Games
We find out what it takes to make it as one of the game’s top talent spotters.
Being a football fan is tough. You’ve got to endure so much ridicule from other fans, especially if you made a prediction that turned out to be wrong; for every Gareth Bale out there, you’ve got thousands who never graduate from the academy.
Football Manager players know all about the ups and downs of football, however, and will swear blind that things are going against them. Turns out they’re wrong though, because the game is researched to an incredible degree, ensuring mistakes don’t happen. And nowadays, it’s used in some very important ways away from your computer screen.
You’ve probably heard the joke about how your team’s manager signed his player based on Football Manager, but that’s not far from the truth according to Tom Markham, head of strategic business development at Sports Interactive, the London studio behind the game. The biggest name in sports stats, Prozone actually uses stats fed into its system from Sports Interactive’s game. “They were actually looking to develop a recruiting system using our database. This is for optimisation of scouts, really. The big clubs have the resources to look at anyone they want, but a smaller club’s scouts might be part-time workers.”
With this system, they can break it down into minute details, even down to the colour of a player’s eyes. “It’s a very useful tool for clubs without a huge amount of resources”, Markham says, like the MLS in the USA. “They get sent a DVD from an agent, but they’re always showreels, which only show the best stuff. We’ve got information on all these players, and they want it, so we’ve had MLS clubs coming to us looking for scouting reports.”
It goes even further, as managers are using a version of Football Manager to help them develop. “The top 20 people that finish their pro licence every year get to go on a fast track that’s run by the University of Liverpool. We build a mini version of the game or a scenario, and the managers are actually using this. [Former Manchester United striker] Ole Gunnar Solskjær is on the course; these guys are actually using this.”
“The two things we really have are the database and the match engine. We’ve got just over 1,300 scouts worldwide. Smaller clubs have one person, but the definition of the scouts can be very different. Some of the people we have are massive fans of the game, they like stats and the access they get. But some are professional scouts from the professional game. To give you an example: we have a guy in Scandinavia who is a professional lawyer, but he loves the game. He’s going to all the youth games, even training in some instances, but to put it into perspective, Manchester City had 30 scouts. The reach is ridiculous, so the bigger clubs will have at least two of our scouts on them.”
One of the smaller clubs is Bolton Wanderers, researched by Chris Manning, who runs a BWFC site called Lion of Vienna Suite. Just how did he get invoved in such a heavy-duty task? “I started around 2010, having spotted a thread on the SI Forums asking for a Bolton fan to get in touch as the previous researcher had left,” he tells Red Bull. “I applied and sent an email to the Premier League head researcher at SI Games. As a very keen and diligent editor of my own personal database I was keen to crack on. A few days later I was in charge of the files and learning how to edit Football Manager for real.”
A fan for many years, Manning has to adhere to certain rules in his role. “You have set limits for clubs depending on their reputation and league positioning. By this I mean that you couldn’t have a Bolton player be at the same level as someone like Chelsea. You’ll always have an upper limit for a Bolton player which equals how good they are, or will be in the final product and you have to use your own judgement within these limits to give the most accurate and honest representation of a player and his abilities.”
“The average person is playing the game for 400 hours”, Markham explains. “We have access to all that data and can literally see what view people are playing in; who they select, and how long each session is.” Ensuring they get the stats right is, of course, paramount: “We have an algorithm. All the data is fed into a massive database and our head researchers in the office are collating that data. For example, our head researcher in Norway will have been passed all the information from the Strømsgodset scout but the algorithm and amount of experience we have can actually compare players in other leagues, and ultimately say whether a player is good enough to go and play for Real Madrid.”
One thing that must be a constant worry for SI is the danger of using fans of a team to research their beloved squad. How on earth can you ensure no bias slips into the stats, ruining the game? “The head researcher is the first port of call. They’ll look at it and say if the stats are off. Secondly, the algorithm sorts it out,” Markham continues. “It regulates everything”. So if a researcher comes back and suddenly someone has doubled their pace stat, the algorithm will flag that. “It works really well. It can be difficult at the start when you recruit someone new, but the head researchers are so used to it, they have it down to a fine art.”
Manning reiterates that it’s an important job. “There are checks and double checks which mean that you always have to justify your edits. In the newest editing phase I upgraded Bolton’s Zach Clough from a decent prospect to someone who could potentially be one of the better players in the game as time goes by. I had to explain this to the head researcher (to whom I report) and give my reasoning. I’ll wait for people to play the game before deciding whether that permission was granted.”
Proving further that there are failsafes to ensure the stats are right, Manning continues, “Obviously the head researcher doesn’t have that sort of hands-on knowledge of every player and so he will question why I am giving a player a boost. With my club, it can be a delicate balance between giving someone a decent upgrade and keeping on the right side of realism. I could very easily give a massive increase in stats but that wouldn’t be accepted by the checks that are made, nor by my own desire to keep things real.”
So has Manning now become a stat fan himself, keeping stacks of information on his club? “I don’t keep records as such. These days websites like whoscored.com keep a lot of records themselves and are fairly accurate. At the end of the season I have to input the seasonal records of each player in terms of games played and goals scored, where relevant, and resources like that are excellent for this sort of information. It can be difficult at the start of a season when trying to get information on the new intake of players, or on whether there have been any changes in the non-playing staff. Some clubs release this information freely, but Bolton tend to keep their cards close to their chest and reveal the information quite late on, which is never good when I have an upcoming submission deadline.”
But it just has to be correct, as even British broadcaster Sky Sports, which has aired Premiership games since the league’s inception 20 years ago, is using the database now. “There was a really mixed reaction when that started”, says Markham, “a lot of people were asking why a game was being used, but others were coming back and saying that if football clubs are using it, it must be good enough.”
The Football Manager team isn’t messing about either, as Markham informs us. “We actually have a football analyst that runs different simulations and we did one a few years on the MLS. The simulation got all the playoff clubs correct, the two finalists, and the scores correct.” On top of that British newspaper The Daily Mirror came to SI Games asking about a potential transfer of Raheem Sterling to Manchester City (from Liverpool). “They wanted to know how we thought Man City would perform with him, and how Liverpool would be without him, and that’s something we can provide.”
When all's said and done, Manning is a fan and the situation works for him. Reminiscent of Pro Evo’s option file modders, this is a labour of love. “It’s volunteer work with, from my perspective, an accurate Bolton Wanderers team being all the reward that I'm after. Financial recompense would be great, but I love the game and so that's enough for me. I've never asked for more than they offer, because for one thing I'm not greedy and for another I really do consider it my duty to give something back to the developers for the countless thousands of hours of gaming that they've given me ever since the days of Championship Manager 2. I've always found the editing process extremely relaxing – after a long day at work it's a peaceful way to spend a couple of hours in an evening and the whole process isn't too taxing, both in terms of time and in terms of the amount of brainpower that it uses.”
Football Manager continues to be a series that has a terrific fanbase, and is becoming more and more important the real world sport. The lines between videogames and sport are blurring these days, but with lovers of both the game and the sport like Manning and his fellow scouts, Sports Interactive continue to be on top of their game.
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