Long heralded as the ultimate football manager game on the market, Football Manager’s database will soon be used by Premier League managers to source the world’s best talent as part of a new deal.
The company behind the game, Sports Interactive, has been known to put significant research into its games with arguably one of the world’s largest scouting systems with personnel watching games at all levels in different continents.
Players of the game have often seen superstars develop before their eyes, far before they reach the world stage. Colombia’s James Rodriguez is one of the most recent examples, having just completed a €80m move to Real Madrid.
Now, according to The Guardian, Sports Interactive’s contractual, biographical and positional information will be passed on to the Premier League’s largest archive of football media content, Prozone.
This won’t be the first instance of the game being adapted for real-world use. Everton in the Premier League raised eyebrows in 2008 after it agreed to a deal to gain access to the game’s scouting database in the hope of finding hidden gems from around the world.
Speaking of the recent deal, Sports Interactive’s studio director Miles Jacobson said, “For years, we’ve heard stories of real-life managers and scouts using our data to help with the recruitment process. From now on, it’s official … real managers around the world will be finding and comparing players using data and a search system that will be very familiar to players of Football Manager.”
Football manager image via Shutterstock
