The world of football or soccer for some is at the same time beautiful and in a quick change. This is why probably football is a very loved sport. The americans love american football, europeans love the football. And those who love football like to play football manager games. And here comes Sports Interactive with their latest installement Worldwide Soccer Manager 2007.

Worldwide Soccer Manager is starting, like the football itself, like a drug. At the beggining you can't realize but sooner or later you will play it like an addict. One match, one transfer, another match to test the acquisition and in the end the time has passed and you can't live without playing some football.

At the beggining of the game you will have to choose which club you will manage, from Chelsea, Milan or Barcelona to small clubs struggling to survive. After installing yourself in the position, you will have to inspect your squad to see its strong and weak points. You can't play if your team is a chaos on the field. You can ask the assistant to explain you this or you can do it yourself to get to know the team better.

As I first chose Arsenal, Pat Rice was my assistant so I asked him to explain this game to you. He was delighted so here we go.

Pat, as you start the game, what is the first thing to do?

Well, you should ask your assistant to explain you what the team has to offer, what are the strong and bad points of the team. You can watch the news who help you to keep up with the information from different categories: the championship, your team, the players you are looking for, and much more.

Next thing to do is to create your team. You have a bunch of players ready to play but they need you to tell everyone their place. You can filter your team to see how many defenders, midfielders and attackers you have and after that is time to choose a tactic. 4-4-2, 4-3-3, a more defensive tactic like 5-3-2 if you have many defenders and few players who can score a goal. To make a perfect team you must take into consideration a lot of things. The position the player plays best, his attributes, his relationship with his teammates which will make him give an extra if the people he likes are on the field. Let's say that you chose your tactics and the players you want in the first team. Those who are weak and aren't fit for the first team, you can move them to reserve team, allowing them to be prepared in case that you have players injured or not able to play in the next game.

{pagebreak}

You now have 11 players ready for combat. Is this enough?

Well no, is not enough. You told them where to stay on the field and that's about it. Now you must consider your team as a squad and tell them how to glue together because otherwise there will be only 11 players on the field and not a team as you would like.

To do this you must go to the squad tab and there you can set orders for each player individually or for the whole team. You can set the mentality, creative freedom, the passing style, the tempo that will be used by your squad and much more allowing your team to understand what do you want from them. You must issue this orders taking into account your players because if you have slow players, making them addopt a quick tempo will only exhaust them and this will mean that after 60 minutes your players will be finished. Also, you can issue orders for each player and here comes the beauty of the game. So many options are available that you can get lost and not know what to choose. After you looked at that player attributes you can say to him if you want him to be creative, run a lot, tackle hard or not, and so forth, allowing your team to give the best it can.

After the team has been formed and you gave them your orders is time for the tactics time. Each opponent has its own tactic and you need to bend your team to outcome your opponents. Let's say that the opponents have a quick attacker. You can't let him run wild in your defense. You must make sure that the defender is marking him well and he can intercept the balls as well as tackle when he has the ball. Each game has a unique tactics that you must find and only after this you will be able to win games easy.

To the game

When you are ready to start a game, you can talk to your team, let them know what do you want from them, even sympatize with them you think they need that. When you are playing home or when you are clear favorite, you must make sure that the team knows that you want them to win this game. Or if they are playing well, you can congratulate the team or the player who has a high rating meaning that he played well and is giving everything he has for the game. Each teamtalk can have positive or negative effect, depending on what you tell them. This way you can boost your team or make them angry which can decide the game. Several times after at the break your squad was playing well but the opponents were just a little better, an encouragement or a sympathize with the team allowed them to relax and win the game.

One problem for some, a good thing for others is that the matches are presented in a top-down perspective with players being just circles with numbers on them. If PES does a better job at displaying the game in a 3D version, here you will be able to see better the workflow of your team, where are problems, which tactics you should addapt and much more. More, you have the match commented, allowing you to see which player failes to do his task, which player is better, if the opposition is changing the tactics, things that are not easy to see in other games. If you need to make changes in your team, you can do it quick, just yelling at your squad what you want them to do or you can chose a more detailed version. A screen will pop up, alowing you to change the players, make substitutions, change the tactics and watch the opponents tactics.

You can create your own training schedule or let the coaches train them. It is better to create your own training schedule and force the players to train as much as you want. Want the defenders to train until they are exhausted? You can set the defending sliders to the max and they will rise in defending very much. But training only defende isn't the best choise. They won't be good at ball control, strength and the opposing attackers might rush through them and score. All this mean that you have to create a training that will allow them to train what is needed for each player. The attackers won't need to train in defense but a little training is necessary in case that your team is pounded and you need them in defense. Each player will act differently at training, some may get injured during training and keeping an eye on this injuries will allow you to change the training for that player so he will benefit from a lighter training. If you patch the game you will also see the benefit of the training. You will see which player grow his attributes, which are not, giving you an idea how they train and what to change in order to make your team better.{pagebreak}

There is a catch. The training is done by coaches. Each coach has it's own attributes so he can train your squad differently at the different section. He may train your attackers well at shooting but can't train goalies. Same for defending , set pieces and all the other categories. You may want to select which coaches should train your players at different categories. If a coach trains too much players he will not give 100% so it's best to leave him with only a couple of jobs.

Training, tactics, preparing the team to play. But what if your team has weak players, not a real challenge for the opposition? What if you need a strong attacker or a playmaker?

Well, this means scouting. Scouting for players, for staff. Means that you must put your scouts to work. If you know what you want, you can give them specific orders or you can tell them to scout different things like the next adversaries, the league, the championship you are part of, you can tell them to look for players from different countries or areas. Each scout has knowledge about different countries, allowiing him to give you more results if you assign him to that country to scout. In FM 2007, there are also feeder clubs, who represent clubs who are part of are colaborating with bigger clubs, clubs with expand your knowledge which is good. In addition, these clubs allow you to farm out promising youngsters for valuable first-team experience. In exchange, you can loan them players with they could never buy.

Once the scouts are done (and this takes some time, depending on their tasks), they will present you what they have found and several additional informations like the players current attributes, potential attributes, if the scout recommands that specific player or not and also an estimative value that will be asked for that player. There are ways to get that player with less money by unsettling him at his team, buying him when he is injured, etc.

If you decide to make an offer to a specific player, that player will be added to your shortlist. When a player is added, you will receive news about him, the press might enquire you about your future plans regarding that player.

{pagebreak}
Gameplay: 84

The game is pretty addictive and once you start your carrier, you will stay and play, one more game, one more transfer until you realize that is night, you haven't ate, and that in 3 hours you must go to work. Next day it's that same maybe even worse because now you are close to the Champions League Final and you must play until you win or lose the game.

Graphics: 85

Regarding the visual part, FM 2007 sacrificed the 3D environment for a 2D version, which offers you information in a clean and efficient manner, and it's clear that extensive work has gone into making sure that the most important screens are always easily accessible in a logical fashion. Sometimes their logic is questionable since I sometimes found myself wondering where that screen is located.

Sound: 75

The sound is pretty basic. You have the crowd loud or not, depending on the situation on the field, but you won't hear any commentary. Why? Because they tried it some time ago and it was a fiasco. The sound in the game is pretty minimal which is good ot not, you judge.

Multiplayer: N/A

Hardware: 90

The game is pretty stable and without bugs. The only patch available brings mostly more information for the player instead of fixing bugs.