Club Football: The Manager was a football simulation game developed by Imagine and released by the lesser known publishing house, Teque, in the middle nineties. Imagine actually still owns the copyright to this game, and there have been speculations that new additions to the series will someday surface in the world of modern gaming. Club Football: The Manager, as one would gather from the title, is a management style of game, as opposed to a wild, button-mashing arcade thriller.
It focuses on European style football, or soccer, and is geared mainly in the second division in the English soccer league.
Club Football: The Manager is not a very complex management style game and can serve as a nice tutorial for gamers first breaking into the genre. The game will begin with the user selecting from a variety of teams in the Division 2 English soccer league. He has several from which to choose, but regardless of the team he selects, his goal will be the same: to develop his players and their talents and eventually break into Division 1. This goal is very similar to other management style games, such as Match Day Manager. It also bears a striking
resemblance to both Championship Manager and Premier Manager, but the level of difficulty in Club Football: The Manager has been toned down considerably compared to the latter titles.
The game play in Club Football: The Manager is primarily a text-based series of data and information. The management portion of the game is very easy to learn without the benefit of any cumbersome manuals or reading. The user will be given a small budget with which to build and develop his team. He will begin with some run-of-the-mill average players…no stand out superstars. He can trade for new players with his bit of money, and can also negotiate new contracts with the ones he has in order to better his chances of succeeding in his quest for advancement. He can train his players and develop their various skills according to his coaching schemes.
There are several options the user can access to customize his game play, aside from selecting a team. He can select the color of his team’s kit and can also change the pitch that he and his team play upon. These, as well as other standard manipulations, make Club Football: The Manager a very playable game. It is not so complex that the user will have to study, but it is varied and interesting enough to keep the average gamer and soccer fan coming back for more.
