Summary
One of the most difficult aspects of everyFootball Manager 2024save is selecting who to manage. There aresome fun teams to control, but sometimes you may just want something different. After all, if you’ve played FM a lot, you’ve probably transformed many teams into the world’s best through wonderkid scouting and overpowered tactics.
So, it’s occasionally nice to have a different sort of Football Manager experience. This is exactly what challenges provide. These aren’t in-game features. They’re challenges created by the FM community that you’re able to enforce upon yourself. They force you to play the game a bit differently and can provide new experiences. Here are the best challenges to try.
8Journeyman Challenge
Journeyman is the sort of challenge most Football Manager players have likely thought of doing at some point, but it takes a lot of time and effort. This is because, for a true Journeyman save, you must start unemployed with no coaching badges or past playing experience. So, you have to start from the bottom and try to get a managerial position at any club that will have you. Then, you must build your way up.
You don’t have to stay with the same club the entire time, as the challenge is more about your managerial career than your team. There’s no specific endpoint to this challenge, but if you may win a major trophy in a major league after essentially starting from nothing, then that would be impressive.
7Build A Nation Challenge
Building up a team to be very strong is a common thing to do in a Football Manager. However, building up an entire league is more unusual, but it’s the goal of the Build A Nation Challenge. For it, you control one team from a small nation that doesn’t have an impressive league. Over a number of seasons, you make them the most dominant team in the league to the point where you finish top every season.
In the process, you try to continually advance in continental competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League. The more progress you make, the more your country’s coefficients improve, meaning more teams in your league may get to play in those competitions. This will steadily improve the quality of your league and its reputation. Your objective is to make it one of the top leagues in the world.
Creating a very deep squad and loaning the players you don’t need to other clubs in the division can help boost the quality of the league.
6Glory Hunter Challenge
The Glory Hunter Challenge is popular among content creators. There are a few variations to the challenge. Yet, in general, you give yourself 20 seasons to win both the league and main domestic cup in Europe’s five biggest leagues, as well as the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, World Cup, and European Championships.
Europe’s five biggest leagues (as they’re named in-game):
English Premier Division, Spanish First Division, Italian Serie A, Bundesliga (Germany), and Ligue 1 Uber Eats (France).
So, it’s all about winning things and doing it quickly. Therefore, scouting forthe best wonderkidsand nurturing youth isn’t a big part of the experience. You need players who can win you things straight away, as you don’t want to spend too many seasons at any one club, as that will eat into your 20-season limit.
5Director Of Football Challenge
Confusingly, FM players have given the name ‘Director of Football Challenge’ to two different famous challenges. This is the one where you are the Director of Football.
Do you love making transfers and sorting contracts in Football Manager but hate dealing with tactics and matchday stuff? If so, then the Director of Football Challenge is for you. Now, you can’t actually give yourself the job title of DOF, as the game isn’t called ‘Football Director of Football 2024.’ However, you can alter your responsibilities and make sure that your assistant manager and coaches are involved in all the team management jobs.
Therefore, you must put them in charge of team talks, training, and set pieces. You also need to go with their recommendations when selecting your team. Your job then becomes all about scouting, making transfers, and handling contracts. So, you build the team and have the AI control it. Be warned, though, that you will still be blamed if your team loses a lot of matches.
4Rags To Riches Challenge
The Rags to Riches Challenge is very simple to understand but time-consuming to complete. You take control of a club in the lowest league of their country and attempt to get them to the top division and win it. This works best in England, where there are plenty of leagues to progress through.
To accomplish the impressive feat, you will need to continually improve your squad, as you will face tougher opposition every time you go up a division. Great scouting and taking advantage of loan deals will be key to your success.
3Local Heroes Challenge
These days, the most successful teams in world football are filled with players from all around the globe. The Local Heroes Challenge attempts to change that. For this challenge, not only are you forced to sign players from the same country as your team, but they have to have the same place of birth. For example, if you’re controlling Liverpool, you’re able to only sign players that were born in Liverpool.
You may need some knowledge of the team you’re controlling to do this, as the name of the club won’t necessarily be the name of a birthplace. For instance, if you’re controlling Arsenal, you would need to look for players from London, as there’s no place of birth called ‘Arsenal.’ Of course, at the start, you will have a mix of players from different places, but over time, you should build a team completely made up of locals.
You can see a player’s place of birth from their ‘information’ screen. Plus, in ‘scouting,’ you can add a ‘place of birth’ filter when searching for players.
2Youth Only Challenge
Making transfers in Football Manager 2024is one of the most enjoyable things to do in the game. Yet, it’s equally enjoyable nurturing the talent in your youth system and hopefully turning them into superstars. That is a requirement in the Youth Only Challenge because you aren’t allowed to sign anybody.
You just have to rely on your youth recruitment to bring in top talent, and it’s then up to you to get them to realize their potential. Your overall goal is to win the biggest trophies using this method. So, controlling a club with excellent youth facilities and youth recruitment is a must.
1The Pentagon Challenge
While people often talk about the UEFA Champions League, it isn’t the only competition like it in the world, nor in the game. There are big continental championships in other places, too. Winning them all is the objective of the Pentagon Challenge. This means you have to win the Asian, African, South American, North American, and European versions of the Champions League.
Therefore, you’re going to have to control at least five different teams during that save. Yet, the rules of the challenge dictate that you must start unemployed. Also, many feel you have to start with no coaching badges or playing experience, but that’s more up to you. Either way, this is a very difficult challenge that takes a long time.
