Coladeros Invitational Serie A Extravaganza — A CM0102 Free-For-All
Back in the throes of Covid-19 — I was lucky enough to find myself ensconced in a wierd little corner of the internet, brought together by the Championship Manager 2001–02 blogs of the semi-legendary Mike Paul Vox — who started streaming on twitch to an audience of global legends after his incredible Diamond Geezers and Coladeros series.
About 6 months into this, I was asked to join a WhatsApp group with several of them, which has now become a place of utter joy — a place where Manchester United games are dissected in varying degrees of agony, where football pundits are torn apart with sledgehammers, and where we’ve managed to coin the term ‘Podolski-ing’ — which I’m not explaining as part of the Omerta code around the group.
This group has been one of the few constants in my life over the past few years. I’ve met a number of them when they’ve travelled up to Scotland, and one of them I now count as one of my closest friends — with random football trips involving my oldest running to bins on other continents a highlight. Recently — the spectre of CM0102 reared its head again as I play in quite a few PvP leagues crossing various social media channels — and we wondered — could we do something similar?
And so, the Coladeros Invitational Serie A extravaganza was born.
Seven of the chat picked Serie A teams to build a squad through a complex drafting process that sort of looked like this:
Picks 1–2: Serie A only
Picks 3–20: Single picks from every league other than Serie A
Picks 21–32: Double Picks other than Serie A
Final 18s — a list of other players wanted by each manager
The reasoning behind this was that we wanted to keep the best Serie A teams together as much as possible in order to have as competitive a league as possible. Here is an overview of each of the teams 24 player 1st team squads:
Venezia — Simon El Penrose
Managed by the venerable Penner, he’s built a squad around the wonderful Francesco Totti — who captains a side brimming with youth. John Carew looks set to lead the line with ammunition served by Wilfried Bouma and Aimo Diana — with the likes of Ibrahim Said and Berry Ferguson giving him a strong spine. The addition of God (Marvin Andrews) at the back also gives him some divine inspiration.
Lecce — CM OnTheRocks
A side brimming with South American flair and brutality — I have my favourites and I won’t shy away from that. A front 3 of Ortega, RVN and Guede should score buckets of goals with the usual Argentine defenders augmented by Kevin Hofland at the back. I have some of the favourites in the reserves like Javan, Jaafar and Vellas ready to step in to the breach when required — but led by Pablo Michelini I fancy us to go pretty well — until we face Roma at which point all bets are off.
Udinese — Sir Terrance Henry Stoot
Our resident Canadian picked Udinese and decided to ram the Pozzo’s full of talent which is unavailable to either Watford or Granada. Everywhere you look there is an insane amount of talent — he’s got Vieira, Shevchenko, Raul, Zidane and Rivaldo for fuck’s sake. His reserves are stacked as well with Tristan, Patsatzoglou, Exteberria, Robbie Keane….He’s an early front runner for honours this season.
Torino — The Ole Man of Oklahomie
Gone are the days of calling a premium rate phoneline for fantasy football or sending telegrams across the state borders to move chess pieces. This is the 21st fucking century and our resident Oklahomite has picked one of the strongest defensive sides in the league. Jeremies and Tommasi is the equivalent of Gandalf sticking a gigantic staff made of shin-high tackles in your face — and with Vieri and Mpenza up front he’s got a good shout of challenging at the top.
Brescia — NJ Gotti
In the Blue corner, fighting out of New Jersey by way of Govan — Brescia top the early season favourites poll with an absolute doozy of a squad. Veron, Crespo, Kahn, Davids, Keane — I could name almost every single player in this squad and justify why they are up there with the best in the game. With a formation called The Sword and a borderline psychotic attention to detail, if this clicks it’ll be very hard to stop — unless he is derailed as one of the two sides with European football this season.
Hellas Verona — Martyn Hearne
Despite the relatively confusing Nom de Plume — Verona are managed by the titular Coladeros managing, cocktail swigging Mike — harking back to the days when we were all a lot younger and more innocent but definitely less attractive. He’s called on some favourites, with Mike Duff and Marcel Mahouve rubbing shoulders with Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho in a squad brimming with interesting characters. A lot may factor on how much he annoys Anelka.
Fiorentina — Cannonball Taffy O’Jones
Finally — La Viola have stuffed the canteen full of leeks and have installed speakers round the training ground to blast out ‘The Best of Shirley Bassey’ as Curly arrives to give it a bit of Welsh Sugar. His drafting strategy was absolutely fascinating, with the late additions of Michalis Konstantinou and Matty Holland transforming his team into something that looks very threatening — mostly due to the fact he drafted fucking Tsigalko. Cole and Kerr look likely to feature early, particularly with UEFA Cup football coming to Florence
And so beginneth the 1st Season of the CISAE — which promises thrills & spills and probably a great deal of swearing. Sporadic updates will probably be blogged — but the main point is this.
Get friends like this. Friends mad enough to play a 22 year old game against each other spanning continents and time zones and ages (sorry Steve).
Viva Los Diamentes.
