Currently, the Football Manager is one of the most popular soccer games in the world. Unlike games like FIFA e PES, the game developed by Sports Interactive and distributed by SEGA focuses on the complete management of a football club, including training, buying and selling players, financial analysis, interviews with journalists, relationship with the fans and several other aspects that simulate the football universe . The success of FM, however, could have been part of Electronic Arts’ history if the developer hadn’t denied the project in the early 1990s.
In a letter presented at the National Football Museum in England, EA Sports tried to get closer to the creators of Football Manager, which at the time was known as European Champions. In the letter, the developer’s production assistant apologizes to brothers Paul and Oliver Collyer, lamenting the company’s inability to launch a prototype of the simulator. In the log, EA says it doesn’t believe a stat-based, action-free game could succeed.
Despite the denial, the company wished the developer brothers luck in an attempt to seek out other companies that already worked with football simulators. At the end of the letter, there is still a note, warning Paul and Oliver that the game discs were infected with viruses.
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Just a year later, in 1992, the Collyer brothers took the idea to Eidos and signed a deal to develop the game. The result was a success: in the first edition six million copies of the game were sold. Over time, the title became a reference in simulation of the most popular sport in the world. Under the name of Championship Manager, the game became a worldwide phenomenon in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2004, the game was renamed Football Manager, gaining important additions in recent years and being used even by coaches and professional football technicians. Years later, EA Sports came to launch FIFA Manager, its own simulator, but the game was not very successful and was discontinued.
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