If you havent played this, then your not a real Football Manager.
This has got to be the best football management game I have every played. I have been playin managerment sims since i first got a PC in 1997, started with USM'08 then moved onto the more complex cm00'01 and even dabled with some LMA 2002. Been playing Si's incarnations since ther last CM and have had every version on Football Manager so far.
This though is the creme de la creme, the thing everyone has wanted since first booting up the very first version, full mutliplayer experience.
Playing against other "managers" from around the world is very satisifying, you get extreamly into it and find your self automatically loading it up whenever you have a spare minute, just to check.
For those who may worry about the big teams being unstopable (like the man utd and barca) the game does take this into account with a few clever ideas, which at first may seem strange, but when you realize what the actual do becomes very clever. Player contracts are quite different in FML, you can offer players 1 or 2 year deals only, and dont worry about player goin to other clubs because they are the current champions or anything, the players have no bias's for anyone other than money, and thus, whoever offers em the most wins. Simples. Its the contract renewal sysyem that makes it different though, as you cant just renew a player deal half way through, it must run to the final day without being renewed, this mean any other club can make them an offer, and like I said before, if they offer more than you, youre star player will easily walk away from you, with a little compensation though, but nowhere near their market value.
There is a way to stop this though, as each team has 5 'locks', you can secure 5 players with an auto extend feature in the contract, this mean there deal will, well auto extend without anyone getting their grubby hand on em, but of course you only have 5 of these, and you cant re use a lock until said players new extened contract has expired, so no hot swapping.
This means even the big teams will loose a few of the 1st teamer each season and encourages movement of players, stopping people from just hoarding the best players. So essentially, if your smart, have a good eye, and save your pennies proporly, you can easily get your hands on C.Ronaldo and Messi.
5 Stars from me, there is alot different here from the normal game, but if your a big FM fan you should definatley give it ago, just be warned, succes doesnt come easy and each league can only have 1 winner, leaving 19 loosers, so glory hunters should stick to the single player version, unless of course you are a football manager expert.
See you in the game soon ;-)