10 Reasons You Will Get Hooked on "Football Manager"

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Perhaps the greatest strength of is the fact that it has scouted and cataloged literally every single player that could ever possibly matter. This means that you can mine the youth systems of every major club across Europe and identify the guys who are going to matter in the years to come. It doesn’t matter if they’re just 14 years old now; these guys will be big someday, and you will be all over it. Names like Gedion Zelalem and Bertrand Traore will already be a part of your vocabulary before 99 percent of the world has any idea who these teenagers are.

If you’re a fan of the U.S. Men’s National Team, you’ve always wondered what would happen if they got to line up against some of the world’s best clubs. Players like Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and even Landon Donovan have enjoyed successful runs in the Premier League; what would happen if a full squad of 11 players matched up with the likes of Chelsea or Manchester City? You now hold the keys to make that happen. You can plunder MLS for the best prospects, pay whatever transfer fees you need to in order to secure already-established players, and then sit back and watch as your American super team takes on (and probably loses to, if we’re being totally honest) all comers.

No matter how good your team looks on paper when you play FIFA, there’s a whole side to the game that can undercut even the best off-the-field management: playing the actual game. Simple functions like passing and shooting can confound even the greatest of tacticians, and it’s very common to find your super team losing to weak, bottom-of-the-table laggards. Football Manager takes that out of the equation by not allowing you to screw up your on-paper masterpiece with your shoddy hand-eye coordination. Instead, you watch simulated highlights of your team’s matches and are free to make substitutions and tactical adjustments as necessary, but in no way are you allowed to manipulate the action on the field beyond that. The result? Your team probably does a lot better than it would if you used the same roster in FIFA.

You’ve studied Sir Alex. You’ve admired Arsene. You’ve even mimicked Mourinho. But you also believe in your heart that you could do even better than those guys. You’ve got the combination of foresight, tactical acumen, and sense of the game to build a team that will win trophies every single year. And while you would never suggest that some of these other great minds of the game don’t have good ideas, you know that yours are just a little bit better. And now, thanks to Football Manager, you can finally prove it.

It’s hard to be a fan of a sport and not believe that you should be running a team. But being totally realistic here, that almost certainly isn’t going to happen. You may be the greatest armchair executive/coach the world has ever seen, but you’re probably not going to get a chance to put those skills to the test in the real world. This is the next best thing; you can take total control of an organization, shape it exactly as you’d want it to be, and see what happens.

Especially if you root for a lower level club, the likelihood of seeing your team lift the league or Champions League trophies is slim-to-none. Whether it’s by birth or your own choice, your favorite team may enjoy marginal success, but it never reaches the level you and your fellow diehards would hope for. Now, you can take your team to the promised land thanks to your steady leadership, next-level knowledge of all the greatest youth players around the world, and shrewd loan agreements.

If you’ve played a game like FIFA, you know that really the best part of the manager mode is building the exact team that you want by pursuing players on the transfer market. In Football Manager, the distraction of playing the games is completely eliminated, and now you can spend basically all your time doing the fun part. And while you do it, you’re building knowledge of living, breathing players as well. There are no fake names loaded into this game; every team’s youth system is loaded with real prospects, and they’re all yours to study and pursue for your own dream team.

If you’re a Football Manager player, you’ve probably watched a lot of sports movies. And if you’ve seen a lot of sports movies, you’ve seen a lot of inspirational speeches. And that means that you probably think you’ve got what it takes to fire your team up before a big game, or even an utterly meaningless one. Football Manager gives you the chance to do that, letting you choose your tone (Assertive? Aggressive? Calm? Passionate?) and overall message (Do you want your players to feel the pressure to perform? Just relax and have a good time?), and you can see what effect that has on your players performance both immediately via morale rating boosts and on the field.

Football Manager leaves no stone unturned when it comes to player evaluations. Gone are the days where you only measure a player’s kick power, kick accuracy, passing power, passing accuracy, and speed. The details are as ridiculously broken down into minute component categories like technical, mental, and physical, with sub-categories like flair, pace, and first touch. There is detailed analysis for every player and every match. You can even pull a player aside and give him either praise or admonition for a performance or his attitude. You could lose yourself for hours simply managing the squad between games, let alone over the course of an entire season.

Have you wondered what would happen if you played with just two defenders? Or if you took Cristiano Ronaldo and threw him at centerback, just to see if you may have discovered something brilliant? With Football Manager, you’re free to get as nuts as you want and see what sticks. You can try to revolutionize the game by emphasizing either defense or offense only, if you want. You can take a possession-oriented team like Barcelona and make them counter-attacking. The choice is yours, and you can at last think outside the box with even the most traditional of squads.