Football Manager 2007 (PC) > Reviews (40)

Football Manager is the definition of a game whose greatness and addictiveness is difficult to describe. Even if you show it to a friend you'll most likely get a dismissive and/or sarcastic response, to the effect of "So you watch *dots* play football? How sophisticated!"

But give this friend your Football Manager for a weekend and you just might never get it back.

Sports Interactive's award winning series doesn't have you playing as Jose Mourinho, Frank Rijkaard, Steve McLaren or any real-life manager. Rather, it allows you to fulfill your managerial dreams by being yourself, competing against Alex Ferguson, bantering week after week with Arsene Wenger and eventually becoming the next Marcello Lippi.

FM 2007 has over a hundred playable leagues spread over countries and you are able to take control of any club among them, no matter how big or small. Will you start with your favourite Premier League club, much to the disappointment of the ever expectant fans? Or will you manage an obscure Portuguese team and work your way up?

Of course, everyone picks either their favourite or, perhaps, the wealthiest club they can think of for their first session, just like they should. FM is pretty thorough and doesn't make any favours to new users. The hefty, text-heavy, booklet and the in-game tutorials do their best at explaining the various commands and how everything works, but it is simply more enjoyable to experiment with players you are already familiar with, rather than with a team of unknowns.

After being informed of the board's expectations, as well as the transfer and wage budgets you're a bestowed to make everything happen, the pre-season starts. Provided your club employs one, your helpful assistant is always at hand to point out your best players, estimate who might be willing to join and can even be burdened with a lot of your duties. You are in charge of everything this side of the dugout, from tactics and line-ups to training and lay-offs, so you might want to focus on the areas you find most interesting until you get the hang of everything.

Of course, assistants vary in skill as much as any player and staff in the game and as you'll reap the rewards if they do a good job, you'll also be the one to blame should they field inappropriate lineups and the board won't be too reluctant in throwing you back to the unemployment line.

The pre-season can be a little slow if you don't keep yourself busy looking for transfers, but once competitive games start rolling, it becomes official: you are hooked. You start devising tactics to avoid conceding goals in the last minutes, yelling at the striker who missed a sitter and praising the defender that came forward for the corner to score the winning goal. You'll soon be trying to off-load your 5 million pound signing that turned out a flop and start building for the future by buying youngsters. Exactly how it happens is a mystery, but it is inevitable.

The extensive and impressively accurate database certainly has something to do with the magic.

There are bargain buys all over the world and discussing findings that just might be perfect for your system with friends is one of the most fun aspects of the game. Great joy also arises when a player you "discovered" makes it big in real life, something that is guaranteed to happen more often than not. Sure, sometimes legendary FM players turn out to be quite poor, but for every Maxim Tsigalko there is a Cristiano Ronaldo and a Robinho. The database is also on target for lower quality players as well, with popular folklore insisting that renowned managers aren't afraid to consult FM when facing obscure opposition, or when surprise line-ups are employed.

The same kind of commitment goes for assessing the clubs' staff, finances and stadia and everything is comfortably adaptable through the included editor. Should you want to revise loans, pick the replacements of sacked managers, or even put your footballer self in the game, it is pretty simple, although a small section in the game manual would have been appreciated. An official update by Sports Interactive is made sometime after the end of the Winter Transfer Window. Football Manager's many followers also offer a plethora of user-created content like league-specific updates and even photos, kits and badges that SI weren't able to license for release.

As silly as it might look, the Game Engine also plays its part to the addiction. A bird's eye view of the field, with players being represented as little dots with feet, combines with lines of radio-like commentary to allow for a pretty imaginative view of every game. Sports Interactive argues that current technology can't possibly offer a better interpretation than the one your mind creates when watching your dot of a star-player jerks past 3 defenders and scorches one home. That is true to some extent, with Football Manager having truly great AI and the teams playing very lifelike according to the tactics and their players' skill. While games offering 3D coverage of matches mostly sport a small number of canned animations, forcing you to watch the same goals over and over, it is very enjoyable to see the diversity of this 2D match engine and your tactical changes actually reflected. But with Pro Evolution's similarly impressive and ever-improving AI, one can only hope that this excuse won't hold on for too long.

Becoming apparent after being captivated is the insane replay value of the game. Even playing with the same team, experiences will vastly differ as you buy other players, employ different tactics, or suffer a key-player being injured for most of the season. Truly gripping though, is the infinite number of scenarios with all the available teams. How about lifting a trophy in every major footballing country? Taking a team from the Conference to the Premier League? Lifting the World Cup with Brazil and 4 years later with Argentina? Winning a Champions League away game with Olympiakos? As limitless as your imagination.

To make a long story short, if you haven't tried any of the best selling Sports Interactive Manager games, I heartily recommend Football Manager 2007.

The only requisite is to like football; if you do, everything will come naturally and it will be an unforgettable experience.

But if you *have* tried Football/Championship Manager, you might be skeptic whether this version is really enough of an improvement to guarantee a purchase, or you'd be better off scouring the internet for a free data update. After all, SI is known to seldom make breakthroughs, satisfied with minor tweaks throughout subsequent years. Fortunately, this is a breakthrough installment, as Football Manager 2007 has the biggest additions since the inclusion of the 2-D match engine 4 years ago. Nothing as impressive by itself, but the sheer volume of improvements makes for an adequately changed game and a much more complete experience.

New in 2007
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The aesthetic improvements could very well be topping the list. In a game you play until the wee hours of the morning, it's important that the screens are as easy on the eyes as possible, which has been proven difficult due to the sheer amounts of text and stats you have to go through. A great effort has been made this year and everything looks pretty slick, with icons, photos, and colours spicing up the interface.

On the other hand, everything remains as lonely as ever for your speakers. All screens are barren of music and sound effects and even the usual saving grace of the crowd noises appears quite glitched this year. The Online Community is sure to provide quality sounds complete with team and player-specific chants, but that doesn't change the fact that SI gaffed this area completely.

Game play wise, the inclusion of Parent/Feeder club relationships is a big addition for the longer game sessions, working nicely with the revamped youth system. They are especially important for English clubs, as you can finally send your work-permit-impaired players to Belgium until they get an EU passport.

Controversy after dubious referee decisions makes for good fun; it really isn't football unless someone is whining about the men in black.

Scouts are finally quite useful, offering solid reports on your next opposition and very helpful report cards for scouted players. Amongst other things, you are presented his most proficient position, if he is better than your best player in that position, if he has the potential to be better and how interested he is in joining the club.

A new value for a player's Perceived Potential is thrown into the mix alongside Current and Potential Ability. This makes it harder for your scouts to assess his potential correctly and fans might make a big deal of a player that'll never live up to anyone's expectations, all the while remaining unimpressed at the signing that will go on to become the next Roy Keane.

Player interaction allows you to praise any player you admire, recommend role-models for your promising youth and ask current squad players to suggest a useful transfer.

Plus, a few more small features and the usual overall tweaks, with the game running faster than ever, even though squad breaks for international games and summer periods still feel quite long.

***OVERALL***

Football Manager can't make you like football. If, however, you are occasionally spotted cheering at the terraces or the local pub, any version of Sports Interactive's flagship titles would have had the same devastatingly addictive effect on you. Veterans, on the other hand, have been disappointed by the slow progression most of the follow-ups usually demonstrate. Thankfully, there is no such fear with Football Manager 2007, as Sports Interactive pulled out all the stops to make an amply revamped version that will most likely be the basis of the series for at least a couple more years. Without a doubt, this is the definitive game for anyone that ever wanted to be a football manager.