Another year around the sun then and here we are, about to celebrate another birthday of CM9798. Every year I try to mark the release date, October 31st, and the surrounding days with content paying tribute to a game that has played a bigger part in my life than I could ever have imagined.

This year, I asked the Blog Squad if anybody fancied trying to put into words what the game has meant to them over the years. Honestly, the very fact we have a Whatsapp with 10 nerds who came together over this game a couple of decades after its release is probably enough to justify why we love this game so. As you’ll have read this week, a number of the group jumped at the opportunity, including Andrew who found time to write a poem despite being blind drunk somewhere for half term. He does have a new blog save starting next week, so we’ll let him off. Thank you to the Squad for sharing their stories.

I also wanted to try and put into words what this game has given me. It is hard to write down all that has happened to me because of this game as like most people who spend their lives behind a computer screen, I hate talking about my own achievements. Unless it’s in Champ Man of course, in which case we’ll talk about that all day and all night and I remain available for yours or any other podcast. Plus, there’s a quiz at the end, so keep reading!

I suppose to give you the full story, my Championship Manager (Champ Man, going forwards) journey started at Christmas 1996. I unwrapped CM2 and installed it later that morning in the downtime between present opening and the relatives arriving pre-lunch. It was an immediate plus that it installed and worked without issue, which was something we had plenty of trouble with over the early years of owning a PC in the mid 90s. I was 8, so fair to say I had a lot still to learn.

I’d been playing a bunch of manager games on an old Amstrad I inherited that resided exclusively in my bedroom. My gran’s neighbours son had gone off to University somewhere and no longer wanted it, and I was offered it. I had a Commodore 64, where I played a lot of Dizzy but never any football, but this neighbour of Gran’s gifted not only the Amstrad but a big box of games. About a dozen of them were football games and most of them management based. I don’t know any of the titles but I think there was one that was a European Cup type game, which hooked me as you could name your own players and it went mental when you got a penalty and had to press space to take it…for no reason, really. I don’t think the timing effected the outcome. Anyway, looking back the fact I was playing an Amstrad and a Commodore in the mid 90s was a bit extreme, I did get a SNES for Christmas in 1995 which went some way to modernising my gaming experience, followed by our first PC in 1996.

I loved CM2 but I wanted more. Managing Newcastle was tough, because I was inept, and expectations were high. I wanted to manage Ronaldo but couldn’t prise him away from Barcelona, even playing as Man Utd in an act of desperation. Football Italia on a Saturday morning was a staple, so the urge to manage some of these superstars was overwhelming, heightened by Ronaldo moving to Inter Milan in 1997. I’d play Kick Off 2 on the SNES, a game I thought was the bees knees but later-read reviews would reveal it was quite average in the eyes of the critics. I only became aware of the “European Leagues” editions a few years later, so CM9798 and it’s promise of foreign leagues that could be ran in conjunction with one another was a dream come true.

Satisfied by now being able to manage Newcastle and Inter Milan, concurrently if I wanted to, a lifelong obsession began. I remember having to convince my Dad it was a good use of my pocket money despite “basically being the same game I already have, but Paul Merson is at Middlesbrough” but he agreed to take me to probably PC World or Currys (before the merger, stats fans). A three country save took forever to create but it was worth the wait. Managing Newcastle was difficult now for different reasons. Expectations were still sky high, but Dalglish had ruined the squad and Shearer was out injured for most of the first season. That did lead to me finding Bakayoko of my own accord, who was a mighty upgrade on Ian Rush. The fact Newcastle started in the Champions League was also a rare novelty for me, having very rarely scaled those heights in CM2. What a game man.

That same slow PC meant graduating to CM3 (which looked incredible in my 9 year old eyes: squad numbers, real tactics screens and instructions, good lord) was not going to happen. I doubled down on CM9798. The editor was put to good use to revolutionise my gaming, creating my school class, my Sunday League team and various other attempts at updating the database myself over the years and ensuring the longevity. It also helped that the lads we hung around with started to go to our friend Ross’ house after we had played football, and with CM9798 not requiring the disc, I was more than happy to lend him my copy to ensure the game was on his machine forever more. We’d pile into that house as a 4 or 5, a couple of us would be on the PC, the others on the PlayStation playing ISS/Pro Evo. Halcyon days, but it meant my CM9798 knowledge was forever growing. God forbid if you missed a night, you’d come back to find half your squad released or the dreaded manager holiday would have destroyed three months of your season.

Fast forward through sixth form and University, where I would still play the newer Football Managers but always end up installing CM9798 just for ease, and we were a decade into playing. I used to come home from my student house for driving lessons, and I’d always sneak in a few hours of 9798 on the desktop PC that remained at my parents house. I got about 25 seasons into that game, which I think started as a Bareclona save but ended up being a bit of journeyman fun and I either won the World Cup with Eire or lost in the final.

I then started cm9798.co.uk in January 2015. I’d had an itch to write about football for a couple of years and it was going absolutely nowhere. Saturated market or lack of talent – you decide. My laptop at the time was struggling to play the latest FMs, my wife would complain of the processor whirring away whilst she was trying to sleep. I reverted to type and played a lot of 9798 but also 01/02, which I haven’t mentioned thus far but stole a lot of my teenage years and was another comfort blanket throughout life. More on that another time.

I had a 97/98 game going that was insane, I’d taken newly promoted Altrincham to the very top and won everything. The best bit though was what was going on around that, with Joe Kinnear flying high at Inter Milan amongst other madness. It’s a well told story but I regaled some of these tales to a group of friends I’d grown up with over some Christmas pints and the idea was born to make a blog and write about CM9798. With all itches scratched, the calendar turned to 2015 and the next chapter of my life was about to begin.

The aim was just to play through the whole game and document it. The first save started at Wimbledon and meandered through 12 seasons at various clubs before I got distracted watching Men Behaving Badly and tried to save the game before my laptop battery ran out…you know the rest. The wonderful Paddy from 90sFootball had given me some retweets to his thousands of followers and meant we had a solid readership building, so I dusted myself down and went again with a new save that gladly reached a 29th season conclusion with the infamous Beardsley moment. It was absolutely surreal to see some of the comments on Last Match Then Bed on Instagram when the story was read out.

After the conclusion of that save I could have walked away but people were enjoying the content and I set about fleshing out the site and making it a resource site for all things CM9798. We ran polls for best teams, trialled tactics (and found the 2-3-1-2-2 from Antonio) welcomed new writers and at some points had a new blog post every day. I was approached to write a book, which I did for 9798 and then again for 0102, and was welcomed into the world of the independent football podcast, guesting all over the place but also being offered a regular spot on Man On the Post by Ross, who I can’t thank enough for his influence on my life.

My son was born in 2019 and I planned to take a break from writing to focus on expanding into the Podcast world by creating Champ Man on the Post, again with the big Rossman and setting about speaking to as many influential people in the Championship Manager World.

You can still hear all the podcasts on this page but here’s some names we spoke to (alongside the Blog Squad and the wider CM Community):

• Paul & Oliver Collyer
• Bjorn Heidenstrom
• Niclas Alexandersson
• Marc Duffy (Sports Interactive)
• Lionel Morgan
• Adam Hurrey
• Cherno Samba
• Jonny Sharples
• Daniel Garb
• Michael Marden (Quickly Kevin)

And that’s without mentioning the many wonderful people in the CM Community who gave up their time to come and chat about these wonderful games. I had discussions with Tommy Svindal Larsen, John Curtis and Alex Brooker but for various reasons, they didn’t happen. I can’t speak highly enough of these guys coming on the podcast. Bjorn absolutely loves it and embraces the CM Community, Cherno Samba the same. I met Mark Kerr at an FM event and he was more interested in talking to me about Newcastle’s Scottish contingent at the time which I appreciated. Daniel Garb, bless him, my laptop crashed before the end of the podcast and he agreed to do it all again. It was a crash course in the pitfalls of making your own media but I loved the experience and would gladly do it again. Niclas Alexandersson has scored a goal in a World Cup and spent 40 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon speaking to me on Skype, before unfollowing me on Twitter and drawing a line under the whole experience. I can’t blame him.

Along the way I introduced the CM Cup, where every year fans of the game would compete for the coveted trophy in various themed competitions – all in good fun and played out over Zoom. These things are only ever as good as those involved and I’m thankful to everyone who got bang into it.

There was also the Covid era, which was obviously a wild time for everybody filled with a bizarre mix of tragedy and human spirit making the best out of an abhorrent situation. In the isolation of CM9798, people had time on their hands for the first time in 20 years and hundreds of people landed on our little webpage trying to download the game and make up for lost (or simply fill their current) time. We started running Challenges, Nick would rustle up some graphics and Zak would keep the league table. It makes me proud how many people took part in those challenges, and I’m not exaggerating to say we received messages from people thanking us for keeping them sane, so it’s nice to think we made a positive difference to people in a difficult time.

If I had to pick a “peak” time of doing all of this, it would have to be the Retirement Home series. For whatever reason this save captured the imagination of the CM public and the save had it all. The ageing legs experienced promotions, relegations, cup wins and more and there was a genuine sadness when it came to an end after winning the Champions League – with Ronaldo up front. A full circle moment, I’m sure you can appreciate.

So here we are, almost 30 years on from that 8 year old boy about to open CM2 on Christmas Day. In running this site there’s been peaks and troughs of popularity. We’re very much in a peak at the moment, the launch of Tom Craine’s Last Match Then Bed podcast has awoken the beast within a couple of thousand people and traffic to the site is approaching those lofty Covid days. Welcome, if you’re new around here.

For so long, CM9798 game me an escape from real life but now it is very much part of my every day life. All I can do is thank you all for reading/following/listening and generally putting up with it all over the years. I hope there’s more to come but I’m older, greyer and have less time than ever. I’ll keep pressing Done.

Your reward for reaching the end of my ramblings? It’s quiz time!