3 reasons why every football fan should play Football Manager

Due to the coronavirus, football fans around the world find themselves stuck at home and looking to keep themselves occupied. Unfortunately, without live football, our options are limited. While Fifa remains the most popular, Sega has made its flagship game, Football Manager, free for another week. The quarantine creates the perfect opportunity for football fans to try the game and understand why FM is rated so highly among the hipsters and tactical analysts of the footballing world. Here are three reasons why every football fan should try Football Manager.

1) In-depth understanding of tactics

Sheffield Wednesday v Manchester City - FA Cup Fifth Round

Football Manager offers the opportunity to understand tactics and tactical systems like no other game. While in Fifa, you control the players during the game, in FM, you cannot do so. Rather, FM is all about the tactical setup of your team, bringing the best out of the players you have and building a squad that can play to its full potential. While the game can be quite overwhelming for beginners, it is extremely educative once the player gets used to it. FM does not compromise on how complicated football tactics actually are, making it the perfect educator for those who want to increase their knowledge of the tactical side of the game.

Fifa is quite unrealistic in that positional compatibility and team chemistry is not accounted for very much in-game. FM is the stark opposite in that such externalities comprise the core of the game itself. Players have to be played in their best positions to get the best out of them. The tactical setup should also ensure that the overall strengths of the side are highlighted while the weaknesses are mitigated. FM is especially helpful for those who want to work as tactical analysts, scouts and even coaches for football clubs as it is a strong foundation to understand the basics.

2) Realistic picture of the day-to-day running of clubs

FC Barcelona v Manchester United - UEFA Champions League Quarter Final: Second Leg

Football clubs are not limited to the pitch. In modern times, they can essentially be compared to large companies. FM gives a realistic picture of the sheer size of operations and effort behind running a successful football club. As a manager in the game, the player has the choice to undertake a variety of roles. Apart from purely coaching the squad and creating tactics, the player is also in-charge of transfers, scouting players, developing the club's facilities, expanding the stadium and improving the commercial side of the club as well.

It must also be mentioned that all of these responsibilities are covered in detail by Football Manager, creating a comprehensive experience for the player who wants to look at the big picture of running a football club.

3) Scouting the next generation of superstars

RB Salzburg v Liverpool FC: Group E - UEFA Champions League

Experienced connoisseurs of Football Manager take great pride in exclaiming that they discovered a player in-game before the same player makes headlines in actuality. For example, Erling Braut-Haaland has long been a favourite of FM players since Football Manager 2019, long before his breakout this season. Football Manager has an unparalleled scouting system.

What sets it apart is that the game itself uses actual personnel from the football world in-game. Innovative coaches like Adin Osmanbasic,the founder of the famous website Spielverlagerung.com are listed as scouts in the game and such examples are countless. FM prides itself on relying on the community of tactical analysts and scouts for their inputs on the next wonderkids, making it an extremely accurate indicator of who is going to be the next superstar in football. By playing Football Manager, the average fan could unearth a starlet who could very well become the next big thing in world football. Recently, Sega gave an insight into how they collect data on these young players, explaining that the FM team itself has scouts who operate like club scouts and watch young players extensively in order to judge their abilities. This indicates the dedication of the FM team to create an educative and accurate experience for football fans without compromising on any of the fun.