Here are three Eastern European nations which are currently being held hostage by a supreme dynasty…and who you should topple them with.
Here are three Eastern European nations which are currently being held hostage by a supreme dynasty…and who you should topple them with.
But there’s one thing that pretty much all FM fanatics will agree with. Eastern Europe is off-limits.
Many prefer to base their career in one of Europe’s traditional ‘big five’ leagues. And why wouldn’t they? The infrastructure is already in place, and there is plenty of money to be made, which will only help on your journey to the very top.
That isn’t the case in Eastern Europe. Stadiums are crumbling, players are paid peanuts, and reaching the UEFA Champions League is a pipedream for most. But there are a select lucky few that have made their way into Europe’s most elite competitions in recent years.
The problem with that for the rest of the country is that the team that does qualify for the UEFA’s premier competition tends to hold their domestic league hostage for years to come. Here are three nations which are currently being held hostage by a supreme dynasty… and who you should topple them with.
Bulgaria
When people think of dominance in European football, they think of the likes of the aforementioned PSG or Bayern Munich, perhaps even Juventus a couple of years ago. But there is one team that has been even more successful than those footballing giants, domestically at least.
Ludogorets are the current reigning champions of Bulgaria, and they have won the First Professional League for eleven consecutive years. Bovada’s soccer betting lines make the Razgrad-based outfit the favourite to make it twelve on the spin again this season. But things could be set to change.
At the halfway point of the 2022/23 season, the reigning champions are in second place, one point behind CSKA Sofia. But the subject of CSKA is also a contentious one, with both the league leaders and third-place CSKA 1948 claiming to be the original CSKA Sofia. That is a story for another day, however.
Rather than laying our allegiances with one or the other, we feel that you should try and topple the dynasty with Levski Sofia. The 26-time Bulgarian top-flight champions did reach the Europa Conference League last season, however, this term they were dumped out in qualifying by Maltese minnows Hamrun Spartans.
Can you restore Levski back to its former glories? Can you make them the number one team in their city and country?
Serbia
In recent years, the Serbian topflight has been dominated by one team, Red Star Belgrade. Back in 1991, Zvezda stunned the world when they won the UEFA Champions League, defeating Marseille in Bari, Italy to lift the famous big-eared trophy. And in recent years, they’ve been returning to their best.
They have won the Serbian SuperLiga for five consecutive seasons and are on course to retain the title again this season. They’re ten points clear of their archrivals Partizan at the halfway mark, and the second half of the campaign looks like a formality.
But it isn’t Partizan who we think you should topple Red Star with. They too enjoyed their own spell on top, winning six consecutive titles between 2007 and 2013. No, we should look outside of Belgrade altogether.
Did you know that since the foundation of the Serbian Premier League back in 1992, only one team other than Red Star and Partizan has won the title? And that team, FK Obilić - who won the league back in 1997/98 - also came from Belgrade? Well, it’s time to end the capital city’s stranglehold on the topflight once and for all.
The best club to do that with would be FK Radnički Niš. The club is based in Niš, Serbia’s second-largest city, and their crowning achievement was finishing as runners-up to Red Star back in 2019. Can you take the title away from Belgrade for the first time in the history of Serbian football?
Romania
Romanian football is going through a turbulent time at the moment. There is currently a battle for the soul of Steaua Bucureşti that has been raging on for the last five years, and the club that has taken advantage of that is CFR Cluj. The team that hales from the north of Romania has reeled off five consecutive tiles while the Steaua civil war has been ongoing, and their dominance shows no sign of stopping.
Rather than getting embroiled in the Steaua situation, we think that the perfect club to topple the newest dynasty in Romanian football would be restoring one of the most successful clubs in the history of the country back to its former glory.
The other team from the capital of Bucharest, Dinamo, has racked up 18 league titles throughout the years and lies just three titles behind the aforementioned Steaua. They haven’t, however lifted the Liga I trophy since 2007. Just like Cluj before them, is it time for Dinamo Bucharest to roll back the years and rise from the ashes?
