Recruitment at Shimizu S-Pulse in Football Manager 26

 
 

This is an update from my Shimizu S-Pulse save in the J1 league, Japan. The in-game date is May 2025, and I have set up my recruitment team and have begun to scout players.  I thought I would show how I intend to find and sign players in FM26, as it is a bit different to what I have done in previous years.  You can read my save introduction here.

This post will be broken down into the following sections:

  1. Orange Samba

  2. Backroom Staff

  3. Recruitment Focuses

  4. TransferRoom

  5. Shortlists

  6. Results

1. Orange Samba

Shimizu wears orange, and we’re focussing on signing Brazilians in this save.  Put these two things together and we have Orange Samba.  This will be the name of the club culture I will reference throughout the blog series. In Season 1 we already have five foreign players and the J1 league restrictions prohibit more than this in a matchday line up. However, there are upcoming changes to the Japanese leagues from August 2026 which I am very excited about:

  • The league will move to a ‘European’ format, beginning in August and ending in May. It is intended that this will make it easier for Japanese clubs to do business.

  • Squad size will change from 25 maximum players to a whopping 99.

  • No restrictions on foreign players.

With all the above in mind, it is important I lay down the ground work now in order to have a long list of scouted players for Shimizu S-Pulse in time for Summer 2026.

2. Backroom Staff

Navigate: Club/Staff

Setting up a good recruitment team and organising my scouting is key to this save as I have decided not to use the ‘Player Database’ (formerly known as ‘Player Search’).  This means I solely rely on staff recommendations and agent offers to add an extra challenge to my save.  

On Day 1 of the save, Shimizu had no recruitment staff whatsoever.  So, Orange Samba starts with me building a predominantly Brazilian recruitment team.  Now, with FM26, I am unsure how much of this makes a difference in the new era of FM…but my reasoning for recruiting Brazilian staff is pretty logical.  (1) they already have a comprehensive knowledge of their home country + domestic leagues and (2) they help increase the likelihood of Brazilian newgens coming through into the club youth teams.  This was also the case in previous FMs, so I hope it helps this time round in FM26.  To find staff I head to Recruitment/Staff Database and use search filters.

I have maxed out on the number of Scouts allowed by the Board, I also recruited a Chief Scout and Director of Football to handle transfer negotiations.  This takes our recruitment team to a total of six, five Brazilians and a solitary Japanese guy who will be stationed at home so he can scout our own domestic J leagues.

3. Recruitment Focuses

Navigate: Recruitment/Recruitment Focuses

Once I have a team in place, I will use Recruitment Focuses for ongoing Orange Samba scouting in Brazil.  Here are the two recruitment focuses I set up for Brazil:

Brazil Youth (15-23)

Number of scouts: 2

Probably the most important Recruitment Focus for Orange Samba is the Brazilian Youth focus.  I’ve chosen 15-23 year olds who have a minimum 3 star Potential Ability, for Current Ability I have set zero stars.  Remember: the idea of this save is not to chase stars, but to find hidden gems instead who can improve.

Brazil Série B

Number of scouts: 2

Campeonato Brasileiro Série A players are likely to be out of our range in terms of transfer fee and likely wage.  Instead I have targeted Campeonato Brasileiro Série B sides, in order to see if any players meet my recruitments.  I have gone with a minimum ability of 2 stars for Current Ability and 2.5 starts for Potential Ability.  No restrictions of age, or anything else really.  Just show me who is decent in Série B and who could hold their own in the J1 league.

I also have a couple of domestic Recruitment Focuses too.  This is because the majority of my squad still needs to be domestic players in order to comply with 2025 J1 league rules.  Here is what I have set up:

Japan J1

Number of scouts: 1

I have set a current ability of 2.5 stars and potential ability of 3 stars.  This is reflective of the J1 league status.

Japan J2

Number of scouts: 1

I have set 2.5 stars for both current and potential ability.  Despite being from a league below, I want the J2 players to be competitive with the current make-up of our squad.

4. TransferRoom

Navigate: Recruitment/Transfer Room In (or Out)

I will be using TransferRoom Out for outgoing players, I have often struggled with selling players in previous FMs.  I loaned out a couple of players this season using the approach, and I think it will also be useful for permanent outgoings too.

It is perhaps TransferRoom In that I have enjoyed more, despite not yet using to sign a player.  It has opened my eyes up to a few targets I would not have seen from my Recruitment Focuses.  I see TransferRoom In as a way to fill a gap in the squad in a relatively short period of time.  Have you had a long term injury rock you with a couple of weeks to go before the transfer deadline approaches?  Use Transfer Room In, you will be offered players who are willing to come (for the right price and wage of course).

Note - unfortunately, at the time of writing, the TransferRoom In requests are pertinent to the time of your enquiry and do not seem to update (i.e the suggested sum of players do not change). So, you may want to strategically time your adverts within Transfer Windows and perhaps publish several. It is unclear if this is a bug, by design or just some quirk with my saves so far. The official feature blog stated: “Your ad will be circulated to every club in the game, and they’ll have the ability to come back to you with players they have that might fit your needs. Your Director of Football will make recommendations to you based on what the clubs come back to you with, with you then able to approach their agent, scout the player for yourself, make an offer or wait for more options to arise”.

5. Shortlists

Navigate: Recruitment/Shortlists

Once targets are identified, I will move the players into Shortlists (Right Click/Add To Shortlist). These will usually be A-B recommendations. From here I will review the scout reports and then initiate my Director of Football to start making bids.  I do this by right clicking on the player and selecting ‘Transfer/Add As Transfer Target’.

If you want to see how it’s going, I go to the Director of Football workflow in Transfer/Recruitment Activity.  The Negotiating attribute is the key Director of Football attribute here. Mazinho Patrão is ‘Good’, and I have captured what FMPedia says about Negotiating too:

When asking the Director of Football to make the deal I will set the agreed playing time, right now FM26 is defaulting to ‘Surplus to Requirements’ for me…I would advise giving an agreed playing time that is reflective in how you intend to use this player when they arrive.  Overpromise and you may get an unhappy player soon into their contract.  Another thing I set is the wage amount.  I usually match their current wage and increase it slightly. Most people in life want a bit more money when they change jobs.  The below is how it currently looks like in my save, as I chase a few domestic end of contract signings when we are legally allowed to do so in about 6 weeks time…

6. Results

I have been successful with two signings so far from two Recruitment Focuses (Brazil Série B and Japan J1).

Daniel Cruz - Shimizu’s Number 9

Daniel Cruz is a good example of the kind of signing I want to make on this save, not a household name and unlikely to get any opportunity at Club Athletico Paranaense; even with them being in Série B.  The signing made sense because he can play in three forward roles in my 4231 (something i will write about in a future blog).  He can play the right sided winger well (Acceleration, Dribbling, First Touch and Off The Ball all being 14s) and he also has the attribute spread to play Wide Forward and Centre Forward with relative ease (Finishing, Flair, Pace and Strength all 13s).  The scout report says he is unlikely to improve considerably, but I think can do well in Japan.  He joins on loan with an option to buy for €350k, should he settle in well.  Orange Samba is up and running!

Kei Chinen - Deadline Day Signing

Whilst the Transfer Deadline Day interface was not added back into Unity FM26, I did experience the drama of a deal running down to the last hours of a Transfer Window.  It is unclear if this is ‘by design’, but I had agreed both the €1.4m transfer with Kashima Antlers and contract with Box to Box Midfielder Kei Chinen 20-or-so days before the deadline was due.  However, Gamaba Osaka were also trying to sign Chinen and were having their loan bids rejected by Kashima. It looked like the player held out until the final moments before joining us at Shimizu.  I really liked this, as it felt realistic to how a lot of deals go in real life.

Kei Chinen is a brilliant Box To Box Midfielder, high attribute scores in Determination, Off The Ball, Stamina, Teamwork and Work Rate.  Like Daniel Cruz, he also has the versatility to play in a couple of other roles in the 4231: Defensive Midfielder and Advanced Playmaker.  I have made him one of my higher earners on €400k annual salary.

Next Up

My next post on the blog will most likely be a summary from Season 1, where I still have 6 months of J League football left to play.  Let’s see how Daniel Cruz and Kei Chinen settle into life at Shimizu S-Pulse.

Thanks for reading/sharing and caring.

Tony / FM Grasshopper

Why Shimizu S-Pulse in FM26?

Welcome back to CoffeehouseFM.

Post-imperial Japan is fascinating. The country’s culture had previously been one of the most secluded and preserved, until Allied forces occupied it for 6 years after World War II. Under US General Douglas MacArthur there were sweeping reforms in order to change Japan’s political systems, the ultimate power was put in the hands of the people and not the emperor.

While the ink was still drying on the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco paperwork, which saw the Allied occupation end, the cultural change in those few years was irreversible too. Food, entertainment, fashion would all change; and so would sport. Perhaps ‘soccer’ was one of the last to catch on. The 1960s saw Japanese soccer mirror baseball, where large co-operations would own a team of amateur players. But the big change came in 1992, when most of those co-operations were brought into the new professional-era called the ‘J-League’.

Ten clubs kicked off that inaugural campaign, nine of them big corporation owned…but there was one outlier. A newly formed non-company club was formed in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka: it was initially called Shimizu FC, but after a few months it would be renamed to Shimizu S-Pulse (in keeping with Japanese tradition of using English, French, Portuguese or Spanish in many club names). The pulse is a literal embodiment of its fans' enthusiasm for soccer and, with my pulse now raised, it is where I want to manage on the full release of Football Manager 2026.

Really, why Japan?

Fully licensed league

I think it is fair to say there were a few hiccups with the launch of the J-League into FM24.  Certain players were not in the game right away and the database perhaps needed more eyes on it to increase the accuracy.  But an excruciating time has passed, and I’m more confident about dipping my toes into the league for a J League save.  That confidence was also demonstrated at the inaugural FIFAe tournament, where Yokohoma F. Marinos was one of the Group Stage clubs (something which I also played along with at the end of the FM24 cycle).  It is a really enjoyable league, and it will have all the fancy player/club pictures.

Finding the next Hulk

 
 

The J League has a love affair with Brazil (around 50% of all foreigners in the J League are from the country).  Although S-Pulse started its history with a cantera type policy of fielding players only from the Shizuoka Prefecture, I intend to keep with the current fashion of signing Brazillians.  However do not expect them to be big names though, instead I plan to unearth some Brazilian talent that is perhaps beneath the classification of ‘Wonderkid’.  Players who are talented enough to have a decent career as long as they have gametime.  The best example I can give is that of Givanildo Vieira de Sousa, but you would know him as ‘Hulk’.  As a teenager he made the move from Serie A fringe player to Japan and excelled at the chance to play competitive football.  After 74 goals in Japanese football over three years Hulk earned the big move to Europe, ending up at FC Porto for the 2008/09 season.  Can I find the next Hulk in FM26 and move them on to Europe?

Another example is my chosen Manager Man: Bismarck Barreto Faria, better known as just ‘Bismarck’, who at 24-years-old moved to Japan. In real-life the attacking midfielder went on to play for Verdy Kawasaki, Kashima Antlers and Vissel Kobe over a 9 year spell in Japan in the 90s. I will be stealing his identity for my save, which fits narratively with the save’s ethos as I focus on Brazil’s Série A, B and C for emerging talents overlooked by Europe: technical midfielders, explosive wingers, and clever forwards. The idea is not to chase stars, but to find hidden gems instead.

Adopt a salary cap

Out of necessity, every club operates within its own salary cap. Players are usually organised in salary bands, and that usually is a private matter between player and club. Some leagues (e.g. Major League Soccer in North America) and confederations go a bit further and set caps on spending, in order to ensure parity between league members…or to at least look like parity is an aspiration in the case of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play.

In my opinion, Major League Soccer’s approach is great and they do that via their franchise structure.  FM22 has been one of my favourite saves since blogging so far.  I loved working and operating within a strict budget + salary cap with Inter Miami.  There’s something very ‘socialist’ about it all: players getting comparable pay in a team sport.  Furthermore, it was great to get the spreadsheet out and organise my squad to the minute detail, ensuring I got the most ‘bang for my buck’.  Just like Japan adopted some American traits in its post-war history, I want to adopt the MLS salary cap system. 

In order to get to the number that I feel offers the balance between FM challenge Vs realism, I would look to get my salary cap number based on a % of my club turnover.  This is similar to how UEFA’s FFP operates.  As a reminder, from 2025/26, UEFA’s new Financial Fair Play rule limits spending on player and coach wages, transfers and agent fees to 70% of club revenue.  I am not quite sure what my salary cap needs to be just yet, Season 1 will probably be the cap that the Board has set in-game. However for subsequent years I will likely take the % of turnover model.

Other miscellaneous reasons

Cherry blossom/sakura trees in bloom are great.  I also like vegetable sushi, mochi, karate, the colour orange and Japanese lo-fi.  Put them all in the Grasshopper blender, season it with an S-Pulse FM save and I am good to go for FM26. See you there?

My FM26 aims ✅

  1. Sign young Brazilians, and let them use Shimizu as a stepping stone.

  2. Adopt a salary cap.

  3. Maintain J League status, and work to challenge for the title within 3-5 years.

  4. Ultimately: win things, lots of things. FIFAe style.

Changing how I play…

I have deliberately put this section towards the end of this post, because I do not wish to kill peoples’ enthusiasm towards FM26.  But it has got to be noted: Football Manager 26 will change the way I play the game.  To be fair, this is probably in keeping with Miles Jacobson’s remarks who said in several pre-release interviews that FM26 is a totally different game to the previous titles before it.

There are a number of UI pain points, and whilst you can play FM26 and progress through seasons…in order to have a long(ish) term save I feel like I need to delegate a lot of tasks in the game to my backroom staff in order to keep sane.  I will not be conducting media duties, take the training or handle [most of] the scouting functions.  It means I will be processing the game much quicker than usual, but I am unsure if this means I will have longer saves.  I do plan to write a bit more about how I delegate certain functions, including transfers, scouting and utilising the (new and great btw) Transfer Room system.

Another blow for me personally is that you cannot currently export data out from the game, and the data that is there in-game is also sketchy.  Deep dive Football Manager saves, adopting data driven recruitment practices for example are perhaps too complicated to do this time around. Football Manager 26 has stripped out some of the immersiveness that made the previous 20 years so good for us Bloggers.

Despite all this, I remain eager to get going with FM26 🙂

Thank you for reading/sharing and caring.

Tony / FM Grasshopper

L'Incroyable Hulk - AS Monaco (2009)

 
 

Bonjour 👋🏻

Any Football Manager title gives the opportunity to create a parallel Universe, but the retro 2007/08 database (made available by TheMadScientist) allows me to go that bit further and re-write history. Perhaps not as drastic as re-writing history in the same was as Albert Einstein did in Command & Conquer: Red Alert, but still drastic enough to create a new French powerhouse. The season is 2008/09, and here is my update from the shores of the Mediterranean; where it’s my second season in charge of AS Monaco.

Nouvelle Tactique: 3421

Last time out on the blog I mentioned that I would be moving away from the 4231 Target Forward tactic. But this is an evolution, as opposed to a drastic revolution, a few instructions remain the same; as do the set piece routines that proved to be effective last season. The big change for us though is the move towards a three at the back, replacing Wingers for Wing Backs and attacking centrally with two No.10s behind a quick striker (unlike the battering ram of Jan Koller last season).

3421 out of possession.

3421 in possession.

Season 2008/09 - L’Incroyable Hulk

So, you’ve seen the new tactic…could it help us build on last year’s 7th place Ligue 1 finish and also be competitive in Europe? Answer: Yes.

However, I should firstly mention the new signings who came in and made the 3421 flourish. In particular Givanildo Vieira de Sousa, who had a really impressive second half of the season. You may know him as ‘Hulk’, an FM07/08 beast of a striker who starts out in the database at Vitória in Brazil’s Série B. I signed Hulk on loan from Newcastle, and he is one of three great loan deals:

  1. Yoann Gourcuff (from AC Milan) - €2.9m loan with mandatory €14.25m fee to buy at the end of the season. Arguably the player that transformed us most this season. Seventeen goals and ten assists (all comps), as he played a mix of AM-S and SS-A in the tactic.

  2. Hulk (from Newcastle) - €400k loan with optional €13.25m fee to buy at the end of the season. Hulk’s became a cult figure at AS Monaco, scoring only a couple in the first 5 months of the season before powering in twelve goals in the final few months, most of those goals key too. He went from 3rd choice striker (behind Black Panther Gomis and IronMan Hoarau), to becoming the main central striker at Monaco. Adaptability in FM is a funny thing!

  3. Gerard Piqué (from Manchester United) - no upfront fee loan with optional €18.5m fee to buy at the end of the season. No man in the squad can beat Piqué’s progressive passes per 90 stat of 5.37. He was also the man on the end of a lot of crosses and passes too: twelve goals from Centre-Back. What a player!

Another signing that saw it come together for us was stealing Mamadou Sakho from under PSG’s noses for a measly €800k. A top teenage talent who predominantly played as the left sided Wide Centre Back.

Ligue 1 - 3rd place, Champions League qualification 🎉

We turned last season’s draws into wins and that made the difference in qualifying for the Champions League this year. What has been interesting though is how the 3421 distributed league goals around the side. Unlike last year, where we relied on Jan Koller’s 19 league goals, it felt that this year anybody in the match day squad could score. We only had two players enter double figures for league goals, and even then it was a rather meagre figure of 11 for Jérémy Ménez and 10 for The Incredible Hulk.

Ligue 1 top seven

UEFA Conference League - Winners 🏆

After a 100% win record in the league phase, we faced some decent opposition in SK Rapid, Werder Bremen and Hearts en route to the final. Nothing could stop the Monaco machine from purring into the showpiece match, where we faced Sicilian side Palermo. Some great FM names awaited us: Barthez, Barzagli, Belletti, Bréchet, Bresciano and Voronin.

So, a cup final for a competition that didn’t exist in 2009…played in a stadium that also had yet to be built (Wrocław Stadium, Poland). I’m still taking this as a massive win for AS Monaco though, it’s their 1st continental honours. After a 1-1 in normal time, we had to thank our lucky stars due to the game going to penalties. Or is it luck? We trained penalties and also had five competent penalty takers line up to smash it home (Hoarau, Gourcuff, Martin, Valbuena and Bastos). 5-4 to AS Monaco in the shootout. Très bien!

 
 

Happy New Year

Do I play more? That’s the question I am currently debating. Whilst I think this save has ‘one more season’ left in it, to see how AS Monaco do in the Champions League…I am also aware that FM25 news will be shared sometime in January 2025. Will that kill my enthusiasm to play, or heighten it? Again, it’s something I am debating. There’s also New Years Resolutions to contend with too, and sadly playing even more Football Manager is not currently on the shortlist 🤭

Regardless though, I’d like to thank you for reading/sharing and caring this and previous AS Monaco retro blogs (including the CM4 playthrough). It has been really fun, and I’ve enjoyed blogging an era I previously never documented when playing Football Manager 2008 the first time round.

I hope you are having a nice festive holiday with friends and family, and I am sure I will be back writing FM in 2025 at some point soon. Take care of yourselves 🎄

Tony / FM Grasshopper

FM24 Heartbreaker - AS Monaco (2008)

 
 

Bonjour tout le monde, 

It was French Noël in the save when I last left readers. Monaco were 7th in Ligue 1 and aspiring to mount a title challenge in the new year. That new year is 2008. Just a reminder, I am playing the FM 2007/08 retro database made available by TheMadScientist (themadscientistfm.wixsite.com). Huge thanks to him and his Danish fingers.

Let’s kick-off right from where we left off…

January 2008 signings ✍️

It is certainly not a ‘war chest’, but €7.5m is a modest amount of money to improve the squad with a couple of players. In fact, I went a bit further than just a couple…

  1. Mathieu Valbuena (€2.5m from Olympique de Marseille)

    In real-life, Dwarf-ish Mathieu Valbuena had a great Ligue 1 career with Marseille. Signing him for €2.5m is a great piece of business, as it not only improves us…it also weakens a geographical and sporting rival. He can play across the front line, but he featured mostly as a Shadow Striker or right Winger in my current 4231. He even scored against his old club too 😀

  2. Bafetimbi Gomis (18 month loan deal with option to buy €3.2m from AS Saint-Etienne)

    Bafe was the original Black Panther, before Marvel got their hands on the rights to make movies in his image. I’m screaming the house down with frequent “Go Miss” as my striker netted 5 times in his first eleven games. Sadly though, a knee injury forced him to call it a season in the final two months of the league campaign. The good news is that I have Gomis for one more season before making the decision to sign him permanently from ASSE.

  3. Michel Bastos (€2.9m from LOSC Lille Métropole)

    I loved Bastos in these early FMs. In real-life he went on to Lyon, but he did not win much in the end there as it coincided with PSG’s real-life dominance from 2012. But he’s quality, and he proved to be a great addition as the attacking Wing Back in my 4231 with 7 assists in 17 appearances.

  4. Yohann Pelé (€3.5m from Le Mans Union Club 72)

    Club captain Flavio Roma got one last dream move in his career as AC Milan opened their cheque book to sign our Goalkeeper for €3.5m. Looking to immediately re-invest, I could have gone big on Hugo Lloris, but Yohann Pelé was the cheaper option (he also isn’t tainted in my mind for one day moving to Tottenham either). It’s worth noting that he’s no relation to the Brazil great, but I hope he will be a solid option between the posts nevertheless.

  5. Guillaume Hoarau (€1.2m from Le Havre, with a 6 month loan back agreed)

    Jan Koller is irreplaceable, but I accepted he would leave me for Celtic at the end of the season. A similar mould of player exists in Guillaume Hoarau. 192cm tall and still only 24-years-old, he will be a decent player in the future. For that reason I loaned him back to Le Havre for the rest of the season to provide him with adequate playing time.

My approach with these signings was grounded in the real-world. I thought it best to go and get Ligue 1 established players because (1) they know French football and (2) they are already physically conditioned into the cycle of the league campaign. I needed new January signings to ‘hit the ground running’, and that’s why I went with these guys. But did they secure European football?

Season 2007/08 - Heartbreaker 💔

“Just about”, is the answer to the previous question. But it could have been so much better!

I usually have a good record of final days in Football Manager games. But this season was a heartbreaker…dropping from 4th to 7th as a result of a 2-0 defeat in the Parcs des Princes to PSG; whilst everybody else won around me. This meant no Champions League, and we relied on Olympique Lyonnais to do us a favour by winning the Coupe de France against lower league opposition (SC Bastia). Even then, Monaco will have to deal with many Euro Cup qualifiers in pre-season just to get a shot at a European campaign!  For the first time in a long while I was left wondering if I was going to get the sack in FM, considering the Board wanted Champions League football.

Alas, they have decided to stick with me for a bit longer…

Target Forward - how did Jan do?

A sprain to Jan Koller’s knee ligaments meant he missed all of February and March, a period which happens to see us drop points in five of eight league games. It is probably fair to say he was essential to how we play, and this is to be expected since I built the team around his presence last time in the blog. If he could have stayed fit for the whole season then he may have topped the Ligue 1 goalscoring charts. Instead, Jan Koller makes do with 19 goals in 30 Ligue 1 games…which is 3rd highest scorer in the league behind Djibril Cissé (20 goals for OM) and Frederico Chaves Guedes (24 goals for OL).

Big Jan is also where you’d expect to see him in the Data Hub too. Decent amount of headers, with a good win rate. Hard bastard.

 
 

But I did see a dip in Jan Koller during the final two months of the season, and his four goals are evidence of that. This could be due to the injury, his upcoming move to Celtic distracting his focus, natural decline as a player in mid-30s OR a combination of all of those things put together. The beauty of FM is that we will never know but it’s meant parting ways with Jan is perhaps right for everybody: virtual him, virtual Monaco and non-virtual me.

Děkuju Jan xoxo

Nouvelle Tactique pour 2008/09 🔜

So, with big Jan leaving, the most sensible thing is to adjust the Target Forward tactic. As I alluded to earlier in this post, Guillaume Hoarau is a solid option for the physical approach upfront but I cannot expect the same results as what I was getting from Jan Koller. We will have to play slightly differently, tweaked instructions and perhaps roles/formation too. I will save that for a future post, as I fully intend to play at least one more season of this 2007/08 database in FM24.

Thank you for reading / sharing and caring.

Tony | FM Grasshopper (p.s. now on Bluesky 🦋)