Previously on La Plata: Colombia, Ojeda’s Junior corrected a bad run of form and qualified for the 2022 Opening Stage Semi Finals.

Intro

I don’t recall managing a club on Football Manager that has taken on as many names/identities as Junior. From the Italian immigrants who formed ‘Juventus’ to the Spanish form of ‘Juventud Infantil’ in the early days of it history, through to ‘Juventud Junior’, ‘Atlético Junior’, ‘Junior de Barranquilla’, ‘Junior Club’ and simply ‘Junior’ in more modern years. But one theme remains largely consistent in its names: Youth.

The Juventud Infantil of Barranquilla, formed in 1924, quickly became the most successful club side in the region (Champion of the first division of the Atlantic Football League in 1932). The hallmarks for this success, again like the name: Youth. Although this save is unlikely to be more than 10 seasons, I can’t help feeling a sense of responsibility in placing great importance on the nurturing of younger players. Youth Development is therefore today’s focus on the blog.

Junior Club: Welcome

Welcome to Junior Club. The in-game year is 2022.

Don’t worry, I am not going to overwhelm you by introducing you to every young player in the squad. I like to introduce my rising stars gradually in my save updates (e.g. Campaz as the Raumdeuter or ‘Arezogol’ in my Season 1 blog posts), and discuss what sets them apart etc. However, in this post I will pull back the curtain a bit more by introducing you to a few more players that I am excited about. Just three in fact: (1) a high-profile external signing, (2) a homegrown academy player from the intake and (3) a player recruited via Junior’s owned affiliate side. I’ll talk about what I have done with them previously and/or what I will plan to do with them in future years.

I will then move on to showing you my U20 Training Programme, with a little explanation on why I have set it up like this. What I have not done is outlined any improvements to the Facilities / Coaching Staff / Director of Football, mainly because I have done some things…but not as much as I could have done in a better league and/or bigger club. A good post on all of that, in order to [hopefully] improve your youth intakes, can be found on FM Samo’s blog which I will link here.

Finally, I conclude today’s post with a look at the Opening Semi Final Group Stage and ‘The Ghost Final’, a once in a lifetime Football Manager experience (I hope). Let’s begin…¡Vamos!

Junior Club: Meet the Young Guns

(1) High-profile External Signing

I signed 18-year-old attacker Jhon Durán in the same week that he agreed a real-life MLS move to Chicago Fire. Durán is from the famed Envigado academy and is one of the most exciting domestic talents in Colombia, it is no wonder that he was one of my main targets. His talents obviously don’t come cheaply, having scored 17 goals (all comps) in 2021…it took an initial €1.5m to take him to the Caribbean Coast. With performance based achievements, such as winning the Copa Libertadores (lol) and scoring 50 goals, it could rise up-to €2.5m.

I am trying to think long-term with young players and predicting future moves, which open up an opportunity in my First XI. With a release clause remaining in Matías Arezo’s contract (which is proving difficult for the DoF to remove) I see Jhon Durán as the ideal replacement for the No.9 shirt. Despite initially being 2nd choice in the Advanced Forward role he’ll get gametime (hence his Squad Player agreed role), especially with Arezo heading off to International Duty from time-to-time and also the move to a front two (discussed last time out). This will mean that I can also field both Durán & Arezo together. Initially, I am giving him a Technical focus on Shooting, but I also need to improve that Composure too.

(2) Homegrown Academy player

Despite being rated 3rd in potential by the Coach Report, I feel as if Juan Aragón is my top youth prospect from the 2022 intake. The Director of Football has sealed a three-and-a-half-year deal until 2025, and I immediately trained him as an Inverted Winger. I chose this role not only because it fits into my current 4-4-2, but I feel it makes him a bit more transferable, in the sense that I could shift him over to the right wing and be a traditional Winger one day too; as both Winger and Inverted Winger focus on Crossing when players are working on Individual Roles.

Note - it’s worth pointing out that there’s no need for me to get overly hung up on role/duty training at this stage with youth players, young players can go in a lot of directions when 15/16 years of age. Also, a large number of my U20 sessions (as I will show a bit later) are team based…it’s only until they get to the First Team where I go full-on with Match Preparation (in order to get those tasty Upcoming Match bonuses), which often lead to players working as units on attributes from their individual roles instead of predefined attributes (see - Attacking Movement, Defensive Shape, Corners and Freekicks as examples).

In short, my First Team training differs substantially to that of the U20s. For the First Team I train with the next few games in mind (‘Train To Win’ as FM Samo would call it), whereas for the U20s I take a more long-term/holistic view. The results are on the training pitch, as opposed to the league table at the end of the season.

To get back on point…the big question with Juan Aragón, and one I always deliberate on with certain roles, is whether to train Supportive or Attack in a player. I chose Inverted Winger on Support because I would rather him concentrate on improving Stamina (9) and Work Rate (6) rather than Anticipation (10) and Flair (16), which are already quite strong for somebody who is 15. Is this the right decision? I don’t know, but I am happy with it nevertheless.

You will see I have asked Juan Aragón to learn ‘Tries Tricks’, which is a nice South American-esque trait to have in my system. I am hoping it’s something that Juan can easily add to his game, seeing that he already has strong Technique (15) and capable of doing the unpredictable (Flair 16).

(3) An Affiliate Player (from Barranquilla FC)

The third and final player to introduce today is Pabue Casiani. Paube is from the Barranquilla Fútbol Club academy, which is owned by Junior Club. Many of the homegrown Junior players in real-life have either played or come out of Barranquilla FC in their careers. It was an obvious attraction in choosing Junior in FM21, as I can move players freely between both clubs.

Barranquilla Fútbol Club play in the league below, so it’s a good staging ground to give minutes to players hungry for gametime. In the case of Paube Casiani, he had a year of first team football at 16/17, but I am bringing him into Junior Club for a 6-12 month period to intensively work on him and see if I can Mentor a better personality and place some suitable traits on him. He has a great reading of the defensive game (Positioning 15) and will mark opponents really well (Marking 15), so it makes sense for me to train the ‘Marks Opponent Tightly’ trait.

I am once again working a young player hard with double intensity and an additional focus, seeing as our U20s do not play as often as our First Team. I am not doing anything fancy with him (standard Central Defender), other than telling him to double down on Decisions, Marking and Positioning. He is physically decent for a 17-year-old, so after 6 months I might work on some of the Technicals in order to see them rise as quick wins (raising lower attributes seem to be easier to boost up, providing there is potential ability there to eat into).

What has surprised me about Paube is how well he took to First Team football during 2021. I tried him out at the start of my switch to a 4-4-2, after being frustrated by my current CBs in the 4-2-3-1 DM, and he never looked back. Paube Casiani (referred to as simply ‘The 17-year-old in my previous blog post) did not really put a foot wrong, playing the remaining 10 games of the traditional Opening Stage season (Read more about overturning Misery here). I didn’t want to drop him, as I had no grounds to, and as my friend Ondrej says: “He doesn’t care how young he is”. I couldn’t describe it any better to be honest.

Junior Club: U20 Training Programme

I’ve mentioned numerous times on the blog that having a structure in place for First Team training is proving difficult, mainly due to the sheer quantity of matches played each year (70-90 per season). This means that there is a big focus on endurance and fitness in the season’s lead up and then match preparatory and recovery sessions during mid-season. The weeks of having a structured 7 day plan, with no travel or matches, are very few and far between. But the U20 side is somewhere where I can heavily focus on applying a technical training model, as the youth usually play just once a week (often a Thursday).

You may be wondering why I haven’t started this already, seeing that we’re now 12 months into the save. The answer is that there wasn’t much point! We had zero players in the U20 squad last year and those that could have been eligible to play were needed for the First Team. However, with the 1st intake arriving in January 2022 and a few external youth signings arranged in order to add some depth…we’re ready to dial in to some youth development with some custom schedules.

Youth Training is split into a balanced 4-week-cycle of custom schedules (below), with a slight favouring towards Physical and Technical development. Week 1’s aim is to boost Physicals, it’s rather demanding but I figure this is what younger players need in order to get them from youth squads and into South American First Team football in 2-3 years. I’ve staggered the most intense days in order to avoid burnout and injuries - those days are: Mondays, Thursdays (Match Day) and Saturdays.

We then move on to Technical, Attacking and Defending/Goalkeeper weeks. Each of these weeks end with a solitary physical and recovery session and days often start with General team based training. I like the idea of getting them all in together during the morning session, before breaking them off into more focussed groups via drills or units. I’m unsure if this is the best schedule you can apply to your squad, but it’s my balanced approach:

To select Custom Training Schedules, simply use drop down in the Training/Calendar section (Green box). Then click on your Custom Schedules (Red box) and that’s where your custom ones will sit (Yellow box). You can schedule a whole calendar year in one go OR just work from week-to-week, it’s up to you.

A further breakdown and insight as to why I choose certain session can be found below:

Week 1 - U20s Physical - 1 Match

• Emphasis on Physical development with five fitness based sessions.

• Three Technical sessions (two in units and one as a team).

• Four General team sessions and a team Bonding included as a low impact activity.

Week 2 - U20s Technical - 1 Match

• Emphasis on Technical development with seven technical based sessions.

• Quickness session to focus 100% on three attributes: Acceleration, Agility and Pace.

• Five General team sessions, often kick starting the day.

Week 3 - Attacking - 1 Match U20s

• Emphasis on Attacking development with seven six attacking sessions (a mix of Set Pieces and Units).

• Resistance session inside the gym, to work on power and strength.

• Five General team sessions, often kick starting the day.

Week 4 - Defending and Goalkeeping - 1 Match U20s

• Emphasis on Defensive & Goalkeeping development with ten defensive sessions (a mix of Set Pieces, Team and Units).

• Endurance session to round off a mild week of training before heading into the exhausting Physical week again.

• Outfield and Possession team training to keep squad together.

Junior Club: Mentoring

I make a general rule that players near to, or exceeding, the 100 First Team Matches Played statistic are not really going to benefit from Mentoring at all, even if they are in the prime years for it. In 2022, none of the First Team young guns are going to be in Mentoring Groups…they’ve either played too many games OR are already established players in the Team Hierarchy. Instead, I am adding some of the U20 squad to mix with older and influential First Teamers in units during pre-season and before the U20 matches start. My approach is to have two or three young guys with an older head, preferably with a defensive and attacking split of groups in order to get sensible player traits passed over (another benefit of the mix).

Note - I added the aforementioned Pabue Casiani and Carlos Cantillo (another player from Barranquilla FC) to the First Team units for Mentoring early on in the season. Simply: Training>Units>Add Reserve/U20 players and select the players you want to mentor.

I have already spoken about how quickly Paube Casiani has taken to First Team football, and he’s now in the mentoring group as a proper First Teamer. But I plan to give the Carlos Cantillo match experience towards taste of some gametime in the 2nd half of 2022 (more on this later). At this point in time, I will simply add him to the First Team Squad and he will therefore not need to be added manually to the Units. Why? Because there is a danger that U20’s training overworks a player before/after a First Team game e.g. an U20 Endurance/Resistance Monday after a Sunday First Team game.

Season 2022: Apertura

The Ghost Final

My last blog post dealt with the subject of FM Misery and the resurrection of Ojeda’s Junior. We had made the Semi Final stage on the last day of the ‘normal’ Opening Stage. We would therefore enter a group with top of the table Atlético Nacional, Deportivo Pasto and of course…Leones FC. We came up short against Nacional but managed to win the rest, which is enough to see us progress to the two legged Opening Final. This would once again be Junior Vs Millonarios, a repeat of the 2021 Closing Stage final.

However this may always end up as ‘The Ghost Final‘, seeing that FM did not schedule it in time before the Closing Stage kicks off on 18 June 2022. I am really not sure what happens here. I’m in the 2022 World Cup year…so the Closing Stage is already cut short by 3 months, but also retains the same amount of games. It raises bigger questions about the future of the save, if the Opening Final can’t be played and the Opening Stage of 2023 doesn’t renew. Then there is the further complication of what happens with Copa Libertadores Group Stage qualification, which this final would resolve. From a brief perusal of other people’s saves, I am however semi-confident things will adjust and FM will catch up with the scheduling. I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I will play through the Closing Stage and hope that the Ghost Final appears to resolve the Opening Stage, and things adjust back to some kind of normality in 2023.

The Unlikely Hero

The aforementioned Carlos Cantillo was the unlikely hero of the Opening Semi Final Group Games. With big injuries to Jhon Durán and Matías Arezo in the first two games of the Semi Final Groups, I was left with playing Cantillo upfront with Santiago Tréllez…effectively my 3rd and 4th best strikers at the club. But I guess, attributes and reputation do not matter in Football Manager 2021…Carlos Cantillo played amazing in the Advanced Forward role: 196 Semi Final minutes played and 4 goals! On the face of it, he shouldn’t be starting Opening Stage finals…yet he would have been there on merit:

I will be keeping Carlos with me now in the First Team, and I am sure I can give him more minutes in the relentless 2022 Closing Stage which will see us play 2-3 times a week over 4 months in order to be finished in time for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Heck, he may even get to play in the Ghost Final…if it makes an appearance one day.

So, that’s my mid-2022 update. I think the next few months in Barranquilla are going to be a bit of a whirlwind, games every 3-4 days as we rush to complete domestic duties before the 2022 World Cup. A lot remains up in the air, continental qualification and title deciders are still pending…but it’s a lot of South American fun. We’re putting the building blocks in place over the last two posts: a new-look 4-4-2 and now with an outlined approach with Youth Training. La Plata: Colombia will hopefully start charting the special era for Junior Club very soon.

As always, thanks for reading/sharing/caring.

FM Grasshopper