Trophy Manager is a free online online football management game where you take charge of your own soccer club.  The game is now in it’s 12th season and as of August 2008 has over 100,000 teams playing the game from 125 countries alone.

In Trophy Manager you take total control of your own soccer club. An ever-confident and enthusiastic board has selected you as the manager who’s going to make the most of their club’s potential. When you start out you have got a squad of 25 eager players, as well as a heap of cash to spend on players and stadium upgrades. You must decide the tactics, find and hire the perfect coaching staff, train your players best as you can and expand the club’s infrastructure – All to get as close as you can to promotion, championships and, possibly, the Champions Cup of your region.

When you join Trophy Manager your club is automatically entered into two competitions- The league and the national cup. In your league you compete against seventeen other clubs for a trophy and promotion to the next league. In the national cup your team plays in a massive knock out competition against every other club in your nation. Once you reach the top division in your country you have the opportunity to qualify for one of the International club competitions. In these competitions your team plays against the best teams from other countries. In addition to all this, you can also play friendlies against other teams, which are usually non-competitive, but fun non the less.

The first thing a user does is start the team creation process, this is done by entering the desired clubname and a valid email address. This process can be more or less rapid according to the number of users who are on the waiting list. After the registration process, the new user gets a team (which they name). The beginner becomes the manager of whole new team of 25 players. Moreover, the team has at its disposal a small stadium and a small amount of money. The name of the stadium and of the coach can be changed in the settings. The manager has to decide which tactics to use, to find and hire the perfect coach, and to train the players and expand the infrastructure.

Teams now can invest in the stadium and in improving the youth players and the centers of training. Teams are also able to improve the capacity of the stadium, improve the food and merchandise, services and infrastructure.  There are many customizations that a user can do on his own team, as rename its stadium or change the type of training. But, like in any game management, the user must place his players in the position that they want to play.

There is some third-party software available to help the player in his experience with the game – though many users discuss whether or not they diminish the talent of the game – such as administrators of teams to indicate which is the best team and the best training for each player.

Each season lasts roughly 3 months. If the team is successful, it can be promoted to a higher division through direct qualification or by disputing a play-off (if a team of the 2nd division rises to the 1st by play-off) with a team of the division above. This division scheme varies from one country to another, and some countries have more divisions than others.

There is the option for teams in the game to go pro. This is the paying option of this game. This gives advantages but none that give any sort of competitive edge. “A TM Pro membership grants you access to a host of extra features for your Trophy Manager team. You do not get any performance enhancing advantages, but instead a lot of great-looking add-ons, insightful extra data and smart functions. The TM Pro package is under constant development and improvement.”  Advantages of Trophy Manager Pro include; a buddy list for quick links to other clubhouses, a notepad so user’s can make notes on players, a 3D trophy cabinet so users can show off trophies, a club crest to the clubhouse and a host of more features.

Overall i had alot of fun with this game. I’m a big soccer fan, so to come across a game as fun and exciting as this was pretty awesome to say the least. The only downside that i found was just like all BBG’s, you start to lose interest after a while. Regardless of that, if your a soccer fan your going to definitely want to try this game.

Second Opinion – By Codanon

The first thing that surprised me about this game was the interface.  It is a lot more attractive that other games like it, namely Hattrick.  It succeeds where Hattrick fails.  It is a true team management game.  The only complain I have about it is that game outages occur a bit more often than usual.  I actually got hooked into this game after playing for a few weeks.  This is a definite try.