Like other people’s dreams or AI outputs, hearing other people’s Football Manager stories can be a bit of an awkward bore. Not always, though. Brian Phillips’s creative series of posts for Run of Play on taking Football Manager 2009’s version of Pro Vercelli back from the Italian third tier to their century-old glory contains some of my favourite writing on football and video games. My own fevered visions of Tommy Svindal Larsen’s crisis on infinite save games should be taken as tribute. Coming to Pro Vercelli late was a large part of what got me to try out Football Manager 2010 to begin with, having had nothing to do with the series since back when it was still all text-based.
I played Football Manager 2010 for a good length of time, enough to complete two seasons, and then I abandoned Football Manager forever. My plan for this post was to open up my old save file as a time capsule, see how it matched up to my memories. Unfortunately, on opening up the battered old laptops I have in my flat, it turns out that they’re not old enough to contain that save file. So it’s just the memories. Not just dreams but dreams more than a decade old. In a sense, the remembering says more than the details of the remembering anyway, so for what it’s worth, here they are.
Playing some time after release, I started my time as Arsenal manager by some players signed in reality by our rivals during the intervening time, including Sandro and Edin Džeko. Džeko was a hit, even more so than in real life for Man City, with the game highlighting the instant fan response to him scoring two against Spurs on his debut. By bringing him to England I had the game catch up with a slightly altered version of reality; the reverse also ended up happening. The best young wonderkid I managed to sign was someone called Serge Aurier and I remembered the name through to when he signed for Tottenham in real life the best part of a decade later.
As always, the Football Manager approach lent working with its players the sometime feel of real human interactions. My favourite bit was turning the aggravating injury-proneness of forwards key Robin Van Persie and Theo Walcott into a strength, in that I could tell both of them and Džeko that they were first choice, and despite only having two positions available none of them would miss out. I have fewer memories of the newly expanded press conferences, though they’re a big part of making you feel like the centre of attention.
Aurier, Sandro, and Džeko did well but we were not an immediate success. We were rubbish at set pieces, couldn’t break down tough defences, and drew so many winnable games we finished mid-table. My job was saved by an FA Cup win. It was very Arsenal. In my second season I looked up some tactics and differentiated the approach to home and away games a bit more, putting practicality ahead of ideals. I also amused myself by taking pragmatism to a bit more of an extreme through solving the set piece problems by signing the 6’3” defender Ryan Shawcross, best known to Arsenal fans for the then-recent incident in which he broke the leg of one of their players. I did wonder if the fan reaction to this choice would have been mentioned in-game if the tackle had happened before its release. It seemed plausible. That and other changes all went well enough to win the league with ease.
At this distance I can’t remember a single individual result, not even who I beat in the FA Cup final, but the shape of the stories stays with me. The contrast with my 50 hours with FIFA 10 that slipped away completely makes the power even clearer. Bring a little bit of knowledge and investment in football, and a bit more time, and Football Manager will convert it into compelling stories. It’s astonishingly good at doing so, in fact. It was the very reliability of the proposition which made me give up Football Manager for good. I felt with ease with which I could slide into all of my time going to this one type of story and decided that there was only one way to stop it. I’ll make do with the dreamlike memories.
Top of the charts for week ending 31 October 2009:
Luke
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this!
I recently wrote about FM11 and had the same feelings when putting pen to paper, and the comparison with dreams is absolutely spot on, and was my main worry when writing my story.
The laptops and saves may be lost to the sands of time, but the memories still remain.
iain.mew
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! I’m interested to read your thoughts on FM11!
I will be covering FM11 too but
It will actually be my final one unless anyone starts reliably publishing digital charts. By the next year FM’s sales had shifted too far to digital for any of the physical releases to reach the top of the charts.