Candelaria And Marquez Soccer Championship

The Candelaria And Marquez Soccer Championship, commonly known as the CMSC, was a six division football league, and the governing body thereof, based in Candelaria And Marquez. Since a lower-league restructuring prior to the XXVIII season the top division was formally known as the CMSC1, though CMSC is still used colloquially. The league was placed on an indefinite hiatus following its thirty-ninth edition and can be considered disbanded in practise with no obvious sign of an imminent resumption of professional football in the Candelarias.

Formed to replace the defunct NFBL following a prior dissolution in the 1970s; the CMSC1 expanded to eighteen teams and became the most watched sports league in the Candelarias and Rushmore, thanks in part to the heavy financial backing of the country’s government and, latterly, a significant degree of foreign investment. Overseas players had been permitted since XXV and the start of what became known as the 'International Era', running for fifteen seasons over the course of thirty years, during which time the league was home to nationals from well over fifty countries. From the start of the XXXI season, the CMSC included two clubs, NAPPC and Tenderville United, from the neighbouring nation of Nethertopia.

Since early in XXVIII, CMSC clubs participated in global football via the Champions' Cup and other UICA competitions, and were collectively ranked as high as first in the formal global rankings system, with Albrecht FC and Albrecht Turkish having lifted world titles, and Caires City ranked for a time as the top side in international club football.

Pre-CMSC
The original National Foot-Ball League was established in 1935, though the game had previously been played across the Candelarias since the islands’ colonisation. City-based and regional amateur leagues had been in place since the turn of the century, attracting vast crowds and being home to certain clubs – including Albrecht Turkish, Caires Sports and Port of Clotaire – that remained major sides until the sport’s dying day. Not all big clubs opted to chase the moolah offered by regular nationwide play right from the start – indeed, only eight teams contested the 1935 championship – but in time the NFBL grew to become one of the country’s major past-times and a great source of national unity throughout the Civil War era and its aftermath. In the immediate years following the conflict however, the league rapidly became a plaything for the wealthiest in the new Candelaria And Marquez – with most of the remaining clubs turning instead to businessmen and companies convinced that money could be made from the national sport. Their assertions, for the most part, proved incorrect; instead, several major clubs went bankrupt while the growth of hooliganism saw middle-class crowds dwindle elsewhere. The league folded following the 1973 season. The increasing availability of television didn’t help matters, with football supporters now able to watch club matches of the highest quality, albeit typically on delay and frequently heavily edited, from as far afield as Starblaydia and Vilita. Enthusiasm for C&M’s infinitely poorer product was inevitably dampened, despite the subsequent prohibition on the broadcast of matches from Atlantian Oceanian countries, as well as on the World Cup itself.

The CMSC
The short-lived first era of international football on Candelariasian television at least brought back to the fore the notion of a C&M national team, and the CMSC was initially formed with that very concept in mind. The finest players of the country – both those who had been playing in minor divisions overseas and those still contracted to the floating, league-less local clubs – were drawn together into two Select XIs; one representing Candelaria, and the other Marquez and the Outlying Islands.

The CAMAFA came under a great deal of criticism over this move from a variety of quarters, in particular those who saw the two separate teams as potentially hugely divisive. Interest in the seven-game series that comprised CMSC I was vast however – particularly in Marquez, once it became clear that ‘their’ side were going to triumph over their Candelarian counterparts and with a team consisting of numerous Hispanic players.

After having moved around the country during the first ‘season’, the two teams became based permanently in Allemali and Onwere respectively for the second, before formally becoming Candelaria-Allemali and Marquez-Onwere. MarquezOW fans would generally include the Select XI’s first two championship titles as “their’s”, and the two trophies still reside in the club’s trophy cabinet, but in practical terms CMSC III is considered the first ‘proper’ league; when several clubs, new and old, were invited to join the championship.

The popularity of the CMS Cup, refounded initially as an amateur competition to coincide with the inaugural CMSC season, proved decisively that the appetite was there once again for club football in the islands. However hard they tried however, the CAMAFA failed to avoid what were widely perceived as the sins of the past and keep their new baby in check. As with the NFBL, the CMSC soon became its own entity where money increasingly talked once more; Gamboa FC and KT Hotspur being among those to claim early success thanks to vast financial backing, though popular and relatively impoverished clubs including Albrecht FC and Turks’ Club also savoured early competitiveness.

The real difference between the NFBL and CMSC was that C&M was now a wealthier country all-round, and far better equipped to support a professional league with sponsorship and relatively high ticket costs. The overall standard remained mediocre, but attendances and media coverage increased almost every year.

In a country with long-time left-leaning sympathies, even in a post-Civil War era undergoing considerable free market reforms, the success of Castillo FC (three championships in six seasons) and later Albrecht FC (five in six) raised concerns among the supporters of other clubs, while in later years many would complain over the financial might of the two largest Albrecht clubs. However, the arrival of many dozens of foreign stars since XXV – and the quota in place to stop the wealthiest clubs bringing in more than their fair share – helped even-out the contest. Equally, many sides soon found themselves with one or more wealthy benefactors, allowing traditionally well-supported but less than successful sides such as Arrigo Portuguese, El din Marbles and Radyukevich CSC to make in-roads in later seasons. At the same time, relatively impecunious sides such as Green Island and Port of Clotaire proved able to hold their own in the CMSC1, whilst playing good football at the same time.

Probably the biggest success story of the league’s final few years – alongside the elven-dominated Green Island and financially flushed giants Albrecht FC – were Caires City however, having taken advantage of modest financial backing, and exceptional management both from the sidelines and in the boardroom, to emerge from the shadow of the two traditional Caires powerhouses and become a major force both at home and abroad.

During the CMSC’s International Era, the league grew from an obscure entity in a backwater footballing nation and region to become – for a brief time – arguably the most widely watched domestic competition in the sporting world. Following Albrecht Turkish’s victory at the third Champions’ Cup; Albrecht FC would lift no fewer than four TQCC titles (not to mention two Globe Cups) – their final, at TQCC24, coming in the immediate aftermath of the league’s dissolution. Numerous other sides made the finals of competitions of various standards, with Candelariasian football’s competitive depth perhaps best indicated by the consistent performances of CMSC2 clubs in the SBCC.

Post-CMSC
The impact of the CMSC would perhaps be even greater on the Candelarias itself than the wider multi-verse, with the league’s multi-layered successes arguably doing more to open the country up to the worlds and expand the Candelariasian populace’s once limited grasp on the nature of reality beyond their own shores than anything else. Club football, alongside the rise to prominence of the C&M national team, went beyond a mere national obsession to become arguably the primary focus of the country’s economy and social activity.

This fact would prove to be inherent in the league’s downfall, however, in the aftermath of the Beatrice event. One of President Robyn Morton’s first acts over the ensuing days was to pull the national team out of World Cup 52 qualifying, believing that the ‘Big Blues’ would otherwise continue to provide an undue distraction for the Candelariasian public as they bid to rebuild the country and fully come to terms with their predicament. The move would ultimately be widely supported, with the public’s former love for international footballers and football administrators alike souring into something approaching loathing as it became clear that such influential individuals had for decades resisted, on mass, the chance to expose the depths of C&M’s media censorship and the activities of the M.O.R.T. and similar organisations.

The lack of a competitive national team would have inevitably and terminally degraded the CMSC’s standing and, with the government’s subsequent and equally inevitable decision to abandon the use of time dilation technology, it became clear that maintaining a league in tune with the international and UICA calendars would no longer be a feasible proposition. Most foreign players were immediately released from their contracts but, even then, initial plans were left in place for the resumption of league play inside a few months. This planned ‘CMSC40’, formed purely for the Candelariasian market with international television contracts abandoned, has yet to come to pass a decade later however.

Public distaste with professional football soon saw a number of smaller clubs go to the wall. Others were able to maintain a presence in amateur or semi-professional competitions spread across the country, while a few of the most historically significant clubs continue to cling onto life principally as social institutions with small numbers of full professionals playing in a complex fixture list of league, cup and exhibition matches as well as undertaking considerable community work. In almost all cases youth development quickly ground to a halt – with the factory-farming of young footballers no longer seen as being in C&M’s economic or social interests – and what youth coaching still exists is typically based around encouraging exercise or providing motivation to less academically engaged youngsters. By 2021, few clubs still maintained even a semi-professional playing staff, while attempts to move in effect the entire sporting operation of others – including Caires Sports and Radyukevich – so the homelands of their international owners proved only fleetingly successful.

In all, Candelariasian football is now passingly reminiscent of its standing in both the pre-NFBL and pre-CMSC eras, suggesting a third emergence of the professional game is by no means out of the question in the long term, but it remains wholly unclear whether the Candelariasian people can ever recover either their passion for, let alone prowess in, the worlds’ game.

Competition format
Having included sixteen clubs since the CMSC V season, the CMSC1 expanded to eighteen prior to XXIX, with each team now playing thirty-four league fixtures per season for a total of three hundred and six matches. League standings were determined by points, then goal difference, goals scored and games won, before an end-of-season one-off play-off – though this latter option was never required to resolve the league title, UICA qualification or relegation.

Qualification for global competitions
The longer time-scale of the CMSC resulted in later years in the establishment of Apertura and Clau-sura stages in the season in order to determine qualification for international club competition.

In practise the divide, after seventeen matches had been played per team, was purely notional – the only reward for ‘winning’ either competition was a small and largely ignored trophy, and there was no promotion or relegation following the Apertura stage. However, the top four teams at the end of each stage qualified for the TQCC (either directly to the group stage, or for the preliminary rounds), while the fifth- and sixth-placed side in the CMSC1 were guaranteed a Globe Cup spot, as was the seventh-placed team after the Clausura stage. At the end of the Apertura stage, the winner of the previous season’s CMS Cup was granted a Globe Cup berth – as long as that team was not already placed in the top six at the time. Otherwise, the place reverted to the seventh-place side.

'Winners' since introduction of Apertura and Clausura

CMSC2
There were three relegation spots in the CMSC1, which lead into the CMSC2 (following pre-XXIX restructuring) – a twenty-team division operated along similar lines (though there were limits on the percentage of turnover spent on transfer fees, and a two-foreigner quota). The top two were promoted, along with a play-off winner from the third- to sixth-placed clubs. CMSC2 sides enjoyed a modicum of success in the SBCC, with Albrecht Independent FC winning the first edition and the division supplying the next four defeated finalists. Candelariasian competitors at odd-numbered cups were drawn entirely from CMSC2 clubs rather than newly promoted sides in the top-flight, owing to the Apertura/Clausura system employed in C&M.

'International Era' promoted clubs

CMSC2
There were three relegation spots in the CMSC1, which lead into the CMSC2 (following pre-XXIX restructuring) – a twenty-team division operated along similar lines (though there were limits on the percentage of turnover spent on transfer fees, and a two-foreigner quota). The top two were promoted, along with a play-off winner from the third- to sixth-placed clubs. CMSC2 sides enjoyed a modicum of success in the SBCC, with Albrecht Independent FC winning the first edition and the division supplying the next four defeated finalists. Candelariasian competitors at odd-numbered cups were drawn entirely from CMSC2 clubs rather than newly promoted sides in the top-flight, owing to the Apertura/Clausura system employed in C&M.

Lower divisions
There were only two relegation places from the CMSC2, which lead into Candelaria1 and Eastern1 (referred to at their time of the league’s disestablishment as the Patton-Carmichael Candelarian Premier League and the El Monstruo Verde Elite Championship respectively, the latter sponsored by a Kura-Pellandi company) – but only if the two sides finished in the bottom two positions were not both from either Candelaria or Marquez and the Outliers. If this was the case, only the eighteenth-placed side were relegated, and the champions of the other regional division were not promoted.

Beneath the two twelve-team regional divisions, the lowest levels of the professional pyramid were the Cristal Chemical Strategic Candelarian Second League (Candelaria2) and Campeonato de la Doble Vidriera de la Élite (Eastern2). Two teams were promoted and relegated per season between the four tiers of the regional competition, while Candelaria2 and Eastern2 also lost a team every year, with sides from below voted into the league based both on their on-field ability, support base, financial potential and boardroom drinks cabinet.

CMS Cup
At the time of the CMSC’s collapse, the CMS Cup was open to these eighty-six clubs, along with eight places reserved from non-league (usually amateur) sides. The forty-eight regional sides entered in the first round proper alongside these, with the eighteen CMSC2 clubs and the second-placed club and play-off winner from the previous year’s CMSC2 entering in the third round, and the remaining sixteen teams making up fully half of the last thirty-two (fourth round) draw. All ties were one-off, with a single replay following a draw, while the semi-finals and final were played at neutral locations with no replays involved.

Historically, the Candelarias’ domestic cup competitions suffered for attention compared to the NFBL and went through numerous transformations over the years to leave results from that era considered largely irrelevant. The modern CMS Cup had become a more tantalising offering, though the relatively changeable nature of the top half of the CMSC1 table compared to some other international leagues, along with the prospect of TQCC or Globe Cup qualification via league finishing positions, left the Cup a particularly popular competition only among a certain set of clubs considered consistent ‘cup teams’.

Despite this, the CMS Cup final remained one of the single most important events in C&M’s sporting calendar regardless of which two teams are involved, and the games themselves were frequently memorable – indeed, of the more than thirty editions thus held, only one (following the XXVII season) finished goalless after ninety minutes, and the cup was not decided on penalties until its final – to date – outing.

Finances and sponsorship
Compared to other organisations in C&M the football league was an extremely wealthy entity, though most of that wealth was tied up in the clubs rather than the communal pot. Though the league enforced a luxury tax on big-money transfers and high wages, and provided financial assistance to certain clubs looking to bring in expensive, big-name foreign stars; those clubs with significant financial backing still had a major competitive advantage – be it those such as Arrigo Portuguese, Caires City or KT Hotspur who had a single major benefactor or company behind them, or those such as Green Island and Candelaria-Allemali who were effectively owned by a conglomerate of businesses. Turks’ Club were a rare example of a fan-owned side, though in practise they too operated at the whims of a millionaire chairman. Albrecht FC, whose financial might was previously based on sponsorship, gate receipts and merchandise, were later owned by Han company Samseong – one of a significant number foreign-owned clubs in the CMSC1. Most other teams had a primary shirt sponsor, ranging from supermarket chains and Kura-Pellandi online gambling firms, to kitchen outfitters and a chiropractic centre.

Owners of major clubs
Not all listed ‘owners’ controlled 100% of their football clubs even at the time of CMSC XXIX, and most of these arrangements have since slipped into abeyance or are otherwise of uncertain accuracy.

Media coverage in C&M
The rights to show the CMSC1 on Candelariasian television were split between several companies, though as a partially state-funded entity TV1 were guaranteed a live match on Monday evenings. A Saturday lunchtime game was usually available on a pay-per-view basis on TV3, while TV3 Digital made all Saturday afternoon games available simultaneously, despite concerns over the knock-on effect on ticket sales. The main highlights package for the top division was owned by TTO, the largest fully commercially-funded network in the country, and broadcasted on Saturday evenings under the station’s flagship title of The Football Show. Onwere TV held the rights to CMSC2 and regional league highlights, while CMS Cup games were shown on satellite network Cúchulainn Sport. Today, the presence of domestic – or even international – football on Candelariasian television is minimal.

Media coverage overseas
The CMSC had long been shown on stations in Oygruppen, but Kura-Pellandi sports channel NTV Sport 2 was the first beyond both the continent and region to take the plunge and buy the rights to live games and highlights. The CMSC board were keen to sell their product overseas over the years and to capitalise on the greater exposure of Candelariasian football via the TQCC, and similar deals were conducted with several foreign networks. In other markets, clubs were permitted to act as independent parties, particularly when broadcasters were interested primarily in the rights to live matches featuring their own national team players.

Former international broadcasters ¹ Live matches were screened on SargoSport 1; twice-weekly highlights on Telex 1; Football Gazzetta Candelaria weekly on Telex 4 ² TSPN CMSC was the only known channel solely dedicated to Candelariasian domestic football, and was available to some 80% of TSPN subscribers ³ Major matches live on BCN2, other matches aired Wednesdays and Sundays on BCN International

Overall 'International Era' table
Rankings include seasons spent in the (CMSC2) and {lower divisions).

Overseas players
The issue of the involvement of non-nationals in CMSC teams first came to the fore prior to the XI championship, when Caires Sports announced the signing of three young stars from continental Rushmore. Though sanctioned by the league itself without a hitch, the CAMAFA – which still held the balance of power in Candelariasian football at the time – objected to the moves on the basis that the country’s own young talent would suffer as a result of any influx from overseas, and damage their long-term hopes of joining the international footballing community.

The CMSC duly accepted the CAMAFA’s findings – grudgingly or otherwise – and installed a ban on all players without C&M passports, cracking down hard on any clubs which attempted to skirt around the new rules. The ban was finally lifted prior to the XXV season – the start of the ‘International Era’ – by allowing each top-flight club to sign a single foreign player.

The weeks that followed saw a mighty list of firsts – Kura-Pellandi midfielder Giorgio Pezzoni becoming the first foreigner from beyond the immediate region to join a CMSC club, the Ariddian teenager Naoki Tonnelier becoming the league’s first female player at Albrecht FC, and Roger (later 'Artulcdhron') Zetaback becoming the first non-human at Green Island (albeit unbeknownst to the Candelariasian populace right up until the league’s dissolution).

Though the majority of the Rushmori imports failed to make an impact, the CMSC voted in favour of expanding the limit to three per team the following season, despite the CAMAFA’s continued misgivings. Though debates over the effect on young Candelariasian talent continued ever since, particularly after poor performances by the C&M national team, a consensus remained that the presence of the foreign stars in the league served to enhance the technical abilities and tactical awareness of the current generation of C&M natives, while a handful of foreign imports – most notably the Cafundelense Dionísio Madeira Lobos – went on to play in C&M colours at various levels. From the perspective of supporters, this era saw the arrival of numerous non-native players who would go down as genuine club legends.

Though Kura-Pelland, traditional sporting allies and rivals of C&M, previously supplied the largest percentage of non-natives to the league; the foreigners of the CMSC later became a diverse bunch indeed, hailing from over fifty different countries. Major world names to have plied their trade in C&M include the Zwangzugian forward pairing of Gary Maini and Peter Vanderpent, the Vanorian World Cup winners Scott (later 'Faeron') Soldarian and Espy va Drake, Starblaydi World Cup 47 winning captain Tuomas Hindenburg, Ad'ihan captain Anthony Jones, and noted strikers from the likes of Bettia, Cafundéu, Daehanjeiguk, Demot, Sorthern Northland and the Capitalizt SLANI.

Besides the valued additions to their playing squads, several clubs benefited financially from bringing in foreign players; be it in the form of overseas television contracts (in those markets where CMSC1 games were sold on an individual basis) or shirt sales (such as Caires Sports’ employment of vast numbers of Yaforites, which made the Knights a closely followed team in the players’ motherland). The attitude of the league itself to foreign signings certainly changed utterly during its final few seasons, with smaller clubs frequently given financial assistance to sign big names whose presence was deemed to enhance the quality of the CMSC product as a whole. Ironically, given the Candelariasian state policy on the non-existence of non-human sentients, the elves of Valanora were consistently among the CMSC’s marquee players, whose presence in the league was regularly used as a major selling point in overseas markets.

Though the four-player quota remained in place until the last, the CMSC, from the XXXI season, provided vague ‘special dispensation’ to certain clubs to enable them to field more than this number of non-Candelariasians. Equally, several clubs exploited rules treating academy players - whatever their nationality - as being 'home-grown', while Nethertopians and other Rushmoris were considered to be 'half-foreigners' for the purposes of the quota system.

The differing scales in which international footballers appear to age allowed several players to become true CMSC mainstays, with Albrecht FC captain and left-back Francois St. Louis, of Kelssek, holding the record for top-flight league starts.

Overseas coaches
No such restrictions on the employment of foreign coaching staff existed, though prior to the start of the ‘International Era’ only a handful of Rushmori coaches had joined the backrooms of CMSC clubs. At the start of XVI, Marquez-Onwere broke the mould by bringing in former Kura-Pelland na-tional team manager Andy Woolworth, who led the naranja to the league title in his first season. Woolworth was soon joined by Matthew Tortini and Felipo Curana at Arrigo Portuguese and Turks’ Club respectively, while another former Kura-Pellandi international, and CMSC player, Giorgio Pezzoni, was Turks’ Club manager at the start of the XXX season. KT Hotspur have also notably dabbled with overseas managers; legendary Praying2God striker Thomas Larson having a period at the helm, while former Bostopian international defender Karl Matthews later succeeded him. Naoki Tonnelier became the league's first female manager when she joined Ironside.

Asdrubal Espinoza, of Aguazul was one of the more successful foreign coaches, having led Albrecht Turkish to CMSC1 and Champions’ Cup titles before leaving for the Queer Poco el Mono Ara national team role, but XXXVI saw the top four clubs all managed by foreigners: Winston Muscat at Port of Clotaire and fellow Sortherner Alejandro Blanco da Cruz at Marquez-Onwere, and two Vanorians – title-winning coach Daft Massimo at Green Island, and Fabio Mannasuch at Turkish.

Other foreigners in the dugout – but not in full managerial positions – included Endmile native Thjis Tullier at Candelaria-Allemali, Kura-Pellandi Larry Torrell-Whyte at the El din Marbles and Squornshelan Djabgor Cvecej at Arrigo Portuguese, with CMSC legends Kim Daeeui and Julius Rotherwell graduated to the assistant manager’s spots at Albrecht FC and Albrecht Turkish respectively. Certain Candelariasians also moved in the opposite direction, those having management spells abroad including Connor Mengucci and Ignacio Vélez in Cafundéu, José Felipe Cassumba Domingos and Hane Davies in Sargossa, and Doug Szczechowicz in Nethertopia.