Cyler's Fantastical FM24 Fixation: The story of Bayern Munich so far...

Right, let’s preface this with some context for the uninitiated.

Football Manager is a video game series that essentially tries its best to simulate the experience of being a coach (with, of course, a lot of liberties to make it a game and not just having a job without the pay). Much like the ever-popular EA Sports FC series, a new installment is released annually, and recently the latest installment was free on Epic Games for a short while. Having played the 2015 and 2022 editions (conveniently named Football Manager 2016 and 2023 respectively) previously, I was of course compelled to immediately pick up the new game, and like I’ve done with every football game I’ve gotten my hands on, my first attempt at anything had to go through Bayern Munich.

What followed is a week of my life being swallowed in watching digital versions of real people, forming relationships with said digital people and of course, maybe a few digital trophies along the way. While this will be a bit of a catch-up piece, any and all future pieces of this storyline will go more in-depth to really give readers an idea of what’s happening in the save, not just the broad-strokes. Of course, Patreon members will immediately be raising their hands asking if this is the save I’ve been sharing details about in the Discord, and the answer is yes, this is the very same team. Let’s dive on in.

The 2023/24 Season: Fixing the mess Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images

I wake on the driveway, my hands on the wheel, wondering how the hell I got hereNow you’re gone, I finally found a tunnel turning into blinding light.

Now FM24 starts at the beginning of the 2023/24 season, meaning I have the opportunity to rewrite history and make sure Thomas Tuchel never manages to break Bayern’s eleven-year long streak of winning the Bundesliga. However, this squad has some major holes for the kind of football I want to play.

Wait that’s a good question actually, what kind of football do I want to play?

Well, with Football Manager, there’s basically two ways to approach tactics. You can either have fun and try weird things to see if they stick, or you can play a 4-2-3-1 and win every game 6-0. Of course I wanted to try weird things, chief among them being using the libero role. The libero is a one-of-a-kind role, one I usually play when I’m playing football in real life and one I’ve never implemented in FM, so I knew I wanted to try it. However I didn’t see it working without a 3-at-the-back formation, which meant I was going to have to do something Pep Guardiola did a couple years ago: bin the wide defenders. Unfortunately, none of my wide defenders who were worth anything managed to get out the door, meaning I had to re-purpose them, with Noussair Mazraoui and Raphaël Guerreiro being re-purposed into the midfield and Sacha Boey being used as a makeshift centre-back. I did however manage to offload Bouna Sarr on a one-year loan with an obligation to buy that added up to just under €2m, which must be one of the best sales Bayern have ever done. Daniel Peretz and Aleksandar Pavlović were loaned out too.

In terms of incomings in the summer, there were just two, but they were as high profile as it gets. Remember what I said about the game not being perfectly realistic? Well, I’m not one to let realism choke my decision-making, and I went big. The first was the deadline day completion of a deal to loan Manuel Akanji from Manchester City for one season, with an option to buy for €54m which I had no intention of activating. The other deal was the signing of Aurelien Tchouaméni from Real Madrid for €74m, with add-ons taking it to a maximum of €81m. How Real Madrid approved that deal, I’ll never know, and frankly I don’t want to ask. The team was now workable, temporarily at least.

The most-used lineup during the 2023/24 season.

The game plan was to have a back three formed by Tchouaméni dropping into the defensive line as the left-most of a back three (much like Leon Goretzka did at times last season), with Eric Dier advancing into midfield. Musiala would act as more of a midfielder too, playing ever so slightly deeper than Leroy Sané who would essentially play as a second striker, utilising his pace to crash the box while Musiala would conduct play in more areas of the pitch. Now, don’t start booking an optometrist appointment just yet, you are reading that correctly, Bryan Zaragoza was the starting right-winger. The Spaniard was on the chopping block but he just kept impressing, so I elected to keep him and he eventually became one of the best performers in the squad.

Speaking of unlikely performers, Eric Dier, too, would become a surprisingly effective force as a libero, ending up making the most appearances out of any defender with 42 across the season. The big tragedy of this season really was Thomas Müller, who simply couldn’t keep fit and didn’t even make 20 appearances across the season, despite my needing his input numerous times during the year as Musiala and Sané cannot just play every minute. However, I found alternative solutions to this with Serge Gnabry and Leon Goretzka getting a good share of minutes in these roles rather than out wide or in the centre of the park.

However, once the January window came, there was another problem. Two, to be exact. Leroy Sané was intent on running his contract down rather than extending, and Serge Gnabry wanted to leave as Liverpool had become interested in him. Losing Gnabry, especially for the fee Liverpool paid for him (€53m) was not a massive problem, but losing Sané definitely was as he was by far my best player this season, averaging a rating of 7.5 with 12 goals and 11 assists in the league alone by the end of the year. It was clear I was going to have to start making some moves, lest the team lose its attacking edge.

So, in this window, I elected to not do anything about it, only signing Nathan Tella on loan from Bayer 04 Leverkusen as a stop-gap replacement for Serge Gnabry, while waiting on Leroy Sané’s situation to develop in the summer. Meanwhile, I also secured the future of the defense post-Dier by signing Samson Baidoo from RB Salzburg for €31m and immediately loaning him back, as well as casually picking up João Neves from SL Benfica for an €86m fee. This might not seem like the best way to re-invest money when there’s clearly issues coming up in attack, but the versatility of Konrad Laimer, Neves, Goretzka, Dier and Kimmich allowed me to have numerous different setups with Neves and Goretzka in particular being played everywhere from second striker to defensive midfielder.

Neves, in particular, took to Bayern like a fish to water, scoring 5 and assisting 3 in 13 league appearances. Tella was serviceable too, coming up big in particular against RB Leipzig in the league — a team that we have formed a stronger rivalry with in this save due to some high-profile clashes — as well as Borussia Dortmund and FC Copenhagen in a UEFA Champions League quarter-final. They say you should never fall in love with a loan player, and while I may have still seen Tella’s shortcomings and decided against signing him permanently, he certainly became a favourite player of mine in the few months he was around. In March, I managed to figure out a long-term solution for the wings, with Savinho (who is still as Girona on loan from ESTAC Troyes in this timeline) being purchased for €52m, set to arrive in the summer.

These signings were crucial in winning the team points, and Bayern Munich lifted the Bundesliga after an invincible season, breaking the points record with 92 points gathered over the course of the season. The team also walked to a DfB Pokal win, with Leroy Sané scoring a brace in the final. The Champions League looked bright too, with the team getting a 0-0 draw away and leading after 15 minutes at the Allianz thanks to Sané... but it all fell apart. In the 66th minute, Bukayo Saka equalised after beating Eric Dier in a 1v1 situation at the edge of the box. The alarm bells were ringing. The full-time whistle blew, and we were into extra time, and because I had made more substitutions than Arteta to try and preserve the lead, feeling unconfident at the team’s likelihood of getting a second goal due to us struggling to create chances in our previous encounters, we had a lot more tired legs. With just ten minutes left to play, I desperately pushed the team forward to put the game to bed before penalties, expecting Arteta to have made a mistake in how his team transition off the ball. He hadn’t.

In the 111th minute, Bundesliga alumnus Reiss Nelson headed home to give Arsenal the lead. Four minutes later, Bayern Twitter legend Strahinja Pavlović scored from a corner to make it 3-1. In stoppage time, Bukayo Saka completed his brace. What was looking like a square 1-1 draw very quickly turned into a 1-4 bloodbath in our own backyard, and the team were heartbroken. There was no one to blame but myself for going with such a stupid approach to the game, trying to take the game to Arsenal when they had fresher players. It was time to re-assess, rebuild and go again. Hey, at least I won a domestic double which we haven’t done in four years, and stopped the Bundesliga streak from ending.

The 2024/25 Season: Homecoming Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

I never make the same mistake twice, I always aim for a third time‘Cause I never make the same mistake twice, if I do it’s an encore.

Now came the first of two summers that will prove to be perhaps the most important windows of the save as a whole, as there will be simply no other transfer period that sees this much change in such a short amount of time. First, the smaller deals.

Frans Krätzig, Paul Wanner, Gabriel Vidović, Yusuf Kabadayı, Justin Janitzek, Arijon Ibrahimović, Adin Ličina, Adam Aznou, Lovro Zvonarek, Aleksandar Pavlović, Robert Ramšak, Mattéo Perez Vinlöf and Nestory Irankunda were sent out to develop for yet another season, as were some new signings: namely Archie Gray (€24.5m), Assan Ouédraogo (€28m), Sverre Halseth Nypan (€3.3m) and Marc Bernal (€17.5m). These are all players I have general plans for, but of course they do not fit into the first team right now and will require a lot of time to develop. Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting’s contract had run its course, and while Dier was also set to leave, I decided to sign him on a one-year contract after his amazing performances last season, but this would end up being a bit of a nothing deal as Dier failed to make a single first-team appearance this season.

The returning Alexander Nübel was quickly shown the door to Al-Ettifaq, who bid €6m (€7.5m with add-ons) for him. Raphaël Guerreiro and Sacha Boey were finally freed too, Guerreiro heading to Milan for €28m and Boey to AS Roma for €35m. Daniel Peretz, too, would be sold AS Monaco for €1.5m, leaving us with a soon-to-retire Sven Ulreich and the aging Manuel Neuer in goal for the season. Mazraoui was loaned out to Liverpool for the season with a €42m obligation should they win the Premier League, but they failed to do so and so Mazraoui would return to the club the next summer, still yet to find a permanent home.

Malik Tillman was of no use to me and didn’t have a high ceiling, and was sold to RB Leipzig for €16m, a deal that would turn out to be highly successful for Leipzig. Josip Stanišić too was shown the door due to a lack of a high potential in the game for a measly sum of €7.5m, but the big hitters were yet to come as the team lost three key figures from last season. Leroy Sané was a player I was seriously considering letting run into the last year of his contract, but when Newcastle United bid €97m I simply couldn’t turn it down. Alphonso Davies was unhappy with his playing time and requested a transfer as he was very clearly second-choice to Kingsley Coman at left wing, being sold to Wolverhampton for €70m. Dayot Upamecano, while happy at the club, soon became desperate to leave after Liverpool FC began to discuss a deal for him, and I eventually had to acquiesce at a €60m price. However, there is little to worry about. You know I have a plan.

With Savinho joining, I already had my Davies replacement in place with a net profit made across those two transactions. Gabriel Moscardo would join the team as Tchouaméni’s backup for just under €20m. With Neves settling well into midfield, Kimmich was re-positioned to play libero this season, but he needed a backup as Dier was lucky to hit a purple patch and the other centre-backs simply weren’t suited to the role: Ousmane Diomande was brought in from Sporting CP for a fee of €59m. With Nathan Tella’s deal not being made permanent, there was a gap at right-wing in case Zaragoza got injured: Yeremy Pino was brought in from Villarreal for a fee of €100m.

We may have a new CB in Samson Baidoo returning from loan but that still left us with only three non-libero CBs: Castello Lukeba was brought in from RB Leipzig for a fee of €110m. Now, there was just one more question to address: How do you replace Leroy Sané? There’s really no players specialised to his skillset. I elected to move Musiala to Sané’s role in the team, and pulled the trigger on the most important deal in German football. Florian Wirtz was purchased for a club record fee of €125m, potentially reaching €140m with add-ons.

Now you might be thinking, “These figures don’t sound right at all! How is he spending well over half a billion Euros in one window?” Well, the experienced FM players already know what I’m doing, but to those not in the know, I am using (or rather, abusing) the option to pay transfer fees in installments. By spreading the payment out, I am only paying about a third of each fee in the window I receive the player, with small chunks of the fee being paid over the course of six years. For example, the Wirtz deal only cost me €47m up-front with the other €78m to be paid over six years, at an average of €13m per year.

The squad more than taken shape, it had begun to look scary.

The squad during the 2024/25 season.

It took some getting used to, but eventually the team began to set the pitch on fire, conceding more than a few but scoring just as many. However, with some tactical adjustments, the team became defensively more than sound, conceding just two goals (to Arsenal, of all teams) from December to February, including shutouts against Borussia Dortmund in the DfB Pokal and Bayer Leverkusen in the league, in which neither team mustered a shot on target.

However, disaster struck as in January, the team lost their first league game, the end of a 52-game long unbeaten streak carried over from the season prior, a 1-0 loss at the Allianz to VfB Stuttgart courtesy of Serhou Guirassy. Just two weeks later, the team would suffer a 2-1 loss to RB Leipzig in the DFB-Pokal quarter-final — who were becoming quite a problem, and then another two weeks later, a 1-0 loss to Liverpool in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16. Morale was low, but I continued to tweak the tactics and motivate the players despite the setbacks.

The January window saw a couple of moves. Tel and Kane were both struggling for fitness, and not wanting to play Müller at striker, I chose to loan in Sébastien Haller for the rest of the season. Claudio Echeverri was also brought in from Manchester City for €54m to sure up the attacking midfield positions, as I wanted to have four options instead of three. The only departure was Leon Goretzka, who joined AC Milan on loan with an obligation to buy for €59m. Once again, no idea why Milan agreed to such a deal, but no complaints here.

A quickfire double from Laimer and Pino at the Allianz against Liverpool helped us get over the line. This was the time where with fitness waning, injuries creeping in and tactics ever-changing from game-to-game as I was unsure of what worked, one man seemed to perform no matter what: Wirtz. The little German that could, did.

It didn’t matter what the tactics were, or even if he was being played in the correct position or not, this kid would play his socks off, and he did so crucially in the quarter-finals against Real Sociedad, scoring a brace in the first leg as part of a 4-0 win. However, as the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals drew to a close, the team found itself 1-0 down again, dominating a game at Old Trafford but ultimately failing to convert their chances with Manchester United getting a goal in stoppage time courtesy of Rasmus Højlund. A 4-1 drubbing of Bayer Leverkusen occurred after the first leg, a game in which Echeverri caught my eye as a serious first team option and not just a backup after scoring a brace.

The Allianz Arena was electric, not just for the semi-final but the chance to play there again in the final. This was it, now or never, the last chance for Neuer and Müller to right the wrong of 2012. Bayern equalled the aggregate score within ten minutes thanks to a far post header from Kingsley Coman via a cross from Joshua Kimmich, it was almost exactly the goal that won Bayern the 2020 Champions League. However, with less than twenty left to play, Mason Mount managed to sneak a goal in from a corner after the ball ping-ponged around the six-yard area. I got desperate.

There was no way we were going to let our legends down like this. Musiala was utterly shattered, so I took him off for Echeverri, and pushed the entire team up the pitch. With the high press, United began to struggle and with quite literally the last move of the game, Harry Maguire tried to pass it to his left-back but Castello Lukeba, pushed all the way up to United’s box, intercepted and laid it off to Echeverri in the middle who hit it first time into the bottom left corner. We were level. Extra time flew by, and Neuer managed to save us on penalties despite misses from Joshua Kimmich and Harry Kane. We were there, we there in the final.

Despite suffering 2 losses in the league, winning 30 games and drawing the other 2 meant we finished the season with 92 points, equalling the record we set last season, but it was more impressive this time around, conceding two more (23 compared to 21) but shattering the record for most goals in a season with 111 (the old record being 101). The Pokal may have been lost, but finale dahoam beckoned. I did not care if Müller was out of form and had actually been one of the worst performers this season, he HAD to start, as did of course Neuer. Our opponent? RB Leipzig. Of course.

Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, but no matter how many times Leipzig breached our defense, Neuer stood imperious. In what will most likely end up being his final Champions League game, under the lights of his own stadium, the captain of Bayern Munich took one last stand against the odds to stop the million shots taken. On the other end, Harry Kane managed to bag a brace, with the game ending 2-0. After a five-year gap, Bayern had captured the Champions League once again, this time at the Allianz Arena, making Neuer and Müller three-time Champions League winners in three different eras.

The 2025/26 season fast approaches, with Thomas Müller now named captain, and Manuel Neuer’s physical decline accelerating to the point that he has decided to call it quits at the end of the season. Furthermore, Kingsley Coman seems hellbent on a move away, requiring us to go back to the drawing board for a winger, and Bryan Zaragoza’s limitations are beginning to show, as while he had an extended patch of very good form, he is no longer consistent. What direction is this squad headed? There’s only one way to find out.