Los Coladeros, Episode 1: Geezers de Diamantes

Just before we start — some info for those interested in what’s going on here. I have reinstalled the PC game Championship Manager 2001/02 (which you can also do legally for free by using champman0102.co.uk), considered by many fans of the Champ/Football Manager series to be the definitive edition, and created a brand new team in the bottom tier of Spanish football, with the goal to break the Barcelona-Real Madrid duopoly and win La Liga. It’s a whimsical football/gaming/nostalgia series for fans of late 90s football, management gaming sims, and expat Brits who are struggling to acclimatise to living in the searing heat of Andalusia.

This series is a sequel to Diamond Geezers, my previous CM01/02 adventure that saw me take the mighty Rushden & Diamonds from Division Three all the way to various arguable degrees of glory, signing all the players we know and love along the way. If you’ve got a lot of time to waste, there are 94 episodes and about 200,000 words of that for you to get stuck into. Episode One can be found here.

Further info about my game settings for those who feel like joining in with the nostalgia: I have done a clean install of the game and applied the 3.9.68 patch so that I don’t have the same pool of players to choose from as I did during Diamond Geezers. All leagues have been selected as background, with Spain active and…