14 DAY TRIAL // I hate it when video game make me feel inadequate and one of the titles that has lately made me feel very poor is Football Manager 2012, the management simulation created by Sports Interactive and published by SEGA last year.
I have been a long term fan of the English club Liverpool (don’t ask for truly rational reasons, I lack any of those) and I always start my first career with the team, trying to get the title in two years and then win the Champions League and the title during the third one, before moving on to other teams.
I had quite a bit of time to spend with FM 2012 during Christmas and New Year’s Eve breaks and I managed to get to the same moment in the virtual season as in real life.
The team that Kenny Daghlish currently manages is stuck in the sixth position of the Premier League for some time and they have shown little in the way of the performances that could lead them to a top three finish when late April rolls around.
In my virtual space I managed to squeeze some better performances out of my players, especially a young center back called Coates and the midfielder Charlie Adam, and sit in fourth place, just one behind Manchester United in third, 9 behind Manchester City in second and another four behind Tottenham Hotspur, the surprising leaders.
Yet my virtual board fires me on the first of January, after failing to get more than a draw away at Wolves, while the current real world Liverpool coach is unlikely to get fired even if he suffers a defeat at Manchester City and falls even further behind the top five.
By design a virtual experience should be a little more forgiving than the real world and I would love to see the developers at Sports Interactive introduce some small changes to the next updates that allow the game to compare the real and virtual and re-asses performance accordingly, allowing me to guide the team until summer and a top three finish.