“Let’s give the fans something to cheer today!” 5 of Football/Championship Manager’s greatest hits

Chances are that if you’re a fan of the beautiful game, then you’ve fallen victim to Football Managers (or Championship Manager if you cut your virtual football management teeth back in the late 90s/early 00s) devilishly addictive spell at some point over the last 30 years or so. 

Whilst it’s spawned quite a few imitations, none of them have managed to stack up to Sports Interactive’s engrossing “Excel sheet on steroids” that continues to indulge the delusions of football fans around the world who think they could lead a non-league team to Champions League glory within the space of a decade.

So, with yet another Football Manager game limbering up for release next month, packed with new features such as an expanded deadline day and revamped staff meetings, we thought there’s no better time than the present to take a look back at some of the other legendary titles which this franchise has produced down the years.

Contents:

1. Championship Manager
2. CM Italia
3. Championship Manager 01/02
4. Football Manager 2007
5. Football Manager 2012

Championship Manager

We kick things off this week (+10,000,000 original pun points) this week with the game which started it all, Championship Manager, which (cue Micah Richards voice) burst onto the scene 30 years ago. 

Ok, so its graphics weren’t anything to write home about, it only featured four playable English divisions with 20 instead of 24 teams and the newly-formed Premier League was conspicuous by its absence and if you played teams in the Champions League/UEFA Cup, all your opponents’ players would be known as “no.1,2,3….”, but this is the game which started it all.

Championship Manager was also localised for the French market in 1993, when Intelek and Ubisoft took the code from this game to create Guy Roux Manager (named after the legendary AJ Auxerre manager), where you could take to the dugout in either of the top 2 French divisions. 

CM Italia

Speaking of adaptations of Championship Manager, the Collyer brothers decided to get in on the act with CM Italia. Given that Serie A was all the rage in the early 90s, with James Richardson and Channel 4 beaming the hottest football action into Brits’ living rooms every weekend, releasing such a game was an absolute no-brainer for the developers.

Using the same engine as CM 93/94, this title allowed you to take the reigns of any Serie A/B team and even included the controversial three foreigner rule, meaning you’d have to engage in a healthy amount of squad rotation if you wanted to look abroad to sign the finest footballing talent. What’s more, it also featured an update for the 94/95 season so players could stretch out the fun for yet another season.

So, if you feel like indulging your inner Fabio Cappello or Marcelo Lippi and reliving the glory days of Serie A, download a copy of this faster than you can say “campionato…di calcio…Italiano!” (provided you can find a computer that runs it, of course.)

Championship Manager 01/02

We shift our attention to the final game of our Championship Manager trio (spoiler alert) now with Championship Manager 01/02. Whilst it didn’t feature any new leagues, this allowed the developers to refine the game’s mechanics to squeeze everything they could out of the Championship Manager 3 engine to produce one of, if not the most, engrossing football management simulators to ever see the light of day.

In fact, such is CM 01/02’s cult status, that many players even prefer it to the successor series Football Manager. This title also continues to benefit from a huge online community, which keeps updating the game with current squads and seasons.

Of course, it goes without saying that we couldn’t mention CM 01/02 without talking about the legendary, To Madeira, the fictional Portuguese goal machine, who’s been the scourge of virtual defences the world over for over 20 years now. Essentially, a local volunteer who Sports Interactive relied upon to get stats for the Portuguese lower leagues added himself to Gouveia’s squad to make up the numbers, giving himself world-beating stats in the process.

Whilst Madeira would subsequently be patched out of the game in later updates, the legend continues to live on.

Football Manager 2007

The release of Football Manager 2007 represented a return to form for the franchise when it hit the shelves back in October 2006. By taking the decision to prioritise substance over style by sacrificing visuals in the name of analysis and entertainment, FM 2007 managed to strike a delicate balance between immersive realism and intuitive usability.

With the addition of a whole host of new features, such as pre-match team talks, the ability to comment on ref’s decisions, overhauls to the youth development system, media interaction and interactions with the board, building your own footballing dynasty had never been this engrossing.

Another crucial innovation was the inclusion of feeder clubs, which allowed you to farm out your promising youngsters to a smaller team so they could get experience that could prove decisive in years to come after they break into your first team.

Football Manager 2012

We round things off this week with Football Manager 2012 which, much like the previous game, saw this franchise rediscover its mojo once again. FM2012’s “back to basics” (well, as much as that’s possible for a game like Football Manager) approach was exactly what this series needed, as games such as FM10 and 11 had sucked the fan out of the game a little as they became too bogged down in detail to be user-friendly.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that this title was lacking in depth by any means as improvements to the transfer market, as well as more detailed scouting, meant that players could enjoy even more of what makes Football Manager great without feeling they were working a second job.