My main Football Manager 2024 save has been a journeyman save in many ways. I spent three years with Perugia, two seasons with Dijon and six seasons with Reading. The longer period spent with Reading was because of 1) my platonic love for this club and 2) the delayed news about FM25. And as we all know, the FM25 was cancelled in the end.
I have been playing this save with the blank database. That means all players & staff were generated as fake at the start of the save, and I am not burdened by any relationship to the real players or staff.
My idea for the main save within FM25 was to manage Burgos FC. When the manager’s seat of this club became available within my FM24 save, I decided to take it and consider it as a new long-term save (within the already existing save).
I started writing this blog post back in January this year. It contained just one paragraph. I added two more paragraphs in March, intending to continue this save. Both playing it and writing about it. But I didn’t hit the FM icon for the next four months.
Every time I wanted to play or write something, there was something more tempting to do. Running, cycling, being with kids, and being outside without a specific reason. In short, anything other than sitting in front of a monitor. Everything sounded better. And it still sounds better. I run a lot, more than in my entire life so far.
But I also realised I miss the game. That’s why I decided to continue and finish this post about five years of managing Burgos in this virtual world. (I wrote this part even before the blog post about I’m missing FM…)
….
Another edit after a couple of months - if this blog post had some “logs” included, they would probably look like this:
Website admin opened, one or two sentences written, website admin closed.
And repeat it after two or three months.
But my (FM24) life would not be complete if I did not finish it…
Back to the beginning…
As I said above, I didn’t play the game since the start of March 2025, and I forgot most of the things that happened recently in the save. That led to the decision to load the saved file from the end of the first season and recapitulate most of the things that happened. I also forgot all the small things I made within my custom skin, but that’s a different story…
I joined Burgos in the 2034/2035 season while the club was an average second-tier club, as they didn’t finish higher than 11th place. The average age of the first team squad was around 27, and my first goal was to lower it and refresh the squad. I aimed to reach the promotion play-off.
I sold 14 players during this season for more than €2M and brought eight players to the club. But only four of these incomers were paid transfers. In retrospect, any of them deserves some special mention.
We played with the 4-2-3-1 tactic, containing Halfback and Roaming Playmaker (both in DM slots), and we finished 4th in the league table. That means we reached the promotion play-off. We beat Cartagena in the semi-final, but we lost to Córdoba 2:5 on aggregate in the final, and we didn’t seal the promotion to the top tier.
2035/2036 = promotion
The second season with Burgos was even better, and we finished second in the second tier. That meant automatic promotion to the La Liga. Mallorca won the league with 97 points, and they scored 107 goals in 42 matches - they were top of the league since the 12th league round.
We scored 85 goals, and we earned 86 points (the third-placed Albacete had 85 points). We conceded only 41 goals - the least from the whole league.
We used the 4-3-3 with a flat midfield trio most of this season.
2036/2037 = straight to the top half finish
I kept the 4-3-3 formation with a small adjustments in terms of roles (Mezzala instead of the second CM(S), FB(A) instead of the WB(S), and small tweaks within team instructions. I was also able to keep some of my key players, and we had a very good first season in the top tier.
We finished 7th in the league with 18 wins, 10 draws and 10 defeats. The only downside of the season was that we conceded 57 goals. But thanks to Real Madrid and the fact that they won the Spanish Cup, we qualified for the Conference League for the next season.
We spent the whole season playing at the Mendizorroza stadium in Alaves because our stadium (El Platío) was under reconstruction to get around 6,3k seats to increase the capacity to almost 19k.
2037/2038 = Champions League football
It was not so often in the past, but it happens sometimes. I didn’t make a separate save after the 37/38 season for an unknown reason. So, just a brief info - we moved back to our stadium, we finished 4th in the league with 76 points. Real Madrid had the same number of points, but they had a better goal difference.
That means we secured the Champions League football for the next (fifth) season with Burgos.
We made it to the Conference League semi-final, where we lost to Juventus. A great first season in Europe.
2038/2039 = Goodbye save
It was in March 2025 when I played that save for the last time. We finished 4th in the league, the same as in the previous season. But we were better in terms of goals scored (85) and goals conceded (41).
In terms of the Champions League, we made it to the Round of 16, where we were knocked out by Barcelona 4:8 on aggregate. I found it a stupid coincidence to get Sevilla and Barcelona in the Champions League knock-out stage. I remember I told myself I should play just La Liga instead.
We had a great “ride” in the Copa del Rey as we beat Cartagena, Tenerife, Barcelona (on penalties), Albacete and we beat Athletic Club 5:2 in the final. It was a historical moment for the club and the ideal end of the save (although I didn’t know at that time I will not play the save again).
2035 vs. 2039. The main change for the club during the five and a half year was that I put all the money the facilities improvement including the recruitment and all this stuff. We did so good that the board accepted almost all my requests.
My favourite part of the save - custom faces with different kits
This is something I wanted to share and write about because it was THAT small thing that kept me interested in playing the save.
My favourite part of the game is developing young players. Especially players from the academy of my own club. Commonly, I will rather play my own young player (despite knowing he is not good enough) than buy an expensive player from elsewhere.
I also started creating the player faces through the AI during FM24 with some simple prompts. I didn’t make many, or some big packs; I made it mainly just for myself to test how it works.
But I decided to also use it as a way to distinguish players from each other. Who is the long-serving player, who is a newgen from the academy, who was bought from other clubs?
It’s very simple. There are three kits in the game, so I used these colours, of course.
Home kit - white kit = academy graduate player.
Away kit - red kit = long-serving player (10 or more seasons with the club + it can also be used for players over the age of 30)
Third kit - green kit = players bought from elsewhere.
+ goalkeepers = black kit
At the end of the 2038/2039 season, we had 12 academy players in the first team squad (white kit) + 1 goalkeeper, 12 players bought from elsewhere (green kit) + 2 goalkeepers, and 1 red kit for Ángel Almagro - our eldest player in the squad (32 years old) as the latest season was his 11th with the club.
It’s also good when you sell some players (from the academy, for example), you will recognise them in the future of the save very quickly, thanks to their face/shirt combination.
You can see in the picture above how easy it is to see everything about the players in this squad view, including the player faces divided by the kit colours, and also the info about the original and development clubs. And more, of course.
But this was something I really enjoyed doing it at least half of this part of the save.
And I think I will do it again if it is possible in the next FM edition.
The players’ bar during the match is also a perfect way to tell the difference at first sight.
The FM24 save summary
Perugia, Dijon, Reading, Burgos. Four clubs in sixteen in-game years. My saves in the previous two editions were around ten seasons, so this one was longer. But we all know it was because of the cancellation of FM25.
I think it had everything. I used the same tactics as in the past with all three clubs, and I think it was successful.
I made my best custom skin (since I started tweaking skins) thanks to this FM24 save, and if I do not enjoy the FM26, I will play FM24 just because of how good this skin is…
If some of you stick with FM24, there is the latest FM24 skin version - the one I used as my personal version - DOWNLOAD.