FIFA Manager (series)

FIFA Manager (short: FIFAM) is the English name for a football management series of video games from Bright Future (in older releases EA sports) and published by Electronic Arts. The game was called Total Club Manager (short: TCM) until the name changed to FIFA Manager with the FIFAM 06.

Before FIFAM and TCM, EA Sports released FIFA Soccer Manager (1997) and The FA Premier League Football Manager 99, 2000, 2001 and 2002, but while the first managed to attract a few attentions, the later were released when the managing games market for non-Championship Manager titles was close to non-existent, and after two unsuccessful titles, it was dropped.

However, by 2001, several workers of German software house Ascaron, who developed the highly popular Anstoss series in the past moved to EA, and the first game, Fussball Manager 2002, was released in Germany only, as a test for a potential series. Resembling Anstoss 3, although on a more serious note (In Anstoss players could be abducted by aliens, train in Area 51 or use performance enhancing drugs) and less financial options (managers developed by German teams often include deep financial options, such as stock and real estate markets), the game had positive feedback, and a year later Total Club Manager 2003 was released, with Bobby Robson on the cover (for the second time, after FIFA Soccer Manager).

One of the key features of Anstoss 3 was the ability to actually play the games after Anstoss Action was released. Although it could be played as a stand-alone game, it only reached the full potential when used with the manager. This feature, only present on other game with limited geographical distribution, the Spanish PC Fútbol, was included for buyers of both TCM 2004 and FIFA 2004, which could use the Football Fusion function. Some fans managed to control games in TCM 2003 by hacking the configuration files, but data loss and corruption was frequent. The cover of TCM 2004 was Celtic manager Martin O'Neill. Criticized by a confusing interface, EA reworked it for TCM 2005, with a more sleek design. European Champion with former FC Porto and Chelsea manager José Mourinho was selected for the main cover.

While the TCM has been released for both PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2, the FIFAM is only available for PC. The PS2 and Xbox versions of the game were developed for EA Canada by Budcat Creations.