Braga FM19 Team Guide – Get That Title With FC Braga!

Founded in 1921, Braga is a professional Portuguese club currently playing in the Portuguese Premier League. Thanks to their performances last season, they have qualified for the EURO Cup. In FM19 Braga has great youth facilities and superb training facilities, and they are enjoying perhaps the best era in the club’s history and have a proud heritage they intend to keep adding to.

FM19 Braga strengths and weaknesses

When you first arrive at the team (season 2018/2019) the Braga team has many strengths and very little weaknesses. In fact, there are over 40 strengths and only 6 weaknesses. That’s one of the best rations I’ve seen in Football Manager 2019, especially for a club that isn’t that big.

Some of the main strengths that need to be mentioned are really good tackling, the team has many players with a high long shot ability, the team is very agile, determined and the team, in general, possess a high level of concentration.

There is also impressive overall squad depth since there are over 4 players all capable of playing a role in the first team.

When it comes to weaknesses, you only have 1 player playing the left wing, you could use more strikers and the wage budget is low so you don’t have much room for maneuverability.

Braga season expectations

The board has high expectations of you this season in Football Manager:

• In League – Champions Cup Qualification

• Taça de Portugal (Cup of Portugal) – Reach Semi Final

• Portuguese League Cup – Reach Semi Final

• Euro Cup – Reach First Knockout Round

The transfer budget starts at 2,69M pounds and a wage budget of 216,389 per week. Altering to win every single competition you can get a transfer budget of 3,68M pounds and 235,450 per week.

We, at FMBrotherhood, wouldn’t suggest saying you’ll win everything. You simply don’t have the team to do that in the first season.

Braga FM19 Squad Dynamics Introduction

First thing you’ll notice in this Braga FM19 side is that there are NO TEAM LEADERS. That is a bad thing since it means that your team is lacking players with a high leadership/determination attribute.

Team Leaders sit at the top of the pyramid and are the most influential players at the club. They typically have leadership and experience in abundance and other players will naturally gravitate towards them.

As the most significant players in the squad, they are the ones you want to keep happiest, as any grievances will not only affect them but also permeate through the rest of the squad.

Highly Influential Players are next and exhibit many of the same hallmarks as the Team Leaders do. They provide stability and bring the core of the squad together, as they will typically be more leading players than team leaders, who are generally the few who emerge from this group and take the overall lead. In this team, you have 2 Highly Influential Players who will become team leaders as the game progresses and you should look to keep them.

Braga FM 2019 Players Review

We’ve compiled a small list of your top 5 players in the team that you should look to keep no matter what.

Dyego Sousa

Dyego is your 28-year-old Target Man. He is your best striker. At the 190cm height, he is really good in the air, he has really good finishing and composure and he is a fairly ambitious and professional individual. Try to keep him in your squad.

Ricardo Horta

Ricardo is only 23 years old, which means he can still develop. He is versatile in many positions, but his best is Attacking Midfield Left. He is really skillful, with a good passing ability and really good dribbling, agility, and flair. He is your present and the future and you must keep him in your team.

Raul Silva

Raul is a central defender and he is your best one. At the age of 28, his ability isn’t going to improve anymore but it is enough to keep him in the team for a few seasons. At the amazing height of 191cm, he is good at heading the ball and as a bonus, he has a really good jumping reach.

You won’t see many players win an aerial duel against him. Good strength, good tackling, anticipation, and bravery make this guy a beast in his position. He is a very aggressive player which might cause him to get additional yellow cards during the season but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. You need these types of players to succeed!

João Novais

João is your central midfielder, he is only 24 and he can still improve a little bit. He is your best free kick taker, he is a good passer of the ball with good technique and vision.

His height and his jumping and heading ability make him a liability when it comes to contesting for balls in the air, but all other skills make up for it. He is on a long contract at the start of the game so you won’t be having any problems with him.

Paulinho

Paulinho is your second best striker. At the age of 25, he may or may not improve at all, depending on how you play him. He is versatile and can also play on the wing. Good finishing, good composure and technique make him an overall good striker. We say keep him for a while!

Did you know?

Did you know that Portugal is THE biggest source of wonderkids in FM19? Especially Braga and Benfica are leading the front with most of them generating there.

One individual we would like to point out is Francisco Trincão. He is only 19 and he is your biggest talent. He is a left-footed winger who plays on the AML position. Since he likes to cut inside and it is one of his starting preferred moves, you can put him on the AMR position for better impact.

If given enough time on the pitch, he can develop into a beastly player like Gareth Bale in his prime at Tottenham. His biggest strength is his dribbling and he gets past opponents easily. His only weakness is his heading and leadership. But he doesn’t need heading since he will be mostly crossing from the wing or cutting inside to shoot.

Did you know that having a B-Team can be bad for you?

Football Manager 2019 treats B teams as a special type of affiliated club. B teams are on their own when playing matches. This makes them an independent team. You can, however, coach the B team.

Braga B team relies on the club for lots of things. They are 100% dependent financially. And this is where what we mean by bad. Yes, you can use their players in your league games, but the players aren’t good enough and YOU have to pay their wages.

This is something we learned about late and we could have had a better start to the game if we had released those players at start and used the wage budget for good players.

Players to sell or release

Having such a low wage budget just forces you to offload some players to be able to buy someone good or just to give better contracts to players you want to keep for the future.

All of the players in this list don’t deserve to be kept in the team since they don’t have anything to offer for the club at the moment and their potential ability is too low, so they won’t offer anything to do the club in the future either. You better sell them as quickly as possible.
These players are mostly from your B-Team, check them out and release them as it is cheaper in the long run.

• Fábio Fonseca – $650 per week
• Ze Pedro – $975 per week
• Miguel Inacio – $1100 per week
• Alves Ruben – $1100 per week
• André Ribeiro – $5,25k per week
• José Nuno Xavier – $650 per week
• Afonso Caetano – $1400 per week
• Tiago Pereira – $1400 per week
• Robert Muric – $5,25k per week

Getting rid of these will free up $17775 which is almost 10% of your total wage budget and that is huge in FM19. The general thought is that a Key Player in FM19 takes about 5% of the wage budget. Freeing up almost 10% will allow you to bring in 2 key players.

Braga FM19 formation

Our choice for the starting lineup (with no transfers) is 4-2-4 wide. It is a mainly counterattacking formation.

Your defensive line helped by both midfielders will absorb the pressure of your opponent, but your defenders have to be skilled enough to launch fast temp attacks when possession has been won.

We simply had to use a formation that employs attacks over wings since you have really talented players in those positions and you have quite a few of them so it’s a good choice so you can rotate them and keep them happy.

Our Conclusion

Overall, Braga has a really young squad, players who can still develop and become better. You have the luxury of only having 3 players aged over 30. With a low transfer budget and low wage budget, you will most likely have to play with your current squad or try to get some loans from Spain.

Our team member from FMBrotherhood, NIK, made an amazing FM19 Braga team guide YouTube video.

In it, you can see the tactic in detail, the first team he uses and some of his thoughts about the Braga team. He goes in-depth into their attributes and he also has a small list of players who you should sign in the first transfer window to make your squad better!