In 1990, things started getting serious. The ZX Spectrum was no longer avaible in the stores, Amiga and Atari ST were now the dog's bollocks. This meant that the games were getting better, but even though the manager-games improved alot too (even visually), it still looked boring and shitty compared to the games in the other genres like Super Mario Bros 3 which later became the best-selling standalone video game of all time.

Until 1990, people were still playing FM2 like mad, but the rather unknown company named Anco Software was going to change that, and also split the footy management games into a new sub-genre: player-manager games. Player Manager was the game that changed it all; a game which founded the action-strategy hybrid genre of football management games.

Bigger, nicer, better. The innovative Player Manager quickly became one of the most popular football games ever. The game-magazines loved it and the sport-interested nerds were in ecstacy. But what was the fuzz about? Well, unlike FM and Football Director, you could not only manage the team and the normal stuff, but you could actually play the matches too, like in FIFA and PES nowadays. The game was based on the match engine from the Kick Off games, which at the time was the best around. So naturally this had to be awesome.

"But what about the management-part of the game?" you might wonder you cute little FM-player. Well, for starters, it was much more detailed than FM2 and the other games. The game offered a really advanced tactics-editor which actually can compete with games that are made today, you could practically make every tactic you wanted. Think about that for a while! Each player had advanced stats (8 parametres in total), therefore much more time was spent on finding the right players for your team. Player Manager had over 1000 players to choose from, which was an enourmous amount at that time.

Something that I found quite interesting was that you could also see the game from the coach's view if you wanted. You could actually watch the players train, thus making it easier to find out the potential and current ability of the players. Player Manager was also one of the first games to add "ability-fading" which basically mean that the players got worse as they got older, and after some seasons you had to retire them and find some new ones.
This game added so much new features to the genre, it's hard to not love this game. If you owned Kick Off 2 too, you could import your team from Player Manager on to that game. Even the sound in the game was a bit improved from earlier games. A real retro gem this surely is.

To quote MobyGames: "The game caused something of a surprise by topping the overall UK Amiga sales chart (which listed budget titles alongside full-price ones) in March 1992." Obviously the game had to be great, right? Well, it was actually not bad at all. In 1st Division Manager by Code Masters you controlled a team from one of the four top divisions in England, which wasn't particulary different from previous games. However, the original and goofy design made the game look like something complete different. Instead of just clicking on some buttons to get to the transfer market, you had to call it. That's right, you had a telephone in this game. You could call the director and tell him that you needed more money, or you could simply hang up as soon as he answered. Prank calls never get old.

Like in Player Manager you could watch the match from a top-down perspective, but you could'nt play the match like in Player Manager. However, you had a commentary who explained what was going on in the match, and he also gave a summary of the 90 minutes after the game. Neat. 1st Division Manager came in different versions for the different consoles, most of the versions only had different graphics though. The screens I'm using in this article is from the Amiga version, but the game was also made for ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and C64.   

Each year it came loads of titles that were either crap, purely "budget games" or game / game sequel that aren't really worth the time. 1990-91 was no exception.

Football Manager: World Cup Edition (1990) - 1990 was the year of the 14th FIFA World Cup in Italy, which West Germany won at the end. FM: WC Edt. was perhaps the third game in the FM-series, but it was basically just FM2 with World Cup mode, with some different graphics.

2 Player Soccer Squad (1991) - Play with your friend! 2 managers in 1 team! Endless possibilities! Well, not really. The game looked like something from the mid-80's and was only made for ZX Spectrum for a reason.

Striker Manager (1991) - Pretty fast, pretty easy. The game had both national teams and league teams. It also had a "3D match engine". Still, it could not compete with the other games released this year.