I love football games.
Perhaps playing on the pitch is what you call “football”, but in a blog like this you are also looking for the sport’s depiction through other kinds of games.
I’m not the best FIFA or PES player in the house, and maybe because of that I’m eager to know football-themed board games and electronic management games. And it was great to be presented to Hattrick back in 2005.
The old trick, in its 2008 shape.
Hattrick is the most serious football manager I know: it is the Internet pioneer; it has a rich set of abilities to compose each player; it simulates matches and lets you manage a club; it has a community that cares about fun and fair play.
On-line games have the possibility to change themselves while working, and this may be a key to their success. Hattrick embraced it.
Not everyone has time to read the rules and try to understand such a game’s intricate engine. A lot of people wouldn’t want to go through it.
And, demanding as this is, I had to call it off after a while. After three years, the great São Paulo Black had earned some trophies in the lower divisions in the game and was struggling to win a fifth division league (after I abandoned the game, the team would win the league, how heartwarming).
The name São Paulo Black would still live as a “bot” (the computer-managed team would even keep my old players).
I like to present Hattrick as the borderline case in free games that sell advantages: on the one hand, they say all money can do is to enhance the experience by adding aesthetic features and more possibilities of social interaction; on the other hand, they sell statistics in the pack, and some find it a concession to plutocracy.
The microtransaction model, as seen on TV: “Golaço”.
As a game researcher, I took the burden to try Playfish’s rushed attempt at Facebook football by the 2010 World Cup; and also the better manager Golaço, much later. Both are typical microtransaction-oriented games, in the sense that disgusts older players, raised under different standards of fairness. In such games, buying stuff with real money may directly boost your performance.
Then, lit by a spark of memory, the much more powerful phoenix of Hattrick arises as Blackest MF.
Hattrick at present: much more detail in football simulation.
He Nan's blog 
Interesting post.
I probably border on obsession with online football manager games at times, but hattrick didn’t really grab me. I started managerzone at the same time in 2007, and still play that.
You might find footballidentity interesting. You can have manager and/or player characters, so the management side involves organising real people. That takes things to a whole new level, but you do need to have the time available at specific times for matches.
Thank you for the tip! I am browsing FootballIdentity right now. Maybe they need more journalists?
I think more journalists would be good, but as you need to use a slot for it (first is free), it’s not the most attractive part of the game for most people.
Even if management is your real aim though, I’d recommend starting with a player character just to get the feel of things first. Youth teams were added fairly recently, so maybe find one of them to join.
If you make a defender you should have no problem finding a team to play for.