Football Manager 2008

Football Manger 2008

Continously since 2001, Sports Interactive is creating a new Football Manager every year. The games is published by Sega and was first sold for their console. The PC version is available since October 2007 now.

The gameplay always stays quite the same: the player is the manager of a football team of his choice and is thus responsible for developpment and success of his favourite squad. The possibilities of the manager are as manifold as in real life: the manager has to sell and buy players. He has to take care of their training. He can evolve skills of every single player in multifarious ways. He is responisible for the finances and has to find some ways to generate income. This could be entrance fee for visitors of the matches, advertising on the football shirts or advertising in the sport field, selling of players, selling stuff for fans or finding a sponsor. Of course, the football stadium has to be extended, when the team becomes more successful and attracts more fans and spectators.

He decides and defines the tactic of his team. The player himself can not really play the matches and get involved by them through a joypad, the controlled team is playing automatically, but the he can now, and this is new in the 2008 version, directly change tactic during the game. He has to react swiftly to events and actions taking place in the match. No more relaxing during the games itself as it used to be in former releases.

Other new features of the game are for example the enhanced possibiites to interact with fans (you can set up special fan days now to improve the relationship between fans and players). The transfers of the players can now be managed from a central station. The financial mechanisms are more sophisticated allowing more kinds of possible interactions and actions. Finally the graphics have been improved and players heads are now displayed in 3D.