You've seen them on shelves and you've read a few reviews. You don't mind football, but you don't know that you like it that much. To be honest, you can't really see the appeal. Yep, football management games are a strange, bewildering breed for those who don't understand them. Understanding that, Future Gamer commissioned a sufferer - ahem, player - to explain.
James Price

My name is James, and I play football management games.

On and off, for the past eight years, I've spent a near-indecent amount of time playing Championship Manager and its sequels. Not being fond of TV, and wary of going out too much after a two-week binge once left me with urine that smelled unhealthily like a bowl of Sugar Puffs, I'm always keen to hear of diversions. Reading works, but it can make me feel oddly detached if I do too much. Videogames, too, are a staple of 'quality time' by myself, but even the most compelling of action games lasts only a few weeks. There's something inordinately compelling about football management sims, though. Obviously, a love of the Beautiful Game is a requisite, but most importantly of all, a keen imagination is vital. And for very good reason.

Consider Championship Manager 3 on the PC. In essence, it's an enormous database of players and thousands of statistics. The act of 'managing' a team is, stripped to its bare bones, effectively the exchange of numbers for another, hopefully 'better', set. Now, every style of game has evolved over the past 20 years. Tomb Raider, for example, boasts a lineage that goes all the way back to Donkey Kong, via Mario World, Prince of Persia, et al. Tekken 3, too, has an ancestry that features the likes of Kung Fu Master and Street Fighter. Your average football management game, however, owes more to spreadsheets and databases like Excel or Dbase.

And the match sequences? Who are they kidding? Premier Manager on the PlayStation offers a highlights option. Select this option after a match reaches its conclusion and you get to watch the goalscoring efforts of both teams. Or, rather, you don't. Premier Manager simply plays an appropriate number of pre-recorded shots, saves and runs. Your imagination does the rest. Championship Manager doesn't even go that far. Although its behind the scenes match mechanics are far more sophisticated than any similar game, its expression of such complex routines is limited to oft-repetitive text commentary, possession bars and ratings for players. When one sum nutmegs another, these displays are updated to reflect the fact.