Can succeeding in reality help you get a real life football managers job?  Let’s take a look at those who thought it could…..

Won Jae Yang (Bath City)

Won Jae Yang was a 17 year old student from Korea when he thought he would try his luck at obtaining the Bath City job.  He was so obsessed with wanting the Bath City manager’s job he emailed them over 100 emails asking to replace manager Adie Britton.  Within each of his emails, he goes into detail about what the manager should of done during each game to win it.
Bath City has decided to publish some of the letters which Won Jae Yang sent them, here’s a snipet from one of them: -

“Hello. My name is Won Jae Yang from Korea. The reason why I am sending you an e-mail is because I want to be Bath City’ Manager. On its last game, I believe that the Bath City’ played well but has not 1played to its full potential. The c urrent ranking shows you that. Honestly, I do not understand Manager, His tactic fluctuates harshly. He does not satisfy Bath City’s passion.”

Won Jae Yang currently refers to himself as the Honorary Director of Tactics for Bath City FC.

John Boileau (Middlesbrough)

Back in 2005, John Boileau had a CV that had seen him take Nuneaton Borough from the Conference North to the Championship in eight seasons and also won the Swedish top flight with small club Kalmar FF.  Ok, it was on Football Manager but still a feat nonetheless.  So with this experience behind him, In 2006 John thought he would apply for the Middlesbrough managers job (this was when Middlesbrough were a Premiership team).

John sent his letter and a CV to Middlesbrough Football Club chairman Steve Gibson and was honestly hoping to be invited for an interview.  In his letter, the 25-year-old, from Rugby in Warwickshire, jokingly said he could manage the Premiership football club after becoming proficient at the Football Manager computer game.

Middlesbrough saw the funny side of this letter and responded by saying: -

“You were of course the outstanding candidate but we decided against your appointment.  Quite frankly we were of the opinion your tenure with us would have been short-lived, as your undoubted talent would result in one of the big European Clubs seeking your services.”

John is still waiting for his first real life manager’s job.

Mac Wilson (Doncaster Rovers)

Football managers are getting younger and younger these days with Karl Robinson of MK Dons the current youngest league manager at 32 years old.  Mac Wilson nearly took this crown from Karl Robinson to become the league’s youngest manager at only 8 years old.

His letter was received by Donny chairman John Ryan back in January 2013 after Dean Saunders was shown the exit.  John Ryan was so impressed with Mac’s letter and positivity as he stated he would get Doncaster Rover’s into the Premier League within three years!  John Ryan decided to give Mac and ring and ask him to come down, have a look around, meet the players and have an interview.

Sadly, Doncaster Rovers went with a 57 year old in the form of former Wales Under 21 manager Brian Flynn.

Don’t let the above three unsuccessful stories put you off though as just like all fairy tales, there is a happy ending and prove that dreams do come true……

Vugar Huseynzade (FK Baku)

In November 2012, FK Baku of the Azerbaijani Premier League hired Vugar Huseynzade in an advisory role.  Since then, Vugar, a 21-year-old Azerbaijan-born, Sweden-based student is now been appointed manager of the club’s ‘A’ side (reserves).  His appointment was solely down to his strength of his Football Manager resumé.

Huseynzade has no actual managerial experience and was fresh out of Business School, with a month or two’s work experience at an American sports agency.  FK Baku initially hired the Baku-born student based solely on being impressed by the knowledge of the game Vugar applied in setting up and running his Football Manager team.

Eight months down the line and FK Baku have decided that Huseynzade is the man to whip their ‘A’ side into shape having been without a manager for two whole years since previous incumbent Kamran Ismayilov upped and left.

Huseynzade was reportedly appointed ahead off former Marseille and France legend Jean-Pierre Papin (crazy!).

Since his appointment, Vugar still tries to relates the real game to Football Manager.  Here are of his classic lines: -

“We have big game tmo and I need to get off to good start, so I’ll save the game now; if I lose, I switch it off and try again.”

“I just stormed out of the press conference. I didn’t have a multiple choice answer sheet to use to reply to their questions.”

“I don’t need scouts. I just use Player Search to find my targets.”

“I told the board when interviewing that team talks are a strong point of mine. I have over four different team talks at my disposal.”

It just shows that there is hope and being a good manager on Football Manager does pay off.  Not sure about you lot, but I’m getting my CV up to date for those reserve teams in the Maldives maybe or failing that I’ve heard good things about Bali in the Indian Ocean.

Here are a handful of scouts who you should seriously look at recruiting once you have ‘hit the big time’ as let’s face it, you have no hope in recruiting these in League One!

Name: Luciano D’Onofrio
Age: 57
Club: Unemployed
Scouting Knowledge: Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal
Reason: High attributes for judging player ability & potential with knowledge of 4 countries

Name: Newton Motta
Age: 57
Club: Bahia
Scouting Knowledge: Brazil
Reason: High attributes with good knowledge of Brazil.

Name: Bryan Robson
Age: 66
Club: Sunderland
Scouting Knowledge: England
Reason: Probably the best scout within the English league but beware, he will only accept a Chief Scout position.

Name: Frank Arnesen
Age: 48
Club: HSV
Scouting Knowledge: Denmark, England, Holland
Reason: Not the best at judging players but is very adaptable and working with the youths.

Name: Norbert Ziegler
Age: 58
Club: Unemployed
Scouting Knowledge: Germany, Central Europe
Reason: Good knowledge of Central Europe

The first person I will be checking out when FM14 is released is the Peterborough United scout.  The players they have signed over the last three years have been immense (Craig Mackail-Smith, Dwight Gayle, George Boyd to name a few).

Ok, so they do not produce their own players, but instead take straight out of non-league but that has got to of came from having an excellent scouting network.

From all the football books that I read a year, below are my top 5 books that I think are a definite for all us Football Managers to help us improve our game.  These books range from gaining a better understanding of the beautiful game from tactics to player strops, speaking with the people who created Football Manager and FM’ers who have taken things a little too far.

1) Football Manager Stole My Life: 20 Years of Beautiful Obsession

This has got to be the top book every FM obsessed fan needs to read.  Not just to have a laugh at others misfortune, but just to remind us that there is actually a real footballing world out there no matter how good FM is.  This book is written by Iain Macintosh (a sports journalist in Singapore), Kenny Millar (sports writer for The Sunday Post and not the ex striker of Celtic and Rangers) and Neil White.

The book goes into details about Nostalgia, Inspirational stories, and failed FM world beaters who never made it in the real world.  These stories range from a boy taking full use of his parents going on holiday and hooking his laptop up to the big screen TV, to Tonton Moukoko getting calls to this day from avid fans asking him where it all went wrong, and an FM addict is put on the psychologists coach to discover what 20 years as a virtual football manager has done to him.  These are just a handful of some of the funny stories which are within this book.

2) FC Barcelona – A Tactical Analysis: Defending

“If you never concede a goal, you’re going to win more games than you lose” – Bobby Moore.  There has never been a truer word spoken and is exactly what this book is for.  What better team to base your defensive tactics on than Barcelona who went 30 home league games unbeaten during the 2010/11 season.

Pep Guardiola’s blue print to get Barcelona so tight defensively was so good, that it didn’t matter who took over from him when he left, it’s legacy still worked without much effort or changes having to be made by the new gaffer.

This book goes into detail about what defensive tactics Barcelona use and could be used by you for your own FM team or potentially against Barca when you next come up against them.

3) Set Plays: Organizing and Coaching Dead Ball Situations

A slightly older book which was published back in April 2005.  It is still worth a read though as it takes an in-depth look at the single most important aspect of scoring and preventing goals from dead ball situations such as Free kicks, Kick-offs, Goal kicks and Corners.

Good set-pieces can be the difference between no points, one point or three. Taking advantage of the numerous dead-ball situations within FM which occur in matches can work massively to your benefit and by reading this book.  We would all love a Steven Gerrard or Gareth Bale in our team to score a direct free kick, but what do we do with indirect free kicks?  This book can certainly give you plenty of food for thought to how we set up our team in the different situations.

4) Coaching Soccer: Match Strategy and Tactics

Match coaching is often overlooked in football coaching in favour of drills and training methods. This book tackles the tough task of preparing for, executing, and analysing the match.  Sometimes it is not always about putting out your best players but instead trying to outfox your opponent.  To do this, you have to send your scout out the week before to compile a report on how they play.  However, this is only the first stage of operation hoodwink.  It’s all well and good having this information, but what does it mean?!  This book is perfect for that to help you understand the match strategies and tactics used within the footballing world.  Once you understand these, coupled with the Barca defending tactics from the earlier book, the world is your oyster – easy!

Let’s read on and I wonder what book is next – yep, you guess it, attacking.

5) Attacking Soccer: Mastering the Modern Game

So by now, we have mastered the dead ball situations, understood the different strategies, and firmed up our defences.  All what is left to do now is score that all important goal.  This book helps football fans from around the world adore the offensive style of play based on fast passing combinations, spectacular dribbling, and the art of beautifully shot goals. The question regarding this style of game is how to coach your team to embrace fast attacking soccer.

This book is written by Peter Schreiner and Norbert Elgert, who are renowned German coaches who give their answers to the modern attacking game, including systematically approaches.  Every coach can easily shape his training programs with easy to use exercises, but is what you are doing making any differences come match day.  This book should help with making sure you are putting your players through the correct attacking exercises and hopefully bring the end of those dreaded goalscoring drought messages that I get all to frequently.

There is one final book to consider, it isn’t out yet but looks a real treat and you can actually pre-order it now.

The Manager: Inside the Minds of Football’s Leaders

This book is due for release on 29th August 2013.  The book goes into detail on all aspects within the footballing world from the post room to the boot room.  With all the big billionaire owners coming over and running the British clubs more as a business than a hobby, working there must just be like working for a FTSE 100 company.

All stories come from some of the 30 biggest names in the game.  If for nothing else, you will learn real life lessons of what these managers have learnt along their way and what methods they have used.  Could help with those tricky FM team talks or handling the media minefield.

Don’t just put these on your ‘to read’ list and stare at the titles thoughtfully every now and then. Go out, buy them, and then read them and hopefully (like me), it will whet your appetite ready for FM14.  After all, until FM14 is out, what else do you have to do!

If you found this article interesting, why not read our other article about 5 Must Own Classic Football Manager Games for £4.68.

So, to help you understand what is real and not real, here is what we know for definite so far from the twitter account of Miles Jacobson who is the ‘Head Honcho’ on FM for Sports Interactive: -

Cross Play

No, not cosplay. Miles has confirmed that as well as being on Mac and Windows, it will also be on Linux.

One price for all 3 – so if you have a Macbook, Windows laptop and Linux desktop (for example) you’ll be able to play the game on each of those machines via Steam.  For the more technically minded, the flavour of Linux we’ll be supporting is Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS)

New Languages

There will be New Languages available within the new game.  So good news if you can speak either Greek or Brazilian Portuguese.  Miles confirmed both languages will be added back in January and March.  This is due to the high amount of sales within Greece and Brazil.

Miles does however like to keep us hanging on with little teasers though like the following tweet he posted: -

“Have just finalised the feature set for FM14 to fit in with this years schedule. Happy. But no, I’m not going to reveal anything yet…”

More Leagues

Nothing is confirmed with regards to what leagues will be new to FM14 but Sports Interactive are on the lookout for Joe Public to work for them in a voluntary role to help them with the updating of Non-league teams.  So with this, could we start to see actual real players with real stats further on down the leagues in tiers 8, 9, 10, etc.  This is something that I am anticipating with bated breath.

Note from the editor: This would be amazing, real grass-roots football.

 A Women’s League

It doesn’t look like this will be included on FM14 or even a separate women’s version of FM14 being released at this present time.

The question was posed to Miles and he responded by saying that until it makes financial sense to do so, it wouldn’t be happening.

Steam Trading Cards

This is a new feature that has already been released on Steam and not just available on FM14.  Steam Trading Cards are collectible cards you get by playing games on Steam. Collect a set of cards to earn items that help you customize your profile and show off your gameplay.

Play as Club Chairman

Despite this being a popular request from you FM’ers out there, this doesn’t look like it will be happening either.

Miles has, and quite rightly, pointed out that the game is called ‘Football Manager’ and not ‘Football Chairman’ – a fair point well made.

He also goes on to say that there will not be the facility to save up your own managers wages in order to be able to buy your own football club within the game.

Despite not being able to do this within Football Manager, maybe there is a gap in the market for SI to create this ‘Football Chairman’ game? – although I wouldn’t visit Paddy Power and placing a bet that it will be anytime soon.

Steam

Football Manager 2014 will continue to be available to play through Steam and there are no plans to move away from Steam at any point in the future.

The reason FM is ran through Steam in the first place is to try to cut down on the number of people who illegally downloaded the game.

Since moving over to Steam a couple of years ago, this has been the case so I cannot see them moving away from it anytime soon.

Release Date

Nothing has been decided on a release date yet for FM14 but Miles has confirmed that they are looking at planning the release date at around end of September/beginning of October so keep your eyes peeled for around then.

Note from the editor: I reckon it will be closer to November, but fingers crossed!

Players

Nothing has been confirmed yet but SI are on the lookout for Non-league team researchers.

This could mean that there will be a lot more Non-league teams which can be managed from the off with a full squad of real life players.

Fingers crossed that this becomes a reality as I love managing in the Non-league more than the Premier League.

To keep up to date with FM progress, if you are on Twitter, why not follow Miles @milesSI.  He is being pretty cagey at the moment with regards to new features but come September, I would expect a lot more to be revealed.

In the meantime, keep reading our blogs for all the latest updates and gossip.

If you found this article interesting, why not have a look at another one of our articles listing out our FM14 wish list of new features which we want – some of them are up there with the Hovering Skateboard from Back to the Future!!!

Ok, granted, all the best free transfer players might have been snapped up by the time the game comes out.  Also, some on the list below might not actually be interested in dropping down to the Championship but you never know what might happen over the next two and a bit months.  However, maybe this could be a potential change to the game SI could make.  Giving us the option of starting the game from two different player databases.  The options being you can start the game with either the squad your team ended with at the end of last season or with the squad including all the signings they made during the pre-season just gone (as you do now).  This would mean any Tottenham fans starting a game on FM13, would of been able to start the game before Adebayor signed permanently.  For other potential game improvements, have a look at our wishlist blog.

Anyway, free transfers – this list of players was correct at the time this article was written including players who have either already been released or had been offered a new contract.

Goalkeepers

Craig Gordon

The one time record breaking goalkeeper hasn’t played over the last season due to injury and is helping coach somewhere up in Scotland.  Rumour has it, he is looking for a new club – could be worth a punt.

Lee Camp

Released by Norwich after only 6 months and playing 1 game for them during that period.  A couple of seasons ago, he was rumoured to be the best keeper outside of the Premier League.  At only 28, could still do a job in the Championship.

Other Goalkeeping options are…

Lukasz Fabianski, Ross Turnbull, Adriano Basso

Defenders

Titus Bramble

Now depending on who you are, some of you might think Titus is an absolute donkey, but Titus I think would be a very good Championship footballer – you might just have to replace him if/when you get promoted.

Richard Dunne

Spent most of last season injured at Aston Villa and isn’t getting any younger.  Still an International player though and scores his fair share of goals each season from defence.

Other defending options are….

Wayne Bridge, Nicky Shorey, Gonzalo Jara, Jon Hartley, Elliott Ward, William Gallas

Midfielders

Simon Davies

Spent last season playing at Fulham and is rumoured to be going Cardiff but with them potentially losing their manager, could end up playing in the Championship next season.

Simone Perrotta

Italian world cup winning midfielder who is out of contract at AS Roma.  At the age of 35, I cannot see any premiership teams taking a chance on him so maybe open to a move to a Championship team (after all, he was born in Ashford-under-Lyme).

Other midfielding options are….

Tiago, Mathieu Flamini, Joaquin, Yossi Benayoun, Phil Neville, Zoltan Gera, Florent Malouda, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Andrey Arshavin, Owen Hargreaves

Strikers

Carlton Cole

A big asset for any Championship team next season.  Didn’t quite cut it for West Ham last season and is the reason behind them letting him go.  A big powerful front man who knows where the back of the net is.

Mido

On loan at Barnsley last season and only managed 1 goal – could be worth a punt to draw the crowds in and make some shirt sales money.

Other striking options are….

Louis Saha, Javier Saviola, Heider Helguson, Jay Simpson

If  we also had the ability to be able to tempt players back out of retirement to help clubs out, it might of been worth asking Michael Owen or Nwankwo Kanu if they fancied a game (although the likes of Championship side Yeovil succeeding in doing this would have been very slim!).

I am sure there are plenty of other decent players on free transfers out there which I have missed so if you know of any, let us know here at footballmanager2014.

This alone makes it worthwhile for football fans that would like to test their management capabilities in the game-world of FM.

Best of all these features though is the addictive nature that is still in full swing. FM13 is an innocent drug that is always in the back of your mind, processing the possibility of a match outcome after another click of the mouse. When you are mesmerised to that level, it’s hard to say anything other than this is a brilliant piece of video game entertainment for fans of the beautiful game.There is also the new Classic Mode, which is a brilliant inclusion that could bring in new people or even bring back the older fans that might have given up on the series because of its overall complexities that drove some people away between the 11-12 era.

However, has it become too detailed for the ordinary football fan who just wants to buy players and win the league?

I am the kind of FM player who isn’t really bothered about getting down to the nitty-gritty like setting daily training regimes for my players, or bringing in Doctor Shipman as my new physio.

There is also the inclusion of Classic Mode, a redesigned take on the football manager gameplay that flows at a much faster pace than the standard mode. The best thing about Classic Mode is that it manages to bring this streamlined version without the loss of its huge player database, 3D football match engine and other in-depth background calculations.

What is removed from Classic Mode though is the time-hogging features, which is clear from the get-go when you initiate a new game and see that you can select no more than three country leagues to be fully represented in the career.

Press and staff meetings are near non-existent – only when very important topics need addressing – while training is limited to team training, cutting out all the in-depth control specifically catering to an individual’s training needs which for me is a bonus.

The new inclusion of being able to add players as ‘transfer targets’ for your assistant to then negotiate terms with is a stroke of genius. This takes out a lot of time for you having to sit there with the player and agent round the table trying to get him to sign while trying not to pay his agent over £4million for just turning up. But for those who like the negotiating side of FM this is probably a feature you will never use.

The one thing SI hasn’t got quite correct yet is the signing of players versus the selling of your own players.  Borussia Dortmund want over £70million for Lewandowski which is overpriced even for the fake footballing world of FM.  But when you want to sell your own players like Nani, you will be lucky to even get £12million for him.

It is really hard to make any kind of mark up on what a player’s actual value is.

The match engine has also been upgraded, not just in 3D, but the general layout of information that is given as the game plays out.

An assistant will post notes on the side of the screen alerting to key parts of the match, and you can use this information to judge substitutions or change basic tactics on the fly without the need to go into the menus. Watching your team perform on the pitch in 3D is more enjoyable now that the animation is better. It is not on the same levels as what you see in FIFA or Pro Evo, but it does its job well.

If you have never liked FM because it did not let you play, then you never will. It is a title that when broken down to the barebones is a massive database doing millions of calculations, with a fancy menu and stats that make you feel good or bad about how you manage a team, while exceptionally keeping to the realism of the sport.

So, overall, FM13 is better than FM12 and its predecessors as it gives you more control and things you can do to impact on the outcome of the next game.  However, there are still a hundred and one things they could do to change the game for better.

Make sure you keep an eye out for our next article which looks into how good FM13 is against some of the other football management games out there.