Football Manager
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- This article is about a computer game. For the general concept, see football manager.
Football Manager was a classic football (soccer) management simulation first developed by Kevin Toms for 8-bit computers.
Football_Manager.jpg
On the 12th February 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos it was announced that Sports Interactive, producers of the Championship Manager game, had acquired the brand and would henceforth release their games under the "Football Manager" name, whilst the Championship Manager series will go on, but no longer be related to Sports Interactive
Commonly known as FM 2005, is expected to compete directly with the first Championship Manager game to be developed by the Eidos funded Beautiful Game Studios.
It includes an updated user interface, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, pre- and post-match information, international player news, cup summary news, 2D clips from agents, coach reports on squads, job centre for non-playing positions, mutual contract termination, enhanced player loan options, manager "mind games" and various other features.
Football Manager 2005 was released on November 4th 2004 and became the 5th fastest selling PC game of all time (according to Eurogamer). The Macintosh version of the game comes on the same disc as the PC version, so its sales are, obviously, included. In the United States and Canada, the game is sold as Worldwide Soccer Manager 2005, the name of an old Sega series started in the Sega Saturn.
Football Manager was banned in China when it was found that countries such as Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao were included as separate countries in imported releases. China has long claimed these countries as their provinces and has their reason for banning the game was that it "threatened its content harmful to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity ... [that] seriously violates Chinese law and has been strongly protested by our nation’s gamers". Sports Interactive has since published a statement reporting that a Chinese version of the game (complete with Taiwan annexed into China as per the Chinese government's wishes) will be released. They have also said that the offending version was not translated into Chinese as it was not supposed to be released in China. The offending games were believed to have been imported or downloaded, written to CD and boxed to be sold in the many illegal software shops in China.
List of Leagues included in FM2005
- Country - Levels/Divisions
- Argentina - 2/2
- Australia - 1/1
- Austria - 2/2
- Belarus - 3/3
- Belgium - 3/4
- Bolivia - 4/5
- Brazil - 3/18
- Bulgaria - 2/2
- Chile - 2/4
- China - 2/2
- Colombia - 2/2
- Croatia - 2/3
- Czech R. - 2/2
- Denmark - 3/3
- England - 6/7
- Finland - 2/2
- France - 3/3
- Germany - 3/4
- Greece - 2/2
- Holland - 2/2
- Hong Kong - 1/1
- Hungary - 2/2
- Iceland - 2/2
- India - 1/1
- Indonesia - 2/3
- Ireland - 2/2
- Israel - 2/2
- Italy - 4/7
- Malayasia - 2/3
- Mexico - 2/2
- N.Ireland - 2/2
- Norway - 3/6
- Peru - 1/1
- Poland - 2/2
- Portugal - 3/5
- Romania - 2/4
- Russia - 2/2
- Scotland - 4/4
- Serb&Mont - 2/3
- Singapore - 1/1
- Slovakia - 2/2
- Slovenia - 2/2
- S. Africa - 2/2
- S. Korea - 2/2
- Spain - 3/6
- Sweden - 3/8
- Switz - 2/2
- Turkey - 3/5
- Ukraine - 2/2
- Uruguay - 2/2
- USA - 1/1
- Wales - 1/1
References
- Game.net article on Football Manager 2005 (http://shop.game.net/ViewProduct.aspx?cat=10384&mid=323526)
- Official Sports Interactive website (http://www.sigames.com)
- Official game website from SEGA (http://www.footballmanager.net)
- Managersnet - Official Israeli website (www.managersnet.net) (http://www.managersnet.net)
- The Dugout - fansite (http://www.thedugout.net)
- SortItOutSI - fansite (http://www.sortitoutsi.net)