Previously on La Plata: Mexico, Dorados de Sinaloa reached Liga MX.
Estadio Banorte, Culiacán. Credit: sinaloa360.com
Intro
This save was always going to get a lot harder (before it would start to get easier). 6 months into the job and we’d hit the big time: Liga MX. I had a lot of people to thank, notably Dan Gear…who said he’d like to see me cover my approach to staying up in Mexico’s top league. I thought it was a good idea for the blog, to explore the things I did and the preparations I made to ensure Liga MX survival…but the lessons for readers today are more around what I failed to do and act upon. We’d reached the big time, but with little thought about what comes next.
Perhaps I got promoted too soon (if that could be considered a thing)? Perhaps we needed another 12 months to lay the groundwork properly; building solid foundations to cope with the increased quality of the league opposition. Today’s post covers the Opening Stage of the 2025/26 Liga MX and the suffering that ensued.
Vamos.
Season 2025/26
Before this post moves on to the lessons learned, I will briefly set the scene with a run through of results and current positions in both the Liga MX and domestic cup, the Copa MX.
Liga MX - The league results makes grim reading up until November where we finally found some form, eventually ending up at 16th position in the Opening Stage table. We have the 2nd leakiest defence with 41 goals conceded from 19 games and if it wasn’t until that final month…we’d have been in serious trouble, and most likely bottom.
Average Points - Rewind back an in-game year and I was nervously focusing on the Average Points table with Murciélagos FC in the Ascenso MX. Now in November 2025, I’m doing the same with Dorados de Sinaloa albeit in a higher league. It’s perhaps the theme throughout my time in Mexico: nervously looking over one’s shoulder at opponents’ fortunes, as well as our own. This is the peril of living in a world of Average Points.
Last season’s Average Points Totals. Note - 2022/23 data missing due to the league not being loaded at the time.
For those unfamiliar with Average Points, it can decide a few things in Latin American fútbol. In Mexico’s Liga MX (for the time being at least, before promotion/relegation gets paused for many years) it dictates which single team gets relegated, and it does this by averaging out the points won over the last 3 years (so current + two years previous). As you can see from above, it was Potros UAEM who were relegated last season with an awful campaign of 10 points over both Opening + Closing Stages.
For the new campaign, Dorados will enter the Liga MX Average Points system with a clean slate like Potros did. This can be viewed as both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that our fortune is in our hands…but the curse is that there is an obvious points benchmark to meet. This benchmark is somewhere between .85 and 1.0, unless the three clubs of Club Nexaxa, Atlético San Luis & Leones Negros have solid campaigns. Meeting this benchmark is perhaps harder for Dorados, due to the sheer gulf in class between established Liga MX sides and fresh meat like us. The cynic in me views Average Points as a way to maintain the status quo in most Latin American leagues. A brief historical example is how Argentina introduced it to protect the big clubs from relegation, thus allowing them to have a bad season, if player turnover was particularly high. Note - this backfired massively back in 2011, when River Plate did what the Argentine FA viewed as impossible: achieve relegation on average points!
So, what does this mean for Hugo Ojeda’s Dorados? Well, we probably have to collect somewhere between 32 points (.85) or 38 points (1.0) over the course of the combined Opening & Closing Stages. Luckily, our Opening Stage (particularly due to November’s form) sees us sit above our target at 1.05 average points:
Current Season’s Average Points Total.
At least by looking into the Average Points table, we know our targets and despite being humiliated in a number of games already this season; the task remains in our hands. Four or five wins and a few draws should be enough in the remaining 19 Closing Stage fixtures to secure survival. Pray.
Copa MX - Despite being given a tough Copa MX group, we did really well to secure a 2nd Round place with a game to spare; with tight wins at home against both Santos Laguna and Deportivo Toluca. Up next is a home and away tie Vs Deportivo Guadalajara, who will be favourites to go through. Bring it on.
Lessons Learned
So, before we get into some of my questionable decisions below; I first want to first emphasise that my approach towards this Liga MX Season was one of ‘Trust’. Akin to what I did with Lorient in Football Manager 2019, whereby I trusted in the team and system that got me promoted.
(1) Top Division Wage Rises
The headline figure that probably should have set the alarm bells ringing much earlier (but did not), was that promotion would see our wage bill rise by €105k per month…equating to an increased wage bill of 25%. That’s without no new deals, or player/staff acquisitions for 2025/26. The AI Management of Dorados had been acquiring players through my FM20 save with the added sweetener of a % promotional wage rise in contracts. I am not completely innocent in this, two of those players were from deals I handled (Acosta at 30% and Yomaha at 25%)…but let’s not overlook the fact that the AI did a remarkable job of allowing 20 First Team players to have this contract clause. There are pros and cons to this approach, and let’s not forget that it ultimately worked: Dorados are in Liga MX. But it doesn’t stop the fact that this club is going to have to be frugal for the next couple of years at least.
(2) “All The Eggs In One Basket” Transfer Policy
Despite our wage bill increasing by 25%, and me not really grasping that until too late…I still thought I would have some budget going into the Liga MX season. After all, it’s a rich league with a good TV deal and high stadium attendances. Our operating balance climbed to €6m in July/August 2020, so I naturally felt relaxed about making a signing to complement the squad. In came the Free Signing of 22-year-old Conrado Verón who met the Club Vision Targets of being young and Argentine. The main reason I wanted him was to phase out Amaury Escoto’s first team role, who is entering his final few years at the club and declining to a level perhaps beneath Liga MX. I thought this was a good and logical succession plan: replace an ageing Deep Lying Forward with a younger model. In order to lure Conrado to Sinaloa, I had to offer him fairly high wages and a Number 10 squad number…but surely the Board would give me some of that sweet €6m to fix the wage bill and make further signings? This is what I was banking on anyway…
Wrong. No more money for Hugo Ojeda…Conrado Verón would be it. Despite needing a back-up Deep Lying Forward, this probably wasn’t the area where I immediately needed reinforcements. I needed defensive cover, especially after the departing Albano Ballari - my 6 month loanee who marshalled our backline - left for Club León. The 41 goals conceded is demonstrative of this and a massive oversight from a seasoned FMer, opps.
To compound my misery further, Conrado Verón hasn’t even been that good in a Dorados shirt - although he probably needs to play more (in all comps: 2 goals, 2 assists in 547 minutes played). He could obviously do it in Argentina’s 2nd tier…but the Mexican Big League is a jump up. With a five year contract we now have to see if we can make this work for both parties; and I am aware that sometimes players need a good 6-12 months before we see them adapt. But this is an example of where I got it wrong [again]. Sorry.
(3) [No] Plan B
I have already mentioned the 41 goals conceded a couple of times already in this post, it pains and sickens me. I would much rather win 1-0 than 2-1, I like the achievement of a clean sheet both in real-life and in Football Manager. But at Dorados I only changed from the v3 4-4-2 tactic mid-way into the Opening Stage during a few away games. On these occasions, I either changed the structure of the central midfield from Attack-Support to Support-Defend and kept the 4-4-2 OR sometimes took Verón out from the team and replaced the DLF role with a Defensive Midfielder at DM in a flat 4-1-4-1. The results have been mixed. Some games Dorados would put up a fight and still lose (e.g. Cruz Azul 2-1) and some games we’d get hammered (e.g. Monterrey 6-1). It’s basically a golden thread running throughout this blog post: no money, no good defensive players…therefore no Plan B. In November, seeing that we’d play at home for most games, we would just run with the expansive 4-4-2 v3 and low and behold it got us out of jail: 3 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat. But I won’t always have a run of 4 home games on the bounce, I will most likely have to find a Plan B from somewhere.
I think that’s where my next moves need to be made: recruit defensively sound players.
Closing Comments
The upcoming 6 months are pivotal, not only for Dorados but also for Hugo Ojeda’s save narrative and this save in general. Honestly, I don’t think I can face a relegation and the immediate headache of trying to get promoted back to The Big Time once again. Mexico has been a really hard slog; so we’ll keep an eye on potential snake moves going forwards. My friend Ondrej better be on standby to make more kits…
As always, thanks for reading/sharing & caring.
FM Grasshopper
