A Fistful of Tax Free Dollars

8 min readApr 26, 2022

Liechtenstein. Oh that sweet double landlocked smell of the hills and the numerous corporations that call it ‘home’ for financial purposes. Pollution? None, the place is 8 times smaller than the city of Los Angeles and the geography is akin to a group of toddlers hitting Play-Do with hammer with an underlay of purest Mordor.

But why am I waxing lyrical about the second least-visited nation in Europe? Because of FC Vaduz of course.

This club, hailing from the capital city of the same name has 5,400 residents — has been playing in the Swiss pyramid, but also competes in its own domestic cup competition, thereby almost guaranteeing European football every year. Since 1997–98, they’ve won the thing every year — except in 2011–12 when USV Eschen/Mauren beat them 4–2 on pens, sending the club into meltdown and causing the 2012 Fondue disaster in which 5 adults were cruelly maimed by flying hot cheese*

But enough history. It’s time to get down to business. And not just on any platform…its Football Manager 2016! (Because I can’t play as them on CM0102 without a load of editor wizardry and I can’t be bothered).

The Start of the season.

Easy right?

I never take charge of friendlies as I cant be bothered so ignore them, but we had an easy opening tie against Ulisses FC — who in real life dissolved in February 2016. Based on their performance I’m not surprised as we cut through them like a hot knife through *Insert Cheese Joke*.

Beating Odd was an unexpected bonus though with a last minute strike from Mbomba giving us a priceless 1–0 lead after dominating most of the game. We followed this up with a sensational win against Grasshoppers on the opening day, turning round a 1–0 defecit to win 2–1 and leave the fans dreaming of massive massive things like losing to Roma in 14 consecutive Champions League finals.

We were pretty busy in the transfer market as our squad was decent, but a little packed out with sentimental Liechtensteiners that frankly werent up to task. We sold our highest valued player to get some funds in and terminated the loan of Joel Untersee (not pictured), who was earning 5.25k on loan from Juventus and was injured for 3 months. I drop him off the edge of an Alp with a sledge and point vaguely in the direction of Turin.

In’s wise — it was a busy place. We pillage the amateur contracts of Finnish youth and supplement that with several loan signings, including star man Ramos who joins as a result of our new tie in with Porto. Pflucke is theoretically a wunderkind, and we even find space to sign one-time Dundee United ‘star’ Mario Bilate, because there really aren’t too many other striking options about.

What a start, what a place. This is just CM0102 for babies isnt it?

The Difficult second album

Well I won’t pretend that I expected to beat Odd away from home, but annoyingly we go out thanks to a wonderstrike from Halvorsen, pocketing 350k from our brief Euro adventure. The fans thank me and pray from somewhere warmer next year.

However our league form then takes an absolute nose-dive, not in least bit influeneced by our propensity to pick up red-cards like students minesweeping at freshers week. Our young domestic prospect Spirig starts this trend in the Thun game and we blow a 2 goal lead with 20 minutes left.

Jelic then gets a red in the next game having been on the pitch for 20 minutes and we compound this with 2 more against St Gallen as Spirig gets another one having come on as a sub and our best player Janjatovic gets a second yellow attempting to hold us together. Annoyingly we were on top in this game until the second red before folding like a hedgefund backed by the owners of Fyre Fest.

Luckily, thanks to my transfer dealings, Euro run and some tight wage work we have money to spend, so I splash it hard.

Lendric is a free agen striker with finishing 14, which I’m paying serious cash for otherwise. Never mind that his other stats look like an 80s fridge has ben set on fire, he can score goals. Theoretically. Passlack is the young Kevin Grosskreutz and can play fucking everywhere, and Uilson is a much better keeper than Peter Jehle — who despite being a National Hero, is to goalkeeping what I am to Norse Folk Dancing.

Marcos Urena is a bit of a mistake, as I offer him big wages to come in, only to realise I’ve confused him with Celso Borges who is actually good and also Costa Rican. Nevertheless he is quite fast, so I tell him to run like fuck everywhere, even if it doesn’t make sense.

We get great traction in our next game, holding Sami Hyypia managed FC Zurich to a 0–0 draw in a game best described as ‘Even the purists poked out their own eyes’. We then travel to the Wankdorf to face Young Boys and I make the fatal mistake of telling the team I expect them to win, despite the fact our opponents have a playing budget 5 times bigger than us. The whole team look confused, but armed with our tweaked SexiFootball formation we are ready to roll. (Note, this is a formation I used with great success with Porto when I actually had good player, and turns out up until this game I had a different version loaded. MANAGEMENT!)

It’s 0–0 at half-time then this happens…

ARE YOU HUGO PINHEIRO IN DISGUISE!

The cross flies in after Urena runs so fast that it confused everyone in a 20m radius and we are 1–0 up. When we concede a late penalty it seems like we are doomed again, but a late set-piece sees Friedrich fire home and send our 283 away fans into rapture. Not so happy are the residents of Vaduz trying to buy hardware as all the employees have come to the Wankdorf for the day.

Maybe this could be our resurrective beginning, our moment where my genius immediately pays off and we start flying up the table like a rocket. our next match against FC Sion, who are probably on their 14th manager of the season already will likely be a breeze now.

For fans of niche footballers, we get the sight of ex-West Ham midfielder Edmilson Fernandes, Ex-Spur Reto Ziegler and Olympic footballer extraordinaire Moussa Konate gracing the pitch for our opponents, with a lovely appeareance from ‘ex Watford and Wolves Legend Geoffrey Mujangi Bia. I’m awestruck as I start the game.

It’s a chasteningly shite defeat as we fail to create a chance in the second half, create a highlight in the full game, or even inflict a fucking injury. I’m fucking furious and throw a boot at Urena and tell him to become Celsa Borges instead. Fucking Latin American wanker.

We get a two week break after this, presumably becuase the Swiss have watched or Cuckoo Clocks to make and we aren’t invited. I have a look at the free agent market but its a grim place at this point and I resolve not to look back there for at least another couple of weeks. We finish the first quarter of our season against Grasshoppers again, rather than Basel who we haven’t played. Not that I’m disappointed by this as we have the resilience of 1000 ketamine addled sloths at the moment.

I take a short break to Luxembourg for a change of scenery and end up back in the transfer market as Thun winning has sent us bottom of the table. I try to sign a striker then decide against it as…well he rejects me. I consider trying to get a flight out of here but turns out Vaduz is one of the very few fucking capital cities in the world without a fucking airport. What the fuck is this place?! A last ditch loan move for a LWB fails although we do get one back to fitness, putting us at close to full strength. I drop Sadiku as despite his actual heroics IRL this season in getting loaned to Vaduz by Zurich and scoring the goals that sent Zurich down, turns out he’s a bit shit. It’s Bilate and Urena forming our frontline.

They’ve got Munas Dabbur, Tommy Oar and the legendary Kim Kallstrom in their lineup. We seem fucked from the kickoff but have the better of a frantically mediocre first half. Its drifting to 0–0 until a long punt from Friedrich finds Bilate, who draws the keeper and cooly squares for Urena to make it 1–0! A stramash in the 66th minute from a corner should see us 2–0 up and then Bilate misses a sitter 5 minutes later. There seems to be a grim inevitibility about conceding a late equaliser, but we see the game out and we take our record against Grasshoppers to 6 points from 6 and our rest of the league record to 5 out of 21. Können wir dich jede Woche spielen?!!