FM21 – Yes Man! – Club 01, Episode 01 – Meet Charlotte

Hi! My name is Pierran Shearer. I am not related to Alan but he has inspired me to start a career in football management. This is my Football Manager story. I’m 28 years old and used to teach PE in a school in Cornwall.

Charlotte 2

As promised, I applied to ALL the jobs that were advertised. It took ages!! I had to write an application for each one and broke my keyboard due to the number of times it was used. That’s how many times I had to write “no experience” and “fairly good on Football Manager computer game” That was until I found out that you could copy and paste it! That sped up the process loads! Maybe I should learn how to use a computer before becoming a football manager… Nah! It’ll be fine!

In the end, I got a job. I was invited to move to the big US and A to Charlotte in North Carolina. Not the top job in Charlotte but at the second team with the imaginative name: Charlotte 2. I didn’t realise there was a Charlotte 1, let alone a Charlotte 2! All I could think of was Charlottes Web…

I arrived and nobody was there. Literally nobody. No spiders or anything.

I stood in the office and shouted “HELLO!” and a man appeared. He explained he was the only one at the club. I’m not even joking. He had the keys to the stadium, the training facilities, the changing rooms. If this guy wasn’t here, I’d be looking for keys under the door mat.

He played right back and was a nice man from Togo. His name was Shalom Dutey. He showed me round and explained that there wouldn’t be any matches played this year due to a virus going about… Not sure what he meant so we cracked open a Corona Beer and got to know each other. I think this guy was now my friend. He was nice to me.

This is Shalom Dutey

The Club

The club play in the USSL D2 – Deep South Division. No, me neither. They are a semi-professional club with 1.5 star training facilities. Other than that they are useless – due to the fact that Shalom had to play goalkeeper, defender, midfield and striker all on his own. They are the feeder team to Charlotte Independence who play in the USL Championship Eastern Division. I think that’s the second division – the one below the MLS. I need to learn the rules around here as I can’t tell if there are any promotions and relegations. I don’t think even Shalom knows… He’s nice but he’s a typical footballer. Not a Frank Lampard with brains – more of a John Terry. Thinks with his feet and his… well, let’s not go there.

They play in a small sports complex in just outside of Charlotte. I think the main team have a decent 15,000 seater stadium but we have to share this with local football teams – mainly made up of kids. We often have to ask them to leave so we can train and play matches. It’s not ideal! Some of the throw eggs at us while we play. Egg-cellent! I started to think it wasn’t what it was CRACKED up to be. This wasn’t an eggs-traordinary situation but that’s enough yoking about, it’s time to find a POACHer! Sorry. You can carry on now.

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Preparations

My job at the moment is to encourage players to join me, which will be difficult as there aren’t many people who want to join the second division team here in Charlotte. I might need to entice them with something else… Maybe eggs?

Please come back and find out what happens next