Football Manager meets The Sims, played by 144 real people. Six clubs. Five minutes a day. Live matches on Saturday afternoons, whether you are watching or in a meeting.
Six football clubs are run entirely by real people. Six owners sign the cheques, six managers pick the team, and 132 players decide whether to do as they are told. Everything you do takes five minutes a day; everything everyone else does is the problem.
Careers run over real-world months. Players age, fall out, get sold, retire, come back as someone worse. Nobody is playing against the computer — the computer only keeps the score.
You own a football club, which is to say you own a hole in the ground that money goes into. Set the budget, set the expectations, and decide how long the manager has left.
You will spend the season wishing you were in any other business, and you will not sell.
Pick the team, pick the shape, and write the instructions eleven adults may or may not read. Every result is your fault; every good performance is someone else's talent.
Handle the dressing room, the press and an owner who has just discovered a spreadsheet.
Train, sulk, shine. Follow the manager's instructions to the letter, or ignore them and go looking for a goal that gets your name in the commentary.
Your career runs for months. Reputations are earned slowly and lost at 3:47pm on a Saturday.
Places are allocated in the order applications are received. Once the 144 are seated, the season starts without the rest.
Screenshot supplied by a team-mate who has since described the leak as "a real shame". Kamara has not responded. The manager has responded at some length.
No. There is nothing to be good at in the usual sense — no clicking, no reflexes, no 4-2-3-1 to memorise. You make choices in plain English and live with them. Being good at people helps considerably more than being good at Football Manager.
Your character carries on without you, on last week's instructions and their own judgement. Miss a week and your judgement is quietly described in the press as "a settling-in period".
Managers, yes — by an owner, at any point, usually on a Sunday. Players can be dropped, frozen out or sold. Owners cannot be sacked, which is the entire problem with football.
Five minutes a day, in a browser tab that looks like a spreadsheet from 1994. We have done what we can. The Saturday matches are on your own time.
The match engine simulates the football and the media bot writes the mischief. Every decision that matters — selection, instructions, whether to follow them — is made by a person who has to see the others on Monday.
Careers age. Some players retire and start again as an unknown 17-year-old; some managers get a better job; some owners double down. Minutes of the previous season remain on file.