Football Manager A game of two halves

It's Football Manager versus Football Manager, new against old, as David Crookes explains

- David Crookes

As those who will have tried know, guiding a digital football team to glory is no mean feat. It takes tactical nous, smart planning and a solid understanding of the beautiful game to send a club up through the divisions. Winning a cup involves more than a bit of luck, too.

Playing football management sims also consumes a heap of time, which is one reason why Sports Interactive's Football Manager series has reportedly been cited in 35 divorce cases. But there is a way to get a football management fix without having to dedicate so much effort. It's called Kevin Toms Football Star* Manager and it has a very different football manager game at its core.

To explain, we have to go back to 1982 when Kevin Toms released the first ever football management sim. Called Football Manager, it was immensely successful, appearing on a host of computer platforms and spawning three sequels, the last of which was released in 1992.

The series Toms began fizzled out after that, which is why Sports Interactive was able to pick up the Football Manager name for its own series in 2004, having lost the naming rights to Championship Manager. But it didn't quite mark the end of Toms' involvement in soccer sims – some 12 years later, he was back, ready to evoke memories of a bygone pre-Premier League era when three points for a win had just been introduced and Aston Villa were the European Cup holders.

Rather than write a game from scratch, in 2016 Toms decided to rewrite his original Football Manager for mobile devices. Given the unavailability of the name, he called it Kevin Toms Football Star* Manager and, after appearing on iOS and Android, it was released on macOS, Windows, Amazon Fire and, more recently, Steam.