"The Snake of Sinaloa" - La Plata: Mexico #FM20

Previously on La Plata: Mexico, Hugo Ojeda’s Murciélagos survived relegation.

Intro

Timing is everything. Not just in real-life, but also in a Football Manager simulation. The second half of 2024 for Hugo Ojeda was a complete shitshow. Murciélagos FC led the table for the number of loses and were joint bottom of the Opening Stage table with two games to go. Facing a likely [deserved?] sacking, Hugo Ojeda made his controversial move. A move that would not only heighten local football rivalries, but also destabilise Sinaloa efforts in the ongoing Tijuana conflict…

Season 2024/25

Before we get on to Hugo’s big decision, I first want to bring readers up to speed with events in Los Mochis. Last time out on the blog I was full of hope and optimism about our chances of a promotion push. It’s perhaps the curse of how and when I decide to blog: as I never play ahead, and I therefore didn’t know how awful things would get with Murciélagos FC.

Murciélagos FC Results with Ojeda 2024/25

New marquee signing Fredy Vera was a waste of space, having never saw the pace and silky finishing that I expected. Drama too in the background, as a large proportion of the squad wanted new deals. Deals we neither couldn’t afford and ones I didn’t want to make. The band of renegades turned on Hugo. Their performances abysmal and my misery compounded when wonderboy loanee Miguel Ávila was ruled out for 12 months with a cruciate knee injury.

Life without Miguel Ávila in a GIF…

But, as previously mentioned, timing is everything. If you don’t control your destiny, it controls you. Having seen rivals Dorados de Sinaloa sack their manager, after an equally horrific campaign (lying in 15th position)…it was time for Hugo to make his play. A move wrapped up in betrayal, controversy and shadiness. Incredibly, Hugo Ojeda would be appointed Dorados Manager with a career win record of just 28%.

Hugo Ojeda’s 515 days in charge with Murciélagos FC: 15 games won, 17 draws and 21 defeats.

Dorados de Sinaloa

I certainly didn’t want a sacking on Hugo Ojeda’s CV, but I can appreciate what I have done is not everybody’s cup of tea. Moving across the Sinaloa state to a local rival is…erm…Judas-like to say the least. But here are my reasons anyway:

Club Infrastructure - Dorados are an all round bigger club than minnows Murciélagos FC. Bigger stadium, bigger wage budget…better facilities. I said during the interview that I didn’t need any staff and I promised to work with the Director of Football (saying all the right things obviously improved Hugo’s chances of being appointed).

Dorados are in the same league as Murciélagos FC, but have a better stature.

Reputation - One of the big barriers at Murciélagos FC was club reputation, I missed out on the vast majority of transfer targets. Even the guys who would come on trial would often use the club to train and get fit before sticking their middle fingers up at us and leave for rivals. Sickening.

This will not be as at Dorados. For sure, the top league is more attractive…but this club once attracted Pep Guardiola at the twilight of his career. After all, we’re the biggest club in Sinaloa!

Players - It is hard to imagine worse players than some of the ones I had at Murciélagos FC. At Dorados, we’ve got a couple of tasty young players and a few entering their peak years…who I’m looking forward to using. But the two I am most looking forward to using are the combination of Amaury Escoto and Carlo Limón upfront. The coaches rate these two guys the club’s best players…and I immediately think we can play a supportive DLF-Poacher combination here.

Club Culture - The culture of the club is to play attacking football, but this does not mean I need to play with an attacking mentality…rather I just need to score goals and have a good shots-to-game ratio. To get through the final two games of the season, we actually played a cautious Route One 4-4-2 and won both games (0-2 away at Alebrijes de Oaxaca FC & a 2-1 home win Vs Atlético Zacatepec). I am in two minds to keep this going, simply winning games will keep the Board & Fans quiet…right?

The other parameters to work within are actually really attractive to me. We’ll look to Argentina to sign some players, with an emphasis on the next generation of talent. In addition, there will be an expectation to bring through a few young players each season…and I have already seen one or two that can be integrated into the squad for the 2024/25 Closing Stage. Can’t wait!

Immediate Aim - The board want a top 7 finish in the Closing Stage, and thus a shot at the Promotion playoffs.

The Snake of Sinaloa

Lampropeltis triangulum sinaloae.

I am aware that [some] followers and readers of the blog may be frustrated that I didn’t face the challenge at Murciélagos FC; by turning it around and living out the fairy tale rise of champions. But this save doesn’t behave, and in Hugo Ojeda we have a guy looking to move up the ladder…fast. We’ll take being disloyal, ruthless…and branded the Snake of Sinaloa for a shot of glory. Embrace the Underworld, embrace Hugo Ojeda.

As always, thanks for reading/sharing and caring.

FM Grasshopper

"Home & Away" - La Plata: Mexico #FM20

La Plata Mexico Header.png

Intro

I am not sure which holds more significance: a 20-year-old Hugo Ojeda surviving a season in the Mexican 2nd Division OR Hugo Ojeda surviving a year in the middle of the Sinaloa-Tijuana Cartel War. Certainly both projects have come with loses & struggles, but Murciélagos FC and Sinaloa appear to be on the rise. The year is 2024 and here is an update…

Home & Away

Having Home & Away formations divides opinion, not just in FM circles…but also in real-world football. The great Arsène Wenger was once very dismissive about the difference between home & away in 2011:

“I never in my life could understand the difference between home and away, for me it’s a football match and no matter where you play you try to play well. I never could understand why in peoples’ heads there is a difference between away and home”.

But six years later, Wenger could not answer why Arsenal were unable to win against their top rivals away from home for so long. Playing the same approach (regardless of the principles around aesthetics) between home and away games could have been his undoing; something was amiss. My usual approach in FM has often been something similar: use a single formation that works in the majority of matches and only make tweaks. But I felt we needed to do something more drastic in away games with Murciélagos FC. In the Opening Stage we went the entire campaign without a single away win, the worst record in the league and a bit of a laughing stock.

The Mexican league adds further justification for seeking the away win too, because an extra bonus point is awarded. A sudden jump of a few +4s would not only guarantee survival, but also put us in contention of a Play-Off place. So, after speaking to good friend and ally Diego Mendoza…I was motivated to try a 4-4-2 away tactic, to push two men up top and really ‘go for it’. Crash and burn, we’d eventually get a win right? Wrong, another 5 away games during the Closing Stage without a win (and non-existent sexy Ojeda-ball) left me wondering what I had to do…so I went back to the 4-3-3 Home formation but with a really simple change:

Swap CF-S to AF-A.

It suddenly meant that Murciélagos FC had a persistent runner on a more aggressive mentality. Not only a goal threat but a guy to offer up the ball to and relieve pressure on our defenders. The first away game: a 1-0 Vs Potros, with the goal coming from the Advanced Forward. Then the last two away games ending unbeaten…a 0-0 with La Piedad and a 1-0 win at Celaya. Sometimes a simple switch of role can have a noticeable effect!

Ojeda’s 4-3-3- v1.1

Season 2023/24

Because I blogged before the conclusion to the Opening Stage, here is me finishing strongly to secure 11th place!

Building on our Opening Stage ‘success’, we were once again solid at home. The aforementioned problems away from home continued, but the little switch to Advanced Forward has given me hope for next season. We came a whisker away from reaching the Promotion Playoffs. I also saw the best and the worst of my team in the final two games of the season. A surprising, but merited win, away at Celaya…left me with real hope of a dream playoff appearance. Miguel Ávila, my loan signing from Club América who I introduced last time on the blog, heading home a near post corner routine giving me false hope of a first season fairy tale. But his yellow card later on in that game meant he would be suspended for our final match, where we were cruelly ripped apart at home by Club Irapuato 0-3. A deflating end to a largely productive season, where we were tipped to go down:

Our combined tally of 45 points means I am in a really strong position next year to once again survive, as we’ve got a 13 point head start (& alphabetical advantage) on teams like Zacatecas and Zacatepec. So, we’ll probably do away with looking at Average Points next season and have a stretch goal instead; achieve a playoff spot in either of the split stages.

New Signings

In order to push on and make the playoffs, I feel we need to strengthen in a few key areas. I’m not one for masses of new signings each season (as a lot of FMers seem to do), instead I like to focus on bringing one or two marquee signings that would improve us; and then maybe an additional youngster or two to comply with any Club Vision.

Ojeda’s War Chest

New budgets attributed to managers are often described as ‘war chests’, and that’s what it feels like with Hugo Ojeda’s new 2024/25 budget. But instead of investing heavily in the playing squad, I’ve taken this opportunity to flesh out the backroom staff. We now have an assortment of staffing roles, with a scouting setup in place and an Assistant Manager to ease the burden on our young manager’s shoulders. Including Hugo Ojeda himself, six Venezuelans are now also part of the backroom staff at Murciélagos FC…una revolución in process!

In terms of player signings, I’ve been quite dismissive of a few Full Backs/Wing Backs scout reports sent to me to fill Left Back…and therefore missed out on bringing anybody here. So we’ll go with Soria, my make-shift right footed LB until the next Transfer Window. The standout 2024 signing is Free Transfer 26-year-old Fredy Vera, a one-time youth international with Paraguay. Vera has a lovely mixture of Composure, Flair, Finishing & First Touch. He can play across the front line in each of the roles within my 4-3-3 and could be the decisive factor for us (remember I need those +4s away from home). I’m actually going to tweak a few instructions for the games he’ll play as an Advanced Forward or as an Attacking Winger. As I plan to be a bit more direct with our passing and make quicker transitions from back to front…utilising his modest quickness and good Off The Ball attribute. So maybe expect a 4-3-3- v1.2 in my next post.

My other Free Signing is Sinaloan Francisco Contreras, who has spent all of his career with rivals Dorados. You can’t be too picky in terms of what players to go for at this level, so I focused on a few specific attributes. I wanted somebody who was (1) fast and (2) hard working for a Central Midfielder Attack role. Contreras fits both criteria well (with great Determination, Quickness, Teamwork and Work Rate) and I really like his player trait of getting forward whenever possible. There will be lots of space to drive into, with the Advanced Forward pushing on, and I am hoping he can be an offensive threat for us.

Closing Comments

It took a fair amount of time to complete a single Mexican season during the pandemic lockdown, but I can’t wait to get going again for Season 2. Facing off against new clubs and getting to grips in a new league has certainly been a great challenge so far, and if anybody is feeling the need to switch up their save…don’t overlook adding new leagues within a current save as I did. Fully recommend it!

Thanks for reading/sharing/caring. Stay safe and stay alert.

FM Grasshopper

"The Fall - Hugo" #FM20

Part III

June 2023

Operation Isabella was the systematic removal of all known Russian presence in South America, the drugs trade was thrown up in the air. Whilst Chepiga thought he had taken out Bastardo’s Caporegime, he had not considered the ever-increasing Venezuelan army. They called us ‘The Free Folk’, untraceable loyal partisans ready to do Ángel Bastardo’s bidding. From all over Central and South America, we operated in unison…silo-by-silo the presence of Chepiga was removed. In its place, a more Mercosur focused regime was implemented: we’d take on the business of the drug trade but the money would no longer drift away across the Atlantic Ocean.

My instructions were to head to Mexico in order to broker a deal with the Sinaloa Cartel, and it’s here where the great Ángel Bastardo wanted his battle to resume. Operation Isabella signalled the end of Ángel Bastardo, Peñarol & La Celeste, the succession without himself as our leader. It takes a brave man to plan for this, but that’s what he was. I watched the incarceration of Bastardo live on TV, the Americans keen to broadcast and humiliate him to a global guidance. Yet he remained brave, I could see it.

Despite being in prison, Bastardo’s plan so far had been faultless…with the most pivotal moment, in his words, still to come. On the outskirts of Sinaloa’s biggest city, Culiacán, we had set up camp 34 days ago. We had been asked to reside next to an old watchtower overlooking a basin where a large river once meandered, in its place a small stream remained. It’s here where Bastardo’s instructions became meticulous in detail, offering an insight into the military mind of a seasoned commander.

The water was to be drained 100m upstream every night for exactly 5 hours at a time. Likewise, the watchtower brick-by-brick was reconstructed onto an enormous wooden wheeled trolley…this had to move 3 meters each night towards the site of where our drainage took place, with candles emitting a light from dusk till dawn to signify it’s occupancy.

Yesterday, on the 34th day, the written instructions in Operation Isabella told me to call the Tijuana Cartel of Baja California; to inform them of our agreement with Sinaola and offer an extension and future partnership between all three groups. The watchtower would be tonight’s meeting place, where the particulars would be discussed and agreed…but betrayal was Bastardo’s prediction. Sensing pressure from the other border states and upsetting the status quo, the site would be a massacre…one instigated by the Tijuana henchman. Outgunned and outnumbered, my mixture of Venezuelans and Uruguayans would rally behind the watchtower, along with Sinaloan representatives. We would face the Tijuana Cartel and the accompanying river that had now been starved of it’s most precious resource: water. The land was a nightmarish illusion, solid until pressure is met: quicksand.

It was by far one of Tijuana’s boldest moves on Culiacán soil since the Mexican Drug War began, around 50 soldiers advanced on the watchtower. Except the soil was now to the Sinaloa advantage, gunshots were traded back and forth towards the watchtower, but the mobile shooters now belonged to me. The Free Folk strafed around the watchtower and quicksand, encircling the Tijuana Cartel until we were behind them. It now looked like death by gunshot was the honourable solution for the men from Baja California, as men drifted into the abyss of mud. For 35 days of preparation, the shootout was over in no time at all. Sinaloa had secured a key victory in their quest for border control. The Sinaloan’s ultimate goal: to manage the San Diego–Tijuana conurbation, the largest urban link between the United States and Mexico.

Bastardo’s Mexican ambitions? Well, I guess we all were Bastardo now. Our aim is to undermine the United States, on our path to prosperity, and to honour the man that gave us freedom back in the Colombian jungle…

…I am Hugo Ojeda. I am Bastardo.

Note from the Editor - Mexico is where we now reside. I haven’t revealed the Football Manager element to our story just yet, that’s for one final [more serious] post to come. But I wanted to lay the ground properly, for what I hope will be a 4-5 season save before FM21 comes out (*pandemic dependant, of course). Hugo Ojeda will be our manager, a 20-year-old Venezuelan refugee who balances Bastardo’s splintered Empire on his young shoulders.

Can he keep it together, in the middle of a Cartel Drug War, and make a success of it all? I hope you can join me to find out.

As always, thanks for reading/sharing/caring.

FM Grasshopper

"The Fall - Ruslan" #FM20

Part II

July 2022

Chepiga squinted at the monitor, the footage was grainy but he could see just enough detail, he wondered if the radiation was robbing him of his eyesight. He marvelled at what would be his biggest shipment yet, perhaps his last. He pondered, should he pull this off, he would have enough money to buy his freedom and live his life in peace. In the same moment he also thought, if he pulled this off, why stop there?

Chepiga gazed longingly at the inside of his new Soviet Stealth Submarine, he would give anything to be on that Sub. He’d acquired it for $15million from a crooked former Soviet general, who had stolen it back in 1991. This one shipment would pay for the submarine three times over.

His most trusted operatives had set off from Santa Marta, Colombia, two days ago with $45million worth of product. Chepiga still had friends in Punta Alegre, Cuba and his men took refuge there overnight before setting off for the Florida Everglades. Chepiga planned to watch the final leg of the operation live, from Pripyat.

There was a flicker of excitement in Chepiga’s stomach as the submarine dived down 50metres. All was well, the submarine was performing beautifully. Suddenly Chepiga could see a flurry of activity, “we’ve been detected, they know we are here, DIVE! DIVE!” The link was suddenly lost…

August 2022

“Listen Chepiga, someone is going away for this. You cannot continue to protect that terrorist scum. You must give him up, if you do, you have our word you can continue with your Colombian operation. We do not care about a few tonnes of drugs, our citizens need a release, we care about the men that have spilt American blood. We care about Bastardo.” Chepiga sat confused, unsure how to leverage himself out of this.  His interrogator was a pregnant woman, he had no point of reference or commonality with her. It was clever, the Americans were always ahead of us in ‘clean’ interrogation techniques, he thought.

Chepiga looked around the cold room, he’d been in plenty of similar rooms over his lifetime but never was he as weak as he felt now. He’d taken to mapping the night sky for the last 14 evenings through the tiny slit in his cell. He was certain he was in the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba, Guantanamo. The situation was worse than he’d feared. The Americans could hold him here indefinitely, nobody is coming to save him. They have threatened to parade him on Fox News with the Submarine covered in Soviet insignia. He was on his own. It was time to negotiate, to play any card he had left.

December 2022

Chepiga and the FBI agents were lurking in one of the shadow stairway exits of the Lusail Stadium.  There were around another fifteen groups, at the exit points of Qatar’s showpiece stadium. Uruguay would not defeat Die Mannschaft in the Last 16, Bastardo was a good manager but his insistence on playing 4-1-3-2 would be his downfall; Chepiga was sure of that. The bust would be tonight at Full-Time.

There was no backing out now, Chepiga had agreed with the Americans to capture Bastardo if he ever left Uruguay, and he knew the Americans would not risk arresting Bastardo in South America. Time and again he warned his old friend, “stay away”, “don’t come to Qatar” among his many messages of warning.

Bastardo ignored them all, his over-confidence annoyed Ruslan. The Argentine had found a moral purpose in Uruguay: to care for the Venezuelan refugees that refused to leave him after Colombia.  But it’s not what Chepiga originally tasked, Project Peñarol was Bastardo’s doing…he had outgrown his original purpose in Uruguay: the management of the Under 20 National Team. 

The shrill of the full-time whistle faded into the still desert air, so did Chepiga’s sympathy for his friend. He had brought this upon himself. It is him or me, his final thought as he strode onto the pitch. AK-47 raised and loaded.

Chepiga had two objectives, to capture Bastardo alive and hand him over to the FBI thus…saving his own skin today. His second objective was to execute Hugo Ojeda. The youngster had become a man, rising up the ranks of Bastardo’s Underworld to sit in the Argentine’s inner circle. Chepiga knew he’d come after him if he ever lived past this evening, killing him was the only way to save his tomorrow self.

Chepiga would only fire three shots, he felt remarkably calm in these situations. Time moved so slow, slow enough to avoid Cavani’s amateurish attempts to stop him. Ruslan’s first shot found its mark, the legs of Hugo Ojeda, shattering his Femur and leaving him prone in the centre circle. Chepiga approached like a snake who had just delivered a venomous bite to rodent. He lifted the young man’s head, his long curly hair soaked in sweat. “Who are you?” growled Chepiga.

“I am Bastardo!” Spat the youngster, defiant, even now. Chepiga remembered the jungle where he first met the boy, he was now a man but he’d seen those eyes before, he was sure it was him. He raised his side arm and executed the youngster.  Hugo Ojeda was history.

Making his way towards the dug out where Bastardo was re-loading, Chepiga gave the order, “Take him now!” A flash grenade wasn’t his preferred choice but the Americans were in charge now.

It hurt to see his old comrade dragged from the stadium, he wished he could go back to the Jungle, he wished his old ally had heeded his warnings. Alas, there would be no glorious “Return to La Plata” for Bastardo this time, not while the Americans had him.

Note from the Editor - Both FM Eadster and I wanted to provide a bit of background around Bastardo’s arrest. Not only does it allow Chris to flesh out his beautifully constructed character a bit more, we also get to see the moral conflict in the Bastardo-Ruslan shared Universe. Ángel Bastardo was given a second chance at the beginning of FM20, but we quickly saw him outgrow his original remit. On the one hand he grew more of a conscious over the previous 4 years of in-game time…but his lifestyle had him drawn back him into the Underworld of contraband and drug trafficking.

Kudos to Chris for the submarine backstory off the Florida Keys coastline and the murder of ‘Hugo Ojeda’. As Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish once said in Game Of Thrones: “Money buys a man’s silence for a time. A bolt in the heart buys it forever”. The only problem is, you need to make sure you get the right man…

Thanks for reading/sharing/caring,

FM Grasshopper