Since Season 7 is soon upon us, time for a new season thread to discuss all results and goings-on here...

Springboks sign UCFA star

In finding a replacement for recently-departed Bert van der Meer, Manager Bartnel Botha completed Transvaal Springboks’ most expensive signing in thirteen months when he inked 28-year-old Nathan Archibald to a deal today.

Archibald is a former member of Transvaal’s UCFA squads who had since been playing top-flight football in England prior to his move to Liga Mundo.

“We needed some experience to step in right away to fill the hole left by Van der Meer” explained Botha, “so I started to track down and contact guys who had played for me back in the days of the UCFA Champions League. Nathan showed interest in returning to Transvaal so I was able to come up with a competitive deal with his club. Admittedly I did not think we would get him, as there were 5 other bids which came through and the last one pushed us to the limit I was prepared to pay.”

Reds Look to Reload

Following a disappointing season where their manager spent half of the time in the hospital, the Redemptio Reds are looking to reload and meet their goal of getting out of Tercera. That reloading process already started taking place before the season starts. With the disappointment of the progress of 30 year old Abe Head, the veteran was sacked and 18 year old Aston Feeney has been brought up from the youth squad.

"We just weren't pleased with Abe's progress," said manager Harvery Carver. "The only thing he brought to the team was being a penalty kick specialist. Aston is 12 years younger with the same skill as Abe has, which gives us that much longer to bring him up."

It is debatable as to whether Aston will see any significant playing time early. Rodrigo Abreu, Brent Hogue, and Jim Mosesson are the obvious starters for the Reds, with Irvin Valezquez and Wayne Dorsey battling it out for the fourth spot.

At defense, Simon Le and Ed Osborn with Leslie Turner and youngsters Nate Morrison and Wes Parish duking it out for the other spots.

Oliver Ellison, Elliot Robertson, and Kelly Lloyd will rotate at forward, with 30 year old Karl Ingram providing a backup role.

Atlético Undergoes Refurbishing


After a successful season and a medal for placing first in the Terceira, VTK spent no time celebrating: he went straight to business. Firstly, youngster Dirk Plum (16) was brought into the team as a replacement for André Carpiteiros (25), who decided to quit to pursue an engineering career. Secondly, veteran goalkeeper Mihail Orãseanu (29) was sold for a sum of 329,000 - no replacements for him have been found yet and a search is still ongoing. Thirdly, defender Jack Mans (32) also parted ways so swift Hugo Manhente (18) was hired and now shares a place with everyone else in the team. And skilled hero Tim Gillhaus (33) is also up for auction - rumors is that a top player from the junior team will replace him once the bidding ends.

The trend is obviously that VTK has chosen to replace cookie-cutter veterans for prospecting youth - an ante that may not really pay off this season, but will very likely bear fruits within two or three seasons.

"I will miss all of the guys that I let go.", stated the manager "But we've all got to move on. Our team needs to keep growing - we can't rely solely on good players that won't develop further - we must have people that may not be the best today, but will certainly achieve stardom tomorrow. I have no regrets about my decisions."

Armed Forces loading up for season

The boys have been hard at work for their second season in Serie Tercera. As the only amateur team in the league, they nearly pulled the impossible and drove straight to the cusp of promotion in their first season. Led by last season's Golden Ball winner, Danny Glass, big things are expected out on Harvard Island. Over the last few days, the Armed Forces side has played twice with mostly reserve players in order to get them some playing time until the regular season kicks off. After a 4-0 drubbing from SiPS first team. the Armed Forces will be gearing up for the start of the new season.

Meanwhile, Arcadia FC is trying to find another defender... will they go for old and experienced such as the retired Siwert Svartvadet? Or will they go young and mouldable? Who knows...

And if they do, which person will they sell to keep their squad at a decent size?

Got my new keeper in 6 bars 19

I saw... but will you develop him properly is the question.

meh I see myself getting pissed off at him mid season and sticking him on the bench

A nineteen year old keeper only needs about 2-3 games to get to 100% experience, then you just have to work on keeping his form up.

This. A six-bar 19-year-old goalkeeper is a keeper (considering 18 seems to be the youngest age for goalkeepers.) I use three keepers on all my teams and never have problems finding enough playing time for them. Easiest position to develop.

If I had the $$$ I would seriously consider buying him off you, but I don't think I can match what he should be worth.

Voobaha National recently pulled in a 16/2 MF from the kiddie pool with the goal of making him into a very serviceable 20/6 or better. Not normally a player I'd take a chance on, but sometimes you have to roll the dice.

The change report was kind, with 12 positives for 7 bars, and one slight drop.

Since the end of the season,The Nats placed 32 year old MF Les Andrews and 34 year old Sven van der Werff on the transfer wires with no offers... ultimately both ended up being released.

To replace those two, VN has added a bit more depth at defence and forward, dishing our over 8 mil econ in the process.

The VooNat voodoo will be strong for season 7!

That's what I have been trying to do with Ngwane and less extent Bathoen. The real downside to my progress report was neither Froggnarson nor McGorry went up a bar. I was also hoping Bathoen would have doubled to 4 instead of going to 3. Oh well.

Upside is I am finding that with almost no player movement, my teamwork values have been going through the roof. Never ever had 20s across the board until this season, then when it was happening it was back to back. I recall Voobaha got burned one game from that.

Arcadia FC had great success in a 5-1 demolishing of AM Adepts FC.

Although the Arcadia FC database crashed, i.e. my little document where I keep track of form and that.

So what is the timeframe for the season to start people? i am eager to get started on the new season.

Im going to extend the sign-ups until next monday, So please each league admins remind your managers that Liga Mundo is still accepting applications.

Keville accepts friendlies from all comers (since we have a bit of extra time before the new season).

If we have 27 teams, i am planning on starting the season with 4 divisions, 7 teams per division, and 1 division with 6 teams. Which division would you like to see as the one to have 6?

I don't think you have a choice which division gets the extra teams, I suspect the bottom division will be the one with 6 teams.

Also keep in mind that having divisions with different number of teams could result in some divisions finishing up two weeks before everyone else (and then sitting around waiting for the rest of the league to play out) due to different lengths of schedules. This is NOT counting byes which occur with odd-numbered teams.

This just happened in one league I am in (Super League) where our 2nd and 3rd divisions finished two weeks before everyone else in Division 1. That long a wait placed at the end of the season can have detrimental effect on progress reports. With 27 teams, we would be better to go with 3 x 9

I strongly recommend we find a 28th team so everything is balanced out (or re-activate one of the inactives and let them be a dummy team).

Here's a radical idea. Why not just keep things as they are? People playing for promotion and to avoid relegation etc. will only get frustrated if the boundaries keep being changed every season making it unclear who is up and who is down. THe other thing is surely a top division of 7, meaning just 5 would stay up, would probably be much too elitist, making it very difficult for any newcomer to the Primera to establish themselves. Also, there's no point establishing a fourth division just for the sake of it if the league is not actually getting any bigger.

There is obviously some self interest here, but I would ask who is up and who down with the proposed new format?

I agree by and large.

8 team divisions seem to be the perfect balance that we should strive for - but between the two options I'd rather stick with the status quo (3 x 9) than go to 4 x 7 no matter how awesome having 4 divsions would be. Like you said:

I Just thinking about cutting the season length down, since it was a complaint by numerous managers over the seasons-not self interest....

It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have 3 superdominant teams in the Primera. A reduced-size Primera would do wonders to kill off interest because as pointed out it will be difficult for promoted teams to stay up.

Smaller leagues only work really well when all the teams are close in competitive quality - we don't have that and I don't see that happening for quite some time.

Yeah i have to concur with Botha, a smaller league would not be of any real benefit.

I'd agree with restructuring if we were getting the five extra teams that four divisions of 8 would require. But if we're staying as 27 then it would seem harsh on the Tercera teams that have to be relegated to make the 4th div. I actually think in the long run a pyramid system would be better for development, because the more removed from the Primera new managers are, the less involved they are likely to feel.

And yes, I have promoted the Liga on the MHA forums...

On the surface it would suck to be moved down a division, but for a manager in for the long haul, those teams demoted would likely benefit from playing weaker competition and the longterm benefits from a good progress report as their players finally get to win some matches, somthing most of those demoted team would not have been experiencing. It's a lot easier to keep form up when you win, and we all know the benefit of high form throughout the season.

Much thanks Kevinho.

3 divisions?
9 Teams per division, what do you guys think?

Why not... it would be the first time ever that we haven't seen a change in format. That's a good sign of stability.

I don't know, if we must have 9x3 then okay... but I'd prefer 4x8. 9 teams is 18 weeks... while 8 teams is 14 weeks. Surely we can find 5 managers in the next four weeks we can save on four weeks in the long haul...

I highly doubt we can bring in 5 additional managers.

Like I have asked before, what is up with the 3 inactive teams? Reactivate them and let them play out managerless as fodder teams to pad the league numbers. That way we only need 2 more managers (which is do-able compared to finding 5 brand-new managers).

Then next season those managerless teams can be removed when new clubs join or if new managers want to come onboard during Season 7.

We have 30 teams. Leave those three clubs to boost the fortunes of the rest. But, if we cannot find two clubs, let's just play with the thirty clubs in three divisions. It was a lot of fun last season, and things went right to the wire in all divisions. Let's not break a good thing.

Might as well go with 30 if we can't get to 32... it wont stretch the season out any more than running 3x9 did, it'll just eliminate the bye week.

so 3x10?

This. Starting this season I'd suggest that we don't deactivate teams just because they are inactive. We use the abandoned teams to get the league to 32 for next season (or a workable team/division set-up).

3x10? That'd give us 18 weeks. I don't think it's out of reason to dedicate a few days to shorten the season length from 18 weeks to 14 weeks with a 4x8 set-up. Can't we just re-activate two dead teams and use them to fill up numbers?

30 teams includes the dead teams. Right now we have 27 actives and 3 inactives. So to get 32 teams we'd need to find another 2 managers.

I'd say simply include the active teams only and get on with the season. If we play with inactive teams taking a beating every week then the league's ranking will suffer, surely? Is there any sign of anyone signing up shortly?

If you guys want another manager I'd be up for it, someone would just have to tell me what to do..

And league ranking concerns us how?

I'm not too concerned with rankings, but having inactive teams mean that they're little more than punching bags... and that kind of takes the fun out of the game.

I thought we all wanted to be the best X11 players we could be? The quality of the league is part of that, surely?

Anyway have bumped my link on the MHA forums to see if any further interest can be drummed up.

And stalling for this freaking long simply drives good X11 players away. Seriously, it's a good thing I had signed up for other leagues because if I hadn't, I already would have deleted my team and deactivated my account. This wait is getting ridiculous. Just start the !@#$@#$ season already.

I could only active 2 of the 3 inactive teams, it looks like franzharia is out of luck - which brings our total of 29 teams, 3x10? or 4x8? we would have a lop sided division, but it will do. Vote in the xpert11 liga league forums please.

Punching bags in the bottom divisions won't harm anyone.

Franzharia is a VIP team so there's probably why you can't re-activate them.

With 29 I'd say opt for the 3 divisions now and next season we aim for 30-32 teams and make any divisional changes then. At least we all know there is the potential to go to 4 divisions in the near future - so no one is surprised by it when it happens.

Let's do this already.

I am able to choose a CL-style set-up for the league instead of the originial 1:1...This is what it said:
"CL is a league system played as a tournament with qualifying rounds in groups and finals from quarter finals in the end. It works almost UEFA Champions League."

This sounds like what Liga Mundo need.

Thoughts?

This would eliminate relegation/promotion, and it seems to be an all out competition to see who is the best overall club from any division

Why do we need to keep changing things? Liga Mundo has great teams. Why can't we just get a format and stick with it instead of changing things every single year. It makes it frustrating beyond belief.

If we went for a CL system, then any player eliminated in the first round would have to sit it out for half the season. Like Pravus, I really fail to see why we have to keep changing things. I am a member of two other player created leagues and they ended their season recently, kept the format exactly the same and pressed ahead...hey, why don't we consider 5x6? That would give us the maximum amount of divisions and a very quick season

6 team divisions only work if 1) it is done from Day 1; and / or 2) all the teams in the league are fairly similar in talent. But with 3 dominant and 1 semi-dominant team in LM, the Primera would be next to impossible for the remaining teams to stay up. The 2 promotion slots would be a constant revolving door.

Every season we have new teams joining; those would suffer the most in a 6-team format. Also 6-team divisions make development very difficult as each game in such a short season means so much that one cannot risk playing their prospects.

Hopefully we are reaching the point in our numbers that we can start stablising the league format.