Formerly Championship Manager, now Football Manager (or FM, for short), the FM revolution is an exquisite slice of heaven handed to us from the soccer gods. If you haven’t played it, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Over the 15 years that I’ve been playing the game, I have experienced several different types of games within the game itself. My favorite is starting unemployed with a Sunday League reputation. But I have fond memories too of FM08 with Alfreton Town, some Sheffield Wednesday games over the years, a journey with Woking and my Exeter days (or months, more like it) on FM13.

There are thousands of Football Manager addicts out there. Here’s my story.

At university, I built and opened a website called Footyman.com. It was a site opened for Football Manager talk, videos, stories, player reviews and info. I have completed all-nighters with a close friend more times than I care to remember — this confession coming from a man who is nearly 26. We’ve stared at the screen until our eyes were red.

At my old job, they blocked one website for an office of 60 people. It was a Football Manager site, and I’m positive that nobody else was using it. I even asked around. It must have shown up so often they felt it was affecting my work, when truth be told their tosh was effecting my important FM commitments.

I even own a Football Manager T-shirt. The missus hates it when the garment gets an outing. “Aren’t you embarrassed to wear that? Everyone will know what a geek you are.” She will never understand the error of her ways. In truth I love wearing it, people need to know who I am and what I stand for.

I’m a self-confessed FM addict and I’m not one bit ashamed. Potentially hard to understand from the outside looking in, but everything about Football Manager engages me. That split second the screen goes black when the game is about to come on. Hours spent scrolling stats, monitoring regens and building a formidable backroom staff — these small touches of brilliance enthrall millions daily. From England to the US and beyond, Football Manager has become the go-to game of our generation and it shows no signs of backing off.

‘Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it’

Salvador Dali

Stick to your doodling pal, Football Manager is here.

Unfortunately for Dali, he never got to experience FM, poor guy. Fortunately for us it’s better than ever. I’m currently playing a FM game with West Bromwich Albion, and here’s my trophy haul so far:

Pepe Mel, eat your heart out.

Football Manager 2014 is available from Amazon for download on the Mac and PC.