FM Grasshopper
Hi, my name is Tony and you’ve made it to my page on Coffeehouse FM! Here you will find a collection of posts all about Sports Interactive’s beautifully developed football management series: Football Manager. In addition to writing here on Coffeehouse FM, I occasionally write for Latte Quarterly and Sports Interactive’s The Byline. You can also hear me on the semi-regular GrassNGear podcast (Feb 2018-present).
Outside of Football Manager, I am part of the Entente Cordiale: a father to Alice & Luca and husband to Morgan. I also do a lot of voluntary ‘stuff’ for my local football club…where I manage one of their girl sides (in which Alice gets to play Enganche).
I hope you enjoy your time on the site,
Tony / 📧 tony@coffeehousefm.com / 🦋 Bluesky
Featured Blogs
A few featured blogs that sit outside of a typical series, or perhaps are pertinent at the present time ✍🏻
FM24 - SuperClub Diaries
A journeyman at the upper echelons of European football with ten of the twelve founding members of the European Super League, with Bayern and PSG replacing North London (because it’s stupid to call Arsenal and Tottenham ‘super clubs’ when they have not won a league title for so long). Welcome to SuperClub Diaries…
Football Manager Tactics
I have a Football Manager Tactics series, where I will try to replicate interesting teams and systems in FM:
FM23 - Plazas de soberanía
“Plazas de soberanía / Strongholds of sovereignty” - a term for the collection of overseas Spanish territories that have been part of the modern country since the 15th & 16th Centuries. They are closer to Africa than mainland Europe. This is where I start in FM23, with AD Ceuta FC…
FM20, FM21 & FM22: The La Plata Trilogy
I wrote a story that spanned the three cycles of FM20, FM21 and FM22 and intertwined it with my Football Manager saves in Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, America and Brazil. The familiar face of Ángel Bastardo returned as a central character, but we were also introduced to Hugo Ojeda and Natasha Sibiski who grew into the story. I call it the ‘La Plata Trilogy’…
FM20 - Río de la Plata & La Plata: Mexico - they say some men carry their war with them for the rest of their lives; and some men put it behind them like an old pair of shoes. Then I guess there are others that go on fighting, even if they have no idea who their fight is with or why it's so important not to give up. FM20 charts the story of two men’s intertwined lives in the Football Management Underworld: Ángel Bastardo & Hugo Ojeda. One will fall, and the other will rise…
FM21 - La Plata: Colombia - when you get a little, you want more. When you get more, you want everything. A decade has passed and Don Hugo Ojeda not only controls Sinaloa, but now all of Mexico’s drug trafficking cartels. Bent on going further, business leads him south: to Colombia. To not only control the product that everybody desires, but to return to Football Management. Can Hugo Ojeda deliver Colombia’s third ‘El Dorado’?
FM22 - La Plata: Vice & Faceless - after years of imprisonment in the US, Don Hugo Ojeda has finally engineered a route out for his former mentor Ángel Bastardo. But there's one catch: Bastardo must serve two years of management in Major League Soccer. The La Plata series heads to Miami for its explosive conclusion.
Legacy FM Grasshopper Saves (2015-2019)
Delve deeper into the back catalogue of fmgrasshopper blogs with: Lorient (FM19), Estudiantes (FM18 and FM17), Inter (FM17) and Grasshopper Club Zürich (FM16) over on my blog. But the introductory pieces of those series are found below:
The Byline from Football Manager
Occasionally I will feature on Football Manager’s The Byline, the home of FM’s written content hosted and collated by Sports Interactive. My submissions here are often shorter, snappier pieces intended to provide an overview of game features & mechanics. The pieces I have directly authored, or co-authored, can be accessed below:
Real Life: Coaching 7v7
