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12-23-2022, 08:03 AM
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#21 | |||
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
It's a problem of complexity and data availability for 2012 for me. I'd love to see what you come up with! Quote:
I wish I could make it Thierry Henry too, but unless someone super smart with web scraping or finding old copies of Football Manager comes along to work pro bono, I'll have to stick with what I've got! Quote:
136x OOTP23 style jersey files (each with a normal map) 825x caps and cap logos 950x primary logos (leagues and teams) Each logo has been edited to relate to baseball instead of soccer, so everywhere there's an "F" (or "V" or "Calcio" or whatever), it's been changed to a "B" (or whatever); and every logo with a soccer ball has been changed to baseball... Whew. It's been a lot and I still want to explore the player data thing! (Because existence is pain, I guess...?) |
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12-23-2022, 08:05 AM
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#22 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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UEBA: Austria and Scotland
Austria
The top of the Austrian pyramid is the Bundesliga. Because I’m using the real world 2012 Champions League group stage for the first year, there are no Austrian teams in the Champions League this year. At the end of the season the promotion relegation numbers are:
The Erste Liga consists of all Austrian pyramid teams that have played in the real world Bundesliga since 2012. Osterreichische Baseball-Bundesliga Austria 10 Teams 54 Games
Erste Liga Austria 8 Teams 42 Games
The Bundesliga season starts the last Saturday in July or the first Saturday in August. The Erste Liga starts on the first Saturday in July. Scotland The top of the Scottish pyramid is the Premier League. Because I’m using the real world 2012 Champions League group stage for the first year, there are no Scottish teams in the Champions League this year. At the end of the season the promotion relegation numbers are:
The First Division consists of all Scottish pyramid teams that have played in the real world Premier League since 2012. Scottish Premier League Scotland 12 Teams 66 Games
Scottish First Division Scotland 5 Teams 24 Games
The Premier League season starts the second Saturday in July. The First Division season starts on the first Saturday in July. Next up is our last league overview, and it's a big one: the UEBA Europa and Conference Leagues! |
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12-24-2022, 06:38 AM
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#23 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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UEBA: Europe
The rest of Europe is spread across the UEBA Europa League, which in my world isn’t a tournament like it is in the real world. It’s divided into two sub-leagues, North and South. Each league has 26 teams and there’s no interleague play.
Europa League teams who are playing the in Champions League this year (APOEL, BATE Borisov, Basel, Dinamo Zagreb, Donetsk, Olympiakos, Viktoria Plzen, and Trabzonspor) have a full uniform set. One team, the Southern League's Galati Otelul, is in the Champions League but I decided not to make them a uniform for a couple of reasons: IRL the club sort of falls apart after its UCL season and hasn't represented Romania since, and ITT, they are a very small team from Romania with obscure sponsors and kit manufacturers, so I de-prioritized trying to get their uniform right. In previous play throughs they don't make a return to the CL, but maybe they'll prove me wrong this year! At the end of the season the promotion relegation numbers are:
The Conference League consists of prominent European teams who haven’t been previously represented in the Champions League Group Stage, except, Sherriff, which was in the group stage in 2020-21. Several of these teams have been IRL Europa League group stage participants though. The Europa League and Conference League each end with a best-of-seven series between sub-league winners. The winner of the championship gets a higher seeding coefficient in the Champions League. UEBA Europa League Northern League Europe 26 Teams 150 games
Southern League Europe 26 Teams 150 games
UEBA Conference League [i[Northern Conference[/i] Europe 12 Teams 66 Games
Southern Conference Europe 12 Teams 66 Games
The Europa League season starts the first Saturday in April. The Conference League season starts on the first Saturday in July. That’s it for the leagues! A couple of notes. If, IRL, a team promotes into one of my major leagues (so from the IRL National League equivalent), I’ll expand the national league in this world to include that team. So to all you Wrexham fans out there, if Rob and Ryan get their team promoted to League 2 this year, I’ll add them to the English National League in my game. I’ll also be changing the sizes of my major leagues to represent real life changes. Off the top of my head, Portugal and Belgium change the number of teams in each league IRL sometime between 2018 and 2021, so I’ll do the same for them in my game. The next post will cover the three major tournaments in the world: the World Cup, the Euros, and the Champions League. |
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12-26-2022, 12:11 PM
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#24 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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UEBA Tournaments: World Cup, Euros, and Champions League
There are three big tournaments in my world.
The World Cup, whose real life counterpart is currently ongoing, and the UEBA European Championship (aka the Euros) happen every four years. I plan to follow the same pattern as the real world tournaments. These tournaments begin on 1 December and run through the month. The Champions League runs annually, beginning the second week in July. I’ll go into the structure and schedule in more detail below. The Euros The Euros are the first international tournament I’ll have, with the 2012 Euros co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland. This is up against a limitation of the game, in that OOTP only allows you to select a host city for a tournament (more on this in my next post). Starting with 2012, the Euros will be as follows: 2012 - Ukraine & Poland* TBD whether I'll do the tournament in 2020 or mirror real-world events and push it to '21. In this world, the Euros are a winter tournament, so it would be relatively unaffected by the pandemic... Something I'll work my way towards as we go. The tournament is comprised of a group stage of 6 groups of 4 teams each, followed by a knockout stage. The group stage consists of a 6-game round robin. The higher seeded team gets two series at home, one away. The group winners and runners up qualify for the round of 16. The group winners and runners up automatically qualify for the knockout stage, and the top four third place teams qualify as wildcards. The knockout stage is a best-of-three series and a single-game final. This year’s groups are: Group A: FRA, WLS, NIR, ALBHost cities:
World Cup The next World Cup will be in 2014, hosted in Brazil. Future tournaments will be hosted as follows: 2014 - BrazilThe tournament is comprised of a group stage of 8 groups of 4 teams each, followed by a knockout stage. The group stage consists of a 6-game round robin. The higher seeded team gets two series at home, one away. The group winners and runners up qualify for the round of 16. The group winners and runners up qualify for the knockout stage, The knockout stage is a best-of-three series and a single-game final. Host cities in Brazil are:
Champions League The Champions League runs annually and starts in mid-July. I gave the league allocations in a previous post, but as a review:
The previous year’s Champions League winner qualifies no matter where they finish domestically, they’ll take one spot from their home league if applicable. The tournament is comprised of a group stage of 8 groups of 4 teams each, followed by a knockout stage. The group stage consists of a 6-game round robin. The higher seeded team gets two series at home, one away. The group winners and runners up qualify for the round of 16. Seeding for the group stage is a function of previous season’s winning percentage, run differential, and league-specific multipliers that seed the more prominent leagues higher. Group stage games start in mid-July and occur every other week on Tuesday and Wednesday. The weekly schedule during the Champions League season can be seen in one of my attachments at the end of this post. The group winners and runners up qualify for the knockout stage, The knockout stage is a best-of-three series and a single-game final. The knockout round starts the first weekend in November. This year’s Champions League is based on the real 2012 Champions League, not my design, so it looks slightly different than how 2013 and beyond will. Group A Bayern Munich (GER)Group B Inter (ITA)Group C Benfica (POR)Group D Real Madrid (ESP)Group E Chelsea (ENG)Group F Arsenal (ENG)Group G APOEL (CYP, EUR)Group H Barcelona (ESP)The 2012 Champions League final will be in Munich (Baseball Arena Munchen, Bayern Munich). National Cup Tournaments The Big Five Leagues also have domestic national cups, which I’ve mentioned previously. They all start on 1 March. Preliminary rounds are best-of-three series, the final is a single game. In most leagues, higher ranked teams get a bye in the first round or two. Nothing really comes out of these cup tournaments, they just exist for fun and sort of replace Spring Training. That’s the tournament landscape for my setup. Before starting on Cup Season, my next post will get into some nitpicks and drawbacks from my playthrough tests. |
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12-30-2022, 08:25 AM
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#25 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Nitpicks and Drawbacks
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but there have been some issues that have cropped up on test playthroughs. I wanted to highlight those here just to get them in the permanent record.
Tournament Cities The game sort of uses the Olympics model for major tournaments. It assumes that the tournament is in a fixed location and just one city, not a host nation or is a season-long tournament like the Champions League that might use teams’ home stadiums. This leads to issues with tournament scheduling, all the stadiums are set to default, and it seems like the game selects some relevant stadium in the home city and schedules all the games there, usually simultaneously. Obviously this isn’t realistic. The problem is that changing these tournament cities is pretty cumbersome. Each game requires finding the stadium number and typing it into the league schedule (League Settings > Options > Edit League Schedule…). A “Set to home team’s stadium” button or option would make this a lot easier. So would a drop-down, search, or some other function besides stadium number. National Teams My World Cup and Euros tournaments use national teams, but the features for these teams are pretty sparse. There’s no auto-load for national team logos or uniforms, and no way to generate a baseball card (and maybe no team picture?) during or immediately after the tournament. It would be fun to generate a World Cup Golden Glove baseball card with the player in his national team uniform. I’d love to be able to put some personality into national teams, and model their uniforms on soccer uniforms, but the functionality for national teams just isn’t there. I’ve made uniforms for national teams, but they don’t get much mileage because of the limited integration with the game. XML colors I spent a lot of time beating up the uniform colors file naming/CSV/XML thing on these boards and I’m really grateful that the dev team worked out the XML file feature. I currently have 564 XML color files, and I like being able to plug a team’s year-by-year uniform changes and then load it in the uniform editor. I don’t have an interest in making 564 teams’ worth of jerseys, caps, and pants every year (soccer teams and their jerseys, dude…), so copying and pasting a bunch of stuff in an XML is really handy. The one nitpick is that it doesn’t look like the autoload XML feature works (Game Settings > Players & FaceGen > [Right Side] Team Picture Functions > “Load All Colors XML Files”). There’s no way to specify a directory for the XML colors, and I don’t know what file path the game uses looking for XML files, so I had to go through every team and load them by hand to make them work. This is really time consuming compared to auto-loading uniform files, but better than making uniform files, so I guess it’s a win. But the feature doesn’t seem fully implemented. League History I’d love to be able to import a league history file. Bare bones like standings, championships, etc. It would be nice to have Real Madrid listed as a multiple-time Champions League winner, or Brazil as World Cup champs. It would also be nice to have team name and location changes. This wouldn’t actually do anything except add some texture to the history of the game without having to simulate 100 years of play. Alternate Team Nicknames Baseball and soccer teams have a lot of alternate nicknames. The Yankees, for example, are the Bronx Bombers or the Evil Empire or just the Yanks, the Orioles are the Birds or the O’s, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the Bums. Tottenham Hotspur are Spurs or the Lillywhites, Fulham are the Whites or the Cottagers. It would be nice to have alternate nicknames for teams, unofficial ones that could get used in storylines or news items. You could have official nicknames and then alternate ones that get used in other contexts. Diacritical Marks The game’s file settings have troubles with diacritical marks (i.e., accent marks). I’d like to have teams represent their local language, but the file imports for logos and uniforms don’t work. So, for example, instead of “İstanbul Büyükşehir” I use “Istanbul Buyuksehir.” The problem is that using diacritics in filenames doesn’t usually work, and the game doesn’t seem to parse those marks on import. It’s not a big deal, but it’s probably solvable by making the auto-load function look for the unaccented version of the letter, e.g., looking for “u” in the file name when it sees “ü” in the team name. Player import This is less a nitpick or drawback and more wishful thinking on my part. I would love to import real soccer players into the game from a game like Football Manager, which is basically the soccer equivalent of OOTP. FM’s databases are notoriously opaque, so extracting any data from there can be a real pain, particularly because they don’t have backwards compatibility. So this is less to do with OOTP and more of a lament that large amounts of data transfer between OOTP and other games is pretty tough. That said, I scraped a FIFA 12 website (which provides a simpler version of the kind of ratings that FM and OOTP use) and converted the top 51 (I meant to do 50, but lost count!) players from FIFA 12 to OOTP players and placed them on their IRL teams. I also put my thumb on the scale and picked the top five American players in FIFA 12 and put them in the game too, just for fun. The FIFA ratings seem a lot more generous than OOTP because I essentially introduced 56 (the US players all ended up with super high ratings) legendary players into the game, so we’ll see how that plays out. Soccer also skews a lot younger than baseball, so it’ll be interesting to see how long Messi and Ronaldo stick around. Okay, that’s that! Next up I’ll be simming towards Cup season, the spring knockout tournaments that precede the regular season. Five countries have cup tournaments: England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. In the meanwhile, if you have questions or suggestions for what you want to see as I run this sim, please let me know! |
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12-30-2022, 02:15 PM
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#26 |
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Major Leagues
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Posts: 497
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Mind if I ask how you set up the cups? Also interested in seeing how you related FIFA ratings to OOTP ratings.
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12-30-2022, 02:41 PM
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#27 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
I made the regular season length 0 games and set up custom playoffs. And it should generate a bracket right off for you. I'll have to shepherd the stadiums once the seasons start, and because of the way scheduling works, I can't schedule it during the regular season like in the real world. I'd love to have the Cup tournaments happen during the season, but I haven't found a good way to do that without going in a rescheduling each game by hand. The game's reschedule function kind of stinks too. There's no way to go in a move a game to another day, you have to go to the Edit Schedule screen, delete it, go to Add New Series/Game, and manually adjust it. Once when I did that i jacked up the whole thing (I think it was for Europa League playoffs, but it's the same idea as messing with the Cup). I'd love something that lets you simply reschedule a scheduled game for another day. Maybe that exists and I just haven't found it? |
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12-30-2022, 03:13 PM
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#28 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
I scraped ratings for FIFA 12 using R Studio and dumped them to a CSV. I exported the top 100 players from the CSV (it scrapes roughly in order by overall ranking). My formula is: =ROUND(250*([FIFA SCORE]/100),0) So basically, a percentage application to 250, the max score in OOTP. So if someone in FIFA is a 95, their rank in OOTP is 0.95 * 250 = 238 (because of the "ROUND" function. One thing OOTP does that FIFA doesn't is give splits for some stats for LHP or RHP, so I fudged that: =ROUND([OOTP SCORE]*((RANDBETWEEN(60,95))/100),0) So the LHP score is the OOTP score computed above multiplied by a percentage between 60 and 95%. Finally, OOTP uses a potential score, which is the formula that's given me the most headaches. I'd like to restrict it to some percentage of the RHP score, so someone who has a rating of 180 would have a potential rating of maybe no more than 220. But I can't quite figure out how to do that right. It would take a lot of doing, maybe based on a combination of the player's age, current score, and the max score? I haven't cracked the code on this one. But here's what I have for now: =[OOTP SCORE]+RANDBETWEEN(0,(250-[OOTP SCORE])) Okay, so here's the one-for-one, roughly in order on the editor screen:
These equivalencies more or less work out so that Goalkeepers make good pitchers, defenders make good catchers, and strikers make good infielders. Some key stats I don't incorporate from FIFA are aggression and strength, which I didn't think quite translated well enough. And the personality and injury stats in OOTP I don't mess with at all, it's too much reading between the lines to try to sort out. Unless I was dealing with legends like Messi and Ronaldo, or outspoken players like Zlatan, or injury prone players like Stu Holden(  ), I didn't adjust the left side of the edit screen too much beyond the biographical data.Happy to hear your feedback! My plan is to import a handful of new players each year, so I can refine this process as I go. |
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12-31-2022, 01:24 AM
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#29 |
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Major Leagues
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Posts: 497
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Ah, ok! One thing I found out when doing my own thing, is that ratings from 200-250 are "exclusive" to players that are very very good at something so I'd suggest to adjust your formula to: =ROUND(200*([FIFA SCORE]/100),0), this way the created players will still be as good but they won't all have legendary status.
 For example, here's Martin Odegaard from my save: His best ratings are an 86 Gap and 81 Power (I set 100% accuracy while I create the players). However, when we check the editor we can see he only has a 171 gap and 161 power. With your formula (250*(86/100)), he'd get a 215 gap rating in the editor, which would result in him getting a 100/100 (or 80/80) rating in the normal screen, just like your players are getting .
__________________
¡Todos Somos Charros! What if the mesoamerican ballgame turned into baseball? What if baseball began in England in the 1880s and became popular instead of football? What if: baseball in Antarctica? Last edited by jasg224; 12-31-2022 at 01:28 AM. |
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12-31-2022, 07:06 AM
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#30 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
I think I’ll do some adjusting on that front and see how it looks. I think Messi and Ronaldo can keep their OP stats but then I can readjust everyone else. |
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01-01-2023, 07:54 PM
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#31 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
For Offensive and Defensive ratings here's my setup: =ROUND(200*([FIFA RATING]/100),0)
=ROUND([OOTP RATING]*((RANDBETWEEN(60,95))/100),0)
=ROUND(RANDBETWEEN(0.95*[OOTP RATING],[OOTP RATING]+(200*LOG(1+([OOTP RATING]/200)))),0) =IF([PREVIOUS SCORE]>199,199,[PREVIOUS SCORE])
The exceptions to this setup are for pitching ratings. For position players, the resulting ratings conversions are usually pretty low, even when using 250 as a bounding number. For pitchers (which are IRL goalkeepers), I kept it as 250, since I create significantly fewer pitchers compared to position players, so some pitchers with maxed out stats won't mess up the whole world. For ratings, I tweaked my setup slightly:
Okay, so that's the last bit on player creation. Next real post will be the start of the sim with the two months of off-season before the start of the Big Five cup tournaments on 1 March. |
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01-02-2023, 05:56 AM
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#32 | |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Fredericton, New Brunswick
Posts: 2,685
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Quote:
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01-04-2023, 07:14 AM
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#33 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
I'm like many of the logo artists here, I'm always tweaking my designs, so I'm always a click away from being "done" with my logos. But uniform setups for the year are almost done, maybe when that's done I'll zip them up and post them. Just got a few more teams to work through! |
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01-04-2023, 12:01 PM
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#34 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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March Madness: Cup Tournaments
On 1 March, the big five leagues begin their knockout cup tournaments.
They are:
Each tournament consists of best-of-three series up through the semifinals, and then a single game final at a neutral stadium. The only exception was in the Coupe de France Round of 16, which was set up incorrectly as a 1-game series. Whoops. The biggest drawback was with stadiums, which kept resetting to a default (see my attachment). I think this is because I had a host city selected for each tournament, so OOTP tried to place the games in that city. I unchecked the host city for next year, we’ll see how it works out. The tournaments had a lot of moving parts! 756 games, staggered series, upsets and Cinderella runs. Here are the highlights! Peak Pitching In England, Chelsea’s Petr Cech picked up five wins in the tournament over 40 innings, struck out 17 against Plymouth, and notched a 1.12 ERA, a 2.3 WAR performance for the Blues. In the first round of the tournament, Leeds’ Orlando Morales no-hit Hereford United, while Ray Trenado of non-league side Barrow tossed a perfet game against Leagu 2 Scun thorpe United. The Copa del Rey featured 6 no-hitters. Ilker Casillas dominated Leon in the opening round, no hitting them behind 26 runs by the Blancos. Not to be outdone, Orlando Gonzalez of Madrid’s rivals Barcelona no-hit Rayo Majadahonda in a 12-0 vicotry. Sevilla’s Carlos Nunez also threw a no-no in a comparatively tame 3-0 win over Sporting Gijon. Villarreal’s Victor Tzintzun blanked Burgos in a dominant 15-0 win. There were two perfect games in the tournament: Celta de Vigo’s Rob Dove threw a perfecto against Soria, while Real Sociedad’s Isamu Sasaki did the same to Etremadura. Except for Sevilla’s win, all of these Copa performances happened in the first round. Two Copa pitchers threw 17 Ks in a game: Alaves’ Alex Soto and Villarreal’s Tzintzun. Soto had 27 Ks in the tournament, powering non-league side Alaves to the Round of 16. In the Coppa Italia, there were four no-hitters: Anatole Beal for Inter over Pordenone, Branislav Bogicevic for Spezia over Virtus Lanciano, Luis Nevarez for Ascoli of Alessandria, and Jose Cardenas for Crotone over Sassuolo. The Pokal in Germany only had a single no hitter, but it was a perfect one: Adalgiso Knoll of Wurzburg faced the minimum against Werder Bremen. In the Coupe de France, Felix Sena of Dijon and Stephane Maury of Strasbourg blanked Clermont and Bastia, respectively. Bertrando Castellanata from Lyon struck out 17 batters from Red Star Paris. Cinderella Stories There’s always a chance for an upset! Nearly every tournament had its share of unlikely runs. By the Round 3 of the BA Cup, every team left was from the top two leagues in England. Not much in the way of upsets in the tournament. In Spain, non-league side Alaves reached the Quarterfinals before being swept by Real Madrid. Two third-tier sides reached the Quarterfinals in Italy: Perugia who lost to Milan, 0 games to 2, and Frosinone who forced game 3 against Sampdoria. In Germany and France, Cinderella brought her glass slippers. Red Bull Leipzig defeated second-tier Cottbus, Bundesliga side Kaiserslautern, fellow Cinderellas Arminia Bielefeld, Union Berlin, and, finally, powerhouse Bayern Munich in the finals. Red Bull went down early 2-0 against Munich, but rallied for a three-run walk-off in the bottom of the 9th to win the Pokal in Berlin’s Olympiastadion in front of 50,000. French underdogs Paris Blues started their Coupe run with a shocking win over Olympique Marseille. They then defeated fellow independent leaguers Chambly, Ligue 1 Brest, Ligue 2 teams Amiens and Metz, and then walked all over Champions League team Lille, 3-0 in front of 55,700 hometown fans in the Stade de France. Your Winners The championship finals were classics. Liverpool held out against West Brom when Albion had the winning run on first in the bottom of the 9th. Madrid couldn’t rally and lost by a run with the tying run at 3rd. In Italy, Inter and Crotone had a 19-run slugfest. Leipzig came from 2 runs down to walk it off all in the bottom of the 9th and complete their miracle run. And in France Paris was never in doubt, shutting out the Goliaths from Lille. Here’s a rundown of the winners. Red indicates they led their respective tournament:
Trivia The Coppa semis included a Milan derby between AB Milan and Inter at the San Siro. Total attendance for the series was over 150 thousand. In the BA Cup fourth round, cross-town rivals Arsenal and Spurs went the distance, scoring 25 total runs over three games. In the Copa, the Sevilla Blanquirrojos (“White-and-reds”) faced off against the Almeria Rojiblancos (“Red-and-whites”). Sevilla won the series en route to the trophy. In the Copa Round of 16, Barcelona and Real Madrid met in the first “El Classico” rivalry of the year. Real Madrid came through easily, sweeping Messi and company from the tournament. Meanwhile During the tournament season, the UEBA Europa League, English Championship and Leagues One and Two, Spanish Segunda Division, Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, and Ligue 2 started their preseasons, and the Europa League kicked off its season as the BA Cup was finishing. The next top tier leagues (ENG, ESP, ITA, FRA) will start their seasons at then end of the month. The most promising free agent of the pre-season, Brazilian infielder Neymar Junior, was strongly courted by English side West Brom (!) but ultimately signed for second-tier Portuguese side Moreirense (!!!). He’s a 5-star player at age 20, we’ll see how he helps out the team, which looks like the favorite for promotion to Liga Portugal. Also, Real Madrid traded away 5-star catcher Sergio Ramos to German third-tier club Wiesbaden after the second round of the tournament. Time will tell if Ramos prefers non-league baseball in Germany to what turned out to be Madrid's run to the Cup title... Okay, that's the Cup season done and dusted! AMA! Next up is opening day for top leagues across Europe! Last edited by Lucky_Will; 01-04-2023 at 12:03 PM. |
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01-05-2023, 12:42 PM
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#35 |
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Major Leagues
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Posts: 497
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Some very interesting cup runs and storylines starting to develop. The Ramos trade is crazy!
Can't wait for opening day and seeing how the derbys continue to develop, or perhaps we'll see some new rivalries form. |
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01-05-2023, 01:29 PM
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#36 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
Same with Neymar I think. Goal is to sim a little tonight and write up how things go, so expect an update in the next day or so. |
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01-05-2023, 03:26 PM
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#37 | |
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All Star Reserve
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01-05-2023, 03:58 PM
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#38 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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Quote:
Reminds me of something I wish you could include in the team setup: Rivalries. I think Football Manager has this, where you can designate some teams as rivals. Not sure what the game mechanic is, whether it generates more fan interest or changes player mechanics, but it would be fun to have the game write up recaps and news for derbies and rivalries... |
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01-06-2023, 04:23 PM
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#39 |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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2012 Regular Season: April
One top tier league and three lower leagues kicked off on the first Saturday of April. They are the Europa League and England’s Championship, League One, and League Two.
In this portion of the season, the Europa League will play 6 games a week with Tuesdays off, while the English teams will play 5 games a week with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off. Italy’s Serie B and Spain’s Segunda Division both kicked off on 21 April. Derbies Local rivalries in soccer are huge deal. There are strong rivalries outside of the local area, think Manchester United and Liverpool, but local rivalries, which grew out of soccer’s early days as clashes between teams representing rival parts of town or different classes of the same town or different political outlooks or all of the above, are the high point of soccer. These matches are called “derbies” (pronounced “dar-bee”) for reasons that are now unknown. Soccer has a ton of derbies, and instead of writing up long season reports, I’m going to keep this thread updated with derby results and pro/rel clashes as I go along. Here’s a look at this month’s results. Istanbul Derby: Besiktas v Galatasaray. Galatasaray was swept at home in the series, 3-0. In game two, Cuban Manny Alvarado went 3-3 with 1 x HR, 2 x 2B, and 2 x BB in Besiktas’ 6-1 win. Irish pitcher Donagh Martin was the standout in game three, throwing 101 pitches for 7.0 IP, 1 x R, 2 x H. The series improved Besiktas to 5-1, while Galatasaray is a dismal 0-6. Bern Canton Derby: Thun v Young Boys. Thun took the series on the road 2-1 with wins in games 1 and 2. Thun shut Bern out for 18 innings before Young Boys finally scored a run in the bottom of the 1st in game 3. Thun scored 14 runs on 18 hits in the series. Thun ends the series 4-2, Young Boys are 2-4. Ukrainian Derby: Shakhtar v Kyiv. Ukraine’s two powerhouses met for the first time this season in Kyiv. Shakhtar won the series 2-1. In game 1, Donetsk’s Dutch catcher Johan MacDonald went 2-4 with a home run, 2 RBI, and 2 runs. Kyiv took game two and their Portuguese RF, Greguorio Penteado, had a similar performance, with a 3-4 day, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 2 R. The rubber match was a back-and-forth 5-2 win for Donetsk. Dynamo falls to 3-6, Donetsk leaves Olympic Stadium 7-2. Serbian Eternal Derby: Partizan v Red Star Belgrade. Belgrade’s biggest clubs square off at Red Star Stadium and Partizan sweeps Red Star. Games one and two were low scoring affairs, 2-3 and 1-3, but Partizan came alive in game three, scoring 7 on 9 hits against Red Star’s one run. The two Belgrade teams are off to slow starts, Partizan is 5-4, Red Star is 2-7. Croatian Eternal Derby: Dinamo Zagreb v Hajduk Split. A hard-fought contest between Croatia’s two biggest teams. The series didn’t start well for Champions League side Zagreb, who dropped the opener 4-6. Split’s Italian 2B, Maximiliano Averlino, went 4/5 with a 2B. But Dinamo rallied to take the next two games, 2-0 and 3-2. The series helped Dinamo improve to 5-7, Split is 7-5. Prague Derby: Sparta Praha v Slavia Praha. Pargue’s rivals take the field and Sparta take the series, 2-1. Slavia’s bats blew game one open in the 7th inning with 5 runs. Sparta was not deterred, however, and cam e back to win two in a row. Sparta’s Ukrainian pitcher Peter Linetsky pitched 7.1 inning in game two, giving up 6 hits and no runs. The two rivals passed each other in the standings, Sparta improving to 8-7, Slavia is 7-8. Basel-Zurich Derby: Basel v Zurich. Zurich Grasshoppers beat Basel 2 games to 1 in this matchup between rival Swiss towns. Basel, in the Champions League this year, took game one 4-2. In the game, Zurich 3B Lorenz Brown went 4/5 with a double and 2 RBI, but it wasn’t enough to win it for Grasshoppers. Zurich turned it around in the next two games, winning 3-0 and 3-1. It was an important series for Zurich, who have struggled to win and now stand at 3-12. Basel finish the series at 6-9. Athens Derby: Olympiacos v AEK Athens. AEK is the third team in Athens, but maintains a decent rivalry with Olympiacos and Panathinakos. The first Athens derby this year saw AEK beat up on the Champions Leagu side, sweeping Olympiacos, outscoring the Champions League side 16-4. The Eagles’ dominated behind strong pitching. Polish starter Telek Raczynski pitched 7.0 and gave up 1 run in game one. AEK pitching blanked Olympiacos in game three to win 7-0. AEK are off to a strong start, finishing the series 10-5. Olympiacos, meanwhile, are having a horrible season at 5-10. Athens Derby 2.0: AEK Athens v Panathinakos. AEK looked to continue its success against cross-town rivals Olympiacos with a follow-up series against Panathinakos. The Eagles proved themselves to be the kings of Athens, sweeping Panathinakos by a total score of 18-8. Irish RF Donovan Hunt hit two HR in the series, and Raczynski notched another win in game three. AEK leaves the Athens Derby with a six-game winning streak at 13-5. Panathinakos is 8-10. The Damned United: Leeds v Derby. Reviving a rivalry from the 60s and 70s, the two clubs were powerhouses in the era under managers Brian Clough and Don Revie. Not a true derby, but more of historical bad blood, the teams have a long history together. They meet in the 2012 season of the English League Championship for the first time and it’s all Peacocks. Leeds welcomed the Rams to Elland Road and promptly swept them. In game 2, Leeds came back from 2 runs down to plate 4 in the bottom of the 8th and win 5-3. Leeds finish the series 3-3, Derby falls to 1-5. They meet again at the end of July. Europa League Here’s how the Europa League standings look after a month. As a reminder, it’s split into two sub-leagues with no inter-league play. In the Northern League, Sweden’s IFK are top of the table, 16-5 (that’s 48 points for the football fans). Nordsjaelland of Denmark are 2 games back at 14-7 (42 points). Brondby, Astana, and Lodz are tied for third on 39 points. In the Southern League, Hapoel Tel Aviv of Israel are in first at 17-4, while Steaua Bucharest (Romania) and Ferencvarosi (Hungary) are in second at 16-5. On the other end of the table, Champions League side BATE Borisov of Belarus are on 18 points (6-15) and looking up at Legia Warsaw (Poland) and Zurich (Switzerland) on 7 wins each, and three teams on 8 wins. In the Southern League, another Champions League side, Otelul Galati, are a dismal 2-19. Their closest competition to go down are Galatasaray, Maccabi Haifa (Israel), and Cyprus’ Anorthosis on 5 wins each. Let’s talk stats! Slash: [red indicates UEL leader]
HR:
H
RBI
ERA
WHIP
K
Rosenborg (NOR) 3B Tsadik Adejola (COD) ends the month on a 14 game hitting streak. Alvarado is the hiting standout of the Europa League right now, with the top stat across the slash line, 9 HR and 23 RBI. Sweden’s IHK have the top two pitchers overall; Adrian Abash (MDV) and Yannis Fontaine (FRA) are off to good starts. Abash is 3-0, 0.76 ERA, 23.2 IP, 27 K, while Fonatine has a modest record (1-2), but has 46 K, 3rd in the NoL. Alvarado took home Player of the Month honors for the Southern League, while Felicio Soranzo (ITA) of Astana won the NoL award. Aliu won NoL's Pitcher of the Month award. Bull of Omonia won the SoL award. Pro/Rel Watch It’s early days but here’s how the promotion spots for lower leagues are looking on 1 May: English League Championship:
English League One
English League Two
Serie B (Italy)
Segunda Division (Spain)
On the other end of the table, here’s how the relegation fights are looking: English League Championship 19. Three teams at 7-11English League One 20. Yeovil Town, 4-14English League Two 20. Hereford United, 3-15,Serie B 18. Grosseto, 1-7Segunda Division 18. Guadalajara, 1-7Meanwhile The biggest win of the month was Debreceni’s (HUN) 19-0 win over Galati. Split’s 3B Lee O’Brien (ENG) hit 3 HR in an 5-8 loss against Qarabag (AZE). Hapoel Tel Aviv’s Egbert Eckholdt (GER) struck out 16 against hapless Otelul Galati. Debrenceni and Hapoel Tel Aviv had some fireworks in their game: a benches-clearing brawl resulted in suspensions for both teams. Next up, in May many of the biggest leagues will start their season: English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 begin on the first Saturday of the month. The Bundesliga and Eredivisie start two weeks later. Last edited by Lucky_Will; 01-06-2023 at 04:26 PM. |
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01-06-2023, 06:09 PM
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#40 | |
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Minors (Double A)
Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 100
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