I’M playing away from home . . . again. And I’m petrified my wife will find out.
I try to muffle my gasps and groans in case she hears me and comes downstairs.
But I can’t help it. Because my team has just conceded from yet another set piece.
Football Manager can be like that. All-consuming and impossible to keep your hands off of.
My wife, who’s always been way out of my league, has begged me to quit. But I can’t let the team down like that.
“It’s only a game,” she says.
Try telling that to Sepp Hedel, a German gamer who holds the record for the longest-ever FM career — 535 years with five clubs.
In real life, he played the game for 146 days. Pffft, amateur.
So it’s not “just a game” . . . it’s much more than that. It’s the Special One.
And with Football Manager 26 coming out on Tuesday, millions of fans are preparing to pull sickies from work and hide laptops from their partners (FM was reportedly cited in 35 divorce cases in 2013).
Fans had to go cold turkey in 2024, because there was no new game released. But now, after months on the sidelines, it’s back.
This year it will be ported from the PC for the first time and be available on consoles, including the Nintendo Switch, later in December.
So it will be impossible to escape. Always by my side. Within my grasp.
I’ll end up like Gollum and his Precious, just uglier. One team to rule them all.
For those who don’t know, Football Manager is a sports simulator.
Like a fantasy football team but a million times better, with algorithms that relegate AI ChatBots to the Conference League.
Even Mourinho’s a fan
You start with a team, usually from the lower divisions, and build it up to become league champs and kings of Europe. Haggle over players, budget, deal with the Press, decide formations.
It’s loved by the likes of Robbie Williams and Jose Mourinho. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer credited it for preparing him for his career as a real-life gaffer.
Indeed, Everton used the game’s player databases to scout stars back in 2008.
Football Manager is a way of life for many.
A religion.
And before he became Chelsea manager, Andre Villas-Boas reportedly used Football Manager to help him learn tactical theory.
Former Rangers boss Alex McLeish was told by his son Jon an amazing player kept popping up in the game, known as Championship Manager until 2004.
McLeish contacted Barcelona to see if that player fancied a loan move to Rangers. Barca said: “No chance.”
It was Lionel Messi.
Like Messi, Football Manager has humble roots: It was created in 1992 by two brothers from Shropshire — Paul and Oliver Collyer — who began coding at home.
The first version, which the Collyers named Champion Manager, fit on two floppy disks and featured English leagues only.
After going through several updates, Championship Manager 97/98 was a game changer, featuring a huge database, full European leagues, and working much faster than previous versions. It’s since been iconised, like Windows 97, with cult-like status.
In 2003, the Collyers, who founded the developers Sports Interactive, fell out with their publisher, Eidos, and joined forces with Sega instead — prompting a new dawn for the game now rebranded Football Manager.
By 2009, the technology was unrecognisable, offering players a 3D match view for the first time. Two years later, they added press conferences, agent negotiations and interactions with players, mirroring the real-world pressures on managers like never before.
Meanwhile, the Collyer brothers — both Everton fans — were awarded MBEs in 2010 for services to the video game industry.
In 2014, Football Manager Mobile arrived, making the game portable, and more addictive than ever.
Then, in 2020, Club Vision arrived, offering unprecedented long-term planning. The FM database contains information on more than 800,000 real-life players and coaching staff across 50 countries.
Co-creator Paul once said: “Where we lived as kids was very cut off — you couldn’t walk to the shop, and even biking it was a bit far. The only hanging out after school was the boys from Strefford in the summer when it was light enough to play football.
“Beyond that there wasn’t really much to do. If we’d been out smoking fags and riding BMXs in the town nothing would have happened. We never sat down and said let’s make a football management game. We just kind of did it.
“Brothers are like that sometimes, you don’t analyse things. You just sit and do it. It was only really for us.”
As it is for the brothers, Football Manager is a way of life for many.
A religion. Every element of the game is always on your mind. And there are triggers everywhere.
Like doing the weekly shop. Bread, milk, fruit . . . oooh, money off those oranges. What a deal. Like the deal Man Utd have offered me for Casemiro — just £2.4million.
He’s a bit past his sell-by-date, like the oranges, but should be good for half a season. Or like my son demanding more pocket money. A reminder that I need to renegotiate the contract terms of our young super-striker in the game.
Sacked in the morning . . . you’re getting sacked in the moorrning. Sacked in the morning
He moans a lot, like my son, but he’s important for changing room dynamics — damn you Football Manager and your clever Morale and Dynamics system. The game even bugs me when I take my lad to a birthday party.
“Can you pick him up a card,” my wife asks. Another one?! He’s already on four. One more and he misses the next game. And we’re away to Real Madrid!
At the party a friend tells me the nearby pub is being bought by a new fella. “Local lad,” he says. “But he’s got a good head on him.”
That’s just what I need — someone who is good in the air. I’ll task my scouts to find a tall striker and change tactics to long balls.
Everywhere I look
See. It’s relentless. Everywhere I look, Football Manager is calling.
Back home, I ponder changing up formation from 4-4-2 to a dynamic wing-back system. It’s then I notice the broom is broken.
My sweeper is indeed finished — I need to replace him. His pace is 8, strength 6 but stamina has dropped to a woeful 5 in Player Attributes.
But at least I’ve done the laundry — that’s three games in a row where we’ve kept a clean sheet.
As a hairdryer whirs upstairs, I realise the lads need the hairdryer treatment too — I’ll change my next Team Talk Tone to Aggressive, a la Sir Alex Ferguson.
We order a pizza, half-and-half (cheese & tomato on one side, hot & spicy with extra jalapenos on the other). That could work in the next match. A solid first half, nothing fancy, just the basics.
Then we spice things up in the second and top it off with an extra kick.
By the end of the day I’m in desperate need of a FM fix.
I have to implement the day’s inspired tactical changes — but I can’t get to my laptop.
Later, with my wife seemingly asleep (like my defenders in that last game) I sneak downstairs like the Secret Lemonade Drinker for quality time alone with FM.
I get so lost in my digital dugout I fail to notice my wife, now awake and glaring at me from the staircase. I slowly close my laptop.
And in my head, the chants begin . . .“Sacked in the morning . . . you’re getting sacked in the moorrning. Sacked in the morning!”
