Top athletes do not escape the addiction either. In our series “The Stars Also Play” and “Armchair Managers” we have shown you several examples, but this one comes from another sport: Andy Murray, two-time Wimbledon champion (and, at the time, ranked no. 126 by the ATP), opened up to BBC Sport.
The confession
Everyone knows the “just one more game” trap. You are in the final stretch of the season, promotion or the Champions League within reach, and before you know it, it is the middle of the night.
That is exactly what happened to Murray. He said that, several times, he stayed up until 3 a.m. playing FM… with training scheduled for 8 a.m.
As an elite athlete, he quickly realized that could not go on:
“I played a lot of Football Manager when I was younger. It helped me pass the downtime between trips, but it also became a problem, because I would end up playing until very late. At some point I realized how much time I was spending on it and had to stop playing so many hours,” he told BBC Sport.
And, like many of us, he did not always play alone:
“When I was in Spain, a friend and I controlled two teams each. We would stay up until 3 a.m., when we had to start training at 8.”
A future in the dugout?
A die-hard Arsenal fan, Murray has never hidden that he would like to stay involved in football when he hangs up his racket:
“People often ask me what career I would like after tennis, and I have always answered that I feel I can keep contributing something to sport. I have always loved football, so it would be exciting to try a career in that area.”
He has no shortage of FM hours, so the basics are there. And there are examples of people who made the jump from the game to reality: Andrej Pavlović, for example, was hired as an analyst by FK Bežanija, of the Serbian second division, after sending the club… his achievements in Football Manager. If you do not know that story yet, click here.
What is the latest you have ever stayed up because of “just one more game”?
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Sources: BBC Sport / GiveMeSport