There’s no way to make Football Manager grabs look sexy. This is as good as it gets.
Revisiting Football Manager has become a little Christmas ritual of mine, one which I look forward to (almost) as much as devouring a turkey luncheon or consuming life-threatening amounts of cheese. It is an indulgence I only allow myself over the festive season because playing Football Manager swallows such enormous swathes of time – time not readily available at any other time of year. Once, incalculable late December hours disappeared with a laptop resting on my knees and a tipple in one hand; not so in recent years, as the iPad edition of Sports Interactive’s venerable series has become the preferred indulgence.
On PC it has become increasingly complex, but its handheld iteration remains relatively lean and, well, a little rough around the edges. Its look and feel recalls the older games in the series, and its play does too – the match engine sometimes feels a little erratic, and as the seasons pass, managers and players end up at the unlikeliest clubs. But all of that is part of this game’s beauty – an overly realistic football management game would be a depressing slog, make no mistake. Football Manager Handheld’s trick is to absorb you in a likely footballing future while including enough just enough madness so as not to break the spell.
And so among more predictable occurrences, we find recent £18 million Chelsea signing Andre Schurrle plying his trade at Championship side Brighton in 2016, Andre Villas-Boas managing Manchester United and Phil Jones a contract rebel, openly and shamefully demanding more cash in the national press. Each and every new game generates an entire alternate universe a little different from the last, one held together by a swathe of player statistics and one made fascinating with the constant clash of those numbers. During matches, an unpredictable dash of luck – just like the real sport – creates thrilling, unlikely victories and bewildering second-half surrenders.
For some, an unwieldy sea of words and numbers. For others, an alternate footballing world ripe with possibility.
The gameworld it presents is absorbing, but actually playing Football Manager Handheld needn’t require constant attention. It can be played idly, with languid pokes and swipes of the screen, and it only advances when you say so. Often I’ll set a match running and go and do something else, knowing that the match won’t progress past half time without my input. Indeed, for much of the game there’s little to actually manage, the game reduced to a procession of fixtures with minor media tussles, contract negotiations or injuries to catch your attention. Play only intensifies during frantic transfer windows or near the end of a season when trophies are at stake or relegation – or the sack – threatens your game.
Does that sound a little dry? It isn’t. For a game which appears to be about statistics and probabilities and the strict management of resources, it creates a special kind of drama. If Ken Levine is looking for dynamic narrative, a set of rules within which player interactions create a near-infinite number of outcomes, then he can find a primitive version of that in each and every game of Football Manager.
The difference is that all of the colour in that narrative takes place in the players’ imagination. It becomes difficult not to layer a little humanity on top of these little bundles of numbers – one grows oddly fond of a veteran player who has never let you down; on signing a newer, younger, more promising player in the same position, there’s a twinge of sadness as you place the former on the transfer list, your club’s finances unable to support any extra baggage. One imagine this tricksy young winger turning up late for training in his sports car with a ridiculous new haircut and an arrogant smirk on his face, and you feel for that discarded player, the harsh realities of football conspiring to leave a faithful club servant unwanted and punted out to a lower league side.
You insert a version of yourself into the fantasy, too. An attacking, direct style of play allied with a ballsy 4-3-3 formation makes me picture my patchy Stevenage squad as the cavalier upstarts of the Championship’s 2015-16 season, a newly-promoted side bravely taking on far mightier clubs with a fearless mix of youthful vigour and a little naivety. Ludicrously, I imagine posturing in post-match interviews as a mixture of Harry Redknapp and Jose Mourinho – a wheeler-dealer with a sharp tongue and an arrogance which can’t help but inspire respect. (Incidentally, I hope the kind of press interactions of the PC version never make it through to the Handheld game – this silly fantasy is infinitely more appealing than selecting a response from a set of pre-prepared responses.)
Not the most nuanced of tactical approaches, certainly, but one which creates real end-to-end drama.
So robust is the Football Manager fantasy that it sometimes spills out into real life. I’ve heard of FM players wearing a suit when they play out a cup final, shaking hands with a doorknob as if it were the opposing manager’s hand. In another tale, a friend of mine gave a real life player short shrift upon meeting him in the flesh, confusing the player’s in-game transfer request for a real-life betrayal.
Even better, longstanding rumours suggest that some Premier League managers have monitored and then signed players based on their potential in the game. And famously, the game has been cited as a factor in 35 divorce cases – as good a reason as any to carefully restrict play to the Christmas period. And yet my fictional career at plucky Stevenage continues, my Football Manager relapse extending out into the new year. At some point, I must begrudgingly bring my annual dalliance to an end, forcibly removing myself from its world and deleting the game from my iPad just to be safe.
But not just yet. My humble local team sits on the verge of an unlikely promotion to the Premier League, and there’s plentiful drama yet to unfold from this unassuming, brilliant clash of numbers and probabilities.
The post Still Playing: Football Manager Handheld – a Christmas ritual, and a welcome relapse appeared first on Edge Online.
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