The long journey has ended. It was one of the longest save I've ever had. And thanks to many reasons also unforgettable. BFC Siófok will always be in my memory as a club I enjoyed managing. Despite the (forced) sacking in the end...
I don't want to repeat myself and I don't want to write about the specific years and specific eras of the save. Not all of you like success and trophies 😜
One of the main key moments of the save was surely the promotion to the top tier but also the fact we won the first league title in our second season in the first division.
And we won it 24 times in a row. MTK Budapest was the runner-up for the most times.
The league titles meant Champions League football. And Champions League meant more and more money.
But it was not as easy as in the domestic league. We finished third and fourth in the group in our first Champions League participation but after some time we were better and better.
We won the first title in 2035 when we beat Tottenham and we beat the same team in the Final after five years to win it for the second time. This trophy was the first of five in a row.
As you can see in the picture below Manchester City was our bogey team but we also beat them three times in the Final.
It had to be City who beat us in the last season of this save as we lost 1-0 on aggregate in the Semi-Final.
Siófok changed from the very average second-tier club to the most dominant club in the country.
I'm sure if I would play it for the next six years I would win six other league titles and we would have 30 league titles same as Ferencvárosi, the most successful Hungarian club in terms of league titles.
But never mind, that was not my dream or my aim. I changed the recruitment policy several times during this save. It went from "Around The Lake" to the more international-based squad and back to the domestic-based squad in the end with 98% of our own players.
Same as we have dynamic rivalries in the game (we 'made' a rivalry with MTK Budapest and Puskás during this save) players and staff are always add to favourite personnel, icons and legends.
At the end of the save we have five people included between Legends - Gerardo Paolacci, György Benedek, Dominik Szoboszlai, Manos Pasas and Keysi Rensie.
Dominik Szoboszlai has a big part in my heart thanks to this save after he signed for BFC Siófok in 2025 and played for us until 2037 before he became a U19s coach and first-team assistant manager later.
Paolacci was my favourite foreign striker, Benedek was our long-serving master at right-wing and Manos Pasas was our record signing from PSG and he won five Champions League titles in five years.
There were a lot of other players I liked and I refused to sell them and waited until we will have enough funds to give them big contracts to keep them around.
We sold 173 players for €1.94B during this save and we bought 161 players for €393M during this save. Just only Manos Pasas was bought for €115M...on the other hand, our own newgen striker László Szalai was sold to Real Madrid in 2035 for €75M what was the club highest fee received.
If you want to know how much we paid to agents, it was €38.5M. Probably the cheap area...
One of my favourite thing within this save was to try to get the affiliate clubs from different nations.
I always had one domestic affiliate in the second tier, some of them were promoted to the top flight thanks to our players who were on-loan there until I made a link with Nyíregyháza Spartacus - an ideal average club in the second tier for 18 or 19 years old players to give them playing time.
But during the time I also arranged a link with clubs in Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Spain or the Czech Republic. And at the end of the save we also had Sydney FC, New England Revolutions, Henan Jianye and FC Hiroshima. Many foreign nations with many newgens who could appear in our own Youth Intake.
🤑🤑🤑
The club developed into an absolutely monstrous thing financially during the time. We had around €1.3B in the bank balance in 2042 and we had more than €1B on transfers and €26.5M on wages per month.
Board decided to deposit €115M in 2043 and €250M in 2044 into a reserve investment fund. I never had this message before, this is how finances look in 2045.
And we are almost at the end of our journey because we can talk about the biggest pain of the second half of this save.
The club board decided to build a new stadium in 2022 and we moved there in 2024. The Siófok Stadium was great during the first years and the 12k capacity was absolutely fine but as we grew up we had 9k season ticket holders and I'm sure we would be able to have a bigger stadium. At least with 20k capacity...
When I asked about the possibility to have a new stadium again I found out it usually takes at least 20 or 25 years before the board will think about the new stadium again.
Just in the half of the penultimate season of the save I realised I can finally ask about a new stadium.
The board rejected my request due to a small fan base.
If I take it from a selfish point of view, it's absolutely stupid. But it's probably right in terms of how the Football Manager is set up and 'coded'.
This is not an official statement of SI but I think the fan base in FM works within the specific area so as we are a small area near the Lake Balaton we are unable to attract the same amount of people as in Budapest for example.
And that's probably the reason why they rejected my request four times due to the same reason. When it happened for the last time in June 2045 I decided to leak this into the press.
The board invited me to a meeting and I was sacked because I criticised the board publicly. And that's the end of Keysi Rensie's journey and relationship with BFC Siófok...
It took 10243 days, 1110 wins, 268 draws and 155 defeats. BFC Siófok scored 3460 goals and conceded 1166 goals. Keysi Rensie ended his Hungarian journey with a 72% win percentage, 24 league wins and 42 cup trophies.
Life Around The Lake after Keysi Rensie...
Keysi Rensie didn't leave the game immediately and he decided to follow BFC Siófok for next years. Mainly because of his sons Jiri and Robert...
Gary Monk took a charge of BFC in the summer of 2045 and he decided to change the whole squad. He spent €545M on new players during the first season in a charge and sold players for €39M.
What about the Rensie brothers? The younger one, Robert, was sent for a loan spell to Japan where he spent the season with FC Hiroshima. The older one, Jiri, was sent to the reserve squad.
After 24 years, BFC Siófok didn't win the Hungarian first division as MTK Budapest finally won the league title.
Jiri Rensie was released by BFC Siófok in summer 2047 and he ended his professional career later and became Director of Football when he was 33 years old. He became a DoF of Nyíregyháza Spartacus in 2049 and started his new chapter as a boss.
Later, in 2051, he moved to FC Vysočina Jihlava in the same role.
Siófok won the league between 2047-2050 four times and they are dominant again but without some European success.
Gary Monk was a manager of the club until 2050 and there were only five domestic players in the first-team squad after so many changes.
The first team squad included players from Australia, Brasil, Colombia, Netherland, Italia, Portugal, Serbia, Spain...
Meanwhile, the older son Jiri became Director of Football, Robert came back from Hiroshima and he then went for loan spells with Mezökövesdi SE, Nyíregyháza Spartacus and Duna Aszfalt TVSE and he signed for the last mentioned club as a free player in summer 2048.
He is playing the third Hungarian tier and during the 2049/2050 season, he played 30 league matches, scored 4 goals and made 19 assists. In 2050/2051 he played 27 games, scored 4 goals, made 20 assists and helped the club to win promotion to the second division.
In the 2051/2052 season, he played 36 league goals, scored 2 goals and made 21 assists. It looks like he found the right club...
The journey and FM18 adventure of Keysi Rensie end there.
The board of BFC Siófok decided to build Keysi Rensie Stadium with a capacity of 56,102 in 2050 and the club moved there in July 2052.
The weird and very high Keysi Rensie Stadium during the Hungarian Super Cup between Siófok and Videoton. Keysi Rensie was there but only in the stands, not in the dugout...
Thank you, everyone, for following this Rensie's journey...