Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my brand new save on Football Manager 2024, where I will attempt to do something that is very difficult to do, and can be very frustrating, especially with the gap between games for international teams. This is the international journeyman, my bid to win every tournament around the world with international teams. Below is what I’m aiming to win.
Inspired by the amazing save by MrGran2, where he’s attempted it twice on Football Manager, but failed to complete it as of yet, these are the tournaments we’re aiming to win. I don’t have a particular plan of which teams I’m going to go with, or in which order I’m going to attempt to win these tournaments. But, as in January in the first year of this save, we have both the AFC Asian Cup and AFCON, so I’m going to be going to one of these. But which nation will I be? Well, if you’ve not looked on the title, how did you click on this? And secondly, here they are.
Do you come from a Land Down Under? Well I don’t personally, but to break the language barrier in my first role in this save, I’ve decided to manage a country that has English as it’s first language, and I’ve become the Australian manager. I grew up watching some decent quality Australian talent in the Premier League, including Mark Viduka, Brett Emerton, Mark Schwarzer and Tim Cahill. But the current crop of Australian internationals aren’t too bad either. Also, of a personal note, my late Uncle Steve spent his last years living in Australia so here’s to you boss. But let’s not faff about. There’s some important matters to contend with.
Serious Expectations: Obviously our first tournament is the Asian Cup being held in Qatar, in which our group has already been drawn. We will look at that in a moment. We have been told we must reach the semi-finals minimum in this tournament. I see that as a realistic prospect definitely, with the quality of nations in Asia, it will be tough to beat the likes of Korea Republic, Japan and Qatar potentially, and you can throw Saudi Arabia and Iran in there as well. It’s going to be highly competitive which is what I like to see.
AFC Asian Cup Group B: We have been placed in Group B of the Asian Cup, taking on India, Syria and Uzbekistan. We should be picking up an easy win over India, but there will undoubtedly be tougher tests against both Syria and Uzbekistan, who are both nations who have been close to the World Cup in more recent years. In fact, Australia beat Syria in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, where the Syrians showed more than their worth.
Rest of 2023: Before we jet off to Qatar though, I have arranged four friendlies to see how well we fare against different strengths of opposition. We begin by playing 2022 World Cup Semi-Finalists Morocco, before we face a lesser team in Asia away at Bahrain. In November, we travel over to Canada to take on the Canucks, before our final game before prep for the Asian Cup is away on the sunny island of Cyprus. I’d say I expect to beat Bahrain and Cyprus, and just hoping to play well against Morocco and Canada.
World Ranking September 2023: Our initial world ranking is 27th, sat almost neck and neck with Korea Republic, obviously our aim being to climb above them.
Australia’s 2022 World Cup Journey: Another thing to remember as well, is that Australia come into the Asian Cup on the back of a fantastic World Cup by their standards in Qatar. After qualifying for the World Cup by a fantastic shootout win over Chile, they were placed in a group with France, Denmark and Tunisia. After taking a shock lead against the 2018 champions, they ended up losing to a Kylian Mbappe led France 4-1, but wins over Tunisia (1-0) and Denmark (1-0) meant they ended 2nd in the group. They would play eventual World Champions Argentina in the last 16, but narrowly lost 2-1, with a chance at the end to take it to extra time.
First Australian Squad: My first squad has been picked ahead of those first friendlies with Morocco and Bahrain. Mathew Ryan is a popular pick, and a really good keeper when he played for Brighton. We have your household names, Jackson Irvine and the like, but this is more to see who I could be up for including in the squad for the Asian Cup. I have also noted World Cup Qualifying starts fairly soon. But we shall wait and see what happens as to whether I’m managing Australia through them.
Friday 13th October 2023: Australia 1-3 Morocco (International Friendly) Our first match as Australia manager ended in a 3-1 friendly defeat to 2022 World Cup Semi-Finalists Morocco, in a game where we experimented a lot of our players, and sent on a lot of players who may not get the start at a tournament. Despite a dominant opening period, we fell behind after 20 minutes. Morocco worked it down the left, Ez Abde receiving the ball. He slid it in from the left and En-Nesyri fired home near the penalty spot for 1-0. They doubled their lead after 33 minutes. Ziyech flew a free kick into the box and found the head of Abqar, who looped his header over Gauci for 2-0. We got one back five minutes after half time, a ball worked from the right made it’s way to Metcalfe. He found Arzani just inside the area, and he fired first time into the top corner to make it 2-1. En-Nesyri got his second and Morocco’s third after the hour mark, Mazraoui carried the ball from halfway and found Brahim ahead of him. He found Ziyech on the right hand side, who fired into the area for En-Nesyri to fire home from close range. A 3-1 defeat is not the best to start the reign, but with it only being the first game, and not first team regulars either, to lose to a team who made the World Cup last 4, is not a disgrace.
Tuesday 17th October 2023: Bahrain 1-2 Australia (International Friendly) Our second friendly of this international break was away at Bahrain and the home side shocked us in the first minute, by attacking straight from the kick off. A passing move by the home side found Ahmed Ahli Duma down the left, and he cut inside towards the 6-yard box, where he fired a shot on goal, but it took a heavy deflection as Cameron Burgess deflected it in off his right foot in an attempt to clear it. We saved our blushes after 27 minutes. Connor Metcalfe’s corner from the right was met at the near post by Harry Souttar, and he nodded home for 1-1. The winner came just 3 minutes after half time. We got a penalty which Stamatepoulos converted by sending the keeper the wrong way. We weren’t at our best at all, but we got that all important first win. Next up, the October break.
World Rankings for October 2023: We’ve dropped two places to 29th, falling behind Chile and Scotland in the rankings.
FIFA World Cup Qualifying Second Round Draw: Those friendlies we were due to play in November have been officially cancelled, as our World Cup qualification journey begins. Asia has a couple of rounds of qualifying to go through for everyone, so we play Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in this first group. It’s a group we ought to be getting 6 wins from 6 from, and as the qualifying has now started, I will stay with Australia during the process, and potentially lead them to the World Cup. As there are more teams to qualify for the tournament, I will have a strong chance of qualifying automatically from the third round. But we have to start in the inaugural stages, and we start these in the November international break.
Jackson Irvine is going to miss the November Internationals!!!!!! He’s picked up a slipped disc in training for St Pauli, and unfortunately he will miss the first qualifiers for the World Cup. Thankfully though, unless he gets run over by a car the day he comes back, he should be fine to play in the Asian Cup.
I made a few changes to the squad for our upcoming World Cup qualifiers. Mitchell James Langerak, Jackson Irvine and Patrick Yazbek are all out through injury, with notable players like Massimo Luongo joining the squad for this run of fixtures. The friendlies I was due to play this month have obviously been replaced with the World Cup matches, and two games we really should be eyeing up wins in. If we can get 6 points with this squad and with these games coming up, we should be well on the way to the next round of qualifying.
Thursday 16th November 2023: Vietnam 1-3 Australia (FIFA World Cup Qualification – AFC Second Round Group 1) We kicked off our World Cup Qualifying campaign with a comfortable 3-1 win away in Vietnam. It took us 17 minutes to open up our account for qualifying, Alex Robertson ran the ball out left, finding Aziz Behich making the underlap. He played the ball across the box and Marco Tilio tapped home for 1-0. Alex Robertson got on the scoresheet himself, this time he was the recipient of a Behich cross from the left, and he nodded home to make it 2-0. Vietnam scored what proved to be a consolation goal on the hour mark. Do Hung Dung was left unmarked in the middle from a cross, and he fired into the top right corner to bring the home side back into it. Marco Tilio rounded the game off a treat towards the end, from a third Behich cross from the left. Aziz Behich really confirmed his man of the match, and massively deserved it. We start off this campaign amazingly well.
Tuesday 21st November 2023: Australia 4-0 Singapore (FIFA World Cup Qualification – AFC Second Round Group 1) Our final game of 2023 was a first half masterclass against sorry Singapore. A free kick led to the first goal, as Metcalfe played the ball over the advancing defence, and found Jamie MacLaren chipping the bouncing ball over the onrushing keeper to make it 1-0. A Hrustic corner from the left found Cameron Burgess at the near post who nodded it past the keeper for 2-0. It was 3-0 after 19 minutes, Metcalfe holding the ball at halfway found Robertson, who laid a beautiful through ball to Jamie MacLaren, who got his second goal of the game, firing the ball across the keeper from the left into the bottom right hand corner. Chipping the ball over the top appeared to be our favourite game as we made it 4-0. This time, Kenny Dougall played the lobbed ball through to Alex Robertson who rounded off a perfect first half. We didn’t need any further goals, although Milos Degenek was ruled out for offside from a free-kick. 2 wins from 2 in our World Cup qualifying group, and here is the table.
Group Table: At the moment, it’s very much plain sailing for both us and Thailand after victories for each of us over the bottom two teams. It’s good to get the goals going before the Asian Cup, and at least we don’t have to worry too much over the tournament about this. All our eggs go into the basket of the Asian Cup now, as I need to work out who I’ll be taking to Qatar.
2023 Results: Since the save started, the team have only played 5 matches, one that I wasn’t in charge of. I would say it’s been a fairly comfortable start to my reign, when you leave out the defeat to Morocco. Our qualification campaign got off to a comfortable start, and we also got a morale boosting win over Bahrain.
That’s it for now! But not for long. I’m working on the Asian Cup blog as we speak, as we will be all over the tournament, looking at how the other groups are going, and to see how we do in our first tournament in this save. I hope you join me then to see if it goes similar to how it did in real life, or whether the Socceroos can win the tournament for just the second time since they moved from OFC to AFC. If you liked it, give me some feedback, and I’ll be back soon, as the International Journeyman continues.
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