Brackley FC - When F1 met Footy

So, what do you do when it's the second long break of the F1 season and there will be no action on track until COTA at the end of October? 

 

Maybe creating a fictional football club (soccer for those Dirty Siders from the US) on EAFC24 on the PS4 where the only players you are allowed to have in your squad must have names linked to Formula 1 isn't the first thing that springs to mind. 

However, that's exactly what Rob did.

The mission was to create a new team and place them in League Two before embarking on a campaign to reach the Premier League before lights out at COTA.

This is the story of the epic journey one man and a football club went on...

First things first - I needed a manager, team name, stadium name, and kit designs. 

The first name that came to mind was Brackley FC who would play their home games at Silverstone.

Then it was on to the design process for the kits.  As this was trying to be a generic F1 themed team I decided to try and incorporate a few different teams into the mix.

I went with a nod to the Gulf McLaren livery for the home kit, a black kit based on the Mercedes Silver Arrows, and a third kit featuring the red and yellow of Ferrari. The goalie wore a Red Bull inspired purple kit.

Available in all good sports outlets

The manager was Valtteri Bottas complete with mustache and mullet.

VB77 takes charge

With that out of the way it was time to take a look at the randomly generated squad that I had been given.

Damn.

Not a single F1 related name among them all.

There was just a tenuous link to one of the strikers.

His name was Marshall so wasn't even spelt correctly for an F1 race marshal but, as it was the closest thing I had, he was kept. 

Then it was time for the brutal culling of the non F1 based players in the squad.

I released as many players as the game would allow me and put the rest on the transfer list before heading over to the transfer market.

Here was where the challenge really began - were there even enough players in the database that a) existed and b) I could tempt to join lowly Brackley?

First up I went to the player search and began a search using every driver last name I could think of from all of history and amazed myself at how many players actually exist out there. 

Hamilton, Clark, Schumacher, Perez, Jones, Webber, Russell, Moss, Hunt, Hill, Prost, Magnussen, Alonso, Sainz, Norris, Hakkinen, and even Maldonado all existed.

Making a list and checking it twice...

There were still not enough to make a decent pool from so I got a little more creative.

Constructors!

A few more searches yielded players called Ferrari, Williams, and Haas!

Still not done I went with people connected to F1 and thought about folk we'd had on the podcast.

Nate Saunders and Matt Bishop had namesakes in the game (well last names anyway) as well as Barretto, Allen, and Croft.

Also found a Walker for the late, great Murray!

Team principals were a little thin on the ground but there is a real player from the USA called Wolff and I was also able to find an R.Dennis.

Braun wasn't close enough so I didn't add him to the scouting list.

One final scan using player first names gave me players with last names of George, Charles, and Lewis.

When searching for players named after tracks I managed to find a Monaco and a Baku!

Alas there was no Vale or Saperstein but there were matches for Pitlane Paul as a search for Harris proved.

Some pre-season scouting revealed how much each would cost so between my limited budget and realizing a few were on the free agent list, my first squad was ready even if there were still two non-F1 players in there.

Playing a 4-5-1 formation it looked like this:

Goalie - Bishop (my biggest initial signing for 800k) 

Defenders - Ferrari (LB) , Alonso (CB), Pritchard (CB), and Walker (RB)

Midfielders - Lewis (LW), Lewis (CM), Russell (CDM), Gormley (CM), and Maldonado (RW) 

Striker - Marshall (CF) 

Not a bad start but Gormley and Pritchard knew they were on borrowed time plus only one Lewis was going to survive. 

So far the left wing one looked the better prospect with a rating of 60. While I was finding a decent pool of players, their ratings were not all fantastic.  This was going to be the first time I was actively choose to have players rated 50 or less in my squad!

I'd done these types of "zero to hero" career modes before but that always involved your squad getting better as you moved up the divisions.

This was going to be much harder as the replacement options were limited in terms of both player availability and their ratings.

I decided to employ all the youth team scouts I was allowed to rather than hire senior scouts. The thought process being that I didn't need scouts of real players as I was pretty much owning that via name searches as and when I thought of another name I'd not searched. 

As the game engine generates fictitious youth players, maybe some of them would be F1 related and maybe there would be a gem among them. 

Long shot but it had to be done. 

League Two went well and by the January transfer window we were sitting in second spot in the league behind Port Vale. 

The January transfer window saw Pritchard and Gormley be used as part of player plus cash deals to bring in Jones (CB) and Norris (CM).  Jones was a nod to Australian champion Alan Jones who won the title in 1980 so I was thrilled that this Jones was also Australian.  Made no real difference but it made me happy.

Charles was added as another midfielder so that the second Lewis could be dropped to the bench. 

I should probably also mention that each player had their squad number set to their driver number or, if not relevant, something that aligned to their F1 career. 

Left winger Lewis took 44, Maldonado 13, Alonso 14, Norris 4, and Russell 63.  I gave Bishop the number 40 to depict the episode number Matt Bishop featured on, and Ferrari was given 50 as they have been around since 1950 when F1 started.

Bishop to the rescue.....again!

Season one ended with the League Two title being secured and Brackley FC looking forward to life in League One. 

Cups had not been a happy hunting ground and we'd been knocked out early in all the cups. 

With 46 games it takes a bit longer to grind through the season but we were still on target for the Premier league by COTA as long as we kept moving up. I could not afford a second season in the lower leagues so League One needed dispatching at the first attempt.

The summer transfer window saw Hunt, Moss, Webber (also Australian!!), and Williams all get added to the squad as well as the record signing of Harris for a million pounds. 

Not bad for a number 2 winger

Then a huge slice of luck saw my youth scout from Belgium find a 16 year old attacking midfielder called de Vries! 

Not only that but he was not one of the regular youngsters but had a high ceiling on his future potential so had a good chance of becoming a proper star player. 

As Charles was a more defensive midfield backup for Russell, de Vries found himself partnering Norris in my center midfield and a magic partnership began. 

League One was pretty straight forward and back to back promotions were secured with Harris being the leading goal scorer followed closely by Norris and then de Vries. 

de Vries slams home one of his many

Marshall, who had been the top scorer in League Two, was now mainly on the bench or sharing left/right wing duties with Lewis and Maldonado.  I was holding onto him for sentimental reasons really if truth be told.

Again, the cups were not as kind and after progressing through a few rounds we were smashed out of the League Cup by Liverpool 5-1 and then dumped out of the FA cup in round 3 by Man City 4-0. 

So, it was onto the Championship with a week still to go before COTA. 

As this league was going to be harder, all the money I would normally have used to buy better players was being sunk into development coaches to try and maximize the potential of the current squad.

It seemed to be working OK as all of the team had steadily increased their ratings by a few points with Norris, de Vries, and Ferrari all making even bigger leaps.

The Championship season started with some sadness as Bishop was declining in skill level and also announced he was retiring at end of season. 

The Italian youth scout had found a decent looking goalie called Ferrari and I decided that as you have two cars in a team, I would allow myself to add Ferrari the keeper to play alongside Ferrari the left back. I gave him number 16 to denote how many World Constructors Championships the Scuderia have won.

Hill was bought from Bournemouth and Schumacher came in as a free agent while the transfer record for Brackley was increased to 2.5 million pounds as Wolff was added to the squad. 

Not only was the Championship title secured, but an incredible FA Cup run saw us go all the way to lifting the trophy as Liverpool were dispatched 4-3 after extra time with Norris slamming home the winner minutes before penalties would have been needed! 

Norris breaks Liverpool hearts

The goal of reaching the Premier League before lights out at COTA had been reached one day early as promotion was secured on the Saturday morning of the COTA weekend.

However, I could not end the story there. 

I had to make an attempt on the Premier League title and maybe the Champions League.

Lots of the squad were approaching their late 20s so we wouldn't have much longer before skill levels dropped away. 

Therefore I decided to play two more seasons to see firstly how we would fare in the Europa League after winning the FA Cup and then to see what would happen in the Premier League. 

With the money for winning the Championship the transfer record was blown away again as we paid 8.5 million to Norwich to sign left winger Sainz. 

This now made the first team squad look like this: 

Goalie - Ferrari 

Defenders - Ferrari (LB) , Alonso (CB), Hill (CB), and Williams (RB) 

Midfielders - Sainz (LW), Norris (CM), Russell (CDM), de Vries (CM), and Maldonado (RW) 

Striker - Harris (CF) 

Subs - Lewis, Wolff, Jones, Schumacher, Charles, Webber, Hunt, Moss, and Marshall 

Only a few were the same as my very first squad and it did hurt to leave Lewis on the bench as Sainz was just so much better....hmmm, Sainz replacing Lewis in a team - Now there's a thing! 

The new signing made his mark in no time by securing the Community Shield with an amazing overhead kick as part of a 2-1 win over Chelsea.  Such a smooth operator!

Community Shield in the bag!

The premier league was much harder and an opening day hammering away to Arsenal was a sign of things to come. 

However, slowly but surely we climbed the table and by late January there was a real shot at top four if we could just keep the winning cycle going. 

Maldonado chips the keeper

Domestic cups were not going to hinder us as we'd crashed out of those but the Europa League was going great and passage to the knockout rounds had been secured. 

The winning streak was kept alive and third spot in the Premier League behind Man City and Chelsea was secured meaning Brackley would play Champions League football next year. 

In addition, an epic final against Seville saw us win 3-2 and lift the Europa League trophy! 

Europa champions!!!

Heading into what was going to be the final campaign for Brackley and some transfer drama hit the team. 

Wolff was not happy at being sub all the time and neither were Hunt or Moss. There were rumors of Wolff feeling it was so not right and had also sent an email on the matter.

As I'd been scouting some other players, and now that I had the funds from a great Premier League and Europa season, I decided to make some changes. 

Wolff was sold for a record Brackley transfer fee of twelve million pounds which was then put to good use to trigger the release clause of Clark of thirty million pounds! 

Hunt and Moss also left which then saw Haas and Magnussen join the squad.

I was a bit smarter on the contract negotiations for any new signings as before I was so desperate to get F1 names onboard I was promising everyone first team action. 

These new recruits all got promised first team squad action not first eleven which meant we wouldn't get so much drama in the camp. I even added a substitute goalie after the youth academy churned out a J.Allen just like the ex-commentator so I promoted him to the senior side. 

However, there was a problem. 

Clark was brilliant and de Vries had developed into a top level midfielder as well. 

This meant making the hard decision to drop Norris to the bench. He'd been with the team since day one and was a great goal-scoring midfielder but was just not quite at the level of de Vries or Clark. 

Both him and Lewis now had to be super subs and come off the bench. 

For this final season I changed the away kit from the black silver arrows inspired design to one closer to the black and gold JP Lotus. 

I could not have asked for the final season to go any better. 

Brackley led the league for the whole season and Harris & Clark were goal scoring machines.

Clark rolls home the winner at the Etihad

A close run battle with Man City all season long finally ended up with us winning the Premier League with a couple of games to spare after essentially ending their challenge with an away win at their place.

A home win against Leeds in the next game saw the trophy be presented! 

The EPL Trophy

Trophy celebrations

Pole position achieved!

As we had European football to concentrate on as well, the FA cup games were made up purely of my second string line up. Although these players are not real and have no feelings, I wanted to pay back their part of this story by giving them the cup run and seeing how they would get on.

They went all the way to the final where goals from Norris, Schumacher (x2), and Lewis saw Liverpool beaten in the final again but this time within 90 minutes as we ran out 4-3 winners. 

Another FA Cup triumph

A group of death in the Champions League had us in with Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, and RB Leipzig. Great away draws in Madrid and Italy saw us edge Inter out of the competition and go through. 

Huge games against Barcelona and Real Madrid in the quarters and semi-finals were navigated to set up a trip to the Champions League final!!!

Clark picks out the top corner vs Barca

Harris acrobatically sees off Madrid

In the end it was a fairly one-sided 5-1 win against Monaco that saw us lift the Champions League trophy with goals from Clark, Harris (x2), Marshall, and Schumacher. 

Completing the triple crown

So, there we have it. 

The minnows of Brackley FC made up only of F1 related players rose from League Two all the way to be champions of both England and Europe! 

Along the way there were some players who I wanted to be good but after buying them their stats were too poor to keep for the Premier League - honorable mentions to Barretto, Sargeant, Hakkinen, Berger, and Perez.  Wanted you guys to be better but alas you had to be let go.

A silly idea to pass the fall lull in the calendar turned out to be really fun to do!

As for Valtteri, well one can only wonder...

What's next?

Waving to the fans....traditions