Football Manager is a series of football management simulation games released by Sega and developed by Sports Interactive.
The game takes you on a journey in which you begin from nothing and recruit the world’s greatest talents to become an unstoppable squad.
It puts you in charge of your club and creates real-life managerial dilemmas for you to deal with. Some of the challenges you will face on your path to leaving a legacy to include player management, injury concerns, and financial allocation.
The most well-known football simulation game is FM. The reason for this is because it is highly realistic and appropriately ranks the players.
But sometimes it feels like a time machine because, in its 13-year long history, the game has predicted some of the world’s best talents even before they burst onto the scene.
Here, we look at three such predictions Football Manager made that changed the course of the beautiful game forever!
AFC Wimbledon’s prediction
Sports Interactive, the inventor of the Football Manager series, has played a significant role in the history of AFC Wimbledon from its creation in 2002. The interactive game sponsored the club’s home uniform, while SI was shown on the club’s away kit.
Football Manager performed a simulation at the start of the 2016/17 season that projected Wimbledon will finish 13th in their inaugural season in League 1. The game also predicted that they will defeat rivals MK Dons 3-1 at the Kingsmeadow.
In March 2017, the actual Dons were 13th and had defeated Milton Keynes 2-0, demonstrating that the Football Manager creators have psychic abilities.
Wonderkid predictor
In 2006, many young people from all around the world were emerging as promising prospects. A teenage Vincent Kompany was flourishing at Anderlecht, Sergio Aguero and Radamel Falcao were the most talked-about players in South America, and Sergio Ramos secured a big-money move to Real Madrid.
And, of course, Lionel Messi was establishing himself as a regular starter for Barcelona.
But all of these stars had one thing in common: they were all awarded a -10 potential on Football Manager. For those unfamiliar with the game’s mechanics, a -10 potential indicates that the player can have a minimum of 170 and a maximum of 200 potential, assuring that they will become one of the world’s greatest.
And boy did the game get it right as all of them have proved themselves at the world’s biggest stage.
Messi to Rangers (almost!)
This is the story of how a Football Manager forecast altered the course of the beautiful game’s history.
During his time at Rangers, Scottish manager Alex McLeish was trying to buy bright teenagers in the transfer window when his son, Football Manager devotee Jon McLeish, came to show him that he had signed a youngster in the game who was performing exceptionally well.
Jon wanted his father to sign the child in person, but Alex patted his son on the back and informed him it was only a game. Lionel Messi was the child in question.
Later, Alex McLeish attempted to get Messi on loan from Barcelona, but the deal fell through!