Championship Manager: Season 01/02 4.2.5

A classic and free football management sim game

Championship Manager: Season 01/02 is a free football management simulation video game that lets you play as a reliable team manager and coach. Developed by Sports Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive, this sports game is under the Championship Manager series released for PC and Xbox. Eventually, this game became a freeware title years later available for free at the publisher’s website. Championship Manager: Season 01/02 lets you take charge of any football club. It also allows you to participate in any of the 100 leagues taking place across 27 countries. There’s an active online community maintaining the game, which provides patches and data updates.

Still going strong

The Championship Manager is a series of football management simulation video games similar to Football Manager. Instead of directly controlling a football player during matches, you get to oversee the logistics concerning the football club. From training and handling finances to set up matches and fan signing events, managing a team, and helping them rise to fame is just as important and can be just as challenging. Championship Manager has spawned numerous titles, which includes Championship Manager: Season 01/02.

Unlike the other games, this one had no new playable leagues added—until a patch for South Korea's K-League was added—so the mechanics were polished more. New features have been added to this title, as well, such as the new EU regulated transfer system and a new attribute-masking mode—or a “fog of war”—that lets you only see information about football players you would know about in real life. The game also lets you send players away for surgery, make player notes and comparison—plus, there are fictional characters available.

Interaction with the media and board has been improved, as well. After the game became free to download, its online community endeavored to provide patches and data updates. They’ve added the abilities to change game values, commentary speed, colored attributes, the start year, and the like. Unfortunately, the graphics hadn’t been improved much—you’ll still be looking at a bunch of text—but the amount of support for this game more than makes up for it.