Alphabet Challenge

Summary

The name probably gives this one away. You have to fill your squad with players to complete the alphabet. Use this template to make things easier.

Alphabet Challenge Rules

• Your squad must have 26 players at all times, no more, no less.
  • You must reach this stage before playing your first competitive match (not pre-season)
• Each player represents a letter of the alphabet in your squad.
  • This is based on the first letter of his surname. Azpilicueta, Bakayoko, Cuadrado etc.
    • The exception to this is players who are commonly known by a single name, ie Neymar.
  • You can only have one of each letter!
• You’re free to fill your youth academy up with whoever you like, but you can only promote a player if you’ve sold/released a player of the same letter.
  • Saving and reloading on scout reports is frowned upon as it makes the challenge easier, but play how you want to play.
• Players that are already out on loan don’t count as part of your squad, but can be recalled if you need them.
  • You can’t loan out players as a way to store them for the future.

Aim

The alphabet challenge is restriction-based, so there isn’t a fixed aim. You should still be looking to meet the board objectives and avoid being fired. Although silverware is still the ultimate prize, the road to success may be slower than say the youth challenge.

You’ll quickly realise that although the rules of the alphabet challenge are simple, it becomes quite difficult. Replacing players is 10x harder if you were dependent on them for a particular position. For example, if you play as Spurs and lose Harry Kane, you’ve not only got to find a ‘K’ player – you’re probably also going to need him to be a striker. You’ll need to be smart in planning for this, try and anticipate what players you might sell and how it will affect your team.

Clubs

You’re free to use any club you like for this challenge. You could of course make your life slightly easier by finding clubs that already have players with the more ‘difficult’ letters. An example would be Piotr Zielinski at Napoli.

One of the great things about this challenge is that you’ll sign players that you might not have ordinarily. The club you start out at will make a huge difference as you’ll also be restricted to signing affordable players (if you start at a lower level).

Tips

• Hire three youth scouts and always have them scouting, you never know what they’ll turn up.
  • If you know the name data sets that each country uses, you can make this a lot easier…
• Signing versatile players that can play in a few positions can be very helpful.
• If you really get stuck, FUTWIZ can be useful – but try not to peek at the potential stats!

Like this? Check out our other challenges.