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Tourist places, tourist season... prices go high, not to mention recent inflation. It's been the topic of articles and memes even, the term "horror receipts" could be seen quite often during last year and this one too.

What for, vacation?

Yeah, Ferdinand is not the sharpest tool in the shed. One of the many pundits who got their job through nepotism and box ticking as opposed to actually having an opinion or insight worth listening too.

The Witcher 3 is actually the game that got me into gaming as a more serious hobby, before that I was mostly into casual sports/racing games. Post playing that I've read the books and played the older games, really good franchise. Just ignore the Netflix show.

I had forgotten that you play on Switch, KCD also got a switch port recently. Like TW3 I think they used some sort of black magic to get it running decently on that hardware.

If I was to compare Witcher and KCD I would say that KCD is similar to Witcher 2 in terms of scope and scale. I'm sure that Warhorse will be hoping for similar blow up with the sequel, although I guess a grounded historical RPG is inherently more niche than a fantasy game.

For me Scotland were just shell shocked and couldn't adapt. They were obviously outclassed but they probably could have kept the score down had they pushed their back line up and gave the German #10s less room to play in. Obviously easier said than done but I don't think the Germans were that good.

Yes I did see that news, they're really going all in on the next game. For me it's not particularly relevant as I've always added graphics, real name fixes and all that jazz but a majority of people don't do that. For those people a licensed Premier League is probably massive.

FM25 is certainly going to be an interesting release with the change to Unity engine. It's a genuinely unique experience not having a clue what's coming next in this franchise.

The story about Rui Costa crying in a friendly is pretty funny, it's 100% something modern players would do for social media likes. A lot of time that stuff feels so obviously insincere. The current trend is players making sure cameras catch them not walking on opposition club badges on carpets or whatever. My favourite case of that has to be Rio Ferdinand whilst doing some TV work at Real Madrid, he'll show 'respect' to a badge happily cheat on his wife whilst she's going through cancer treatment.

Maybe Rui Costa is president because of the name and he's not really running things? Like Joe Biden.

Bachelor/Bachelorette parties are somewhat strange traditions, well the more extreme ones anyway. 'Let's take the groom to be to the most famous red light district in Europe'...'Okay, cool'. I've only actually been to 1 wedding as an adult, got dragged along to loads as a kid though. I guess my parents were more popular than me.

On replaying KCD recently it probably became my favourite game of all time. Mechanically it's an RPG with some immersive sim elements but it's the attention to historical details and general quality of writing that made me love it. It's clear and obvious that the mostly Czech team working on it really cared. I could be wrong but I think Jan Ziska will be a major character in the sequel, maybe you visited his monument whilst visiting Prague? If your PC can run it you should pick it up, it's regularly on sale with all of it's DLC for around 6 or 7 Euros these days.

I'm sure India would be an experience. I don't particularly enjoy big cities in developed world I'm not sure how I'd deal with the chaos of a big city in the developing world.

Scotland. lol

Now that you mention it I think I remember reading about the old Benfica president back when that was all happening. You're right, it's highly unlikely that Rui Costa was unaware/uninvolved.

The impression I got from the Benfica forum was more one of displeasure at the current situation over excitement about any potential investment from Mark Attanasio's group tbh. From what I know about the guy it's safe to say that even if he did invest in the club not much would change on the pitch. He's personally wealthy and he's good at raising money but he's not the oil state that you'd probably need to get excited about as a Benfica fan.

I know there's a lot of fan ownership in Portugal so I guess that would influence how fans would react to something like that.

Of course you are right about the international tournaments, I'm sure my excitement for it will rise once it kicks off. I think through a mix of the British summer having not started yet and the timing of the previous world cup it feels 'too soon' for another on at the moment. lol

Our FA have actually taken some good strides forward over the last 15 years or so, especially when it comes to player development. The technical floor of our young players is certainly on the up and that should build a better framework to support the odd superstar that we can produce. We're not trying to be 00s Spain but I'd imagine that is probably what influenced our FA to make a change. We've won 5 or 6 youth tournaments over the last 5 or 6 years and whilst it obviously isn't a sure fire sign of success it does feel as if we're taking steps forward.

In terms of managers we don't seem to be producing much, in the league system at least. I wonder if that might be down to the English football holding onto the 'manager' job whilst a lot Europe is trending towards 'head coaches'. Once Southgate goes I could see us replacing him from within. Southgate really isn't the most inspiring manager but he's also doing what a lot of managers before him have struggled to do, he's keeping a happy camp. That at least says something about his man management skills.

Not Auschwitz but I have visited the Anne Frank House museum. I was technically on a stag do so it was a bit different to the rest of the weekend.

100% influenced by a video game (Kingdom Come Deliverance) but I really want to visit the Czech Republic. No real plans to go as of yet but maybe that will change when the sequel comes out later this year.

If I was going to do a big Asia trip I think I'd pick China over weeb land but yeah, Japan would be cool too.

Fair enough, I take it that the doors are open to an investment but he wasn't the type of character the current board want to work with. Or maybe they're saying the doors are open so they don't piss fans off but they're really not. I doubt Attanasio's group just randomly knocked on the door.

I took a glance at a Benfica forum when the news broke and there were certainly some interested fans. Although I think that was mostly down to Rui Costa and the current board. I think the world 'parasite' came up a few times.

Wouldn't say I'm excited going into the Euros but yes, they usually are decent tournaments. I haven't really watched much football outside of the English Championship in the last 2 years so I'm certainly not confident in any predictions. Although a glance at the squads and my money would be on France.

England are doing the typical England thing where we pin pretty much all of our hopes on a single 'wonderkid'. On the bright side Bellingham seems to have his head screwed on at this age more than the liked of Rooney and Gascoigne ever did. Realistically though, don't fancy our chances.

Poland, interesting. Holiday? Work travel?

https://www.sportico.com/business/team-sales/2024/mark-attanasio-jean-marc-chapus-benfica-stake-sale-1234783339/

I see our joint majority shareholder (soon to be owner) is looking to invest in Benfica. From the AGMs and interviews I've seen with him he seems like a pretty genuine guy, so the approach is almost certainly serious.

He has previously spoken about investing in other clubs too so in that sense this isn't surprising. Although I must say I was thinking his next investment would look more like Brentford's owner linking up with FC Midtjylland or Brighton's with Union Saint-Gilloise, not a big European club.

If this does go through I think it's safe to say that we'll be looking to copy your homework on certain things. As it stands we're currently building an in house data/analytics tool, we're extremely focused on youth development and are one of the few British clubs (outside of the top 6 or 7) to have full time scouts out in South America. Whilst I am assuming Benfica are stronger than us with the analytics stuff it's clear that you're one of the best in the world at finding value in South America and youth development.

From a Norwich point of view this would be far more interesting than our most recent link up with the Indian Chennaiyin FC. lol

Yeah, it's certainly been a while. I guess it was probably in Chang or whatever it was called back then.

I did Humble Bundle for a long time, most of my games are that or random buys in steam sales. Not the most efficient use of my money seeing as only about 50 of those games have been played for more than 10 hours. I don't mind too much I suppose though as a lot of that went to charity.

I'm not surprised about Nunez honestly, I'd imagine his physicals and mental attributes are fairly similar to DCL and he's got more about him technically.

There are types of player archetypes that the match engine just loves. The physical monster as we've already spoken about, the dime a dozen ball mover (vision/passing/first touch/technique) and whatever you'd call Callum Wilson (holy trinity + a little pace and work rate).

That's actually why I like managing in lesser leagues, you get to build tactics around players with very specific skill sets. In top divisions players obviously get more and more well rounded and that means you can get away with doing whatever. I also love when you find a freak 18-20 technique/creativity guy whilst managing in the lower leagues, they do things you don't see in top divisions. I guess it's because they're so far above their competition in those aspects or something.

I don't remember why but I must have deleted everyone from my friends list, must have had an episode. My steam friend code is 66695117

I think you're absolutely right as to why negative hidden attributes/personalities are not given to real life players. Same reason they don't have clubs financially mismanaged to anywhere near the extent that they are in real life. I could absolutely see an agent or a club official getting upset over something like that.

Don't recall Richarldson or McTominay being worldbeaters in any of my games but Calvert-Lewin, absolutely. Physicals, particularly the strength attribute, are really good in the match engine. We have a young striker who's only ever managed 3 or 4 goals in a season in the real world, in football manager he'll score 30+ in the Premier League easily. He's broken to the point where I actually put in a post on the SI forum asking the Norwich researcher to nerf him.

I wish they cared less about new features and more about polishing and reworking old ones. Although in their eyes I guess they need new things to make people buy the new game. I think some aspects of the game, like player and press interactions, need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I also think set pieces need to be torn down and rebuilt too although I'll take what we've got this year (basically the same as before but now your staff do the micromanaging in game).

They also added the option to use an intermediary to help sell a player. Honestly I think they folded to pressure there and added the option to stop people complaining. In the real world teams get stuck with players and the game should really mimic that.

If I stay in Japan for my first main save I'll likely start with the same club or Shonan Bellmare in the division above. I believe Bellmare means beautiful sea in Italian. I also recall watching one of their games on youtube and hearing their fans sing We Are out of nowhere. They also play in a striking radioactive green which is pretty cool. A lively club that's for sure.

The Vanarama north/south save is always fun. In regards to work permits there are new rules in place which mean English clubs can sign 2-4 players per season without having to worry about work permit rules. I don't know if that affects Vanorama or just Premier league down to League 2 though.

I do like the English bottom to top type save a lot though. It's a really tough start as the national leagues are savage but then getting from league 2 to the Championship is fairly smooth. Then it's tough again because of the huge gulf in finances. Then premier league is premier league, hopefully the AI squad building is better than it has been there.

That's fair. I quite enjoy beta saves because sometimes you can see things that they're working on that don't make it into the final cut. A good example of this is last year where the match engine was super chaotic in midfield, with lots of interceptions, deflections and possession turning over. For whatever reason they couldn't balance it correctly so they ended up just going back to what they had in previous game. They've added some of that in this year's engine with deflections feeling a lot more natural but the midfield play still feels far too smooth.

If I was to take a guess what will get toned back from this beta it's probably the influence of money clubs out in the desert. I've seen quite a few people posting stupid fees they've gotten for average players from teams in Saudi Arabia.

A lot of the best saves I've had have just been through picking a league I know next to nothing about and then going on wikipedia and finding a club with an interesting story in that league. Google streetview helps me pick sides too although that's probably too much for most people. lmao

Have you picked up this year's football manager? If so how are you finding the beta?

I've actually been enjoying it a hell of a lot more than last year's game already. I don't think they've delivered on all of their marketing selling points (player interactions are still pretty weird) but I am enjoying the most recent version of the match engine a lot. Players seem so much more aware of each other you can combine roles that you couldn't before. Of course there are still problems with it like manager ai not subbing players until really late in the game. There are things we're just not going to know about until we've played a lot like the AI team building, if they nail that long term saves will be a lot more challenging.

I started in the J-league 3 with a team purely because of their hipster badge. There's a lot of parity in their top division and it's also financially pretty strong compared to a lot of the smaller leagues, which makes sense I guess. It seems that the main challenge for a lower league team going through the leagues in Japan will be getting the domestic talent level of the squad up. You can only use 4 foreign players (or 5 in top division) but you can sign as many as you want so it makes for quite a fun squad building balancing act. Also found that if you're looking to make money flipping players for profit it's much better to sign an average Korean or Chinese player than the significantly better South Americans you can sign. I guess that makes sense as their leagues put a lot of value in domestic players. It's been years since I've played in a league like this.

That's interesting, I don't think winning a title or a CL would have that sort of impact on me. I guess Benfica are in that category of teams that could potentially win one and we just aren't ever going to be. Best we could hope for is a freak season like Leicester's 5000-1 title win.

I do however struggle to see how fans that didn't grow up/live in the vicinity of a club actually manage to forge a connection with the club. If I didn't go to games I'd certainly care a lot less about the club overall. If I moved to another city I'd still support the club but I doubt I'd follow anywhere near as closely.

My club are actually in the process of selling to an American guy and his family. Our current owner is worth about $30m whereas this guy is supposedly worth $700m. He founded an asset management company that manage over $40b in assets and owns a baseball team worth $1.6b. He doesn't give off the impression of somebody that's going to spend wildly but it's a hell of a step up in finances we could be potentially getting our hands on. Our current owners haven't put anything in for a very long time. Interestingly the guy's brother wrote Donnie Brasco and was one of the producers on House. lol

England beat Italy 3 - 1 to qualify. Our front 4 of Kane, Bellingham, Foden and Rashford (or Grealish) is pretty damn good.

The club vs country thing I'd tend to say club. Although it would depend on how we're winning our CL, if we're just another Man City then I'd probably take the World Cup. I have a feeling I'd become jaded very quickly if we became one of the wealthiest clubs in the world overnight.

How do you feel on that topic? Would you want some uber rich Sheikh to take over and buy your way to being one of those top 8 in the world?

I watched a Nations League game when it first started up and it was clear our players didn't care less. I'm not putting the effort in if they aren't.