Idea: Adopt manager profile

One idea I've always liked, and would be an enjoyable feature nowadays as managers have detailed personal and coaching statistics: If I add the exact name, nationality and date of birth of a manager when I click on 'Add Manager' I should be able to adopt that manager's 'user profile.'

Thus, for example, if I inputted Jose Mourinho and I took over Liverpool at the start of the game, it would say something along the lines, Mourinho leaves Inter in a shock decision as he is determined to re-capture the Premier League title.

Or, at the start of the game, if I inputed Arsene Wenger's details and took over Arsenal, business would be as normal at Highbury.

This feature would go along nicely with the addition of a few more media news items that would make this manager speculation come alive and thus prevent games from getting 'tedious' and 'routine' after a few seasons in.

has been mentioned quite a few times lately, but its definitely not for me. the whole point of the game is to take over a club and make it yours. every fan sits at home, and at some point thinks "i could do better than this idiot thats managing us" and FM is their chance to do it....

Yeah, why is this one coming up so often at the moment?

I'm with rinso, it is all about me and not me as Morinho!

If you want to style yourself on someone, then that is all good but i see the challenge as trying to be better than the greats, not trying to be the greats.

If you chose Morinho, the stats would start to change as soon as you started managing in your own preferred way, so you wouldnt be Morinho for long anyway.

There was a game that did this, called FA Premier League Football Manager (I think it was an early incarnation of Total Club Manager). You took over as Wenger or whoever. And it felt hollow. The game had a myriad of problems, from disastrous bugs (players stopping training and never recovering fitness, Steven Gerrard would willingly go on loan to Forest Green where his wages would bankrupt them) to design (Get sacked and it was game over, you could afford a fifty thousand seater stadium but no players) and research (Players at the wrong clubs for the time, with the wrong positions, clubs with only 9 players in the squad and no grey player get around implemented). It was dire. And for all those problems, that you were not the manager was the biggest one. The successes and failures were not stamped with your identity. In a management game, the game play centres around what you do. Your decisions and your influence, and to see another name up there just felt so wrong.

I get the feeling that many of those who make this kind of suggestion want a short cut to success. To not build their own reputation, but borrow one. And that to me is counter to the basic premise of the game.

I've never really thought about this as a feature before, but it seems like a decent idea, it would add a kind of role playing as a real manager element to the game, with actual experience as opposed to just selecting an experience level at the start of the game.

However it might cause some kind of issues in terms of licensing, maybe real life managers wouldn't be so keen on being played in the game, without profit.

I don't think it deters from the spirit of the game. I know there are times I've thought it would be interesting to control a managers career much like you can control a players career when you are coaching them. Maybe its just a weird being john malkovich kind of thing.

Either way, I'm for it.

as much as i hate seeing rafa benitez takeover arsenal/chelsea/ac milan after being sacked for me and this idea would mean i could be rafa and keep him at liverpool, i do agree with all the negative aspects of the idea. but i suppose u could just choose to not utilise the feature if you dont want to.

has been mentioned quite a few times lately, but its definitely not for me. the whole point of the game is to take over a club and make it yours. every fan sits at home, and at some point thinks "i could do better than this idiot thats managing us" and FM is their chance to do it....

Original Post is not a bad idea, just maybe the IRL stats adopted could be a way of helping with the "levels of difficulty" idea that doesnt seem to really be workable (top flight managers would generally be in the high teens for most of these). ie a Manager with 20 Motivation would keep morale up & inspire a bit more that Joe Average, though I do like how new user manager stats start at 10 and change depending on play, after all (eg) Man Management is quantifiable from decisions made in game.

Rinso, the whole point of the game is to have FUN, and if that does not involve "making the game YOURS" then thats OK too! You are right about wanting to do better than a real manager. When Croatia knocked us out of Euro qualifiers I had set up FM as England to see what I could do before the ten o'clock news had finished!