Building a club is something I have done numerous times. I have written about it, I have given it a lot of thought on numerous occasions, it is essentially playing the game as the creators intended you to.  That is the point where it becomes somewhat boring and stale to me. I do the same thing, year in, year out. I refine the process, I pick up some new tricks along the way, I make use of the new possibilities the game offers but there are no radical changes in how I play the game.

So I figured I would set myself a new kind of challenge. If I know how to build a side, I surely have to know how to destroy a side as well. If you know the variables that can bring you success, you can apply those same variables and use them to utterly ruin a team. Just to make it interesting somewhat, attempting to wreck a team without getting the sack should add an extra dimension to the challenge. In a way, I will be the devil’s manager, kind of like the Rolling Stones sang.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul and faith
And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what is puzzling you is the nature of my game

So what exactly are we planning to do with this save? Well, the objective is as ambitious as it should be interesting, from a scholarly point of view anyway. We are going to try and get Barcelona relegated without getting sacked. We will take that as a short-term goal. Looking at this save from a more long-term perspective, we want to utterly destroy the club. Financially ruin them, ruin the famous La Masia academy and basically try to remove them from the playable leagues in Spain, preferably without getting sacked too often.

It is not supposed to be a save where we just lose every game on purpose because there is no actual skill involved in that. A trained monkey could achieve the same goal if you taught it which buttons to click. We want to show you how you can manipulate the conditions the game uses to calculate job safety. If you know how you can deliberately manipulate to stay in a job despite poor results, you can use these same tricks if you need them during a save where you are genuinely struggling.

Similarly, by showing you how to tear down aspects of a team, you also learn how to build them up. It is a way to delve into the inner workings of the game, to figure out the mechanics somewhat. By destroying a top side like Barcelona, we hope to show you how you can use these same building blocks to your advantage as well when you are trying to establish your own dynasty.

Another aspect we wish to incorporate into this series of Breaking Barça is the very reason why we have used a plural form throughout this entire introduction; we want to introduce a community aspect to this series. Initially, this save will be played by at least two managers and we look to get some guest contributions from big names throughout the save to focus on an area of their expertise, messing up a specific part of FC Barcelona, while simultaneously explaining what they are doing and why, so you, as readers, can gain an insight into what makes this game tick.

The final facet we wish to discuss is the pop culture angle. Breaking Bad is an immensely popular tv-show and one that kind of suits the narrative we are going for. Walter White, who will be redubbed to Walter Blanco for this series, is inadvertently destroying his own and his families life in the tv-show, which is a feat he will undoubtedly strive to emulate when in control of FC Barcelona. It also makes for great artwork, as you can see above. We wish to express our thanks to Jamie Sale for creating this brilliant cover image for us. Once again mate, you are a star.

We are finishing this brief introductory article off with a disclaimer. None of the gamers involved in this series has a particular dislike towards Barcelona or the values the club stands for. The title “Breaking Barça” is just a cool alliteration and it makes for some rather sweet artwork when we decided to include the image of Walter White from the tv-series Breaking Bad. Barcelona is just a major club to provide us with an interesting enough challenge for this series, as well as suiting the narrative name-wise. Just to reiterate, we have no problems or issues towards FC Barcelona or Catalonia, this concept just suits the narrative.

Metro Clouds from FM Clouds & Guido from Strikerless

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Guido

Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.