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Have You Played… Football Manager 2012?Or any Football Manager game, take your pick.
Or any Football Manager game, take your pick.

Official Football Manager 2012 TV TrailerWatch on YouTube
Official Football Manager 2012 TV Trailer

It’s also because those moments are fleeting. For every pitch-invading victory, there’s also about four defeats at Wembley, falling at the last hurdle before promotion or a cup final. To support a team like Reading, you have to be extremely ready to deal with mountains of disappointment and sadness just to feel something every so often, like that timePavel Pogrebnyak chipped the West Brom keeperdeep in stoppage time to clinch a hilariously undeserved victory.
The thing about Football Manager is that these rare moments are compressed. Want to feel like I did during my years in the east stand at the Madejski Stadium? Don’t want to deal with the disappointment of standing in the freezing cold drinking scalding coffee and watching the revolving door of managers fail to inspire the team like Brian McDermott once did?Football Manager 2012was the first game to scratch the sportsball itch for real. FIFA lets you scam your way to the top with easy difficulty modes, but Football Manager forces you to take the rough with the slightly-less-rough, and makes victories feel genuinely earned when your team’s iteration ofAdam Le Fondre comes in extremely clutch.
I got Reading to win the Champions’ League in FM2012, and it’s still one of my greatest achievements in gaming. And in life, to be honest. I still remember the generated player from my youth academy, Zhang Wan, getting a record-breaking season and scoring a well-deserved winner after I’d worked for seasons upon seasons to craft the perfect squad. You’ll get attached to footballers who don’t exist, ruthlessly sell off your favourite IRL players, and achieve an overinflated ego on your ability to actually be a manager of a football team. Or a manager of literally anything. It’s really good.