Football Manager 2005


Football Manager 2005 is a football management simulation video game developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega. It is the first game in the Football Manager series, and was succeeded by Football Manager 2006.
On 12 February 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos Interactive it was announced that Sports Interactive, producers of the Championship Manager game, had acquired the brand and would henceforth release their games under the "Football Manager" name, whilst the Championship Manager series will go on, but no longer be related to Sports Interactive.
Commonly known as "FM 2005", it competed directly with Championship Manager 5 the severely delayed, and widely slated effort from Eidos-funded Beautiful Game Studios.
Football Manager 2005 included an updated user interface, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, pre and post-match information, international player news, cup summary news, 2D clips from agents, coach reports on squads, job centre for non-playing positions, mutual contract termination, enhanced player loan options, manager "mind games" and various other features.

Chinese controversy

Football Manager 2005 was banned in China when it was found that places such as Tibet and Taiwan were included as separate countries in imported releases. China banned the game because it felt that it "threatened its content harmful to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity... seriously violates Chinese law and has been strongly protested by our nation's gamers".
Sports Interactive published a statement in reply, reporting that a Chinese version of the game would be released. They also stated that the offending version was not translated into Chinese as it was not supposed to be released in China. The offending games were believed to have been imported or downloaded, written to CD and boxed to be sold in illegal software shops in China.

Reception

Football Manager 2005 received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.