Started a game of CM97/98 with Sportclub Excelsior in Toto Divisie. It’s hard playing with lower ranked Dutch teams in this game – no money, no fans, nobody wants to play for you, all the half decent youngsters either go somewhere else or get pinched after about 2 games because of the dreaded big-club release clause.

Anyway, through a combination of graft, luck, an exhaustively put together band of miscreants, and tweaking the tactics of @9798Nikolai, things have started to come together in season #5. We’ve found a bit of solidity with Jan Suchoparek at the back and possibly regen Neville Southall in goal. Regen George Weah, appearing as Joe Latoundji, has been prolific and equally instrumental in attack, alongside mainstay cheapo investment Bruno Gimenez.

We weren’t consistent enough to break the Ajax/PSV hegemony in the league, however we did finish a club record high 4th, and found our feet in the Amstel Cup. Feyenoord were dispatched in round 2, despite us going down to 9 men.

A kind draw gave us D2 Zwolle in round 3, who we saw off 2-1 fairly easily. The quarter final saw us host the reigning European and World club champions, Ajax. We came from behind twice to take the match to extra time at 2-2. Gimenez struck early doors in the first period to send us through with a historic victory.

The semi final saw us face fellow high flyers NAC, who I was expecting a stiff test against after a heavy 4-1 defeat in the league just 2 months earlier. However 2 goals in the first 6 minutes eased all the nerves and we coasted through, with midfield maestro Diniev adding a 3rd early in the 2nd half.

The other semi final saw lowly Telstar succumb to the might of PSV. They had wrapped up the league title a few weeks beforehand and were now preparing to face Man Utd in the Champions League final after they played us in the domestic cup final.

I felt cautiously optimistic going into it. We’d lost both league games to them – a 6-4 ding-dong that we actually had more shots on target in, but young Nev was still settling in, and a 1-0 where we matched them but their keeper, Luca Bucci, was MOM – but the overall improvement had been excellent since we started switching between the narrow 2-3-1-2-2 and a modified version that moves one of the AMCs to CB, depending on the quality of opponent and/or formation used.

Without wanting to blow my own alpenhoorn too much, this 3-3-1-1-2 had been pretty effective at stifling the attacking threat of the big boys and their Ajax/3-1-3-3. We essentially match the numbers at the back and try and focus our attacking in the space left by their only having 1 CB and 1 DM.

We’d only lost once in 15 games going into the final, an absolute mugging at home to Willem II where they went down to 10 men and scored with their only 2 shots on target (dammit Nev!) and we lost 2-1. Our overall record since the 1-0 loss to PSV was P15 W11 D3 L1. We lost our captain, Lyndon B Johnson, to a torn groin a few weeks back:

But other than that, there were no major injury concerns or suspensions heading into the final. My biggest concern was a potential penalty shootout. My personal record in CM9798 finals is reasonable if I get the job done in 90 minutes, but if it’s all square AET, all bets are off. Me and the penalties just don’t get along.

Right then, so the line up and formation shown above were what we went into the final with. Of the others as yet unmentioned in the first XI, Alexander Vergueitchik is regen Sergei Gerasimets, who famously scored the winner for Belarus against Holland in a Euro 96 qualifier (and had a rather splendid curly mullet to boot). The others, well they’re an honest bunch of lads. Here it is, PSV vs Excelsior, David vs Goliath, Branko vs Strupar: