Premier League clubs use Football Manager to buy players

Football Manager has, over the years, given aspiring gamers the chance to be the boss of a professional soccer team. In 2014, though, it is the actual football bosses who are turning to the game for advice on which players to buy.

Premier League clubs in England have begun using the game’s database to help identify and recruit new signings.

Sports Interactive, the game’s creators, will start providing information from its databases to Prozone Recruiter – an online analysis platform which many of the top clubs use to scout new talent.

Biographical, contractual, and positional information compiled by Sports Interactive over 20 years is the crux of the data being fed into the Prozone tool, along with video footage of thousands of players worldwide.

“Prozone Recruiter has been built to supplement the intuition of scouts and coaches by delivering detailed performance information on over 80,000 players worldwide,” says Prozone’s CEO Thomas Schmider.

“The Sports Interactive database is a highly accurate and valuable resource that will further enhance the recruitment services that we provide. The integration of Sports Interactive data further establishes Recruiter as the most comprehensive recruitment and asset management platform available.”

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 players, you might be closer to the position of Club Manager than you realised.