This is the story of a journalist who, as a kid, appeared in an edition of Football Manager. Years later, he went looking for explanations for the attributes he had been given. We tell it in the first person, as he told it.
A goalkeeper at Lewes
I signed for Lewes FC in 2008. The club was on the rise: promotion to the Conference, a new stand (paid for by selling the best players), a new under-18 coach fresh from Brighton, and a crop of youngsters full of talent. Perhaps the best youth team without an academy in the south of England.
Most came from the Brighton, Bournemouth and Southampton academies, released in the move from under-16s to under-18s. Others had left of their own accord. Why would anyone turn down an under-18 contract at one of those academies? Low pay, dormitories that were not always in good condition, and the obligation to take a vocational sports course instead of staying at school or going to university.
Some, like me, came from smaller clubs. For four years I went through half the academies in the south-east of the country. Three days a week, my mum would pick me up from school, hand me a sandwich, a protein bar and an energy drink, and off we went, hours by car along the coast.
I was constantly released. At Portsmouth I was passed over for an Argentine, at Charlton for an American, at Fulham for England’s under-16 goalkeeper and at Brighton for a boy twice my height (but very good). At Lewes, I stayed.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”31″ gal_title=”Lewes 1″]Hooked on Football Manager
At that time, I was a Football Manager addict. So imagine my face when I found out I was in FM10. A grin from ear to ear.
What did I do first? I signed myself for Manchester United. The board “loved” it: a club in debt spending time and money on a player with no quality who was also sending the legendary Edwin van der Sar to the bench. They only did not sack me because I won the Champions League (yes, in the final I benched myself).
Over the years, I stopped caring about having been in the game, but I still wanted to understand the strange data they had given me.
There were several errors: they had me at 1.88 m when I am 1.80 m, and my birth month was wrong. In the attributes, I was described as an eccentric goalkeeper, prone to doing bizarre things.
Something did not add up. FM is known for the quality of its scouting: Sky Sports uses it to show the strengths of English teams’ signings, and several clubs use it as extra information to find new players. So why were my details so far from reality?
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”33″ gal_title=”Lewes 2″]I went looking for the person who rated me
Contacting one of the game’s producers led nowhere. Apparently, the person who rated me had already left the research team, and they either would not or could not contact them.
But I managed to speak to Dean Gripton, a true football encyclopedia and “only” the head of research for the top English divisions in Football Manager.
Very kindly, Dean told me I could still try a grand comeback, even at nearly 30.
“Every player ever created in FM stays in the database, but anyone who no longer has an active role in football is flagged as not to be extracted. We never delete profiles. Who knows if they might come back one day as part of a coaching staff, or even as players in the lower leagues? Your profile ID is 29038456 and it was last updated in 2014, probably when you were flagged as not to be extracted. Your history shows the 2008 and 2009 seasons at Lewes, with zero games and zero goals. After that we assumed you left the club.”
Brilliant. A few more cruel facts about my insignificant career.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”34″ gal_title=”Lewes 3″]How FM scouting works
Football Manager’s research work is impressive. There are 770,000 people in the database, although “only” 100,000 are active in the latest edition. The rest are flagged as not to be extracted.
Dean coordinates research in England, meaning a huge network of observers who follow all kinds of English teams (Sunday league is left out, of course) and update player profiles throughout the year.
“They are not just fans of the game, they are enthusiasts for their teams. Andrew Bennett, who sadly passed away recently, was Cambridge’s historian and also their researcher in the game. The Chelsea researcher is extremely dedicated: he goes to every under-18 and under-23 game. He is probably more interested in the prospects than the first team. They are all volunteers. They do it for the love of football and Football Manager, they are meticulous and like to keep their teams as up to date as possible. And they love keeping an eye on the prospects about to explode. What FM player, when the game comes out, does not go straight looking for the wonderkids? It is one of the most exciting parts.”
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”35″ gal_title=”Lewes 4″]And my attributes?
And at youth level, where it is harder to find interested observers? Are the attributes real or fiction? Basically, I wanted to understand how mine had been made.
“In your case you have no attributes entered in the database at all, which is very common for young players in the lower leagues. The high eccentricity you saw in your save was pure chance. If you started another career, the attributes would be completely different, because they are blank and the game generates them. Unfortunately, you did not get enough exposure to be rated. If you had played for the first team, it would have been a different story.”
I was laughing while I talked to Dean, but inside my heart was in pieces. A feeling I know well: I thought I had achieved something and it turned out to taste of failure. I made it into Football Manager, but my attributes had not even been rated.
This game imitates reality so well that it ended up ruining my best memories. And, just like reality, strangely, I think I like that.
Do you know anyone who has appeared in FM?
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Fonte: adapted from Eurogamer