Championship Manager

Championship Manager

Ever thought after you saw your favourite team losing again: "I can do this better"? Well, you can try now. That's to say, not for real. But there is a game that lets you act as a football team manager, and it's almost like reality. It's not an action game, it's just strategic thinking and well, it's sure about football. The game gets very close to the real thing. It's called Championship Manager.

As a manager you buy and sell players, determine the starting eleven, the subs, the match tactics and training practice. Further you communicate with players, staff, the board and the media. There is an unbelievable amount of detail in it and a very good match engine. It's brilliant in simulating a football match. You can play in about 40 competitions all over the world and all the national and international rules are there. There is a large database with an awful lot of players and staff in it, about 200,000. And above all, it's great fun.

The game is made by Sports Interactive, based in London. There is a large internet community that uses a message board. You will find lots of hints and information there.

Personal history

I started playing the game in May 1998 and I've hardly played another game eversince. The then up to date version was CM 97/98 and it was amazingly a DOS program. It took me a good while to get used to the game. After some disasters (I remember being very depressed when I was sacked by Hearts of Midlothian after a bad spell), I got things going. Starting with CM3 (the first Windows version) caused some problems again, but after some time I got a reasonable insight and experience in the game. CM4 and subsequent games were too slow for my poor computer, so I decided to stick on the CM01/02 version. In my opinion still the best game in its kind. I've tried to reconstruct all the seasons I've played in a personal history. Due to files getting lost or corrupted this has not always been possible, but it is the best approximation.

The Esbjerg Adventure

In one of the games in the CM 99/00 version I started out with the Danish Premier Division team Esbjerg fB. From the first, second and third season I made up a story. It tries to capture the things you're experiencing when playing the game.

A side-effect of the game is that you get interested in foreign competitions and foreign clubs. The previously mentioned game sparkled an interest in the real football club Esbjerg. They have a beautiful website, though unfortunately but understandably in Danish. It's a little bit strange to see player names very familiar to you out there in the real world. That same season the real Esbjerg went down, only to come back in the Premier Division the next year. Nowadays it's one of the Danish topclubs. One of these days I'm probably going to visit their "Idraetsparke".