Football Manager, previously known as Championship Manager, or just Champo, is a computer game in which you manage a football club.
It is basically a big spreadsheet with a bit of animation when there's a match.
1. This is your reaction when someone says "it's just a game".
2. You consider your 18 league titles a HUGE personal achievement.
3. You cheered this bit in The Inbetweeners.
5. You have seen a new day dawn while still trying to get Wolves promoted far too many times.
6. You know you have a problem when the in-game calendar says the year is 2032, as one writer confessed in The Guardian:
But my playing got progressively more regular. I was going out less and less. I started putting on my pyjamas as soon as I got home from work. I dreamt about it. My flatmate told me that I had to sort it out. I knew what I had to sort out, I had a very tricky League Cup tie against Ipswich coming up and didn't have time to chat.
It dawned on me that I had been playing too long when I found myself in the first game of the 2032 season facing up to a team containing Michael Owen's son. There is an in-game function that cruelly tells you how long you have been playing. I tentatively opened it up: 127 hours. I knew I had to stop.
7. Like Robbie Williams, you have considered snapping your Football Manager CD in half so you can't play it any more.
8. You've even played FM during traffic jams.
9. You have no problem remembering the most obscure players' names.
10. You remember when the game was called Championship Manager and it looked like this.
View this video on YouTube
11. You consider this to be a perfectly acceptable choice of clothing.
12. You take it VERY PERSONALLY when an imaginary player, who is not real, wants to leave your club and play somewhere else for more money.
13. Your grasp of reality when it comes to football news is fading.
14. You don't mock people who want to make Aberystwyth from the Welsh Premier League the biggest team in the world. You salute them.
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15. This may look like nonsense to the average person, but you think: "Great if you have a couple of pacey wingers, a big target man and a good BWM".
16. But even your best-laid plans don't always work out.
17. You SAY you're not going to revert to an older saved game when you lose a big game... but you always do.
RT this if you've ever saved your session before an important game on Football Manager & replayed it till you win.
Moyes turns off Football Manager. Reloads saved game. Starts match again. Realises it's not real. Concedes early again. Cries.
18. Like Plan B, you fake illnesses in order to keep on playing.
19. You shout at the screen when your players are embarrassing you and the club.
Even though there is now an in-game feature to shout at the players from your imaginary touchline, you know it's not the same.
20. You know all about Cherno Samba, Tonton Zola Moukoko and Tó Madeira, superstars of past FM instalments who didn't achieve much in real life (in Tó Madeira's case because he's not a real player).
Yes, that is Tonton Zola Moukoko, the best player in the world... http://t.co/dNwjcE3H6g
21. You begin to think of regens – the weird computer-generated youngsters the game creates over time– as your own children.
this guy 😂 love a football manager regen!
22. You spend more time thinking about imaginary job interviews on FM than ones in real life.
Newcastle job interview on #FM15 after Pardew sacking - couldn't be more accurate...
23. When you see a manager (in real life) complimenting or slating a forthcoming team you think "ah, great mind games there".
24. When Manchester United signed Robin van Persie, you said: "I had him at Stoke. Great professional. Excellent finisher but struggles with natural fitness."
Which is met with blank stares.
25. As Jason Manford points out, it is entirely normal to hold grudges against players in real life for in-game misdemeanors.
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26. You have learned to internalise screaming or cursing when playing in a room with other people present.
27. You physically cannot – can not – end a game session after a defeat. But you can't end while you're on a winning streak either. So the cycle continues on and on, forever.
