Lemerre's First World Cup

Amidst all the doom and gloom with the impending death of the game, this past weekend saw Lemerre's first ever fully blown World Cup. I'm pretty sure everyone in FML circles know what this consists of, but for anyone that doesn't it's like a Trialist World Cup, only it isn't limited to trialists. You can use your own squad players, as well as loans from other teams. At the end of the competition all loanees are released and returned back to their clubs, so no one is without their senior squad for longer than 24 hours or so. The theory is that everyone is willing to loan out their star players for the sake of the community, giving a high quality competition.

The truth, in Lemerre anyway, was a little different. Aside from the members not willing - for whatever reason - to loan out their players, there was the people that had become inactive because of the big announcement. It was therefore difficult to get a squad together and eventually it was announced that each squad would be allowed up to eight players who had the second nationality of the nation you had selected. Pre-empting the difficulty, I chose Mexico. I already had 6 players who I had brought up from my old academy, including the awesome centre back Eder Saavedra (see screenshots) and two accomplished strikers to build my team around. I managed to get in another 4 loans and one signing before turning to the free agents list for trialists.

I thought it was going to end early, after losing my first game and drawing my second, but because of the generous qualification needs for the next round, I scraped through after winning my final group game 3-1. I then proceeded through the Last 16 Round 4-2 and the Quarter Finals 3-2. Not particularly dominant, but after my overload strategy worked in my final group game, I decided to stick with it. Entertaining was an understatement.

So onto the Semi Final then where, ironically I met the team that I beat 3-1 in that deciding group game. Final score? 3-1 again with a brace from my tournaments top player, loanee Marco Fabian. In the Final I met the manager that loaned me Fabian. Unfortunately I lost the game 3-1, but it was very close with most stats straight down the middle. Floriana Fc were simply more clinical than my team were.

World Cup Final:
Mexico 1 - 3 Italy