FIFA, Football Manager and a cold beer

Football Manager

There are two kinds of football fanatics in this world- those who have played Football Manager, and those who haven’t played Football Manager… yet.

Introduced to it in 2007, I’ve played every version that has come out since. What looks like a glorified Gmail equivalent to most, is actually one of the best, most detailed and quite simply, one of the most addictive football based games around. For the uninitiated, Sports Interactive’s Football Manager is a football management simulation game, with users playing not as footballers, but the managers themselves.

Did you just say, ‘Oh Yeah, like the Manager mode in FIFA?’ Well, don’t. Yes, you can pick the squad, buy new players, set the formation and make the substitutions. Yes, you are playing an entire season, in which you participate in different tournaments. Yes, there are fixed transfer windows in which managers are allowed to buy and sell players, to strengthen their squad. But that’s where the similarity, if at all there ever was one, ends. To make one extremely fundamental point absolutely clear: you don’t get to control the players, pass the ball and score a goal. Football Manager keeps it real.

FM is not about insane controller skills. It’s about tactical shrewdness and studying your opponent’s game and building an effective strategy to counter it. Just so everyone’s on the same page, strategy isn’t getting a defender (or if you’re cheeky, the goalkeeper) to run the length of the pitch and score a chipped goal over the opposition’s nonplussed goalkeeper. That never happens in real life, because it’s football, not anarchy.

Emile William Ivanhoe Heskey

FM is about knowing your squad and being aware of their strengths, and more importantly, their physical and technical limitations. In FIFA, I can play Emile Heskey up front and score a goal. Not in FM though, no. As I said, FM is realistic.

The obvious limitation, the ultimate lack of control is what makes Football Manager the challenging game that it is. Although the odds were incredibly low, Manchester United did lose to Leeds in the Carling Cup a couple of seasons ago. Even Sir Alex Ferguson entering the field, or very literally ‘pulling the strings’ could not have salvaged the match – he was still to blame for the loss. It was his decision to field a weaker side. The tactics employed and the formation the players played in, were all decided by the manager. That helpless feeling of sitting on the side-lines and watching your team lose, or the elation after winning a particularly hard fought match is what FM aims to mirror.

Transfers aren’t a simple matter of comparing your available budget to a player’s valuation. It isn’t as basic as looking up the highest rated player, making a couple of high priced bids, offering a staggering salary to the player, and thus securing his services. No, that’s what Manchester City and PSG do.

Normally, there is a lot of deliberation that goes in before buying a player. At the very bottom of the ladder are the scouts, who go around the world trying to spot new talent, and having found one, get detailed reports on them. The manager, on being provided a list of such players, personally evaluates them. Sometimes, this is overlooked. *cough ‘Bebe‘ cough*. Once a target has been identified, there is a lot of negotiation that follows. Convincing the board to part with their money, talking to the player’s agents, talking to the player himself can often take months to be settled. All these factors come into play even when playing Football Manager, and this provides an interesting insight into how transfers actually work.

Usually, players are thoroughly scouted by the manager. Usually.

From things like board requests and arranging friendlies to pitch size and staff appointments, FM has it covered. You can train players to improve specific aspects of their game, and watch those efforts come to fruition when there is a visible improvement in the player on the pitch. You can speak to the media and seduce other players to join your club. You can continue doing this for a prolonged period, sometimes for months. In other words, you can be Barcelona without a single pass of the ball.

Just like in real life, you can send young, promising players out on loan, so that they can get a chance to play first team football. FM also lets you go and ‘watch’ other teams play, the way some managers are often spotted watching their transfer prospects in action. You can dish out disciplinary warnings, or a brand new contract, depending on the player’s behaviour. Appealing against match bans and fighting to secure the player’s work permit – it’s all thrown in.

We all play FIFA

I’m not trying to market FM, nor am I trying to put down FIFA. I am as aware as any of you that the importance of FIFA and PES in our lives can never be underestimated, nor will they ever be replaced. It’s just that there is a lot more to football than just the matches, and that is what makes it different from the other sports. Now here’s a game that allows us to experience all that, and at the rate at which the developers are going, a lot more every year! For those of you who already play it, you know we’re already a community. For the ones who haven’t, this is a request. Try it, you might like it.

Oh, and the beer? Well, you can play FM with one hand, while sipping on a cold one with the other. That should count for something, right?