The excitement has been increasing constantly until the release of the official version today, I couldn't wait much more. So finally, it's time to load up the game and hope that my ideas will be working during this save.

First things I did after starting the save was to establish my desired backroom staff und do some transfers.

During the first summer transfer window we were given a budget of a total of 3 millions in total. In general I was pretty happy with the quality of the first team squad, so there was no need for a big spending. The only two players joined are Tobias Svendsen and Danilo D'Ambrosio. I tried to sign Toni Lato but he decided to sign for PSG. Tobias Svendsen was developing crazy for me in the Beta, so I decided to get him as future left midfielder. Danilo D'Ambrosio's main strength is he's versatility as he can play DL/WBL/ML/DR/WBR/MR, which was the main reason to get him.

In the backroom areas I didn't follow my plans I did in the previous blog. There has been some great investment and I have almost a complete new team for coaching and scouting. As you can see in the image below I focussed on the personality of my coaches:

I think with the likes of Leonardo and Bernhard Peters we will form a great trio which can develop Lyon into a world class club.

First Problems

As we already have some great talents at the club I though, that it would be nice to loan them out to some smaller french clubs to improve their development. After the first clubs joined our affiliated club a problem did pop up, as we couldn't loan out any more players. What happened?

Due to my bad scouting of the regulations of the French League I missed that there is a rule, which prohibits a club to loan out more than 7 players to french clubs. Apparently the French FA whats to stop the big guys at Monaco & Paris to buy all the players and develop them by loaning them out to french clubs.

The plan was go give players some playing time in the top league pretty early, but I guess this won't be possible that easy. In order to achieve the homegrown status for a big amount the the following idea will be implemented in order make sure the youth development continues to stay at a high standard:

With a brand new stadium in place, there is a chance having good finances over the years, although we will not reach PSG. In the first month of FM at Lyon I did see that a full stadium can bring me around 1 million of income. With all the games during the season I expect to make around 20 millions with ticket sales over the full year. Here is a short introduction to the stadium:

Stadium

Olympique Lyonnais's Stadium is called Parc Olympique Lyonnais or Stade des Lumières. They've moved to their brand new Stadium in January 2016. With a sellout of 55,169, the local side smashed Troyes AC with 4:1 in their first game at the new ground.

There were actually many reasons for almost ten years between the first renderings and the actual opening. And so it was the very last Stadium to be opened for the EURO 2016 in France. So why did the stadium come last among France’s Euro 2016 venues?

Most importantly is that the Stadium was built with private funds instead of public-private partnership and construction of the budget proved challenging (loans from numerous banks alone secured only €145m). So the club owner Jean-Michel Aulas needed to get various other sources to be able to fund the stadium

Second major objective was to address protests of local residents. The stadium lies in Décines-Charpieu, a small commune in Lyon’s eastern suburbs, and consumed 44 hectares, becoming the area’s largest development. For Olympique this location was only the second choice, but proved a great choice due to great road network and proximity of the international airport.

The stands offers 60,000 seats and 10% of them are dedicated to corporate clients. Of the 6,000 business seats some 1,400 are spread across 105 skyboxes, while remainder is located in the stands, with access to a total of 8 large business lounges.

Increased capacity and corporate seat percentage allowed Olympique Lyonnais to expect the match day revenue to grow 3-5 times compared to the old Stade de Gerland once the new stadium is fully optimized.

Interesting Fact: The roof of the Stadium manages to collect rainwater for internal use.