7 Reasons Not to Revisit Old Football Management Games
1. It’s unproductive. When you’re playing a current Football management game, you can at least try to justify spending all of the time engaged in a trivial activity by reassuring yourself that you’re gaining invaluable insights into the modern game. All you’re learning by re-visiting an old one is how good everyone used to think Gary O’Neill would become.
2. Guilt. You’ll feel guilty about re-visiting an old game. And so you should. You now know who most of the promising players in the game are – this is much like insider dealing on the stock markets – and you’ll feel so guilty about this that you’ll set yourself ridiculous challenges within the game. Trying to build a Premier League winning team entirely from Belgian players; trying to win the FA Cup with an entirely left-footed team; winning the Champions League with a team of players with silly names (Raphael Wicky, Chung Yoo-Suk, Bernt Haas and Olivier De Cock are always the first names on the team-sheet); trying to qualify for the World Cup with an all-Scottish team – the guilt-induced-absurdity is endless.
3. Wayne Routledge. Your Premier League team’s bête noire will be Wayne Routledge. He’ll be awesome whenever you play against him. Yes, the same Wayne Routledge that wouldn’t even get into a Premier League team picked by his own mother. “Wayne Routledge. Wayne Routledge!” will be the tortured and incredulous cry that accompanies your heaviest defeat of the season.
4. Management. The managers do weird things in old games. Arsene Wenger spends money on players, Fergie retires, Steve McLaren is English (I couldn’t resist this video), Rafa Benitez picks a squad using logic and Steve Bruce doesn’t frighten small children.
5. Imagination. Because the old game develops very differently to current real-life football, you have to keep track of them both in your mind. So you now have two Peter Crouches, both a real Peter Crouch and an imaginary one. Do you really need an imaginary Peter Crouch?
6. Match Of The Day. Settling down to watch Match Of The Day becomes a confusing experience after you’ve been playing an old game for some time – it’s like watching The Twilight Zone. All of the wrong players are playing for all of the wrong teams, all of the wrong teams are in all of the wrong leagues, all of the wrong scorers are scoring at all of the wrong ends yet Alan Shearer still can’t find a decent shirt. Where the hell is he shopping?
7. Internationals. I wasn’t managing them, but England won the 2010 World Cup. Wayne scored a hat-trick in the final against Italy. Wayne Routledge. Wayne Routledge!
