Football Manager 2006 (PC) – Review

Okay, we’re done talking about the break between SI Games and Eidos, which made many virtual footie-managers nervous back in 2003. We can simply look at the facts, and say that SI Games put Eidos and its Championship Manager to shame with the release of Football Manager 2005.

As usual in this genre, every new season means a new game in which all the latest changes in the world of football are in place. The older a football manager series gets, the more nations it will include, which does get largely irrelevant for most people after a while. But still, this time around you can choose between more than 5000 different teams, which is twice the amount of last year’s game.

Numbers or bar graphs?

The interface looks quite familiar in general, save for a few layout adjustments and the addition of a few new buttons. If you played Football Manager 2005, you’ll quickly get used to the new look, whereas it might take you a while to learn all of the many features if you’re new to the series. But this is not to say that the menu system is bad – everything is arranged logically, and when you think of how much information it manages, it’s quite impressive really.

If you think that manager games usually contain an overwhelming amount of numbers, SI Games has included a great feature for you. You have the ability to replace numerical player stats with bar graphs, and this graphical representation gives a quick indication of strengths and weaknesses.

Tactical geniuses will prevail

As you can see, the game has a number of innovations, and if we stick to the ones that have the most profound effect on the outcome of your games, we can name a few treats. Once again, the training part of the game has received an overhaul. Personally, I haven’t really dealt with this myself much. I just let my AI assistant take care of it, since it seemed too difficult to bother with. But in this edition, training doesn’t seem as difficult and time-consuming as before.

The majority of the new features centre on the matches themselves. Thankfully, SI Games has included the ability to change your tactical decision on the fly using Quick Tactics. Instead of stopping the action entirely, you can now change formations and the like while the ball is still in play. This saves a lot of needless fiddling around, and the cunning manager can utilize the feature to his or her advantage. You can quickly go on the offensive or fall back in the field without having to wait for the ball to go out of play.

Scold or praise? You have the power

Another new thing is the ability to have a talk with your players during half-time. Earlier, you were restricted to simply substituting players who delivered bad performances, but now you can tell them exactly how you feel about their abilities on the field. Do it right, and you’ll see good results, but you need to be careful about what you say. You might end up aggravating your players and if your entire team gets annoyed with you, it can get you fired quite quickly if you’re already in trouble. It’s quite a lot easier to substitute the coach than the team, you know…

You need to interact more with the players in general this time, and that improves the sense of realism. It also increases the level of difficulty, because unhappy players simply won’t perform well. And if you happen to fall out with the stars of the team, your results will obviously suffer a great deal.

New tactical features

The tactical front has also been improved. You can adjust your tactical dispositions to a far greater degree, thereby realising the full potential of every single player on your team. It’s quite possible to settle for standard tactics all the time, but you will find that your game improves a great deal if you manage to incorporate the strengths of your players in your tactics.

Football Manager 2006 really shows the competition how it’s done. Even though it’s just another manager game, you can actually fiddle with just about every detail of the sport. But you still need to be a fan of this type of game, because it’s definitely not something you just play for a couple of hours and then put aside for months. We don’t think there’s any real danger of that happening, though, because once you get started you’re almost sure to get sucked right in.

Even if you already own Football Manager 2005, I think that this new version is an absolute must-buy. It’s got a lot of cool new details, and you know you want them.

Source: Boomtown Denmark
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)