This game is one of a kind, I think. Well, probably there are more like it nowadays but there weren't that many when I started to play circa 2005. I'm still playing but not with the same team I started with, which was lost probably around 2007.
It's an odd game. A football (real football) browser game where you don't play at all, not even see a ball moving. Ever. Here, you take the place of everyone who is not a sportsman (no women's football yet). Coach? You get it. Finance guy? The other one who decides who to sell? The one who plans a stadium remodelling? Youth's coach? you take the role of all of those people. But the catch is that you have no control on the match real time besides choosing your starter players and set some conditions for when to change tactics or make substitutions. You can say, and it would be pretty correct, that this is a financial game disguised as a football team manager.
And something else that makes it unique is that everything happens in real time. Often, teams play two times per week (regular season and league cup). Here's the same, so you have two matches per week. Real weeks. So most of the week, you have nothing to do. There are certain daily updates but nothing crucial to force you check every day. In fact, you could pretty well log in once or twice per week, say, 45 minutes total, and do pretty well. And your game results are often a consequence of your long term plan - or lack thereof. It can take real years to see slight improvements, which can definitely be matched with how your rivals grow as well - everyone (or most of the players) are other persons like you doing the best they can.
I guess that lack of immediate rewards is what makes the game so different. It's hard to imagine it both being a project to become a multimillionare nor a game that gathers crowds. But here it is, 20 years after, still going as strong as this thing can go.
