Day 146

After the highs and lows and tension of the past week, today’s complete and utter silence was a welcome change. We’re going through a rough patch at the moment, but I think we’re going to pull through.

A note from your editor

Rowan Kaiser wrote an interesting editorial on Gameranx recently about Football Manager and the Limitations of Fun. He described Football Manager as not being “fun,” but still being worthwhile for its chance to go for “greatness,” and asserted, “There’s no way I can describe Football Manager and make it seem interesting.” I take issue with this quote, but agree with the broader sentiment of the piece. Allow me to explain.

To describe Football Manager—in its current incarnation or the original 1992 release of Championship Manager—as boring is to show either a lack of imagination or a failure to understand the beautiful game (or both). It is football management without the messy bits; reality distilled into a potent video-game concoction with you as the plausible hero. You get to live out the fantasy of leading your team to local, national, and international glory. Most of us don’t stand a chance of playing professional football for Manchester United or Real Madrid or, ahem, England—we lack the necessary athleticism, skill, talent, and panache.

But every football fan likes to think that he could set the tactics, sign the players, and pick the lineup that would lead his or her team to greatness—that’s what we do over a pint at the pub or from our armchair at home. The dream of being a top football manager seems almost attainable, and that is the big draw of Sports Interactive’s series.

Fun is not a good word to describe the feeling I get as I discover a hidden gem—an unknown future star—while poring through dozens of pages of player listings, or when I make a substitution that instantly turns the game. It cannot explain my satisfaction with looking back over five years of building my squad and dragging the club from the lower leagues to European stardom on a nickel-and-dime budget.

Watching my boys take the lead against Mansfield yesterday wasn’t fun, nor was coming back from two goals behind against Forest Green a few days ago; it was exhilarating, thrilling, electrifying. My pulse quickened and my hands shook. When they scored a short time later I felt crushed and broken. I ran my hands through my hair, glanced around nervously, and willed my team to respond.

My heart races just thinking about it. Adrenaline pumped through me as I sought the magical formula that would win us the match. Yesterday’s game was important; it could have changed the course of the season. I was as eager and invested as any super fan, but unlike them my shouts and cries could to some extent be heard. I had just enough power to feel in control, commanding. But not enough that I didn’t feel helpless, too—because I am but one man on the sidelines, rather than an omniscient being capable of bending the forces of reality in my favour (as I would do in a FIFA or Pro Evo game).

These dualities of control and helplessness, plausible fantasies and undeniable realities are where Football Manager transcends “fun” and video games and becomes a dream world of quitting your job to get paid to think and talk about football. We all think we could be great managers; here we have the chance to prove it. Maybe there’s some fun in that, but really it’s about the glory, frustration, accomplishment, failure, control, and feasibility of managing a little slice of football history. Sounds pretty interesting to me.