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Frankfurt am Main, summer 1997. A year after relegation from the First Bundesliga, Eintracht Frankfurt's fans and board alike are frustrated by the failure to bounce straight back up, finishing a mediocre 7th at the second level, a full ten points off promotion. The club was actually closer to a second relegation in a row than it was to returning to the pinnacle of German football.
Club legend Karl-Heinz "Charly" Körbel, still record holder for Bundesliga appearances (602), had originally failed to keep the club in the top flight, even though by the time relegation was confirmed, Dragoslav Stepanović had already replaced him. The Serbian couldn't do much at the second level, and neither could his caretaker replacement Horst Ehrmantraut. Perhaps, then, it was a good time to stop appointing ex-players as manager, or trainer/head coach as the job is known on the continent.
Nine years had passed since the Dutch won the European Championships on German soil, in that glorious summer of 1988. Back then, border-crossings were littered with signs and banners saying "You are now entering the territory of the European Champions".
It was as good a time as any to get over the national trauma of 1974, and to stop mentioning ze var as vell. Maybe Calimero could grow up a wee bit.
One Dutchman did. It took him until the age of 29 to realise that the bottom half of the Dutch second division really was his active playing career's ceiling, but when he did, Mark de Vries instantly turned his attention to acquiring all relevant coaching badges.
Nine years later, he had long left his home country (on the back of two national amateur titles and an amateur cup as manager of Appingedam) and had completed a three-year stint at Kickers Emden, in north-west Germany. In those three years, the club had finished 4th, 4th and, most recently, 9th in the Regionalliga Nord, one of the third-level feeder leagues into the Bundesliga-structure.
On the face of it, then, the club was going backward. Those with more inside information, knew it was the inevitable consequence of the attractive, attacking football they were playing. It reached local and regional news at first, and occasionally, such as when Emden made a decent Cup run, also the national (sport)news. And so scouts flocked to the German lowlands to pick up the best players on a regular basis. Eventually, enough talent would be taken away from De Vries' side, and their promotion hopes were killed off.
Then, in the summer of 1997, Eintracht Frankfurt came calling. German champions in 1959 (albeit pre-Bundesliga), the club had also won four DFB-Pokals (1974, 1975, 1981 and in that Orange summer of 1988), and were no strangers to European success either, as the 1980 UEFA Cup in the trophy cabinet shows. If it wasn't for the invincible Real Madrid team, Eintracht would've lifted the European Cup in 1960 as well, but Di Stefano & Co. thrashed Frankfurt 7-3 at Hampden Park that 18th of May.
Nevertheless, the decision for De Vries was between forever messing about at amateur, or at best semi-pro, level, instructing his side to play great football, only to lose that crop inside a season or two at most, or to try and resurrect a fallen giant. The decision was easy.
This is my second serious attempt at the Kevin Keegan Challenge that many people enjoyed five years ago.
My first objective is to promote three fallen giants back to where they belong, needing to resign in the immediate aftermath of each completed promotion campaign.
I've not played CM/FM for a while, due to all sorts of work commitments and the revolution in my private life. The appetite's come back though, but I don't want to kill it off by playing the most recent version of the game as it's not fast enough to complete enough seasons in this challenge. So I've gone back to the game that along with CM01/02 took the most hours of my life, giving a lot of enjoyment and despair back in return, be it in stand-alone games or (offline) games with friends.
As it's a challenge story, it won't be as high on detail as "norml" style efforts. For that, I still have WTBCSA to complete, which will hit the forum again eventually.
First things first: this lot have a bit of potential, but there are too many players that add nothing to the cause. Thank god they're not on overly long or expensive contracts, so the odd immediate termination won't cost too much. Sead Mehic, Edi Martini, Ardian (I suspect some Albanian civil servant was half-asleep when filling in his birth certificate) Dashi and Hakan Cengiz were all released. Ethnic cleansing, a concept not unfamiliar to either Germans or the Albanians, Turkish and Bosnians I've released, is so much easier to defend when you're bound by a maximum three (non-EU) foreigners rule. God forbid the union ever expands.
Just to show it´s not only eastern Europeans that have to go, a Swiss lad by the name of Urs Guntensberger will also have to go, but he´s worth a bit of money so the board probably won´t appreciate me just releasing him. He´s transfer-listed along with a bunch of unwanted Germans, led by Ralf Falkenmeyer. The latter departs for Karlsruhe for a handsome £725k, or just over 2 million German Marks.
Rene Beuchel didn't have to go, but neither did he feature heavily in my long-term first team plans, so when a range of clubs offered around £2m for him, I was happy to let him talk to them. In the end, Gelsenkirchen will be his new home, Schalke'04 willing to pay £2.2m to take Beuchel off our hands.
What was left was a team that looked ok in goal, defence and up front. Ok, but not overly special. Central midfield was literally non-existent, all midfielders either left or right sided. To plug the holes for the time being, Sascha Lehnhart (on a free) and Frank Scharpenberg (£800k from Gütersloh) were signed. 22-year-old right back Arnold Dybek arrived on another free transfer, destined to take over the number two jersey from the ageing Dietmar Roth at some point, and finally we paid Fortuna Köln four hundred grand for the services of Christoph Dengel, fighting off First Bundesliga rivals in the signing process. Dengel can play either on the left or on the right up front, and will spend most of his time in the latter position, since in Antonio Da Silva (Brazil) we already have a creative and talented forward on the left.
The difficult search for proper wingers goes on, surprisingly, given the rich history of famous right wingers in Germany.
If I could turn back time... 
God forbid the union ever expands.
You can come back after I win a dozen awards or so :p
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