Bonus Blog: Addiction To An Institution

Welcome back my friends to a special edition of my blog site. I this issue I will be addressing an unbelievably huge part of my life, and so many others. Something that has been at the very core of our personalities and achievements down the years. An institution that has taken many hours of joy and pain from my dearest friends and I for so long. This blog coincides with the release of that very special friend of mine’s year 2012 edition. I am talking, of course, about Football Manager 2012.

Let me take you back to a time where everything seemed so simple. I had a Sega Master System while my friends had Mega Drives. Move on a couple of years and I had a PS1 while some had Nintendo 64’s. In truth I was always one step behind in the console game. Not that I cared much about this too much, in fact it made the time playing on them more special and helped me to appreciate the moments of technologically based fun. I remember one sunny afternoon, around a friend’s house (Joe Munt), I was introduced to a game that brought sheer joy to me in the small time I was afforded to play it. The game was Championship Manager 2, the old school version of today’s international sensation. The makers were Eidos, a small British based software company established in 1990. From the moment I made my first signing for Northampton Town, bringing Ali Gibb to the club on a permanent deal from Norwich after a successful loan spell, I was hooked. I can’t begin to tell you the rush that you get when a player you have signed scores his first goal. It is still a buzz even now, in a time when you can fine your players for misconduct or tell the media that you dislike the opposition manager.

It was not at Joe’s house that my addiction started though, far from it. I had no PC when I was a nipper but just around the corner from my house were two absolute legends in the making. Long Meadow was a vast road that separated the Bedgrove Road from the Paddock. The road stretched for hundreds of yards, but at the Camborne Avenue end lived a very special family – the Goodins. Five (soon to be six) of the most legendary people you are ever likely to meet. The two sons of John and Anita were Luke and Ellis, one is currently stateside chasing the American Dream and the other is one of the key players in FC Unique’s title challenge of 2011/12 season. Both had to put up with a persistent Championship Manager “junkie” that lurked round the corner from their home. That addict was me. I would knock on the door every day like clockwork to get my “fix” of the fictional management world. I would invite them out to play football, but eventually we would end up at the computer screen typing in MSDOS the keywords cd/cm9798 and loading up one of our many saved games.

There were many unfortunate incidents that plighted our gaming experiences and caused many arguments among the three of us. Like accidently clicking cancel when Luke was about to sign Juninho for Man Utd. An incident that threatened our very friendship, and is probably still not forgiven to this day. The Guttuso method was forged on one game where you could theoretically sign any player you wished if you offered them a month-to-month contract. The season where Luke was cheating to sign players for nothing and it slipped me by for several months before I realised his budget did not deviate nor did his balance. Luke would click through many pages without reading each screen, while Ellis would take so long it was home time before we got to the first game. There were so many great memories as well. The main one being the season Luke and I both reached the Champions League final. He beat me 2-0 but the journeys we both undertook to get there were memorable.

There have been many players of note throughout the years of playing the game that are worth a mention; Martin Palermo, Javier Saviola, Francesco Viveros, Roberto Donadoni, Dougie Freedman, Lewis Buxton, Ibrahima Bakayoko, Robert Pires, Christian Vieri, Vladimir Beschastnykh, Karl-Heinz Riedel, Lars Ricken, Davor Suker to name but a few. There are so many more that brought enjoyment and pleasure to the world of Championship/Football Manager.

What new players will capture our imaginations this year as we progress through the 2012 season and beyond? What torturous pain will we have to endure in order to achieve true greatness in this truly perfect management simulation? Only time will tell my friends, a lot of time. In fact let’s not lie to ourselves, any free time we get will be spent at our laptops and PC’s dedicated to the one, the only Football Manager. Let the addiction re-ignite. Thanks for reading.