‘Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.’

I Cor 13:4-7 (New International Version)

Beautiful words, often read in churches during the marriage ceremony – a moment of declaring the relationship to be holy and indissoluble, a moment of declaring love, fidelity and honesty. Is it not the case, dear reader, that you often publicly expressed your love for your Football Manager CD? If yes – then please take a closer look at whether you really do love the game.

‘Love is patient…’ but is it really? This is a time for me to come clean and admit that I do lack patience – patience necessary to thoroughly analyse the tactics of my next opposition, to give due consideration to my starting line up and formation, not to mention an analysis of previous matches… Do you spend enough time checking out your next rival, or do you not bother and instead you prefer to complain after the game that you did not expect such resistance from your opponents? Unfortunately, I sometimes do.

But ‘love is [also] kind’ – if you give yourself sufficient time to do all these things properly and attentively, you will be rewarded, if not with a win, then at least with experience and higher team morale after a draw against Barcelona at Camp Nou. There is a lot to be gained from the right approach: the satisfaction and happiness of your supporters and the board, and of course massive boost for your own self esteem. Each day spent with FM brings new feelings out in me - I verify my attitude and the way I play the game. Recently I have been stressing one feature of FM – that in my opinion it is difficult – it’s harder to get a win now, but it was not really in any way an accusation towards the game makers from SI. Still, you can see that now you will not be able to complete playing the whole season in 3 – 4 days, like it used to be. Now it will be more like 1-2 matches per day. But I feel that it starts giving me the good old thrill of enjoyment again. Not necessary because I win. Sometimes only because I have been able to get a draw out of a hot away game.

’[Love] does not envy…’ And is a person not guilty of envy when they attack someone by saying: ‘Shut up, you have won the Champions League with a team like Chelsea, anyone could do that, it doesn’t count.’ Now, there has been a discussion going on for some time about whether or not to introduce difficulty levels in FM, and someone raised an objection that should this happen we risk that the players choosing to play the game in ‘easy’ mode will be subject to verbal abuse and mocking on websites and in the fora. I suggest that you take a look into the tactics section of the CM Forum where you will see for yourself that there are complex tactics being devised even for giants like Barcelona, for example. I heard people say: ‘Barcelona win effortlessly just because it’s, well, Barcelona’. But is it really the case, even allowing for a fact that it’s a game, not real world? Do we not often envy our fellow FM players because their tactical, training and scouting skills are better than ours? Did it not rankle – envy again – that while a team led by your friend or classmate banged four goals into the net of mighty Bayern Munich you are heavily loosing to minnows like Eintracht Frankfurt? Again, I sometimes do feel like that. But I don’t play using other people’s tactics. I am sometimes bitter because I do not have as much free time as some of my fellow FM players, but that’s it. The tactics is my own, and so are training regimes and my team are slowly getting there.

‘[Love] does not boast, it is not proud.’ As we often are. As is the case when, on hearing that our friend can’t win against Eintracht we dismiss him/her saying: ‘Oh, really? I just massacred Bayern 4:0’ Is it bad, you might ask. Maybe it is not that bad, but gloating about a newly discovered talented youth player when in fact all you did was use Genie Scout IS, really. Same goes for posting a pic of your results on a website when in fact what you did to get the cup was a ‘save&load’ method replaying of the final match 7 times until you’d got the result.

‘[Love] is not rude’. And we often are. How often we would enhance our favorite team using editors, just because we think the team has been treated a bit unfairly by the researchers: ‘come on, a few millions more in the bank, a little upgrade of players stats (pace and technique 16+, even though we are in Polish 3^rd division, doesn’t matter, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, the boys are training hard, they deserve it, plus no one will notice anyway’ Ok, maybe not all of us do it, but I’m sure there is quite a few of us out there blushing as they read on.

Finally, ‘… [Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’ But trust, hope and love are the virtues that deserve another article in terms of the game’s future. For now, let us end with one conclusion stemming from this ‘examination of conscience’ that we have just made: our love of FM is not as pure as we have sometimes been inclined to think…

*And just like love between people can be destructive and toxic, so can be our love for Football Manager; by saying that I am alluding to an article by divinus (‘Cast Away’) and especially to readers’ comments posted below it; some of them made me really sick:

‘Man, it is as if you told a suicide jumper, miraculously saved but with broken hands, legs and spine after a failed suicide attempt that the world was beautiful and that what he did was so wonderful and so emotional.’

After a few comments like that I was mortified. It wasn’t until much later that someone, namely Pucek - at last showed some maturity; he wrote:

‘The author of the article described his feelings in a great way. He used many interesting metaphors and comparisons. As far as his article’s content is concerned, I think everyone has a right to live and experience his FM mania in their own personal way. To me FM will always be nothing more than a computer game, but a very special one nonetheless.’ I couldn’t agree more with that. And I perceive it (namely verbal wars and abuse hurled at each other by articles comment posters – translator’s note) as harmful for our community and our game, it’s a deliberate own goal. I became a writer with this website because I had been absolutely enchanted by the Prompter It is here where older or more experienced FM players selflessly and eagerly help those who are new or need any advice. I am delighted by the fact that around our website we have gathered a community that we could call a kind of a ‘family’. People taking part in Sufler project are present in the CM Forum, meet in real life during specially organized trips and outings, discuss politics, sport, economics and religion (also via our website) and somewhere in the background of it all there is this one thing that brings us all together. Each and every one of us. This thing is Football Manager.To me this website is an expression of Love of the game, Faith in the FM players and Hope for a great future for the whole FM series. This website is my real love, I have an emotional bond with it. And that’s what I would like to thank you all for.

So, let us work patiently to be better human beings and let us hope that the programmers, in turn, will develop our game and make FM better, too. In the meantime, I wish you luck before your next match.

PS. Opinions expressed by the author in the article are his own and are not endorsed – neither in whole nor in part – by the website administrators.

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Translator notes:

* This paragraph of the article is a response to the earlier text and the comments that have been made in connection with it, that is why it may feel slightly out of context if you haven’t read the article it refers to. At the time of translation the text in question has not been published in English yet.

Translated by Sol