2013
League A League B League C League D
1st Dynamo Kiev Newcastle Utd Ajax AC Milan
2nd Rhone Manchester Utd Bayern Munich Sampdoria
AC won Serie A once more, by ten points. My points standing was only inferior to 2012 by one less victory, one more draw, which goes to show how good Milan were this time. They only lost one game, that was to me in our second meeting, a fine 3-0 victory. Sadly that didn't rattle their confidence, and I subsequently dropped points by drawing with Juve for the second time, although I won most of the remaining games. I won the Coppa Italia against Juve, on penalties no less. I saved one of their pens, while Zalayeta (who had scored in normal time, Platt getting the equaliser) shot wide and Abdessadki skied it, and I put my three away. I think the shoot outs I did the other day in some of the online friendlies really helped sharpen me up! I almost never win them. This was actually the second time I won the Coppa, the first time being in 2007. I won the European Cup against Man Utd the following year, making 2013 the first time in five seasons that I won a trophy, so a successful year despite my failure to win Lo Scudetto.
Milan won the European Cup 3-0 against Liverpool (I had been knocked out on away goals to Kiev in the quarters, the fatal goal coming from an injured Tostao), while Chelsea won the UEFA Cup against Arsenal. The Gunners got their revenge in the FA Cup, winning it against their London rivals.
The teams relegated from Serie A were Anderlecht and Nancy Lorraine. Both teams started the season quite strongly, but soon started falling behind. Nevertheless Anderlecht gave me hard games in both our league meetings, one loss and a draw for me! The top scorer in Serie A was Volpato of Siena, with 17. Having been promoted along with Nancy this year, Siena were stuck at the bottom for a long time but began improving their results after a while, achieving enough regular wins to be in the upper reaches of the bottom half of the table at the end of the year. Volpato scored about half their goals, not surprising with that tally. Benfica improved over a similar period, though to a lesser degree. I had much better luck against them, beating them 5-0 both times. Macco, not a regular first teamer, nonetheless scored 3 goals for Benfica this year.
After me in the league came Roma, then Juve, Fiorentina and narrowly behind them on goal difference was Inter, to make up the final Euro qualification spot. Messina, home to Gerrard and Fouque, had a very strong run in the second half of the campaign and very briefly hopped into the top six with a few games to go, but they were edged out and fell into the bottom half at the end.
Iouga retired for me at the age of 40, having been making decent performances right up to the end. He made 3 assists this season, not at all shabby when you consider my single highest assist players were Gullit and Peruma on 5 each. Peruma, incidentally, had his best scoring season yet with 3 league goals coming early in the year. Iouga made over 100 appearances, scoring 11 goals and making 11 assists. He will be sorely missed. Zamenhof, who has proved himself a reasonably capable stand in over the years (even if lethally slow at coming out to deal with through balls), has also retired at 39. Another leaver is Burchet, who has struggled to make an impact on the few occasions I brought him on this term. He was on the decline, his pace falling below 90, and this is the first year I've felt he was undoubtedly deadweight. That allowed me to make two acquisitions; a young Frenchman named Espimas (he looks familiar but I can't quite place him) and a regen Giuseppe Favalli (CB, and if needed SB+WB).
Valeny is 40 this year, and I imagine he will retire this time. I bought Lorenz for the 2013 season, and he almost never needed a rest, meaning little playing time for Dulic or Valeny, though when called upon they both performed well. Sometimes I have played them in place of Di Tomasso, my 35 year old sweeper. I'm not sure whether to keep up with that sweeper role, though I am toying with the idea of putting Gullit there; he played there a few times this season to good effect. There were several notable retirements for other clubs; Henry retired with 197 goals in less than 300 games, Van Nistelrooy with only a slightly less impressive goal ratio, and Milan lost two important players that might give me an edge- Shevchenko and Nesta.
Cerezo scored loads of goals early in the season, but that dried up a lot as I won virtually no penalties in the second half of the season. He still achieved a new personal best of 11 goals though, matching Mancini and only behind Vialli (13). In addition to this, though Gullit and Platt only scored 3 between them in the league, I got a smattering of goals from a range of second string players like Thijs and Baggio, and in my starting line up Dodo had his best scoring season, with 8 goals. I think 7 of them came in the second half of the year, he was on fire, often striking into the corner from the edge of the box. That proved very helpful to getting me into second place at the end of the year, and Sampdoria achieved their highest goal haul yet with 68 (9 better than last season).
The AI does lots of predictable transfers, such as buying regens of players who only retired the season before (Del Piero is one such example this time). But there were a couple of interesting transfers by computer teams; Galatasaray, in League A, bought Edingson! I forgot to check how old he is, but presumably he will be in his prime. More bizarrely, due to the abscence of the Spanish league in the universe of my current playthrough, Messi has just been bought by Gothenburg in the same division. They have won League A before, but this season they were close to the bottom! Messi is 26, his stats are as you would expect, and they got him free with a salary of ~330!! To put that figure into context, it's almost as low as a salary you will see for any player in the game, one would expect it to be at least three or four times higher for a player with his ability. It will be interesting to see if he can lead them to success. As this game is from a time when Messi was barely known internationally, his only special ability is 'outside' (of the boot, for passing and shooting), not even 'dribbling' or 'tactical dribbling' to make him prioritise dribbling for the AI, though as I say his general stats are appropriately phenomenal.
, but I always forget what the team is called, and just knew they were a scandinavian team with a bluish kit!