Football Manager, not for the weak-willed!
Picture edited by my 10 year old daughter!
The above picture should be on the box of Sport Interactive’s latest Football Manager game which is released next month.
It won’t be and instead will lure fans in and slowly take away their free time, social life and eventually their sanity!
Of course I’m being overly-dramatic there but I do feel it necessary to try and alert people to the perils of playing the game too much.
My record stint was 11 hours solid on the game when I had been signed off work with a broken wrist. That did have the occasional toilet and tea break but even so, that’s an extraordinary length of time to be playing on a laptop.
To get some sort of perspective on that, I could have flown from London Heathrow to Rio di Janeiro in the same time!
I have played several of the Football Manager series now and also a couple of the games from the Championship Manager series too. I guess that you could say that I’m a bit of a veteran of the games!
The basic look of Championship Manager ’93, my first ever managerial game
Championship Manager started in the early 90’s with very basic graphics and as player you only had a few decisions to make.
As manager, you chose who started in the team, the formation that they would play in and the style of football.
You were also in charge of buying and selling players but had no control of budgets and you had a limit of 22 players for your squad.
My most memorable game on there was when I was managing Cambridge United (then of the Third Division) and we beat Newcastle United of the Premiership 2-1 in the FA Cup.
The Championship Manager games at the turn of the millennium are widely perceived as the best and there is even a website where you can download the game from the 2001/02 season. Yes, before you ask, I have downloaded and played it in the last couple of years but don’t play it anymore.
I remember my best friend coming back from Oxford University during his first year of studying there and he only had stories of his Championship Manager career!
I couldn’t work out how in one particular season he had won all but one of his Premier League games (drew the other game against Everton) as manager of Aldershot.
I have never managed to be that successful on any of the football management games!
The Football Manager series slowly evolved form the first edition released in 2005 and it was the 2011 version that I played far too much!
The game was also released that version on the iPhone so I downloaded it and started a game on there as manager of Gateshead.
I won the Conference league title and FA Trophy in my first season and 20 (virtual) seasons later, I had won the Europa League with them!
Football Manager 2019’s thorough and extensive tactics
The games have now gone way too in-depth for my liking and there are just too many things that you can do in it.
Other fellow Championship Manager enthusiasts have made a version of the 2001/02 season game but with today’s players on it.
If you’ve never played one of these games before, I’d recommend it but you need to play them in moderation. I got way too carried away and lost valuable hours, maybe even days of my life playing them!
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