is my first lengthy post! Enjoy 🙂
StratMan Gaming 