Over the years playing Championship Manager and Football Manager, you tend to forget just how many wonderkids and memorable players there were in every edition.
Some players are instantly memorable, but some are players who have thrived for you on the game and then only come back to mind when somebody else mentions them.
This exact thing happened on the THTP X account, courtesy of Sort It Out SI.net. Cheers, guys. They put up a screenshot of a popular formation from Championship Manager 01/02 called the Diablo. I looked through the names, and many are recognisable, like Milevskiy, Duff, N’Diaye, and Solis.
If You Know, You Know… 😉⚽ pic.twitter.com/PK2XwrY7zs
— Sort It Out SI.net (@sortitoutsi) October 20, 2024
However, the screenshot brought back so many memories for me, as it reminded me of a certain Portuguese striker by the name of Joao Paiva, who is one of the hosts of FM players who have been lodged into the back of my subconscious.
Who is Joao Paiva?
Many of you who are not lucky or old enough to be acquainted with FM 01/02 will be asking who Joao Paiva is.
Well, during my younger days, I thrived on winning promotions from the fifth tier of English football (now the National League) to the Premier League, then went on and dominated Europe.
I believe I did this with Southport and Chester on some editions of Championship Manager. The main issue was that you never had much of a transfer kitty to spend. In many ways, that’s what made the game more enjoyable, but it was also a good challenge.
That meant you had to box clever with your signings in the free-agent market. That first summer, Paiva was in his late teens and was a free agent.
Signing Paiva was always an excellent start to your recruitment, as the Portuguese youngster would be deadly in the lower leagues and usually prolific in every league up to the Premier League.
Unfortunately for the striker, when we got to the Premier League, he would sometimes hit his ceiling. He would still score goals, but not as prolifically as he did in the lower leagues. As free signings go, though, he was outstanding.
What happened to Paiva in real life?
In real life, Paiva came through the youth system at Portuguese giants Sporting CP in his home city of Lisbon. However, he never appeared in Sporting’s first team. Instead, he played For Sporting B from 2001 until 2003, making 50 appearances and scoring 20 goals.
The forward moved on in 2003, joining Maritimo, but once again, he had to settle for playing for the club’s B team, where he made 28 league appearances while scoring six goals.
He wasn’t in Funchal for long, as the following summer, he joined second-tier Espinho. In the 2004/05 campaign, Paiva made just nine appearances and scored just one goal as his team suffered relegation to the third tier of the Portuguese game.
The forward then moved to Cyprus with Apollon Limassol as he sought a change of fortunes. He at least played more regularly in the Cypriot top flight, making 54 league appearances and scoring 16 goals between 2005 and 2007.
He then spent half a season at AEK Larnaca, making 12 appearances and finding the net just twice. Arguably, it wasn’t until the summer of 2008 that Paiva’s career really started to get moving after a switch to Swiss club, Luzern.
He spent two and a half years with the Swiss outfit, scoring 23 goals in 73 appearances. His best season in front of goal was the 2008/09 season, when he struck 11 times in 28 games. His team eventually finished ninth place in the table, barely beating the drop into the second tier.
In the January transfer window of 2011, Paiva joined another Swiss club, Grasshoppers. A record of just three goals in 25 appearances wasn’t exactly inspiring over the course of the Swiss league season.
His journey in Swiss football continued with Wohlen, as in the 2013/14 campaign, he scored 16 goals in 34 appearances. He was with the club just a season before moving on to Winterthur, where he remained for two seasons, grabbing 20 goals as he featured 63 times.
He ended his football career in Switzerland with short stints at Union Zurich and Dietikon, scoring a total of six goals in 17 appearances.
Paiva coached the latter from 2018 until 2021 and became head coach of another Swiss club, Bellinzona, in 2021.
His reign at his new club was short and sweet, as he joined in July and left in August, having managed the team in just three competitive games, winning two of his three matches. The reason for his exit was reportedly “diverging technical views”.
According to his LinkedIn profile (yes, I am stalking him now!), the former forward is employed by the Swiss Association of Football Players as a player relationship manager.
Remembering players like Paiva is why we love Football Manager
Many non-Football Manager fans often deride the game. However, the fact that I still remember a Portuguese player whose football career didn’t quite live up to his FM reputation is why we love the game.
We can build healthy or unhealthy attachments with players we don’t know, and sometimes, we never hear of them again in the professional game.
Every CM/FM player of a certain vintage knows the likes of Cherno Samba or Mark Kerr. However, sometimes, there are players who far fewer FM managers remember or have even heard of that make the game unique.
Seeing these players’ names or hearing about them takes us back to a simpler time, maybe in our childhood or youth. It takes us away from the day-to-day grind of modern life.
Joao Paiva’s playing career in real life was decent, but in FM, I am sure he brought even more joy to a lot of people trying to work their way up from the lower echelons of the lower divisions in CM 01/02.
CM 01/02 helped me through a difficult period of my life, and Joao Paiva was a part of that therapy without knowing it. He will probably never see this, but for that, sir, I salute you and wish you all the best in the rest of your life’s endeavours!
Do you remember Joao Paiva’s career in real life or CM 01/02?
