Championship Manager ’70s Legends Review (IOS)

Back of the net, with a curly perm & a tash!

Welcome to the world of football management. When you mention Soccer to games, they usually think of two types of games. The first being you arcade classics such as FIFA and PES, with their flashy graphics, gameplay and licensed commentators.
Secondly you think of the pc, stat heavy football management sims. You know the kind of thing. They let you don the sheapskin coat (or more recently puffa jacket), of a manager for your chosen team. Weather it be a premiership giant such as Liverpool, Man u or Chelsea. Or a local team from one of the lower divisions such as Wrexham Town. The idea is that you pick your chosen side, and start off at the lowest league and by buying and selling players well, training your team well, as well as all the other micro management that goes on in the day to day running of a football club.

Championship Manager 70’s Legends is an excellent hand held time waster for the discerning football fan

Like their arcade rivals, the football management sims ` fans have had two main contenders to choose from. Football Manager, and Championship Manager. Both have their fans, and both have fared very well on the pc. They are well known for eating away large chunks of peoples lives, whilst striving to get your chosen team to national and international glory With the emergence of portable gaming, it seemed a shoe in that the football manager sim would be perfect for some hand held gaming. Until I had played this title, my soccer management sim of choice had been Championship manager 2011. But the cool people at square enix have published a curveball that makes the more mature gamer & football fan like myself smile like a bloomin Cheshire cat!

Championship Manager Legends 1970`s does exactly what it says on the tin. Basically this game is based in the 1970’s. with all the legends that we know today. No Rooney, Torres Carroll, of Kaka here. Names such as Johan Cruyff, George Best, Pele, Kevin Keegan, Trevor Brooking, Kenny Dalglish …need I go on. Now if the just mentioned names mean nothing to you, then this may not be the game for you. But, if they got you all excited and nostalgic then you need this on your iphone sir!

When you start the game, one of this first thing you will realise, is there is no sound. Nothing. No background musak, no crowd during the match playbacks…nowt. But since I personally turn the volume down whilst I’m gaming in public, then it isn’t a major problem. So once noticing the lack of sound we are then presented with a choice of manager name and age.Then you chose a country to play in. England, Scotland, Spain or Italy.We are then presented with a choice of three years to start a season from. 1970, 1973 & 1976.. We then have a little bit of background fact about the year (current best international side, European side and domestic champions from that year. Then we choose our league.

So with a 45 year old manager called Johnny Scouser, I started with Liverpool FC, and chose 1976 in the English League Division 1. Now there are certain things that differed with, “the beautiful game” , back in the day. The first thing you realise is there is no such a thing as a transfer window. So you can buy and sell player all year round. The second big difference is you are only allowed to have two substitutes on the bench. So you have to pick your squad very carefully. No room for a spare keeper on the bench. I found I had one centre forward and a defensive midfielder on the bench the best option..

The graphics are pretty basic, but functional, and not too cluttered. The match highlights are little more then coloured dots on a green pitch skating around hitting a white dot, but oddly they can still keep your attention.. The attraction of these games has never been the graphics luckily; nope it’s the chance to buy all the best players that you think your team should have, and get them to the top of the table, winning all the cups out there. Well after my first season I managed to do a Raffa Benietez. I managed to steer Liverpool to European Glory, but only managed to get 5th in the First Division, and out of the league and FA cups early on. But as the Season 1977/78 approached my current Liverpool squad contained: Kleffe in goal, Gordon McQueen, Phil Neal, & Viv Anderson in defence, In Midfield I had Steve Highway, Trevor Brooking, Liam Brady and Ian Callaghan in Midfield. Johan Cruyff playing off the strikers, and Gurt Muller and Andy Gray up front. On the bench I had Duncan McKenzie and a 15-year-old called Diago Maradona. The 3-4-1-2 formation was perfect for Europe, but maybe for my second season I may need to change it for domestic games.

Championship Manager 70’s Legends is an excellent hand held time waster for the discerning football fan . There is loads of depth including press conferences, board requests, training schedules, as well as all the other things you come to expect from this kind of game. A nice touch is the inclusion of news items from the period at selected times in the season, just to give you a flavour of the culture of the 1970`sIf you can get past the lack of sound and average graphics, then you may have found the iphone gaming version of Barcelona. Now if you will excuse me, I think it’s time to try and tempt Kenny Dalglish away from Celtic.