Scouring the globe and hunting for future superstars is a big reason why we play Football Manager. 

When your scouts present a player with five-star potential and a 90+ recommendation, you think you’ve hit the jackpot. The bid goes in, the contract is offered, and he signs on the dotted line. Your new wonderkid Attacking Midfielder joins the other four wonderkid Attacking Midfielders you already have in your squad… 

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can build a successful squad while maintaining balance. You can look beyond the star ratings and shape your recruitment strategy, in numerous ways, that’ll be much more beneficial in both the short and long term. Here are a few ideas from FMSamo.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve picked out some of the best FM20 saves in the Bundesliga. In this series finale, we’re focusing on a side that are one of Germany’s biggest but have not lifted the title since 1958.

You’ve got the chance to not just win the Bundesliga but create a dynasty from a team that oozes potential.
The Ruhr region was traditionally the industrial powerhouse of Germany but industrial isn’t a word that can be used to describe Schalke 04, one of the region’s biggest teams. Die Königsblauen have a a squad packed with exciting young talent and look set to challenge for the top four in the coming seasons.
 

We’ve been profiling teams across the length and breadth of Germany, analysing the Bundesliga teams you should manage in Football Manager 2020. 

Die Wölfe started life as a worker’s team for Volkswagen and after spending most of the 20th century in Germany’s lower divisions, they have been Bundesliga mainstays since 1997. Many tipped the club to drop straight back down the divisions after their initial promotion, but they thrived in the top-flight, regularly qualifying for European competitions and winning the league title in the 2008/09 season. In fact, Wolfsburg were the last side other than Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund to win the Bundesliga. 

Since then, the club have regularly competed with Germany’s elite and in 2015 they enjoyed their best year of the last decade, finishing second in the league, winning the DfB Pokal and lifting the Supercup before the start of the following season. 

Being the only club from the state of Lower Saxony and challenging the elite is the sort of mission Football Manager was built for. Here’s everything you need to know before kicking off your adventure at the Volkswagen Arena. 

The Director of Football (DoF) may seem like a role which merely gets in the way, someone who takes tasks out of the manager’s hands. But, more recently we’ve seen many examples of a DoF working alongside a manager to propel the club forward; helping a manager to make key decisions and allowing them to focus more on tactics and team selection. 

While DoFs in the real world are increasingly commonplace, they are still perhaps underappreciated and underutilised in Football Manager.

In FM, if you’re not utilising a DoF you’re, potentially, not becoming the best boss you can be. Here’s how they can help and why you should seriously think about employing one. With words of advice from commentator, journalist and avid FM fan, Michael McCann. 
 

The latest in our series on Bundesliga teams to manage sees us profile a team known to many for their regular appearances in continental competitions over the last two decades, Bayer 04 Leverkusen. 

The club were founded in 1904 by workers at the Pharmaceutical company Bayer AG and they’ve tried to maintain a link to their roots to this day, with Leverkusen nicknamed ‘Die Werkself’, meaning ‘The Company’s Eleven’. Despite their long history, they’ve never lifted the German title.

Bundesliga regulars since 1980, they’ve mostly finished in the top half, aside from a couple of brushes with the drop zone, and more often than not in the top six. Domestically, their best achievements are five second-place finishes in the league and a single DfB Pokal triumph in 1993.

Leverkusen have had some great success in Europe, producing a dramatic comeback from a 3-0 first leg deficit to win the 1988 Euro Cup on penalties. They also became the first team to reach the Champions Cup final without having ever won a league title in 2002, losing 2-1. 

Köln (or Cologne) is the cultural centre of Germany’s Rhineland, hosting a wealth of museums, galleries and, like all good cities, one very interesting football club. A club with a magnificent 50,000 seater-stadium which creates one of the nation’s finest atmospheres. 

1.FC Köln were Bundesliga stalwarts until 1998 when they slipped into the second tier. Until that campaign, they’d been in the top flight since the Bundesliga’s inception and were the first team to win the title. They were crowned champions again in 1978, truly cementing themselves as one of the country’s fiercest clubs. 20 years later, they dropped down to the second tier. 

Looking back retrospectively like this makes that relegation seem so peculiar. The same can be said for their relegation in 2018 too, a year after securing a fifth-placed finish in the Bundesliga. 

Earlier in the series we profiled Hertha Berlin and now we turn our attention to their neighbours from the east of the city, Union Berlin.

In their current guise, ‘The Iron Ones’ were formed in 1966 but, as they were based in the eastern part of Berlin, they only joined the Bundesliga league structure in 1990. Since then they’ve mostly played their football in the Bundesliga 2 and the 3.Liga and prior to 2019, their greatest success came in 2001, when they reached the DFB-Pokal final as a third-tier outfit, losing 2-0 to Schalke 04 in the final. 
 

The Bundesliga became the first major European league to restart since the Coronavirus outbreak. In the three weeks since its return we’ve been entertained with plenty of high-scoring games and tense clashes at both ends of the table.

The Bundesliga is a fantastic league to start a save in Football Manager as well. For a start, it’s fully licensed - no silhouettes on the team line-ups screen here - and each of the 18 teams in the league has a fully fleshed out, unique identity. Over the coming days we’re going to showcase six Bundesliga outfits that offer the best short and long-term challenges for you to get stuck into in FM20.

We kick things off with a trip to the capital to take a closer look at Hertha Berlin.
 

A throw-in is not all that different from a free kick or a corner; it’s a set-piece that you can train and prepare multiple routines for. There is one major difference, though: while corners and free-kicks are aspects of the game that are coached rigorously from a young age, throw-ins are often neglected. This is madness as, on average, football teams get to take and defend around 50 throw-ins per game. That is a colossal figure, far too big just to ignore. The good news is, though, that (like all set-pieces) throw-ins can be improved upon both in terms of technique and positioning.

By @MerryGuido 

That special buzz in the air. The big pre-match build-up. There’s nothing quite like a Football Manager cup final.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro with a trophy cabinet bursting at the seams or a managerial novice, cup final days always feel exceptional. It’s difficult to treat a cup final as ‘just another game’ and we don’t think you should. Treat it for what it is… a day to remember. Here are the six things you need to do to get fixed up and looking sharp for your cup final.
 

If you’re like me and usually take some time before hitting ‘Continue’ after starting a new save, then you more than likely have Day One of Football Manager nailed down by now. A combination of attempted perfectionism and general new save obsession means that days can pass before I reach our first league game… and I’m completely ok with that.

However, if you’re not as inclined to spend hours deciding which U18 Physios and set piece routines you will need in your first season, or you’re a newcomer to the series, it’s important to remember that Day One in FM can be critical in ensuring you get the right things done from the very beginning. It’s valuable time where you can avoid being slow off the mark when it comes to sorting your team, tactics, recruitment and financial situation before hitting ‘Save’ for the first time.

Here are 10 essentials that every player should remember when starting a new save in Football Manager. 

Football Manager 2020 comes in all shapes and sizes. The desktop game is available on PC, Mac and Google Stadia, while we also produce Football Manager Touch for PC, Mac, Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch and Football Manager Mobile is available on Android and iOS.