Through Football Manager, a fan helped his team find a player who would become his team’s top scorer.
For many years now, FIFA and PES (now eFootball) have competed at the top of soccer video games, trying to stand out from each other with better gameplay, increasingly real-life graphics, and exclusive licenses.
But while those two franchises are scrambling to gain more popularity among players, Football Manager (FM), a simulation video game where you can be the coach of a soccer team, has quietly stayed on track and continues to be appreciated by fans. that they are interested in the technical aspect of football.
The game offers a complete experience of the world of soccer, each installment having updated templates, among the first team, reserves and youth of hundreds of clubs, in which the players are described almost perfectly, specifying how good they are in the roles of each position and if they have second nationalities.
In fact, handling these kinds of details has made Scouts and club employees use the tools in this video game to search for players they might not otherwise see. Even, Football Manager fans have helped soccer teams to discover players who can be called up.
In the early 2000s, James and Phil Younghusband were a pair of brothers who played together for the Chelsea Youth Academy. However, in 2005, it was clear that neither of them was going to make the first team of the Blues. James, 19 at the time, was on Chelsea’s reserve records, as was Phil, a year his junior.
It seemed that their careers had already reached their peak, until they received a call from the Philippine Football Federation (PFF), which issued an international call.
This happened thanks to an anonymous Football Manager player who discovered that the siblings could be chosen by the Philippines because in the information of the game it appeared that they had this second nationality, a question that was real, because the mother of the Younghusband was born in Manila, the capital of this country.
The fan contacted the Federation to report the situation and then they contacted the English team, and Neil Bath, Chelsea’s head of youth development, who informed the brothers of this opportunity.
“When we qualified for the Southeast Asian Championship we went to a bar to celebrate And there was this 15 or 16-year-old boy, he was very shy, but he told us that he was the one who found us in the game. I was very grateful to him “said Phil Younghusband in an interview with The Athletic.
Enthusiastic about the prospect of representing their mother’s home nation on the big stage, the duo, who are native English through their father, accepted the invitation to play for the Philippines. After some tryouts in the under-23 national team, they both celebrated their senior team debut in 2006.
This decision led them to become legends of the Philippines. Phil Younghusband, who played primarily as a forward, He became the most summoned player and the historical scorer of the Southeast Asian country’s national team, with 52 goals in 108 games. James, who served as a midfielder, also had a fruitful career, with 98 games and 12 goals.
In an interview with Sportskeeda, James Younghusband said he was “very grateful to the Football Manager game and to that guy who informed the federation about us.”
Phil retired from soccer in November 2019, while James did so in June 2020. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
