play football manager

international teams managed: england/czech republic/turkey/france/holland

clubs managed: reading/man city/milan/rangers/roma/valencia/barcelona/middelsbrough/real madrid

honours: world cup finalist with england, olympic finalist with holland, scottish league cup, scottish cup x2, scottish premier league with rangers, spanish primera liga with valencia, spanish primera liga with barcelona

The only video game I ever loved in my lie has changed too much for me to understand and enjoy. Sadly, I have decided not to play Football Manager/FIFA Manager anymore, or at least not on a regular basis. I wish the games’ coders and publishers would revert to a simpler version like those from back in 2001 or 2002.

I played Football manager 2001 in 2004 and was amazed at how hooked I was. I bought FM 05 but gave it to a friend (who also liked FM and Championship Manager) who was leaving school. Then I bought a pirated copy of FIFA Manager 06, but I couldn’t for the life of me install it. I gave it to several people to see if they could install it, but the installer wouldn’t run. Perhaps a fair outcome for buying pirated material. I then bought FIFA Manager 07, but couldn’t run it as it was a DVD and I did not have a DVD drive on my PC at the time. In the meantime I immigrated to the US from my native country (Bangladesh) and in packing the disc was misplaced. Thus, every time I tried to get to play football management games, something untoward happened.

I finally managed to download a Demo version of both Football Manager (produced by Sports Interactive, formerly of Championship Manager, and published by SEGA) and FIFA Manager (produced and published by EA Sports, formerly of Football Manager and Total Club Manager).

Maybe because I have not played it for 4 years, and the last version I played was from 2001, I found myself very confused. I suffer from information overload everytime I play, and I did not foresee having to deal with the media, the “manager’s” private life, or sponsors or find the transfer market to be such a hard place to be. The game also inches forward slowly, whereas I used to finish 1-2 “seasons” in 3-4 hours of play, I now manage barely a few months of virtual play. There seems to be less emphasis on tactics and more on business and personal skills in the game (both of them). Currently very underwhelmed with my experience. Having not played Championship manager before, Football Manager is very complicated. I fare better with FIFA Manager as I have played EA’s management simulation game before. Still, I must say I am disappointed so far, and I will give it another 2-3 weeks of play. If I am still unhappy, I will consider this goal complete and not worth doing.

i plan to only start this after i’m done with ib.

fm 2009 anyone?