Football Manager 2008 review

Nov 14, 2007

Somehow, the Football Manager series is both an acquired taste and a huge success.

A possible explanation for this is simple: it does something ostensibly very dull but does it very well. Let’s face it, screen after screen of stats and lists from which you assemble and pick a team is not a grabber, and a top-down view of some blobs on a pitch is hardly eye-candy. But the alchemy it does with this unpromising material is the closest thing to simulating our national sport in any format, and it delivers more than its fair share of football’s emotion and drama.

Actually, it isn’t so much alchemy that makes Football Manager work as imagination - yours and mine. When you play, you fill in the gaps and create the narrative. Just as many horror films don’t show you the monster, so Football Manager only offers you some tools to play with and the meticulously researched setting to play in, and leaves the rest to you.