Football Manager and FIFA aren’t real, lads

In 2011, a guy called John Boileau applied for the job of Middlesbrough FC manager, citing his experience and success in the Football Manager game. It was a good joke that was enhanced by the rejoinder from Steve Gibson, the club Chairman, telling Boileau how delighted he was that someone of his status had applied. You can read their exchange here: https://lettersofnote.com/2011/02/22/you-were-of-course-the-outstanding-candidate/

Fast forward 12 years and social media is full of John Boileaus who aren’t even joking. We have football fans wanting 5 or 6 signings – or ‘upgrades’ – every transfer window, regardless of what has happened on the pitch. Players of 30 and over are meant to be moved on because that is how it works in simulation games like Football Manager and FIFA: qualities like the dressing room dynamic and leadership are just quantifiable ratings, not key aspects of how a team functions. There is an assumption that clubs can sign unlimited overseas players with no impact on ‘homegrown’ rules; young players are dismissed as not ready, and perhaps most incredibly, players are recommended on the basis of what they have achieved for the recommender in these football simulation games. Even local newspapers get in on the act’ ‘signing’ players in Football Manager and then reporting on how they got on as if it was real: no wonder people have stopped reading local papers.

Lads with laptops are everywhere; analysing performances and goals; using stats to explain why x player is better than y and actually criticising the decisions of real coaches and thinking they know better. Ok, the last one of those things may always have happened, but it wasn’t delivered with the smugness of someone who took Peterborough to a European final in a made up game.

Reading their deluded rantings, it is clear that something has gone wrong and these people have lost the ability to distinguish fantasy games in which they are a top football manager from reality. As well made as these games are, they aren’t real, lads. FIFA ratings for different characteristics of real players are arbitrary and occasionally bizarre. Transfers are not as easy as just offering more money. than everyone else. Team building does not work by changing half the players every few months.

I played Football Manager obsessively in its early days: it is addictive and I arguably had to stop for the sake of my family and my real life career. I’d find my mind drifting all the time to potential formations, tactics and signings. The rare occasions I got fired enraged me. In its place, the game was good, escapist fun even if it was taking way too much of my time. But I never thought I was a real football manager or that doing well at a computer game meant I knew more than people in the real football world.

The worst thing about it is the arrogance with which this new breed of tech-enabled wannabes pronounce on a game you suspect most of them have never played and none of them have worked in. Statistical analysis at the highest level of the sport has undoubtedly added to the quality of tactics, training and recruitment. This emphatically does not mean that a lad from your IT department’s analysis of players, systems or or transfer deals reflects any expertise whatsoever. But you wouldn’t know it to read their arrogant assertions, their dismissal of qualities that have long been essential to football success or their advocacy or rejection of particular players. It is all posted with such certainty, such “I know better than you” pomposity. They all come over as versions of the IT man who comes to fix Tim’s computer in the office.

The sad reality is these geeks with gadgets are spending too long in their bedrooms . FIFA and FM aren’t close to reality; they’re just fun simulations and entertaining diversions. Football management is about personality, drive, connections and good fortune as well as tactical knowhow. It’s really not about making decisions based on made up ratings in a computer game. You’re not football managers, you’re not professional analysts, you’re just lads with too much time on your hands. Get off the internet, go for a walk, maybe kick a ball about. Real football, like real life, is not a computer game.