Hello there! In the last post we dove into Ternana’s incredible promotion campaign.
In Part 1 of the 2022/2023 season we will take a look at the summer transfer window and how the team performed until the 2022 World Cup break.
Summer Transfer Window
I mentioned in the first post of the save that we had a total of 110 players in total at the club. After this ridiculously busy transfer window, we’ve reduced that number to 58. This includes the players brought in during this window.
Out
We offloaded 50 players for a total of £11.7m. From those 50 players, the majority were from the youth teams, also a further 12 were released. We sold 6 and loaned 2 players from the first team, Stefano Pettinari – £2.7m to Sampdoria, Davide Agazzi – £1.5m to Fiorentina, Fabrizio Paghera – £1m to Salernitana, Aniello Solzano – £875k to FC Midtylland, Felippo Damian – £525k to Brescia, Alessandro Celli – £400k to Crotone, Matija Boben – loan w/ a future fee £350k to Empoli, Lorenzo Mazza – loan to Lecco, and Alexis Ferrante – £275k to Catanzaro.
In
As you can imagine, there were a lot of incoming players. We signed a total of 24 players for about £18m. Two of those transfers were already agreed upon my arrival to the team. We signed 8 players from Atalanta, 11 players from St. Pauli and 4 Chilean players (one of them coming from Atalanta).
Let’s take a look:
First Team:
Defenders: Jannes Wieckhoff (£625k), Jakov Medic (£1.2m) & utility man Park Yi-Young (free) join from St. Pauli. Enrico del Prato (free) joins from Atalanta.
Midfielders: Tomás Alarcón joins on loan from Cadiz with a £6.5m option to buy, Alessandro Mallamo (free) & Andrea Colpani (free) join from Atalanta, César Falletti (£850k) joins from Bologna, and Finn Becker (£1.3m) joins from St. Pauli.
Forwards: Alfredo Donnarumma (£675k) joins from Brescia, Ben Bremerton Diaz (£12m) joins from Blackburn, and Marco Tumminello (free) joins from Atalanta.
U20s:
Defenders: Giovanni Bonfanti (free) joins from Atalanta & Marcel Beifus (free) joins from St. Pauli.
Midfielders Alassane Sidibe (£1.6m) & David Perez (£110k) (half Chilean) join us from Atalanta. Franz Roggow (£230k) & Niklas Jessen (£200k) join us from St. Pauli.
U18s:
Defenders: Gerald Brandt (£100k) joins from St. Pauli & Lorenzo Carrara (£170k) joins Atalanta
Midfielders Lapo Assuma joins as free agent, he has dual Chilean/Italian nationality. Ljubiša Dragićević (£150k), Oliver Schwartz (£90k) & Samuel Utaka (£200k) join us from St. Pauli.
First Team
The transfer window allowed us to offload some deadwood and upgrade where we needed. This season we will be using 23 players in the first team, 13 returning and 10 fresh faces. Incase of emergencies we will use youth team players.
Goalkeepers:
Defenders:
Rightbacks
Centerbacks
Leftbacks
Midfielders:
Defensive Midfielders
Central Midfielders
Attacking Midfielders
Forwards:
Preseason
At the beginning of the preseason the bookies were predicting for us to finish in 18th place and go straight backdown to Serie B but by the end of the preseason they moved us to 16th place. I’m not to trust the odds but it did give me comfort knowing that the AI no longer saw us getting relegated.
This preseason was shorter than usual as the 2022 World Cup was due to begin in November. We only had two weeks of preparation in which we played four friendly matches. The team cohesion did not skip a beat, we won all four matches – fellow Serie A teams, SPAL (8-0) and Roma (3-0), Hungarian first division team Újpest (0-7) and Serie B affiliate Catanzaro (0-5).
Staff – I don’t believe I’ve written much about the staff this time around (or even during my time at SC Verl). Before the end of last season I took a lot of time to assess every single staff member at the club, including youth teams, to find the proper replacement. After releasing the majority of my staff, I began a complete staff rebuild. The only staff member that’s worth a look is our new Head of Youth Development, Boro Primorac. The Bosnian was the perfect candidate, he even has our current formation as his 2nd preferred tactic. Although we still don’t have the best Scouting Team or Medical team, I couldn’t be more content with how the coaching team turned out.
Competitions
Serie A - First Half
We did not have any breathing room as the Serie A campaign begun just a couple of weeks after preseason. We were scheduled to play fourteen matches between July and October. Then we would take a month off due to the World Cup and would have us return in early December to play a few friendly matches to get us ready for the rest of what would be a busy season.
The season would go on to have a lot of ups-and-downs in terms of league position and joy. We started off with back-to-back wins against Bologna (1-2) and Fiorentina (5-0). New signing “Big Ben” Brereton Díaz was on fire with 5 goals in two games. Fellow new signing, Finn Becker, also had a great start to the season with 1 goal and 2 assists. Then, our 40-match unbeaten run came to a close after Napoli’s (0-2) win at the Stadio Libero Liberati.
We bounced back with three consecutive wins in the league. Alfredo Donnarumma broke Ternana’s goalscoring record in a single match with 5 goals against Spezia (5-1). A comeback win against Sassuolo (3-1) was followed by a hard fought win against bottom of the table Benevento (0-1). The excitement from those consecutive wins went straight down the drain as they were followed by three consecutive losses. The first was a competitive match against Joachim Low’s Roma (2-1), then two back-to-back thrashings by Sampdoria (0-3) and Milan (2-0).
The last five matches of the season were entertaining. Torino had a horrible time in Terni, they didn’t have a shot on goal and lost the match (4-0). We then drew (2-2) against Cagliari, both teams had lots of chances but a fair result nonetheless. Two more wins followed, against Verona (1-0) and against SPAL (2-6). Atalanta was next in the last game before the break. Gasperini was on the brink of getting sacked as Atalanta were in 12th place. Even though the match was quite even, Atalanta was more prolific winning the match (3-0). Things got worse when Chilean DM Tomás Alarcón injured himself. He will be out for 3-4 months therefore, I will be terminating his loan in January.
Fourteen matches in and we find ourselves in 5th place, way beyond expectations. We’ve scored the 3rd most goals in the league, with Alfredo scoring 15 in 14 matches. Our defense isn’t there yet, I’m hoping to find the right combination in back as I’ve rotated the back-four way too often. If we’re able to maintain the current form I have no doubt that we can earn one of the European spots.
January Transfer Window
Transfers Out:
Anthony Partipilo kept moaning about his playing time and the fact that he was not a natural midfielder made it an easy decision when Torino approached us with a £1.2M offer.
Transfers In:
Afeez Aremu (£350k, St. Pauli) & Daniel Gutíerrez (£650k, Colo Colo)
Aremu and Gutíerrez were signed to replace Chilean DM Tomás Alarcón, who suffered a long-term injury back in November. I forgot that Ben Brereten Díaz counted as a Non-EU player due to Brexit. Having only one spot left, I decided to register Aremu as he's a natural DM. Gutíerrez will now be retrained into a DM.
Coppa Italia
We beat Frosinone (3-1) in the First Round. In the Second Round, we faced Hellas Verona, a 90+3 minute penally goal by Alfredo Donnarumma took us to the next round. Roma would then kick our asses (3-1) in the Third Round. Let’s hope we can go a bit further next season.
Before we get on with the league, let’s take a short break to talk about tactics.
“Ternizilla 3.0”
During the two-month World Cup break, I decided to tweak the tactic a bit as I noticed that we were not balanced when in the defensive phase. Our left-side midfielder and central midfielder were roots of the problem.
After playing some friendly matches and poking around the DataHub, I found that most of the opposition entries were coming from our left-hand side. We kept getting overran on the lefthand side as our CM(A) was not tracking back enough and left a lot of space for CWB(S) to cover.
Another issue was the position of our central midfielder. For the last two seasons, I’ve switched his role three times – RPM, AP, and DLP. Regardless of the role or PIs, he continues to stay quite deep and too close to our HB.
Solutions:
1. The CM(A) is now a CM(S) with PIs to dribble more, run wide with the ball, and take more risks. He will only push up when he has the ball otherwise he will support our left CWB(S) while in the defensive phase.
2. The central midfielder has now become the CM(A) and has the freedom to push as high, he could be thought of as a makeshift Shadow-Striker when attacking. This will naturally have him further up the field in both the defensive and attacking phase.
Here’s what the updated tactic looks like:
Serie A - Second Half
Last time around, Ternana sat in 5th place after 14 matches. With no Coppa Italia or European competition to worry about, all of our focus was now on the league. January would turn out be a month packed full of action were we would face four of the top six sides in the league table.
The tactical tweaks proved have worked as we began the month with three consecutive wins – Udinese (5-1), Genoa (4-0) and Lazio (1-4). Inter brought us back to reality (2-1) and reminded us that we were nowhere close to them. Juventus traveled to Terni and left with 0 points after a (3-0) win to Ternana, our goalkeeper Krapikas was the star of the show and helped us get a clean sheet with 8 saves. Five days later, Lorenzo Insigne would be the better goalscorer that day as he netted a hat-trick to help Napoli beat us (3-2).
We hosted Bologna in the first match of February, the (2-2) draw would end up being the funnest match of the season with both teams have the same amount of possession (50/50), shots (24) and shots on goal (19). It often seemed as if we were both playing defenderless. Three more wins against Sassuolo (0-5), Benevento (3-1) and Spezia (0-2) helped us get into the top 4.
Roma paid us a visit in the last match of February, this would be the most important match of the season. Roma pulled us apart, the final score of (0-2) didn’t do justice to them, they embarrassed us. That’s three wins against us this season. This called for some good kick in ass, so I found inspiration from Oaky-FM and fined half the starting lineup for such a miserable display. What happened next was more than what I was expecting, this loss would end up being the last one of the season.
From the thirteen matches between March and May, Ternana would go on to tie once and win the remaining twelve. Our defensive problems seemed to have disappeared, the team helped our GK, Titas Krapikas, keep 9 cleansheets and only allowing four teams to score against us – Sampdoria (1-3), Milan (3-1), Udinese (1-3) and Atalanta (2-1). Four of those nine cleansheets came in the last four matches of the season, against Lazio (2-0), a hard fought battle against Inter (1-0), Genoa (0-1) and Juventus (0-2).
The current form wasn’t just about how well we were playing, we also had a lot of help from other teams around the league. Juventus had a horrible time after the WC break, they would only win 8 from 24 matches. Torino and Roma also had their ups-and-downs. Atalanta, Milan and Napoli turned their seasons around to qualify for Europe. In the end, the unbeaten match streak would help us secure not just Champions League football but our highest finish in the Serie A.
Player of the Year
What else can I say about this man that I haven’t said before the guy just can’t stop scoring.
Alfredo continued last year’s superb goalscoring form into the 22/23 season. The former Brescia man finished with 46 goals and 6 assists in 39 matches with a 7.75 average rating in all competitions.
He won the European Golden Boot, beating the Haaland, Mbappe, and Ronaldo. He also won Signing of the Year, Serie A Forward of the Year and Serie A Player of the Year.
All the man is missing is an international call up. Maybe we can help him next season.
Team Performance
Aside from our superstar striker, Alfredo Donnarumma, Ternana featured three more players in the Serie A – Team of the Year. Rightback Luca Ghiringhelli, utility-man Park Yi-Young and homegrown-talent Antonio Palumbo.
Luca Ghiringhelli finished the season as our highest goal provider with 13 assists in 23 (2) matches, averaging a 7.27 rating. He would have had higher numbers if I hadn’t rotated him so much. Park Yi-Young scored 1 goal and assisted 5 more in 28 (3) matches, he average a 7.05 rating. Antonio Palumbo was ever-present this season, he played in allover the midfield, sometimes as a DM. He finished the season with 6 goals and 5 assists in 34 (1) matches, with an average rating of 7.1
There were a lot more players that stood-out this season, but here are three that were exceptionally great. Starting with Titas Krapikas, who won Goalkeeper of the Year after only conceding 36 goals in 37 matches, along with 16 clean-sheets to finish the season with a 7.14 average rating. Ivan Kontek won Defender of the Year, the Croatian scored 3 goals in 25 matches with an average rating of 7.41. His defending numbers were also great with a 83% headers won ratio (313 headers won), 80% tackles won and 220 clearances. Lastly, loanee Ilias Koutsoupias won Young Player of the Year. His stats will be highlighted later on.8.
Youth
Intake
Our Bosnian Head of Youth Development, Boro Primorac, made a bit difference this season. Although it wasn’t a “golden generation,” he was able to bring through five top talents, including a Croatian player (Primorac spent two years as Hajduk Split’s HYD), as well as four other top talents young Italian talents. I will take over their individual training while they’re in the youth setup.
Sadly, Boro Primorac decided to retire at the end of the season. I’ve already identified his replacement, young Chilean HoYD Esteban Diaz from Chilean Club Santiago Wanderers. I will share his screenshot after I’ve secured his contract.
First Team
Throughout the season I promoted Francesco Toffanin and Gioacchino Niosi from the U20 team. Although they didn’t play much, it was great to have a bit of depth in the team. “Youth players” are first team players that are 23 y/o and under.
U18s & U20s
Our youth setup once again had an amazing season. The U18s won both of their tournaments, the league and super coppa. The U20s finished 3rd in the Primavera 1 division. Because of their good form, a few players made their debuts with the first team and others continued their progress from last season.
Finances & Infrastructure
Finances – We finished the season with £25.3m in the bank. As you can see above, broadcast revenues were important to keep us in the positive. The additions of the Champions League money will be important for the future of the club as I’m pushing to max out our facilities as soon as possible. We also had the lowest wage budget at £350k p/w.
Affiliates – We’ve signed two new affiliates, Slovakian top tier club – Žilina and Spanish club – Rayo Vallecano. They will serve as great clubs to send players out on loan, especially Rayo so that our young Chileans can gain their EU passports asap.
Facilities – We invested £4m into the youth facilities and £1.8m into the club facilities. We’ve also move from “adequate youth coaching” to “excellent youth coaching.” Our youth recruitment has also had a huge upgrade from “adequate” to “good.”
If you read my SC Verl, you’d know that I never got build a new stadium in the 7 years that I was at the club. I won’t have to wait too long this time around as I’ve persuaded the chairperson to start working on a new stadium. No plans have been set but the fact that they’re working on it, makes me excited to keep the save going.
Thanks for making it all the way down here. That’s a lot of f-ing words there. Hope I didn’t lose you. That’s all for the 2022/2023 season. All in all, it was an unexpected season.
In the next post, I’ll be discussing the 2023/2024 Season from the summer transfer window until the winter break. The plan is to offload some players in the summer to try and find the right balance for team, present and future.
Feel free to reach me on twitter or slack.
Happy Holidays!
Best,
José
