Sunday March 13 2022 will go down as a historic day for Newcastle U FC. The Tynesiders celebrated a famous league double, winning both senior and U23 Greece league championships. In the course of the senior league success, they managed to beat (and twice!) VM’s #1 team https://www.virtualmanager.com/squads/231968 Pederson FK, winning 4-3 away in an extraordinary game at Fap Stadium with 2 goals from Turkish international https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14476468-burak-sengor Burak Sengor, and a further brace including the winner from Brazilian star https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14493641-hermes-leao Hermes Leao. What proved to be the crucial result came at The Sir Kevin Keegan Stadium on Saturday night, with the Geordies taking a second victory over Pederson FK, 1-0 with a great strike from Slovenian https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14513116-ernest-habera Ernie ‘the boot’, his 436th goal for Newcastle. Of the season’s 30 games, the Toon won 23 and drew 6, going on a magnificent 14 match unbeaten run that led to this, only their third Division 1 title in the club’s history and their first in 5 years since twice winning the Brazilian senior title in 2017. The seniors have generally been a much more successful cup team, winning senior national cup competitions on no less than 10 times so far.

A key player in this season’s success was undoubtedly 93-rated Nigerian ‘keeper https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14420450-essien-bada, now on 1304 games for the Toon, in fact all his matches have been for Newcastle since he was bought as a youngster from https://www.virtualmanager.com/clubs/329409 Spurs for 6 million. His 66 seasons for the team have seen an extraordinary 254 Man of the Match awards and Newcastle regularly conceding the lowest number of goals in the league.

The U23 league success was a fantastic double, but Newcastle have previously won that league title twice, but this season overcame a very strong https://www.virtualmanager.com/squads/1234364 FC Arsenal team, 6 times U23 league championship winners. In another remarkable season, Newcastle’s U23s were unbeaten, winning 19 games and drawing 3. Top scorer was French international https://www.virtualmanager.com/players/14895009-gaspard-cygan Cygan netting 22 times, the 22 year old having now already scored 392 goals for the Geordies.

The team will therefore qualify for both Super Cups in season 2022-11.

Asked to comment on this phenomenal league double, manager Rolf Bergström said:
“Finally! It has taken us 5 long, long years to win our third senior league title and our first outside of Brazil. We have worked so hard, every day for this success, building so many squads who have come and gone and just missing out on league success, way too many second places but you know, we are really going to enjoy this. For our amazing fans, and we have around 30,000 supporters, this is a chance to finally celebrate a significant success to add to all those wonderful cups we have won. With 2 Super Cups to look forward to, next season is going to be great, hopefully we can progress a bit further than we have in the past in those competitions."

David "two chins" Maguire, the club Chairman, separately said; "The way VM is set up it is very difficult to optimise your team for both senior and junior league and cup competitions, and so many clubs simply prefer to just concentrate on one or the other. Not here though, Newcastle have always tried to do our very best in both competitions and this week proves that it can be done. I am very proud of what Rolf and the boys have achieved."

Their success over the last few seasons has seen Newcastle climb into the top 10 VIFA rankings of both Senior and U23 teams, remarkably hitting #1 of all U23 teams 3 times in February and currently standing at #9 in the senior list of all teams (their highest was #4 back in 2017).