When thinking of “soccer games”, most people will immediately think of Pro Evolution Soccer or the massive FIFA game series. Maybe even Mario Smash Football.

But while there are millions of people whose sporting dream is to become the next Robert Lewandowski, there are also 59.3 million people in Europe who play fantasy football every year, sitting in the chair of a fictional club manager and putting together their own team.

For these people, Football Manager, as it is now called, is the perfect game that gives them full control over their chosen club. The game has now become synonymous with sports club management games, but it rarely made it beyond the PC in its creator’s bedroom.

In this article we look at the creation of Football Manager games and how they have evolved into the great games they are today.

A Passion Project

The idea for Football Manager, originally called Championship Manager, was born in 1985 when two brothers, Paul and Oliver Collier, decided to develop their own football management simulation.

The brothers were soccer fans and had tried other soccer management simulations such as League Division 1 and Mexico ’86, but were not satisfied with any of them. Determined to improve on what was already on the market, the brothers set out to create their own version.

The game took six years to develop, and the reason for this is simple: it was only two people involved in the development, and these two went first to school and then to university. There was a six-month break during development because one or both of the brothers lost interest and played other games, such as Doom.

Finding A Publisher

After the brothers had completed the finished product, they needed a publisher to publish it. Initially, the game received a lot of rejection. One of the first problems with the release of the
game was the lack of graphics. Football fans and game publishers associate soccer games with series like FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer, with full 3D graphics and direct control of the players, rather than a “spreadsheet simulator,” as one publisher put it. Instead of controlling the players in the game, Football Manager used a set of statistics for each player and random number generation (RNG) software. This is more similar to role-playing games like World of Warcraft or Knockout Poker than a traditional sports game. , to determine the outcome of the game. This lack of graphics and the complete lack of any real moving parts scared off publishers. Electronic Arts (EA) even demanded that the brothers add more graphics to the game before they would even consider it.

Eventually, publisher Domark, which would later become Square Enix Europe, agreed to release the game for the Amiga and Atari ST. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

Onwards and Upwards

The first game was followed by CM 93, which featured real player names for the first time, catching players’ attention.

After a short stint covering Italian football with CM Italia, Collyer’s game development studio Sports Interactive began work on its first full sequel, Championship Manager 2.

CM2 was a huge success, and the ’96/97 season and two expansions were released in ’97/98, receiving much critical praise.

Getting the Right Numbers

From the start, Sports Interactive placed a premium on accurate assessment of clubs and players. After SI stopped using the Rothmans Yearbook, an annual book containing statistics on the previous season of English football, they decided to turn to regional football publications to get information directly from people who were actually watching the games.

This small team has now grown to several thousand fans, covering 2,200 major clubs in 51 countries and around 2,000 clubs, mainly in the lower leagues of Europe.

The quality of the information received enabled SI to accurately assess clubs and players, as well as promising future players with world-class potential.

A Footballing Legacy

Football Manager has evolved into a basic football game, from a team of two to a squad of 110 players that still includes the Collyer brothers. It has been influential enough to have its own documentary in 2014, and continues to enable players all over the world to realise their dreams of leading their favourite team to glory.