Hello again and welcome to the San Marino challenge where we will be making our debut in Serie A for the 2024/5 season!
This could be a bit of an uphill battle as we are favourites to get relegated with odds of 1000-1 to win the title. Our transfer budget sits at a moderate £4.5 million with only £111k p/w wage budget, this would totally be spent in an effort to try and keep us in the division in what could be an uphill struggle all season.
Just to highlight how small a team we are in this context our ground is less than a third of the size of the second smallest ground in the league. Our sponsorship income amounted to a mere £450k, with Parma being the second lowest at £3.6 million whilst Juventus managed to fetch in an incredible £142 million! Finally, our reputation had increased to a steady 2 and a half stars, a whole star less than any other Serie A club and less than 9 Serie B clubs!
To further exacerbate our lack of funds we would also be going into this season with a very depleted squad. Due to my reliance on loans and Portsmouth nicking Simic from us on a free our squad was down to its bare bones. Of the 11 who started the final game of last season, only 8 remained at the club and of these, many were likely to find Serie A a monumental step up. With this in mind I set to work.
Scrambling in the Transfer Market
My priority in the market was to bring in some new full backs, strikers, central midfielders and a goalkeeper as these areas were severely lacking at this level…..so not much improvement needed then! Ultimately I was able to spend a record £3.2 million to bring in 16 players to the club with most of this money spent on just three players and a loan signing.
In goal the best player I could find was Nicola Leali, a journeyman GK who spent the last 5 years of his career at Perugia making a grand total of 33 appearances……grief we are scraping the barrel here. He’s actually rated better than Colombo but I think i’ll give my Sammarinese goalkeeper the starting position at at first for loyalty’s sake and take it from there.
In defence I was able to bring in two quality players to improve our threadbare depth in this area. Firstly in the heart of defence Becci was our best player in this position arriving on loan from Roma for a steady £350k. He’s not very experienced but should provide some quality in this area when he gets some game time under his belt.
At full back Muca is currently our record signing costing us £1.1 million from relegation rivals Cagliari. He came through the academy there and has been a bit part player for them however, at San Marino he was by far our best option at right back and was rated as a good Serie B player with the potential to develop into a good Serie A player in future. He could be a big part of the team in years to come!
Perhaps the best signing of the window came in midfield as Karamoko arrived from good old ASEC Mimosas while costing us a huge £30k! He has huge potential and already possesses great physical and mental attributes and should really kick on once he gets some top flight experience.
Finally up front I was in a tricky spot. We had an established set of forwards consisting of Birligea, Nanni, Gori and the youngster Bollini which was fine…..at Serie B level. In Serie A however, we were very much lacking in quality and I was keen to find a way to improve our goal scoring options without pissing off all of our established strikers..
In the end the best I could do was to bring in two free transfers, both in their early 30’s. Firstly is Manchester Untied legend Fran Marcheda who is fresh from a seven year stint in Greece with Parathinaikos. His record of 51 goals in 182 games for them doesn’t bode well for his return to Italian football but i’m hoping he can make some sort of impact from the bench. Secondly comes Sheffield Wednesday legend Lucas Joao who is rated our best striker……..which is a little worrying. Mostly he will be used as a battering ram to knock down high balls for others or get on the end of crosses!
The rest of the signings in the window have been brought in to provide depth to the squad, our starting 11 would look something like the below. So without further padding, it was finally time to get on with the season!
Pre-Season and Italian Cup
So with these new signings in the squad we embarked on a tour of Italy which included a few Serie B and A clubs to really test us. We picked up a credible draw against Chievo and won a few other games before a terrifying 5-0 defeat against Frosinone caused me to panic somewhat. We played a full strength team for this game and totally capitulated against a mid table Serie B side who we have only lost to once before in 5 games.
Fortunately we were able to recover for the Italian Cup game against Lecce as we were able to cling on for a 0-0 draw and then sneak past the 6-5 on penalties!
Our schedule to start Serie A is a tough one. We open up away to Napoli before playing Atalanta and Bologna who have both recently played in Europe, something of a baptism of fire for us then. Predictably we get our ass handed to us by Napoli in a 3-0 defeat however I was a little more optimistic in our second game against Atalanta. After all we were at home, so hopefully we could nick a point somehow. We fell behind on 24 minutes after Zapata curled in a good free kick but we were still firmly in the game. My optimism was raised further when they had a CB sent off on the half hour mark! We had an hour to find a goal against ten men, surely we could find way through against this?
Nope. Atalanta sat deep and managed to easily keep us at arms length for the second half and won out 1-0. Two games down and no goals or points to show for our efforts. This was a little….concerning. Fortunately we attacked a lot better against Bologna as Shala had the honour of scoring our first top flight goal thanks to a low drive from the D of the penalty area! With something to actually defend we played much better with Luca Falbo in particular being impressive. This lasted until just before half time when we failed to mark properly from a corner to allow Capone to head an equaliser past Colombo. The score remained unchanged for the second half as we finally secured a point! This loan point saw us rocket up to 16th in the league as we went into September with a much more favourable schedule.
We would be playing three teams predicted to finish in or around the relegation zone so a few wins here would be crucial to our survival hopes. Cagliari would be coming to the San Marino Stadium first where we played out a very dour game that seemed destined for a 0-0. We got into extra time still locked at 0-0 when Joao took a shot from 20 yards out. The keeper palmed it out to the corner of the penalty area where Leandro picked the ball up. He swept it back across the box for Bollini to slam into the net! A huge goal and fittingly crafted by two of the clubs youth players!
We rode this momentum to sneak past Crotone as another of the clubs youth players scored the winning goal, this time it was defender Stefanelli who scored his 11th career goal with a header from a corner! After our first away win, we then made it three wins in a row with a home win against Sampdoria! Once again we played out a very tight and dour first half which stretched on and on until we brough on Birligea in the second half. After Marcheda lost a header from a long ball it fell to Monaco who played a perfectly weighted through ball for the Romanian striker who kept his composure and applied a wonderful finish into the far corner of the net. We clung onto the lead and this saw us rise to 11th in the table!
After a fruitful September, October proved to be a lot more challenging. After a predictable defeat against Roma, Bollini scored his second goal of the season which proved to be a second 90th minute winning goal, this time against Verona. Little did i know at the time (with 3 wins from 4) this would be our last goal for almost a month as we didn’t score again until Udinese came to town as Shala notched his second goal of the season in a 1-1 draw. We were only denied a win in this game when Colombo came charging off his line, brought down a striker and conceded a penalty. This was one of a small number of mistakes on the part of Colombo so I felt it was finally time to give Leali a go in net.
Uncharacteristically we then managed to score 3 goals as we hammered Sassuolo before Fiorentina wiped out the good goal difference gained by hammering us 3-0.
I was beginning to discover why Leali had never developed into a regular Serie A goalkeeper over the years. For all his good work in stopping shots (and he was going to have a lot of those playing behind this defence) he had a very worrying habit of wandering off his line every time a cross came into the box but getting nowhere near them.
I was stuck between a spectacularly unreliable goalkeeper in Leali or Colombo who was playing his heart out but way short on quality at this level……I opted for Leali to guide us to safety.
In December we had something of a successful month as Joao finally broke his duck to lead us to a win over Parma (where we nearly threw a way a 3 goal lead) and Bollini scored his first career double to give us another 3-2 win this time over Chievo to give us 6 points from 9 during this month.
Lets just pretend that the defeats to Serie B Cittadella and bottom 3 Lazio didn’t happen……..
This decent form would be well needed for January as we had a horror run of games that consisted of five of the top ten in the league………things didn’t start of well. At all.
Still at least Juve are a way above average side so things should improve……..
Big ouch. At least we took the lead against Napoli but in truth these three games showed how outclassed we were in this league at times as we came away from them with a aggregate score of 16-1. Painful.
The final of these three games proved to be a record setting game as well.
That’s right, it was only mid January but we had already set a league record for worst ever discipline having accumulated 79 yellows and 3 reds in 22 games! That’s almost 4 yellow cards every game and is surely one of the earliest dates this record has been set without intentionally trying to do it.
The league table up to this point in the season made for somewhat positive reading as we only sat in 14th but with a 12 point gap to the bottom three. the main concern at this stage is that if we do get dragged into a relegation fight our goal difference is probably going to deteriorate if we fail to keep picking up the wins.
Our attack at this stage in the season is firmly average however our defence is especially fragile (mostly thanks to the recent run of hammerings we’ve received) with us having the equal 4th worst defence in the league!
Youth Preview
Before we go it was time to look at the youth preview for this season and, for once I had some optimism. This was the first time during our tenure at the club that we had some improved youth facilities and coaching having average facilities across the board.
I was right to be optimistic as we had a number of positive aspects to this youth intake. The central midfielder in particular looks like he will be an absolute smash hit for us and he could be backed up by a number of good wingers!
Thanks again for reading everyone, I’m going to wrap this post up in the middle of the January transfer window so it doesn’t turn into too long of a piece! I’ve got a couple of familiar names lined up for the transfer window to give us a boost in the second half of the season so i’ll be sure to go through these next time as well.
Next time out we will cover the back half of this season as we try and keep our heads above water in Serie A while covering the San Marino national side as we attempt to not finish bottom of our World Cup Qualifying Group for the first time ever!
Alex
StratMan Gaming 