As somebody who has played Football Manager since it was Championship Manager, I have known the delights of the football sim for a long time.
However, my 12-year-old football-mad son has only had a passing interest in Football Manager until this week.
EA Sports FC has become unplayable
I cannot say that I have been entirely loyal to Football Manager. When I was a child and FIFA first emerged, I was a full-blown addict, while also loving International Superstar Soccer/ Pro Evo.
I have played these over the years but had barely touched FIFA until a few years ago when my son finally caught the football bug. However, he asked me to play games against the AI, help him out against a difficult online opponent, or play against him.
EAFC is actually unplayable unless it’s after 10 pm the servers/gameplay before then are absolutely horrid. The button delay is scary.
— opm (@Opiumpicks) April 29, 2024
FIFA, or EA FC as it is now known, was always fun to me as a child. The last few editions are rage-inducing, though. The game has you shouting obscenities at the scene, as the mechanics are just ridiculous.
You play a pass to put your teammate through on goal, and suddenly your player has instead played it back to your centre-back for an unknown reason. Then there is the case of players not moving where they should. Wingers can have the ball and cry out for a full-back to produce an overlapping run. Instead, they stay in their own half, acting as a spectator.
These may seem like little things, but they all add up to terrible gameplay. Maybe next time, EA should look at the gameplay rather than spending so much time looking at the graphics.
An alternative to EA FC
So, anyway, back to my son. He has played FIFA/EA Sports like every other football-loving kid for a while now. However, as he has confessed to me, he does not like the game, but he does not really have much choice, as there are so few football games available.
Pro Evolution Soccer was once a great game. Now rebranded as eFootball, it is only online and has no career mode, which is a big problem, as players like my son like to build teams and play for a long time. I have played eFootball for a few games relatively recently, and I believe it has better gameplay than EA FC. In my opinion, it is simply more fun to play.
It seems that Football Manager has become my son’s alternative to those rage-inducing sessions on EA FC. One of the main reasons he said he likes FM is that you are not restricted to playing just 15 seasons, like you are in EA FC. You can play for however long you want.
Loving FM after playing it since Saturday
He has played Football Manager in the past, but it was always too in-depth for him. There were too many things to remember and too much to do. He just wanted to build a team and win trophies.
Then, I introduced him to delegating responsibilities to your staff. It has helped him, as he is now loving Football Manager. He says he wishes that EA FC’s career mode was more like FM, as it would be a far better game.
He has employed me as assistant manager, which may have been a mistake! However, he is slowly learning the mechanics of the game and playing more of the game himself.
Funnily enough, he has barely touched EA FC in the last couple of days. Strangely, I have found him to be far happier when he is playing FM than when he is playing EA FC.
He is going through the emotions we all go through when playing FM, getting tense when in big games, and being elated at winning matches and cups. Last night, he even went to bed thinking about FM and wanted to play all night.
Considering this is a boy who, in the past, was obsessed with EA FC, it has been a big turnaround. Now he is even stating that Football Manager is his favourite game, which, as we all know with children, can change with the wind.
He reckons he may be the only near-teen or teenager playing the game. However, I said all ages of people play FM that’s part of the beauty of the game. One of my son’s favourite qualities is that he refuses to be a sheep.
Even if people have a go at him for being different, he stands his ground. If his peers said anything about him playing FM, he would ignore them. It would make him play the game even more.
Once I caught the Football Manager bug, it was hard to get rid of, and I would not want to anyway. It has basically been the only computer game that I have played for the last two decades, except the odd game of other aforementioned games, which, as previously mentioned, was at the request of my son.
Hopefully, my son will stick with Football Manager, as it certainly makes him less frustrated and angry than Rage Inductor Simulator, sorry, I mean EA FC.
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