This is post six of a wider series. A series for FM23.
“Without the piano, my life would be a disaster.”
Jools Holland.
In-game date: 27 May 2026
I’ve just had the most surreal weekend. I visited the Sports Interactive headquarters in London alongside a group of other writers for the Football Manager The Byline hints and tips section of the official website. The studio is an incredible place and I was delighted to do the guided tour, but ashamed to be beaten 7-3 a few hours later in an on-site network game by the brains behind the Dictate the Game website, Ryan. At least he bought me a pint afterwards (and won a cake).
I won’t name everybody in the picture above, in case some wouldn’t like me to, but maybe you can gather your family and play a game of “Guess the Blogger.” If he wasn’t actually in attendance and therefore already in the photograph, that’s exactly the sort of thing my good friend FM Grasshopper would inflict on his poor wife and kids.
Thanks to Andrew, Dave, Holly, Ryan, Luke and Jack at SI. One of those sound exactly like Jools Holland when they speak, and that alone brought me a lot of joy. It was a great weekend with wonderful people and I’d be honoured to be invited back again in future.
The 2025-26 season
Right, let’s go back into the exciting Football Manager universe now. Enzo Scutari’s fourth season in charge of Sampdoria is complete, and what a season it was.
For the second time in four years, Sampdoria have secured a place in the UEFA Champions League. Hopefully it goes better than last time.
If it wasn’t for Niko Kovač’s Inter Milan being so relentless in their pursuit of their fourth title in six years and Italy’s pesky head-to-head sorting logic rather than considering goal difference, we’d have won the league. Rhetoric like that is ultimately meaningless, as we didn’t win Serie A, but the context around our third place final position this year gives me hope that we are not that far away from lifting the Scudetto in future.
After an unbelievable 100% win record in the Europa League “league” stage and easing past FC Utrecht in the last 16, our continental hopes this year were very much alive.
I had my laptop with me in London, so it was odd playing out a disgusting 6-0 aggregate defeat in the Europa League Quarter Final stage against MaddFM’s beloved Newcastle United with the illustrious likes of FM Samo and the far-travelled and eloquent Rock’s End FM sat beside me.
Even stranger was playing out three or four of the final league matches in a pub in Stratford nursing a hangover, sat beside the iconic Dan Gear.
We reached the Quarter Final of the Coppa Italia, losing to eventual Serie A champions Inter Milan, and lost out to Inter in the domestic Supercoppa too. As I’ve written before in this series however, a club of our size and reach performing at this level should be celebrated, in spite of the frustrating near-misses.
Analysis
I had an interesting conversation over the weekend around statistical analysis and my fascination with it. It was interesting because if you follow my blog and writing for The Byline (quick plug – my latest piece around player performance metrics is here), you’ll know I have a deep interest in the underlying numbers in football. Though it’s not my primary focus, nor is it solely how I judge teams and their performances. I’m a football fan first and foremost, and find the numbers only become interesting and useful when they validate what you can already see on the pitch, or conversely can help you troubleshoot and pinpoint areas of concern when things aren’t going as planned. I wrote about this previously in the first half of one of my favourite posts I’ve written – Additional Statistics in Football Manager. Maybe it needs a more clickbait-y title. Maybe not.
For that reason, the numbers analysis in this blog post is going to be high level with a single visual and a handful of observations, rather than diving deep into the analytics like I usually do. I’ll instead focus on our wealth of exciting young players in this post.
For clarity – ‘Creative Contribution’ is a calculation considering Dribbles, Fouls Against, Sprints, Crosses, Open Play Key Passes, Chances Created and Progressive Passes. ‘Defensive Contribution’ considers Headers Won, Blocks, Clearances, Interceptions, Pressures and negatively weights Mistakes Leading to a Goal. The dot size which represents Striking Threat considers Non Penalty xG, Shots on Target, Non Penalty xG per shot, Conversion Rate and Goals scored.
Observations:
- All of our attacking midfielders across AML, AMC and AMR appear in the top-left quadrant of the visual. This means that they focus solely on their goal-creating output, while spending very little time defending.
- Our three main CB options have the highest results for Defensive Contributions. Ideal, for obvious reasons.
- Boulaye Dia and Lorenzo Lucca as our key striker options focus so precisely on goal-scoring alone that it allows our main AF Dia to have an utterly ridiculous Striking Threat result with no other player coming close. Dia has scored 73 goals in 75 appearances in a Sampdoria shirt since his £2.4m move from Inter Milan. Boulaye Dia is undoubtedly the “player of the save” so far. No one else comes close to the impact he has had on our fortunes.
- The only four players in the ‘best’ quadrant denoting both a high Creative and Defensive output simultaneously are our four Full Backs. 17-year old right-back Jacopo Martino is quickly becoming integral to how we play.
It’s ideal to see the way I set up Scutari’s tactical strategy produces the appropriate results by position and role.
End of season (four) review
The future
As we head into Enzo Scutari’s fifth season in charge, there is meaningful change incoming.
Backup goalkeeper (and former number one) Emil Audero is pushing for a move out and will be replaced by the ‘trained at Sampdoria‘ and gloriously-named goliath Titas Krapikas as our new backup. 34-year old icon Manolo Gabbiadini is looking likely to test himself in England again with an inexplicable move to Sunderland. Gabbiadini has spent ten years at Sampdoria across two spells and leaves behind a lasting legacy. Loyal servant Pedro Obiang is set to retire and Telasco Segovia and Gerard Yepes are earmarked for an exit too.
Over the past twelve months we have invested heavily in promising young players to complement our improving youth intakes. With the exception of incoming Anglo-Irishman Louie Barry, 22, arriving from Aston Villa and the aforementioned backup keeper Krapikas, 27, all of our arrivals have been teenagers.
The future’s bright, as they say.
Here’s a clickable slideshow of the most promising teenage players on Sampdoria’s books as we head into the 2026-27 season. There is one omission who I’ll highlight separately at the end. Who’s your favourite? Who is most likely to succeed?
Starboy?
So far at Sampdoria I’d argue that the best young player we have used and signed has been the Venezuelan winger Yerson Chacón. He is now 22 and a mainstay in our first team. The above grid of youngsters are very exciting, but there’s one more who is arriving in the summer who is arguably the most exciting of all…
Introducing Emanuel Silva. A £1million (rising to £5.75m) transfer from River Plate.
I am excited for the arrival of this young Argentinian. I think it might just be a match made in heaven. Time will tell.
Thanks for reading.
FM Stag