Football Manager is one of the most popular video games in the world, and it even influenced André Villas-Boas, now one of the three highest-paid managers today, to pursue a career as a manager. To mark the release of Football Manager 2017, Visão de Mercado interviewed Bruno Gens, who, together with Carlos Bessa, is one of the people responsible for coordinating everything that happens in our country, to give us a look at how it all works.
Background and role on the FM team
You coordinate Football Manager's database in Portugal. How did you end up joining the game's team?
First of all, thanks for the interview and the attention given to the game, second, I'm not 'the' coordinator, I'm one of two coordinators of the Portuguese database. Carlos Bessa (the other coordinator) holds a similar role.
As for how I joined, well, I was always quite critical of the Portuguese databases, not just because I kept seeing players with wrong data, or most players in the 3rd tier missing altogether, but also because young Portuguese talent wasn't being given any value.
You'd rarely find quality young players in the Portuguese database, so I decided to voice my frustration and started reporting everything directly to Sports Interactive.
Two years later they invited me to join the research team. At first with Portuguese-speaking databases (I regularly watched the Girabola on RTP África and followed the other PALOP leagues as much as I could).
Then they invited me to coordinate half of the CNS, and finally, in May 2015, I was invited by José Guilherme Chieira, who I can only thank for the opportunity, to take on the role of coordinator, together with Carlos Bessa, who was already part of the research team too.
In detail, what does your work involve?
A coordinator's job is to build a harmonious team, where everyone works towards the same goal: providing the best possible database for fans of the Football Manager series.
For that reason, recruitment is one of the key tasks, and beyond that we handle all the player details, keep squads and staff up to date, and all the other general data in the game, including league rules or referees.
Rating/quantifying players into numbers based on live scouting is just one of our many tasks, but obviously the hardest and most visible one.
How does FM manage to run a network of scouts present in almost every country and countless lower divisions?
A lot of coordination and clearly defined tasks with clear goals for each stage of the research process.
It's also essential that the coordinator at each level of the hierarchy is present and helps whoever needs it, no matter how small the question. Researchers from every country are also always in constant contact with each other, to reduce inconsistencies within the game.
New features and player ratings
What are the big new features in the new edition?
The headline features of this edition are an x64 version that lets the game run faster, and the introduction of the social panel, which in practice is like a Twitter feed inside Football Manager, letting you follow how fans' opinions evolve about player and manager performance, or even find out first-hand about transfer rumours and what fans think of them.
New roles were also added to the game. Sports scientists, who are part of the club's medical department and help prevent and reduce the duration of injuries.
In the scouting department, Data Analysts appear, who, through improved and expanded statistical analysis in Football Manager, will now highlight, before and after each match, which players/areas of our system need changes or which ones are performing well.
All of this comes on top of polishing and refining what was already there, thanks to the emphasis placed on developing the game's AI, which brought a significant increase in the options available for every decision, whether in the 3D match engine, transfers, or managers' tactical choices.
It's often said that football can't be quantified, that it can't be fully captured in numbers. What FM does is exactly that: define analysis parameters for a player and score them on those same parameters. How do you translate what you see on a pitch into the game?
Judgement is the basis of everything. Of course we have guideline values for each division (not meant to be followed blindly), and every researcher researcher will bring their own dose of subjectivity when rating a given player, but that's exactly why we like to discuss things as a team, whether there's been an under- or over-rating in our scouting.
Still on the previous question, is it possible to quantify mental attributes?
They're harder to assess, because they require watching a player over an extended period of time, but one of the reasons the research teams are so large is precisely so there's detailed knowledge of every player being rated. To increase realism in the simulation, you need to capture every characteristic of each player, not just on the pitch but off it too.
Your ratings for younger players are often debated, both for getting it right and for some well-known 'misses'. Given how hard it is to project the career of a 17-year-old, what factors do you try to weigh in?
Nobody's perfect. For one reason or another, we all make rating mistakes. For every good signing, clubs tend to get a certain number of other signings wrong too, despite having access to far more information and tools than us researchers
Even knowing a player perfectly, and how he reacts to the different situations he faces, there's no scientific formula that guarantees 100% success. There can always be new obstacles (including managers) or events that will influence his development as a player.
The game's impact on real-world football
Is the world of video games affecting real football?
I'd like to think so. Why not use it to complement scouting work? I hope there's enough common sense not to use video games exclusively as a scouting method, but it's certainly an excellent complement.
Have you ever heard of a player who found out about his in-game rating and was unhappy about it?
Diogo Jota, back when he played for Paços de Ferreira! But always jokingly, he used to ask me what his attributes would look like, and sometimes said a certain attribute should be higher. And, fair enough, he had a point.
Given how much you know about so many players from various teams, do clubs often reach out to you for information about certain players?
In Portugal, interest is almost non-existent, although there's growing interest in our work thanks to the attention we've given to the lower divisions, which
used to be (before our team took over the project) quite weak. In England, interest is much higher, for example this year we were invited by Manchester City's scouting department to meet with them, and we shared our working methods with each other.
VM Flash: quick questions
VM Flash
In your opinion, what's been the best FM edition to date?
CM 99/00, and in terms of the Portuguese database, without a doubt FM2017
Which player are you proudest of having 'discovered' (rated with great potential in the game while he was at a lower competitive level, and who then went on to have a strong real-life career)?
Renato Sanches.
Your biggest 'miss' rating a player?
I haven't been coordinator long enough yet for real misses, but maybe Bernard (Vitória SC), even though there's still time.
Who's the best player in the world in your opinion?
Messi
Who's the best manager in the world in your opinion?
Pep Guardiola
Favourite film?
Into the Wild; Portuguese: Alice by Marco Martins.
Favourite book?
The Nowhere Men by Michael Calvin.
