‘Cringe-inducing football pun goes here’

Football Manager, undeniably the best football management game on Earth, is back again. My addictive relationship with the game began at the tender age of seven and I’ve been hooked ever since, even turning up fifteen minutes late to my GCSE Religious Studies exam due to an FA Cup semi-final with Hull running into extra-time. Anyone who claims to be a football fan but has never owned a copy of this game is clearly lying – the two are mutually exclusive. Rugby fans (wrong ball), Americans (can’t even name the sport right) and girls (computer game plus football equals unfortunate sausagefest) have never understood the joys of playing Football Manager, and although a full tutorial for novices has been included in the game for the first time, this article may have little relevance to those who have never played the series before.

Wives and girlfriends of those who play are known as ‘Football Manager Widows’ for good reason

To those unfamiliar with Football Manager, the simple premise is to give armchair fans a chance to become real-life managers in a way no normal fantasy football game can, with almost every possible aspect of running a team available for tinkering. The game is seriously addictive; wives and girlfriends of those that play are commonly known as ‘Football Manager Widows’ for good reason.

After only a week of playing the new release I can confirm that time flies just as quickly as in previous years, and hours spent fiddling with tactics and making moves in the transfer market pass by within the blink of an eye. In fact, every full stop in this article not only indicates the end of a sentence, but also the immediate minimizing of this document and another twenty minutes spent taking the mighty Dagenham & Redbridge back into the Premier League. Whilst the continuity and quality of this article may suffer as a result of my poor attention span, with a Carling Cup tie against Arsenal just round the corner and my team sitting outside the playoffs, this piece just has no real significance in comparison.

Each annual release of FM is fundamentally a slight variation on the previous, yet minor improvements in gameplay and an updated database force thousands of fans to splash the cash on an annual basis. This year is no different, with numerous new features tempting us addicts like a free beer festival for alcoholics. Each new database over the years has offered their own quirks and anomalies, including various overrated players, but the joy in finding those hidden wonderkids in the depths of the Slovakian lower leagues and fielding a team including the likes of Stefan Kuntz, Yo-Suk Bum, Argel Fucks and Wan King make up for Jermaine Pennant bizarrely starting for England.

Making magical transfer moves (my personal favourite was bringing Roberto Baggio to Watford in 2004) has become that little bit easier, as you can now offer loyalty bonuses to players and are able to ‘lock’ certain areas of your contract negotiations, meaning there are no more frustrating “David N’Gog demands an increase of £300 to his contract” moments. Another new feature perfect for those hoping to replicate the wild career paths of Roy Hodgson and Sven-Göran Eriksson is the ability to add additional foreign leagues to your save game at any point. As soon as your season in the Premier League or La Liga gets a bit frustrating then the opportunity to pack your bags and head to the lowly Finnish Third Division has never been so easy, and the convenience of not having to choose which nations are playable at the start of your career means the game can process at a far quicker speed (“I know my game is loading slower than Emile Heskey, but one day I might want to manage in the Indonesian Premier Division!”)

Up until recently the idea of interacting with players scared many users (“a distraction from proper football,” they claimed), yet the feature is improved upon yet again with the ability to take on a persona during team talks, and a range of ‘tones’ allows even more customization of your man-management style. Whether it be a bit of the ol’ Fergie ‘hairdryer’ treatment or playing it cool like Mourinho, the instant player feedback highlights the impact of your words, giving a more conversational feel to the dressing room – although there doesn’t appear to be an ‘offer your team shit advice in your poorly pronounced Italian-English’ option, à la Fabio Capello. Be careful though – when the mid-season rut of poor results dampen your season’s hopes, your players’ moral takes on even more importance and the way in which you verbally rape your players after that 0-0 draw with Swansea can have devastating, and perhaps exaggerated, effects.

Whilst the new ‘Intelligent Interface’ may at first appear a bit crowded and overwhelming, once you have grown used to the extra information crammed into your screen you begin to wonder how you ever used to stay up till 3am playing without it. However, I have never liked the interactive media conferences and they remain as hopeless as ever with reactions from your players and the media either confusing or overdramatic, and although the novelty of storming out of a press conference for no apparent reason never ceases to amuse, this aspect of the game remains an unnecessary disruption between match days. Similarly, whilst the 3D graphics engine during matches has improved somewhat, I’ve never been convinced by it and couldn’t really care less if I can see Titus Bramble concede an own goal in improved animation. Call me old-fashioned, but I remember the days when I got by with commentary text only and the (epileptic fit inducing) flashing text of “GOAL FOR LAZIO!!!!!” sent me into howls of excitement. Whilst the 2D match engine was a revolutionary feature in FM05, the 3D view stills has the quality of a crappy 90s PS1 game and needs a bit of attention.

There are those who simply skim through a season in a day, only ever distracted from match days with the occasional headline transfer, yet this type of user does the game a disservice and fails to experience the microscopic depth of control available as the most acute details can make or break a season. It is not until you fully immerse yourself into the game and begin organising your team’s training schedule, choreographing your team’s set-pieces and start buying unknown Brazilian seventeen year olds, that you can truly experience FM at its best. Some say that this sort management sim is nothing more than dull spreadsheets and numbers, but these morons have no imagination and can fuck off back to playing Mario Kart. Where Football Manager succeeds is that unlike almost every other game there are an infinite amount of career paths and gameplay is not bound by specific missions or tasks – in FM you are completely free to roam the football world as you please. Whether it be showing Mourinho how it is done at Real Madrid; overhauling the likes of Yeovil Town with a bunch of skinny Romanian under-21s, or emigrating to Jamaica and bringing the World Cup trophy to the Caribbean, life as a Football Manager addict looks set to continue.

I’ll give myself until Christmas before I pack it in and retire from the world of management, as the potential impact on my education is so great even another season of Champions League football with Tottenham Hotspur wouldn’t make for it.