CM2 96-97 Italia - Career of Gianluca Peroni - Season 1

Having conquered Scottish football with Queen's Park, won a World Cup with Scotland, and lead Hereford United to a Premier League title, I then proceeded to spend 6 seasons trying to win an International competition with Wales... which... on CM2 96-97 inside an English leagues database is an incredibly harder challenge than you might think! After crashing out in the Second Round of the World Cup, I conceded that I probably wasn't going to win anything with this Welsh side and that it was maybe time to try something new... In case the blog title didn't give it away... I turned my attention to the Italian Leagues version of CM2 96-97. Italian football was a big deal in the 90's and there are earlier versions of the Italian leagues for CM1 with it being a bit of a regular addition to the series by 1996. I know very little about 90's Italian football. And I'm no Italian football genius like James Horncastle or anything... but the prospect of playing in an European league looked like it might be good fun. And with this being an (almost) solely Italian database I decided I also had to invent an Italian character to play as... obviously... and settled upon the name: Gianluca Peroni in tribute to my favorite Italian brand beer and a name I genuinely thought would be completely made up. Until I googled it like 2 minutes ago... and learned Peroni is genuinely a real surname... In any event: Gianluca Peroni it is, and Mr. Peroni; a 35 year old young, inexperienced manager starting his fledgling career in football management would take the helm of Serie B side; AC Cesena. Why? Cesena were relegated from Serie B at end of the 96/97 season in real life 2nd from bottom, so I fancied the challenge of seeing if I could keep them up. And having done so well with teams who play in black & white before now, I felt like it would be nice to carry that theme through into league number 3.

Mildly long intro aside; I'm going into this with no real pre-conceived aim or goal. Sure I want to eventually win everything at least once... but my aim here is more to just try and enjoy the game a bit more and not let the pressure of a challenge taint it for me. Taking a look at my Cesena side I concluded that they were a fairly well balanced team. So with that in mind I opted to only bring in a couple of new signings to bolster where I thought improvements were needed signing young Centre Back; Simone Farabegoli, Right Back; Federico Molinari who I hope is going to go on to be legendary, and Striker Diego Virille all on free transfers.

And after a couple of games into the season, concerned that Valerio Fiori just wasn't really first team Goalkeeper material and spotting a name I recognized from my time in a different universe as Hereford boss, I snapped up Florian Prunea from Steaua for a cool £1,000,000, squandering our whole transfer budget, with hopes that he'll go on to be the best Goalkeeper in the world as he had done in my prior save.

Love that background... I opted to play a balanced 5-3-2 formation with a Passing style here in Italy as I feel that best matches the rest of the teams and competition in the leagues - and it was popular in Italian football in real life at the time. I also just fancied trying something a bit different as Gianluca. It's a slightly more flexible system and I can shift to Sweeper Defensive or Ultra Defensive fairly easily in the event we need to close up shop and hold a narrow lead.

The Italian leagues are a bit different in that the season kicks off with the Coppa Italia 1st and 2nd rounds. We had a tough draw against potential Serie A promotion contenders Palermo but in a tight game, we managed to edge passed them 2-1 and was rewarded with a visit from another team who play in black & white.. Serie A's Juventus who soundly beat us 3-1 and that was the end of our Coppa Italia run this season...

With that being the only cup competition in Italy, at least in Serie B anyway, that gave us plenty of space to focus on the league! We kicked off with a 1-0 loss against Salernitana which isn't ideal... but quickly bounced back with a 3-0 win over Torino which I was pleased with, given that I fancied Torino as another team with promotion candidates written all over them. After a 4-4 draw against Cremonese we then went on to pick up 5 wins on the bounce including a 7-0 demolition against Pescara at home.

The highest score I've achieved with any team I've managed in the game so far and a new record for Cesena! We then picked up a further 5 wins and 5 draws with Genoa and Lucchese both holding us to goalless scorelines, but with 11 wins, 6 draws and only one loss after 18 games we sat at the top of Serie B by January with a 6 point lead over Castel di Sangro in 2nd!

Far beyond my initial expectations. The good form continued as we beat Chievo 3-0 and Salernitana 4-1 but after a 3-1 loss away to Torino player form started to falter - not helped by a few members of the first team squad wanting to move to a bigger club - and as a result team form faltered. We won against Cremonese, but were soundly beaten by Bari 3-0 in a game we never really showed up for. We won at Brescia but lost against Cosenza. We beat Reggina 6-2 and I thought we were back but then went on to lose against Pescara 3-1. Having only been beaten once all season in our first 18, the losses were starting to rack up, however we still managed to hold a lead of 6 points at the top of the table. We beat Genoa 2-0 followed by two draws and a loss. We bounced back with a win against Lucchese at home followed by 4 low scoring draws against Padova, Emploi, Castel di Sangro and Lecce however despite the dip in form, we did enough to secure promotion despite slipping off the top.

Owing to our mixed form Bari had overtaken us by a point, with 2 games to go before the end of the season. After Bari couldn't get passed Empoli in a 3-3 draw, we went on to beat Venezia 3-2 to reclaim top spot but purely on goal difference! We had to pick up a win against Chievo at home as anything less than a win gave Bari the opportunity to leapfrog us. Chievo currently sat in 17th with 12 wins and 7 draws against 19 defeats... Bari meanwhile had Castel di Sangro at home - a team that had had a strong season and sat inside automatic promotion. Chievo barely showed up for our game and we won comfortably 3-0 and I hoped we had done enough... Bari went on to win, but only 1-0, a result which secured promotion for both teams as 5th place Padova lost to Cosenza 3-1... but more importantly it meant that; by 6 goals we had won the Serie B division title on goal difference!!

It doesn't matter how... it just matters that you got there! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. In reality the second half of the season had felt a bit disappointing and we drew far too many games that we should have won. 4 games in April finished 0-0 or 1-1 so food for thought going into next season. But having set myself the initial goal of just surviving relegation - again - we snatched the Serie B title and will be mixing it up with Serie A Champions; Milan, Juventus, Fiorentina, Lazio, but not Coppa Italia champions; Udinese who have been relegated...

Giovanni Bossi was our best player all season, sat on the left hand side of defensive midfield after Aldo Dolchetti picked up an injury. He played so well that he forced Dolchetti out the team, and with 10 goals in 33 games he was a potent threat on left wing and often a difference maker in some of our narrow wins.

Girolamo Bizzarri was our top scorer with 18 goals in 40 games and a further 11 assists. Paired with new signing Diego Virille for most of the season, who finished on 14 goals and 10 assists in 39 games, I'm mindful that 32 goals between them is absolutely not to be sniffed at, but I do feel we will need a more prolific goalscorer if we are going to survive in Serie A. For now Bizzarri is likely to start next season but at 29 I don't see him developing much beyond his current level.

Alessandro Bianchi was the creative spark in midfield with 34 assists and 36 games and also club captain. Although his form was sometimes a bit mixed he was the lynch pin around the rest of the team and the first name on the team sheet, when he wasn't injured! I'm hoping he can maintain the same level of goal assists in Serie A but I am mindful he might not be up to task and I should have a Plan B in place.

I feel like an honorable mention should also go to Omar Melizza who sat in the middle of our 3 man centre midfield and bagged 14 goals in 37 games. At 19 years old, I hope he has room to develop and improve and his good form earned him a new contract and a bumper pay rise at the end of this season!

At the End of Year Awards I received the Serie B Manager of the Year award which is very nice. That's one achievement to mark off the list! I'm also going to keep my eye on Serie B top scorer Davide Dionigi and he's unsettled at Reggina and if we can snap him up to join Cesena then I'll jump at the opportunity!

So achieving promotion to Serie A is obviously fantastic and I'm pleased with the achievement however there are some realities to face... the club is £1.6 million in debt, largely because of the wage bill. A good 7, 8 players are just not good enough to play for the squad and / or just don't fit in my team and are transfer listed but some of them have 2, 3 years left on their contracts. Some of the first team players we have - I think - are going to struggle with the step up in level and I want to bring in better talent. There is alot of work to do if survival in Serie A is to be a reality. And we have no money. But I'm up for the challenge and just hope I can make it all somehow work before we wind up in a potential relegation battle next season!