Saying goodbye to FM 2010

In which Dave says goodbye to FM 2010, and completely doesn’t cry  about losing his Ajax team. Also featuring an international futsal player.

Football Manager is an annual series, which although undeniably a great thing does lead to one incredibly gut wrenching moment: when last year’s iteration of the game has to be deleted to make space for the new version. You don’t tend to get this with a lot of other games. Some, like FIFA, are principally console games and so the old disc can just be stored on a shelf. Others, such as GTA or COD, release new versions every few years, by which time you have completely drained the previous game of any playability (aside from my copy of SimCity 3000, which has followed me from computer to computer for nearly 10 years now), so the uninstallation is a quick and painless process.

However, FM is nothing like these games, you don’t just play it, you experience it, growing attached and giving personality to your group of statistics. I’ve been going on an almost genocidal cleanse of my computer recently, and decided that with less than a week until the full release and the demo already installed I could no longer justify having FM 2010 lurking on my hard drive, with almost 5 Gb of assorted kitpacks, skins and saved games around it, so today it went.

Before I could select the dreaded “delete local content” button on Steam however, I had to do one last tour of my teams, looking at overall best XIs and re-experiencing one last time those great moments: Messi scoring five against Atletico Madrid, Danny Drinkwater scoring the winner against Manchester United in Kettering Town’s first ever Premier League game and a rejuvenated Johan Cruyff knocking in a hat trick to secure Ajax’s third consecutive Champions League title. The moments that made last year’s game probably my favourite of the series, and one that may well get another chance in the dog eat dog world of my hard drive at some point.

But it is to the future we must look, and for me at least, the future’s bright. I’ll leave you with a clip of Jean-Paul Marna showing the threat that a Flair stat of 18 poses to Blue Square Premier defenders:

Marvellous.

p.s. Have you got any great moments from FM2010? Share them below.

Category: FM2010, FM2011