It’s been a few weeks since I did my last article when I wrote about my quadruple dreams and the impact of the recent financial changes on my team, Castilla, in Gold Championship 7 (Game World ID 3065) and back then season 21 was drawing to a close.
I ended up playing 7 games in 10 days and I ended up sacrificing the Spanish Cup Final to concentrate on the league and SMFA Cup. In a sense I weren’t disappointed because the Zaragoza manager who i’ve become friends with beat me in the final 2-0. Their manager has assembled a good team over the past few years and hats off tom him for making it an entirely Spanish based squad that now competes for silverware season after season.
By sacrificing the Spanish Cup Final it meant that I could field my strongest XI in my remaining two leagues games in season. I ended up funnily enough playing Zaragoza again the next day in the penultimate league fixture which I won 4-0 but my title rival Valencia also won. This meant that I went into the final league game of the season with the same points as them but I had the superior goal difference.
I won my final game convincingly to claim my first league title since season 17. Previously i’d won the league 6 seasons on the bounce from season 12 to 17! It was nice to finally lay my hands on the Spanish league once again.
My final game of the season was the showpiece event, the SMFA Cup. I’ve won this competition on 3 previous occasions and this included back to back titles in season 16 and 17. I faced an excellent Morecambe team in the final who hadn’t won this competition before but were beaten finalists in season 15.
The manager of Morecambe has been in Gold 7 since day one like myself and i’d now class them as a super club within the game world. They also aren’t a push over as they’ve won the English league 3 times in the past 4 seasons! The SMFA Cup final was a tight affair and an early goal sealed Morecambe’s first SMFA Cup and I had to be content with ending the season with just the league and cup double (as i’d wont the Spanish Shield earlier in the season).
I’ve started season 22 as I mean to go on by winning my opening two league games. I was also delighted to be drawn against my brother in Group F of the SMFA Cup. He’s been managing a team from Genoa since September 2013 but our paths have never crossed during that time. This is because needless to say i’m managing in Spain and he’s managing in Italy.
I suppose this is what makes Gold Championships unique and different to Standard Game Worlds. Gold Championships contain multiple national leagues. Each one will have the American, Argentine, Brazilian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Scottish, Spanish and Turkish leagues by default. They are then joined by 5 other leagues that are selected randomly from 39 leagues. So they could be joined by the Australian, Belgian, Chinese, South African and Swiss leagues for example.
Naturally with this many leagues there are numerous clubs to choose from and this leads to more managers in a Game World. I’ve just checked Gold Championship 7 (Game World ID 3065) and there are currently 83 managed clubs. This is what I like about these type of Game Worlds because with that many managers it makes it more challenging in the transfer market.
In a Standard Game World for example a Spanish Championship, it contains two divisions with 20 clubs in each one. This means that you have club’s from England, France, Germany, Italy etc as external clubs and there is a wealth of talent to help you build a team of your dreams. However, within a Gold Championship all of these clubs are active within your Game World making the transfer market harder as the pool of talent at external clubs is smaller.
I’ve found that you need to be clever in the transfer market in a Gold Championship and also have patience. This is also the case in some very popular Standard and Custom Game Worlds as well. It won’t be to everyone’s taste though as some like to build a squad instantly. I think in my next blog i’ll discuss the strategy of how I managed to build up my Castilla over the years as I believe this will interest some managers.
If you want to test your managerial skills in a Gold Championship, then you have to be a Gold Manager. It costs 2,250 SM credits for 30 days or 15,300 for 365 days. As well as being able to compete in this unique Game Worlds you’ll also be able to manage international teams, manage your club in SMFA competitions and manage an additional 10 clubs.
About the author – Steven Gore
Steven is one of the co-founders of Soccer Manager and has been playing SM Worlds since August 2005. He can be found in Gold Championship 7 (Game World ID 3065) managing Castilla if you’d like to join him.
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