For the best part of a quarter century, Football Manager (or Championship Manager as it used to be known as in a former life) has has had an increasing influence on the sport that it simulates.
Over the years, the Football Manager player database has swelled to the point that it is currently the single most complete resource for player statistics and attributes in the modern game. The current iteration of the game has detailed information on more than 300,000 football players from every corner of the globe. That figures doubles when you factor in managers, coaches, scouts and the several other non-player roles that Football Manager has painstakingly run the rule over.
These facts and figures aren't randomised, either. They are compiled using the a dedicated team of spread across 51 different countries and 140 leagues. Each player is evaluated in 250 different stats which, when combined, makes for a unique algorithim of football simulation. And this painstaking attention to details isn't just solely for the benefit of gamers, either.
The average team in the Premier League would employ somewhere in the region of 7 international scouts. With so few staff to cover so many players and leagues across the footballing spectrum, Football Manager is being leaned on to fill in the gap.
So respected are the Football Manager scouts that several of them have since been employed by professional teams eager to unearth the next Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez or N'Golo Kante. In 2008, Everton reached a deal with the makers of Football Manager to purchase their database so they could spot up n' coming gems who were soon to breakthrough. The Toffees have yet to sign Carlos Fierro though, so we're not entirely sure how much they are paying attention to it.
Real time data is becoming a much bigger factor in how teams develop in the modern game. Services like Opta and Prozone can give you numbers on how teams play, how often they pass, which direction they tend to send their penalty kicks and it's these - coupled with the databases like that at Football Manager - which is pointing the sport in the direction of a 'Moneyball' style analytical approach the game.
This approach to player recruitment isn't a new thing, however. As legend has it former Rangers boss Alex McCleish had a son who was a big Football Manager fan and he recommended that his pop sign a player who was ruling the roost in his Barcelona B side. McCleish balked at the idea. He'd never heard of the player in question.
And that's why Rangers never made a loan approach for a teenage Lionel Messi.
[BBC]
