On 11 August 2001, Borussia Dortmund played a Bundesliga game with an unusual outcome. They finished the game with three players having been sent off, two for violent conduct. Yet even as Bobic, Ricken and Rosický lost their heads, Dortmund still managed to win the match, with a late penalty scored well after two of the red cards had occurred. Stranger still, when Football 1 showed their highlights package for the game, introduced as always by Gary Lineker and talked through by Alan Hansen, they omitted any mention of the violence. Hansen preferred to suggest that Dortmund had been lucky to win given that they didn’t keep hold of the ball well, as opposed to because they had eight players on the pitch by the end. New manager Iain Mew was similarly tight-lipped on the subject of his team’s ill discipline afterwards.
This conspiracy of silence only happened in the world of LMA Manager 2002, of course. With very few changes to LMA Manager 2001 beyond an upgrade to the match engine and the inclusion of several more European leagues, I went for the Dortmund job for a slightly different experience. It did feel more like I was part of a bigger football world, particularly when dealing with seemingly every club in Europe also chasing after Hasan Salihamidžić and having to raise my offer twenty times (securing Danny Mills was considerably less difficult). And my in-match tactical shouts were vocalised in German, which was a nice touch.
The incremental improvements offered by the move to PS2 were a moderate success for Codemasters at attracting new players. It outperformed the PS1 version released in October 2001, although the delay meant that when they brought out LMA Manager 2003 in October 2002 it was clearly too much too soon and only reached #20 in the chart at a busier time of year. They went back to March for LMA Manager 2004 and duly saw it reach #2. So they found an audience, but not one which was going to come back for mere squad updates within six months.
The core of the game remaining the same means another competent console football management game, which was both a slightly easier and less enticing prospect by this point. The change to the match engine makes games a bit better to watch, and the alternative of skipping to the highlights gives something which very roughly replicates the experience of watching your team on Match of the Day. Gary Lineker doing little more than introducing who’s playing is no problem, but Alan Hansen sounding like he’s flicking through holiday snaps from a holiday he wasn’t very excited to go on isn’t so great.
“And then this happened.” “Next clip.” “And another one.” intones Alan in transition, between prosaic comments on each chance at goal. Using a guy known for his analysis rather than his commentary makes this feel even more limited. There’s nary a “you can’t win anything with kids” or “if in doubt, launch it” in there. Still, the feeling of getting to see your players in action remains a good one, and the game manages actual tension going regarding the result playing out.
The Wolfsburg match, though, and Hansen and the game’s missing of the real story, illustrated a problem with realism and detail. You could call it an uncanny valley of emergent narrative. Present the basic facts and let the players make their own reading of them, and they will generally get to a satisfactory one. Present a visual alone and they can go with that. I still remember the time I was playing Premier Manager 97 and a Tottenham player took a powerful shot against Norwich from the edge of the box, only for it to hit one of their defenders and rebound all the way up the pitch and into the goal at the other end, but I don’t remember it in a bad way. Sport and life are full of one-off freak events; if they happen in your simulation they are there to be rolled with. However, try presenting the facts and also tying them up in a bow with interpretation, like in a TV football show of the highlights, and any discrepancy between the two is going to jar. It’s an issue which goes well beyond LMA Manager.
Top of the charts for week ending 20 April 2002:
UK games: LMA Manager 2002 (Codemasters, PS2) 
Japan games: 熱チュー!プロ野球2002 / Netsu Chu!
Pro Baseball 2002 (Namco, PS2)
UK films: Bend It Like Beckham 
UK singles: Oasis – The Hindu Times 
UK albums: Celine Dion – A New Day Has Come