Day 273

It sunk in today that we’re about to win the league. Either Wrexham or Mansfield must win all of their remaining matches, and we must lose all ours, for the title to go elsewhere. That’s possible, but if it came down to the final day of the season I would pull out all the stops to ensure we don’t lose.

I, Juan Day, the son of perhaps the only coupling between a Scot and a Puerto Rican alive today, am about to win the fifth tier of English football’s big prize—top spot in the Conference National, and promotion to the League 2 of the Football League. In my first season as a professional manager, plucked from obscurity—never heard of within the footballing world; experienced in management only of little computer people and my own existence. That’s the stuff of fairy tales.

Football management games are, I think, at the pinnacle of wish fulfillment. Football sims like FIFA and Pro Evo tend to get thought of in that way, but they involve you controlling footballers on the pitch as if a god—or puppeteer. You are not playing at your ability in FIFA, but rather that of your avatar. In Football Manager, however, they are one and the same.

When you win trophies in a football management game, you feel like you’ve earned it more so than in a football sim—or any kind of non-management sports sim, for that matter. You find yourself roleplaying, even when you’re plowing through months at a time. You don’t proudly say to anyone within earshot, “I just scored a 30-yard stunner.” You say we, or you just scream out the name of the goalscorer. You play football manager like a real coach; you play FIFA as a puppeteer. You share your glory with all your virtual players. We did it. And I masterminded our success.

Every self-respecting football fan has yelled their tactical advice at the TV, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the player on the receiving end likely wouldn’t listen even if he could. We’re all experts. We could all be Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola, leading a multi-million dollar team of egos to the treble, or Alan Pardew bringing a proud club out of its vicious downward spiral. If only we had the chance.

Football Manager is that chance, and we all like to prove it. We take big clubs and make them bigger, turn small clubs into giants, and achieve the impossible task of leading a group of useless miscreants—six leagues down with no money or fans—to the top of the world. Because we’re football managers, and bloody good ones at that. Or so we wish.