6.4. El Camino: A CD Tenerife Story
Contents: 4 games to seal our fate or lose everything we have built for the past 6 years in FM19
🎵 Suggested Tune: Black Water – Reuben and the Dark 🎵
In my last post, despite making a resurgence up the league, reaching the Copa Del Rey final, winning two Manager of the Month awards and securing Champions League football for the 4th season in a row at CD Tenerife, our board and chairman Senior Miguel Concepcion appear to have grown impatient at Los Chicharreros – somehow expecting more from us irrespective of how much we have done for the club over the past 6 seasons, bringing them from weekly outings against the likes of Mirandes, Lugo and Albacete to European adventures versus Chelsea, Bayern, Milan and many more.
Now in May 2024, we sit in a precarious position whereby we must get results against Athletic Bilbao (h), Malaga (h), Getafe (a) and finally against Atletico Madrid in the Copa Del Rey final in order to secure our future with CD Tenerife (at least till FM20 comes out 😆). Can Manager @MaddFM rally his team to overcome these last few hurdles and ultimately save his job at Los Chicharreros?
Hurdle 1 – CD Tenerife vs Athletic Bilbao – Sunday 5th May 2024
Despite the notable absences of Xadas and Fabio Silva, we put in a dominant performance and goals from Dani Olmo, Olivier Batista Meier and Jadon Sancho give us a 3-1 win to slightly ease the pressure on Manager @MaddFM.
HURDLE 2 – CD TENERIFE VS Malaga – Monday 13TH MAY 2024
Is the Olmo show again as a brace from the Croatian international helps us to a 2-1 win over Malaga, not overly convincing on paper however we dominated throughout, conceding a late consolation goal which led to a torrent of Demand More abuse from MaddFM on the sideline.
Two wins out of two now for under fire Tenerife means that they are just one point behind 3rd place Atletico Madrid going in to the final game of the season – is there a glimmer of hope that they might yet steal 3rd position and more than likely secure Manager MaddFM‘s fate in the Tenerife hot seat?!
HURDLE 3 – getafe vs CD Tenerife – Sunday 19TH MAY 2024
Just when you think things are going your way and you’re on a roll in this game, something happens which again brings it all crashing down around you and makes you question why it is that you buy and spend endless hours on this beautiful bast*rd of a game year on year. Despite leading on three occasions in this match, Watford flop (damn you Miles) Isaac Success pops up out of nowhere to smash in a 95th minute equaliser for already relegated Getafe in our final game of the season to make it 3-3 and spoil our perfect end of season run-in. What will the board think of this?
This is made even worse by the realisation that Atletico Madrid decided to lose their last game of the season against Real Sociedad meaning we have completely wasted the opportunity to steal 3rd place right from under their noses. We will have to settle for 4th position overall which yes we will take considering how we have performed in the league all season, and the fact that this was our predicted finish point at the start of the season by the Spanish media.
Will this be enough to please Senior Concepcion and his cohorts on the Tenerife board?
Theme Hospital 💉
Let’s not go in to detail about what a cracking game Theme Hospital was, especially as it was the first ever PC game I bought along with Championship Manager 3 after I finished primary school back in 1999. Fast forward to Football Manager 2019 and it feels like we are playing Theme Hospital all over again, as our inbox is suddenly brimming with good news just as we are about to embark on the most important game we’ve had in this save so far – a cup final vs Atletico Madrid.
Copa Del Rey Final
CD Tenerife vs Atletico Madrid
Saturday 25th May 2024
Holders Atletico Madrid take on 2022 finalists CD Tenerife today in what should be an extremely even fixture after both sides ended their La Liga season neck-and-neck on 79 points apiece, with the Madrid side taking 3rd position based on Head-to-Head results earlier in the year.
Rumour has it that relations between the Tenerife board and Manager MaddFM are at boiling point, with sources saying that only a win will save his job despite qualifying for the Champions League this season – if things aren’t bad enough, Tenerife are without 5 key first team players with Xadas, Bisseck, Cuisance, Rossbach and Dani Olmo all missing out through injury as Tenerife look to claim only their second piece of silverware under MaddFM since winning the Spanish Super Cup back in 2022.
The game kicks off and it’s Tenerife who start the strongest, moving the ball around at pace and dominating the midfield taking full advantage of the absence of Rodri who also misses out through injury. After 3 consecutive attacks, Tenerife win a throw in on the left hand side and this happens:
We hold our lead until half time and look good value for money to go on and win the game, however with 5 first team players out our squad is thin and tired after a long and gruelling season. Atletico come out at half time raring to go, and it’s only a matter of time before they equalise on 65 mins through that man Antoine Griezmann who I’m normally not a fan of despite the fact that he also shares a passion for the best game in the world:
It’s at this point I’m realising that this just isn’t our season – winless September, Champions League drama, Mick McCarthy, job insecurities, multiple injuries, late goals, we’ve had it all ahead of us and just as I am thinking about the fact that we have conceded 3 goals in injury time in our last 3 games (90+3, 90+1 and 90+5) – Antoine Griezmann decides that enough is enough and smashes home a Free Kick in the dying moments of the game. Putain de Merde! 🤬
The End?
4th in the league….Copa Del Rey Runners Up….Champions League Last 16…is that really a bad season for a club of CD Tenerife‘s stature? Our End of Season Awards are held and loanee Olivier Batista Meier is voted as our Fans Player of the Season ahead of Fabio Silva in 2nd and Xadas in 3rd. Might need to make that a permanent signing then. There’s also good news as Perr Schuurs is voted as our Signing of the Season, meaning our decision to “Better Call Sol” proved highly effective when signing a Centre Back in FM!
Despite missing out on Player of the Season, 21 year old Fabio Silva finishes as La Liga Top Scorer with 20 goals which for some reason is the second consevutive season that breaks the record for lowest top scorer – Messrs Ronaldo and Messi are rolling in their fictional FM graves looking at these stats, we can see that for some reason FM does not feel scoring 30+ goals a season should be a common occurrence despite the fact that Messi and Ronaldo did it for years in La Liga:
It’s not all bad for Fabio Silva, who by scoring 20 league goals triggers a €675,000 bonus as well as earning a combined €2.6 million for finishing Top Scorer and making it in to the Team of the Year…who agreed to those clauses?!!!! 🙈
D-Day ⏲️
The dust settles and finally we get the memo that Senior Concepcion and the rest of the Tenerife board are requesting our presence as we are called in to discuss the season’s events and decide on our future as CD Tenerife Manager. Is this where it all ends?
AND IT’S SAVED!!! The board have finally come to their senses and decided that I am in fact the right man for the job, realising how far we have taken the club and giving us time to continue building what we have started.
While we haven’t yet completely dethroned Barcelona or the Madrids from the peak of Spanish football, we are certainly on the right track and with FM20 on the horizon I reckon we have one more season in us in which to finally mount a league title challenge. We have much to do in terms of adding more depth and quality to the squad, but if the board make some funds available (especially as we are now making a profit as per the latest La Liga figures released below), then Season 7 will hopefully turn out to be a cracker for Los Chicharreros and an action filled final year to this Career Save.
And so ends Season 6! Thank you for reading and hopefully enjoying this FM19 save over the past 7 months or so, we have had a turbulent time at Tenerife and hopefully our next and final season will bring the success we’ve craved since starting this save back in February. If you haven’t already, feel free to jump back to our first post where it all began at Tenerife, and don’t forget to follow me here via the Follow button below as well as on Twitter for more FM content and updates. Feedback and Retweets appreciated!!
Cheers,
MaddFM aka Paul.