It is possible that the editorial choice of Gamepedia displease some more assiduous fans of manager games. In the construction of the episodes of the soccer games encyclopedia, the idea was always to highlight franchises that brought an important evolution to the games and marked history for that. In this premise, the double Football Manager and Championship Manager undoubtedly has its participation guaranteed. The big point is: the story of the two is practically the same, after all, they were the same thing for a long time and, when not, only one of them lasted. So, sorry for the nostalgic ones, but the honoree of the 29th episode is Football Manager.
The story to be told in this episode begins in 1992, more specifically on September 1, when Paul and Oliver Collyer, from Sports Interactive, published “Championship Manager”. The franchise was an absolute success until 2003, even leaving behind one of the phenomena of the time, the Elifoot. The issue is that the game was developed by Sports Interactive and published by Eidos and the companies had a litigious separation. As a result, Eidos got the right to use the name and Sports Interactive retained the source code.
It is much more difficult to redo an entire development process over 11 years to arrive at a football simulator or find a publisher, create a new branding and launch a marketing campaign? History shows us that the divorce was better for Sports Interactive, which found its new partnership in SEGA and launched Football Manager 2005, which continues to this day carrying the success of manager games on its back. Meanwhile, Eidos kept the successful name, but failed to replicate the recipe for success it had in its hands. Even after being bought by Square Enix, success did not come and the CM project was discontinued in 2018.
O Football Manager is a series of football club management simulators, initially released for computers and, from 2006, for consoles. The dynamics can be roughly separated into three parts: administrative, football management and coaching staff. First, you need to ensure the proper functioning of a sports institution as a whole, with culture, goals and financial health. Then, the issue is to ensure a suitable squad for the club’s pretensions and make the coach’s wishes viable. Finally, it’s time to guarantee performance on the field, with tactics, day to day with the players, training and, of course, the field and the ball. That is, you are responsible for ensuring all stages of your club’s success, except the performance of the players themselves – despite also having your degree of influence on it.
In its first edition under the new name, the FM also added an important layer of entertainment to the game: the 3D simulation of the matches. This new feature made the previous simple look outdated, which looked more like a simulation of a button game than a football game at the time. It is undeniable that the previous model also had emotion, but visualizing a stadium and the ball entering the net is very different from watching the score change.
The game’s great asset is how it manages to add new layers of complexity while advancing its edits. This goes through the inclusion, back there, of the transfer market, of the increasingly better options for personalizing avatars and tactics for the game day, and continues to advance with, for example, the announcement of inclusion of women’s football for the near future. It is possible to have manager experiences in other games, such as FIFA, which still allow players to control the gameplay. Fact is that the FM it is the one that delves more into the management of a club as a whole and, if this is yours, there is no comparison in this aspect.
Football Manager is a great football experience like few in the world. In this category of managers, there is certainly no other football player that comes close. To this day he is an absolute success in Brazil, even not being officially sold in the country since 2017 due to licensing issues. Still, there are legal ways to buy the game.
