Previously on La Plata: Vice, Hugo Ojeda sent Carlos Valderrama to Miami.

Welcome to Miami.

How has Major League Soccer treated me so far? Well…

1. I signed a Billionaire Property Tycoon as General Manager to handle contracts and transfers, who is 84 years older than the club. Is this an FM record?

2. He secured a new contract to our World Cup winning Designated Player for a further two seasons. Days later, this player then broke his leg and retired.

3. We were leading the Florida Derby (Vs Orlando City) 2-1 in injury time, but ended up losing 2-3.

Strap yourselves in for a save update, which spans the first 6 months of The MLS Network Save with fellow blogger Chris aka FM Eadster (who is managing Portland Timbers). It’s been a wild first semester so far…

El Pibe & The Grandfather

El Pibe

Chris and I decided to turn off the 1st transfer window because we wanted to work within the 2021 squads. So, this meant a greater focus was made in fleshing out the backroom staff. My first choice Assistant Head Coach was Carlos Valderrama (as mentioned in my Bastardoverse piece a couple of months back). But unfortunately he became a “retired person” in the FM22 database and I had the choice of finding another heartthrob OR editing him back into the game prior to save creation.

I obviously chose the latter, and to placate Chris’ jealously I allowed him to choose a similar MLS icon to become his Portland Timbers No.2 via the FM Editor. I’ll leave him to wax lyrical about who he chose and why, but doesn’t matter to me because El Pibe (The Kid) is back:

The Grandfather

Simply put, I wanted the best negotiator I could find as my General Manager (GM). My GM will handle player contracts and initiate transfer deals with clubs, so acquiring somebody with Negotiating 14 was an upgrade on what I previously had (42-year-old Niki Budalic with Negotiating 12). To my surprise, whilst on stream negotiating his contract, it appeared Herb Simon was twice as old as poor Niki. Not only this, he’s also a mother f’king real estate Tycoon. This is the kind of investment opportunity Ángel Bastardo needs in Miami in order to clean some Ojeda drug money…

There are other appointments too: an MLS return for Freddie Ljungberg as an Attacking Coach, plus a few more Scouts. But the headline appointments are clearly Carlos and Herb, who join Ángel Bastardo to make Inter Miami the envy of Major League Soccer.

Return from La Plata

The injury

Just look how sexy Blaise Matuidi was, and just how good could he have potentially been for me in FM22?

Blaise Matuidi did not play competitive football for my Inter Miami side. He sadly broke his leg in our final pre-season friendly Vs Sacramento Republic FC, days after signing a contract extension to keep him at Miami until 2023. The original diagnosis was 7-9 months but, after a period of reflection, Blaise decided to call time on his career leaving me with an unused International and DP slot (annoyingly after MLS squad registration and waiver draft deadlines). Grrrrr.

Return from La Plata

What Herb Simon decided to do in response was nothing short of sensational, it’s almost as if virtual Herb has been reading my blog. As I wrote in my save introduction:

If you want to see an example of Inter Miami’s short-term approach, then look no further than the treatment of ex-Estudiantes de La Plata forward Matías Pellegrini - who was bought out from his contracted and loaned to lower league affiliate club Fort Lauderdale…just so Matuidi could be properly registered [again] for the 2021 MLS season. After training for a number of weeks away from the squad, the 21-year-old eventually re-signed with Estudiantes on loan.
Source: https://coffeehousefm.com/fmgrasshopperblog/2021/9/6/why-inter-miami-in-fm22-la-plata-vice

Big Herb gave a new contract to Matías Pellegrini and we recalled the La Plata boy back to Miami to link up with Estudiantes legend Bastardo. It’s a great narrative to see play out and softened the blow of losing Matuidi, who surely would have been one of my key players for 2021 year.

6 Months of Soccer (2021)

Soccer hasn’t been easy. President David Beckham has the ambition of finishing in the top five of the Supporters’ Shield, which is absurd…but we’ll at least try.

We began this save using a vanilla 4141/433, which had few Team Instructions meaning we didn’t really have a distinct style of play. I simply wanted to use advanced wide men supporting a lone forward, DP Gonzalo Higuain. You can go back and watch the various streams, but you can see below that we were quite inconsistent. We were also not getting enough out of Higuain, who managed just one goal from open play in the first two months of MLS 😮

June was a horrible month. Performances were dull, and we exited the MLS Open Cup at home Vs Philly. The 433 (and also the v22.02 FM22 Match Engine) were on their last legs. With the last game under both being the 3-2 home defeat in the big Florida Derby, conceding goals 90+2 and 90+5. Awful.

I don’t want the Orlando City result to define my Miami legacy. I can’t buy my way out of a hole with the transfer window closed and I can’t jump ship to another club just yet...so, just like in the last few FMs I turn to 442 as my saviour. Fortunately, I am all too aware of my weaknesses and as a result had been training a version of 4-4-2 not too dissimilar to the below since the start of pre-season:

Depth wise we’re a squad lacking in quality, but it’s all about embracing that and just having a system that gets some excitement and goals...whilst accepting it’s not always going to go well. Three victories and two defeats in five probably shows this. But the board and supporters finally seem happy about the entertaining style of play, we earn plenty of xG (whilst also giving it away). It’s exciting apparently. Are you excited?

We are stereotypically 442: attacking wide men being released with the Pass Into Space and Counter instructions. These guys supply the ammunition to the Complete Forward and Poacher up top. Despite leading a mutiny team meeting against me earlier in the month of July, Complete Forward Higuain now has two goals in his last two games and he has already withdrawn his concerns about my managerial ability. Hopefully no Ted Redwood Infamous parody for me!

It’s too early to say if I’ve cracked it and changed our fortunes for the long term, but I believe I’m seeing better play now and more importantly: decent goals. We’re turning over the play, we cross into the endzone and our offense are touching it down. Team Miami with the Ws 🤞🏻

The MLS Save

These streams are best described as conversations with your mates down the pub (e.g. “What did you have for dinner tonight mate?”). I am keeping up with traditions by going faceless™️, however I am led to believe the streams at least have decent audio and are in High Definition. Thanks to FM Stag for his help with that.

The details of the stream are in the graphic below, if you wanted to drop in and say howdy you would certainly be made to feel welcome…

📺 twitch.tv/fm_grasshopper

Happy Holidays

I think this is my final blog post of the calendar year, so I want to wish readers a great festive season and best of luck in 2022.

There has been a lot of changes to the website over the last 6 months (IRL), as I moved default domains from fmgrasshopper to coffeehousefm. Some great bloggers have come together, and there’s a nice mixture of styles and approaches. Furthermore, as a group we now host the Latte Quarterly e-magazine and also Ondrej’s fabulous Rensie Skin…things any FM fan would enjoy 👍🏻

Thanks for sticking with me, and the rest of the guys, and we hope you enjoy 2022 with us.

Tony / FM Grasshopper