Football Manager Stole My Life Read online

  Copyright BackPage Press 2012

  ISBN 978-0956497178

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the publisher.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Cover photography and design: Freight Design, Glasgow

  Designed and typeset by Freight Design, Glasgow

  Ebook production by Laura Kincaid, tenthousand creative services

  www.backpagepress.co.uk

  2.5% of the sale of this product will be donated to War Child, charity no. 1071659

  This goes out to my brother John White, my co-manager in the glory days – Neil White

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  SKILL AND PACE

  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FM

  —2002

  —2003

  —2004

  —2005

  —2006

  —2007

  —2008

  —2009

  —2010

  —2011

  SHALL WE SING A SONG FOR YOU

  — Gunplay, penalty shoot-outs and Duke Nukem marathons

  THE NEXT BIG THING

  — Neymar Mr Nice Guy

  — Cerci’s a Jolly Good Fellow

  — Just Say To

  — To Madeira

  — Fabio Paim

  — Assistant Researchers

  — In Good Kompany

  — The Power of Babel

  — Leo and Oskitz

  — Micah Maker

  — Love ’em or Hatem

  — Dirty Sanchez

  — Mark of Greatness

  SACK THE BOARD

  — CM3: Who Watches Watchdog?

  — CM4: Crashed Out

  — FM09: Running Out Of Steam

  MORE THAN A GAME

  — Director of Fundraising, War Child

  — The Congo Diaries

  — Danny Lynch, Media and Communications Officer, Kick It Out

  THERE'S ONLY ONE TONTON ZOLA MOUKOKO

  — Alexander Farnerud

  — Anders Svensson

  — Cherno Samba

  — Freddy Adu

  — Gareth Jelleyman

  — Joao Paiva

  — John Welsh

  — Justin Georcelin

  — Kennedy Bakircioglu

  — Lionel Morgan

  — Mark Kerr

  — Michael ‘Mike’ Duff

  — Michael Dunwell

  — Nii Lamptey

  — Ryan Williams

  — Stefan Selakovic

  — Tim Sparv

  — Tommy Svindal Larsen

  — Tonton Zola Moukoko

  — Willie Howie

  — Alan Fettis

  — Billy Jones

  — Daniel Braaten

  — Dean Keates

  — Rene Mihelic

  — Serge Makofo

  BACKPACK TO THE FUTURE

  FOOTBALL MANAGER STOLE MY LIFE

  — Lost in Translation

  — False Number 999

  — My Friends Love You Mark Kerr

  — No Substitute For Sleep

  — God Save The Quiniela

  — FM Broke My Foot

  — The Intervention

  — Release Clause

  — Out For The Season

  — For The Love Of The Game

  — Graham Alexander, Interrupted

  — Wesley And Me

  — Technical Support

  — James And The Giant Pie

  — FM Planned Honeymoon

  — Youth Policy

  — Primus Inter Nerdus

  — Communication Breakdown

  — Anti-Social Networking

  — Mr Bowie’s Champ Man Masterclass

  — Happy Birthday Dele Adebola

  — Car Crash TV

  — Vauxhall And I

  — Man And Boy

  — Favourite Personnel

  FOOTBALL CRAZY?

  GAME CHANGER

  — Bala Challenge

  — Demanding Times

  — Stats Entertainment

  — Sky’s the Limit

  — Fringe Player

  — Talking Tactics

  — Pyramid Of Power

  — Screen Saver

  — Captains of Industry

  — The Empathy Machine

  — Charity Shield

  EXTREME FM

  — Suit Up

  — Top Tunes

  — Give Yourself A Shake

  — Meet The Family

  — Climate Change

  — Meet The Press

  — Doing A Bunk

  — Bus Pass

  — The Price Is Right

  — Scout’s Honour

  — The Retiring Type

  THE HEIDENHEIM CHRONICLES

  — Pt.2

  — Pt.3

  — Pt.4

  — Pt.5

  — Pt.6

  — Pt.7

  — Pt.8

  — Pt.9

  — Pt.10

  HIT THE NET

  THANK YOU!

  THE WRITERS

  FOREWORD

  Miles Jacobson

  Sports Interactive

  Summer 2012

  Sports Interactive have spent two decades creating and improving a game that has stolen the lives of millions – but it won’t stop there.

  When Ov and Paul Collyer first started working on a game they called European Champions as teenagers they were football fans who wanted to make a football management game that they wanted to play.

  When I first got involved with the studio 17 years ago, it was as a mate helping out a couple of other mates who made a game I’d spent so much of my ‘free’ time playing.

  Who would have thought that 20 years after Ov and Paul’s first release, we’d have sold more than 20 million copies of the studio’s different games, played for an average of more than 100 hours by each person, every year.

  It never ceases to amaze us how many people enjoy our games and the effect it has on them. Just like we were all those years ago, we’re still football fans making a game for ourselves that lots of other people seem to enjoy as well. We thank those of you who buy our games every day for allowing us to have made a career out of what is still our hobby!

  We’ve had musicians telling us how the game keeps them sane (or, in some cases, insane) on tour. Footballers telling us how the game has inspired them to do their coaching badges and get into management when their careers end. We’ve heard how the game has helped people get through some dark times, as they were able to escape into a parallel world where they were managing a football team.

  People talk about their games in the pub as though it’s real life. Our amazing research team around the world find great talent before they’ve made their first team debuts and when people see them play, they know of them from FM.

  We even heard people admitting that they only put money on Alan Dzagoev to score the first goal against the Czech Republic in Euro 2012 because they knew of him from FM – with me asking them to donate some of their winnings to War Child, a charity that benefits from every copy of Football Manager sold.

  So when BackPage Press approached us asking for some help for a book they were working on to document some of these stories, we were delighted. Especially as they too offered to donate some of the proceeds to War Child!

  It’s been a great 20 years. But this is only just the beginning of the story of Sports Interactive and our games. All of us at the studio hope to keep making a ga
me that we all want to play for many years to come.

  INTRODUCTION

  Neil White

  BackPage Press, Summer 2012

  How one unjust sacking almost destroyed a marriage and inspired a book on the greatest game in the world.

  I thought I was alone. We all did.

  For years following the split of a turbulent yet triumphant managerial partnership with my younger brother, I had hardly discussed Champ Man with anybody. Those days when I would come back from university and the two of us would sit side-by-side in his room constructing a team around Ariel Ortega were long gone. I was making my way in the world, in a meandering kind of way, but my managerial alter-ego remained a secret identity. My finest hour, when Stirling Albion won the League Cup out of the Third Division and my statue was erected outside Forthbank, was one I did not feel able to share.

  Shortly after the epoch-defining front two of Barry Elliott and Scott McLean took Stirling to Hampden, I got a job on the sports desk of The Sunday Times Scotland and realised that I was not alone.

  Of the five writers on the desk, only one did not play and that was because he feared that once he loaded the game up, there was every chance he would ‘go native’. He was absolutely right, but part of me still regrets never seeing that sprawling database and the spider’s web of cause-and-effect decision-making overload this fastidious football mind. I imagine him degenerating into something like Martin Sheen in the final reel of Apocalypse Now, except instead of Marlon Brando, his deranged quest would be for Maxim Tsigalko.

  The rest of us would talk about the game we were in: me scratching out a reputation in the lower leagues, trying to earn the Falkirk job I cherished, not walk into it; them throwing money around at Rangers, Celtic and Liverpool. Then, one day, the chief football writer, let’s call him Douglas Alexander, told me this story.

  His pregnant wife returns home from work to find her husband sitting at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, in his suit. His work laptop is open in front of him. His head is in his hands. She asks him what is wrong.

  “I can’t believe it. They’ve sacked me.”

  ”What? How? Why? But we’re going to have a family! What are we going to do?”

  What? Wait… no… it’s OK, I mean… it’s Liverpool. They’ve sacked me. I’m second in the league and still in Europe, but we got beat 4–0 off Everton. It’s not fair.”

  Incredibly, Dougie’s marriage survived that derby defeat dismissal and baby David is almost old enough to co-manage Liverpool with his old man.

  Hearing Dougie’s confession, I began to wonder how many more stories were out there. How many lives had been... what’s the right word? Touched? Stunted? Destroyed?… by this most immersive of games?

  At every turn in the production of this book, somebody else told us their story: the gamers who sent in their tales, some of which appear in these pages; the Champ Man/FM legends who confessed to signing themselves for Barcelona or Manchester United; the guy on the seat next to BackPage Press on the train to the launch of Graham Hunter’s Barcelona book; Andrew and Adrian, at Freight, who designed this book. That pair once spent an Edinburgh-Glasgow train ride discussing strategy for their matches, in character of course. At the end of the line, the lady across from them said: “My son is a footballer, he just got released by Hearts and he’s been training with East Fife. What team do you manage?” Andrew and Adrian, faced with the choice of confessing to their delusions or staying with the story, made the right call. “I’m at Aberdeen, he’s St Mirren.”

  As we finished putting the book together at the end of the season, I was struck by how every event in football was reflected through the lens of FM. When Harry Redknapp didn’t get the England job, Paul Merson commiserated with him, as he hated when that happened to him on Champ Man. When Pep Guardiola left Barcelona, Kevin Bridges sympathised with the burnout suffered by the king of Catalonia, likening the experience to his own CM 01/02 career. When Vincent Kompany led Manchester City to the English title, Twitter was flooded by people reflecting in his glory. After all, it was they who discovered him as a 17-year-old at Anderlecht. And then, when Alan Dzagoev burst out of the blocks with two goals in the first round of matches at Euro 2012, Miles Jacobson was quick to point out that he was both an FM star and an FM player.

  Twenty years after it all began, FM is a bigger part of football than ever before. Many of those who live second lives as managers play no other games. They are not gamers, but lovers of football, and FM has become as much a part of that culture for them as watching the game on a Saturday.

  This game remains a place where dreams can come true and that should never lose its appeal. You and I can lead our team out in the final of the Champions League (suit and theme music optional). Players who never reach the big leagues can be sold to Real Madrid for £40m (and hear about it from total strangers in late-night takeaway joints) and, thanks to the 20 million copies sold since 1992, FM has helped transform the lives of children in regions devastated by conflict through its incredible partnership with War Child.

  Everyone involved in this book enjoyed immensely the process of documenting the cultural phenomenon of Football Manager. We hope it serves well the game we all love.

  Thank you very much for buying it and may your dreams continue to come true.

  SKILL

  AND PACE

  How to take over the world from your bedroom

  This whole thing started in Cheshire, where, in the early 1980s, two young brothers, like many thousands of young people up and down the UK, started to play a game called Football Manager. Written and published by Kevin Toms, an English games designer, this was a game that enabled the early home computers to produce an incredibly immersive management experience. It also gave Paul and Ov Collyer the idea to create their own game, one that soon had their friends hooked, but was rejected by all but two of the 20 publishers they sent it to.

  Paul: We had a BBC Micro, because our parents thought it was educational. So we played Football Manager on that.

  FMSML: HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU GUYS ON YOUR BBC TO GO FROM PLAYING THAT GAME TO TRYING TO WORK OUT HOW YOU COULD DO ONE YOURSELF?

  Ov: I don’t think we did an actual lot of programming of what became… we messed around on it.

  Paul: I did a league table generator, very early, that basically plotted the results for the First Division, as it was then, and it would update the league table. That was my first kind of effort, I think we had a couple of little bits and pieces didn’t we?

  Ov: What was it, the Amstrad?

  Paul: It was the Amstrad when we actually started again, or you started it didn’t you, with the skill and pace?

  Ov: Skill and pace! For some reason we identified, or I identified, I’ll take the blame…

  Paul: Well, I think it’s pretty fundamental to it, actually.

  Ov: I decided that the two main attributes of players were skill and pace. That’s it. No passing, heading.

  Paul: That’s the Arsene Wenger school of thought, skill and pace.

  Ov: So yeah, I think it was on the Amstrad, was it the Amstrad 6128, I think? The one with the disc drive, and we messed around with that for ages.

  Paul: 1985 I think it started out.

  Ov: Maybe a couple of years after that before we got an ST?

  Paul: We did buy an Atari ST, that’s right – proper programming language.

  Ov: Then an Amiga 500. Each time we’d rewrite it I think, didn’t we, when we went from the ST to the Amiga 500?

  Paul: I think we must have rewritten it, because it had to go onto GFA Basic. Then we sort of… I went off to university and spent a few years up there, and we sort of did bits on our own really, then we’d come back at half-term and do nothing but sit across the computer. But you were still at school, so you were probably doing quite a lot from home.

  Ov: Yeah it was just kind of on and off really, as a hobby. We just referred to it amongst each other as ‘The Game’. You know, ‘Have you done any more work on The
Game?’ Or ‘Do you want to go and work on The Game?’ It was this kind of constant, it was this nice thing as brothers to have I think.

  Paul: I think I left university, dropped out of university because of this, basically. Basically I spent too much time drinking beer and doing The Game, playing The Game. I think that was what, 1990 was it?

  Ov: Yeah, about then. I sort of did similar.

  Paul: Then we started sending it off, sending letters to people.

  Ov: Yeah I think it was the case then that I’d come back from a year at university which I hadn’t enjoyed at all, I didn’t want to stay there, and we had this sort of thing in the background, we thought, ‘Well why don’t we see what we can do with it?’ All our friends were saying, ‘This is really good, this is so much fun to play, why not try something?’

  It was a case of just polishing it up a little bit, writing a user guide that I did, photocopied it like 20 times, and sending it off to a bunch of publishers to see what happens.

  When Paul and Ov Collyer decided to send the game they had developed to publishers, they had to come up with a name. Until then, it had always been ‘The Game’ played by only the brothers and their friends.

  This is the document that accompanied the copies of ‘European Champions’ that went out to 20 publishers, explaining how the game worked and what made it different from the management simulations on the market.

  Most publishers ignored them. Electronic Arts rejected them. However, Domark saw a diamond in the rough and Championship Manager found a home.

  (A transcript of the following can be found in Appendix I)

  / Here’s the secret of Champ Man’s success – 150 managers who are trying to beat you. In 1992, that was a pretty big deal.

  / The basic DNA of the transfer system is here. No agents to muddy the waters.

  / Already, the search for a dependable 7/10 full-back had begun