Championship Manager: Season 00/01

The Good
A job of a sport manager is not simple. Stress, lack of time and amount of duties makes this person be entirely absorbed by his work. Our task as manager is not only to control our team during matches, but also to buy and sell players, negotiate contracts, arrange friendly matches and tournaments, oversee trainings or cooperate with board and media. Those tasks are waiting for you in Championship Manager 2000-2001.

In this edition you are able to control a team from 26 countries, including Germany, England, Spain or Brazil. For those who got into a passion- leagues from Finland, Australia or Croatia.

Unlike newest versions of Championship Manager, in edition 2000-2001 you do not need to be a skillful coach or football expert to reach for the biggest titles, also when you decide to take control of team that is sentenced to relegation. Game consists of huge database which includes all needed information about player and club history and statistics. Intuitive interface causes that we will not be lost in all those statistics.

When we are tired of working all time with the same club, we can go on holiday or resign from club and send applications to other teams who are currently without manager. But the quality of our next employer depends on our reputation. Multitude of options is really surprising.

The Bad
Unfortunately huge database makes the game load very long. When you decide to pick all available leagues, you will have to prepare to spend several minutes on waiting for the game to start. (With my 2 GHz processor first loading with full database takes about 12 minutes, next about 2 minutes!). Of course you will also have to assign some time for game loading during the play.

Incredible results like 6:3 or 5:4 occur too often and transfer of a world class player to a team from lower division is possible and astonishingly simple. That could not happen in real life. Despite expended game mode, we do not have the opportunity to take control of our team’s training. What is more, we can not establish ticket prices or expand the stadium.

The Bottom Line
One of the worst fault of sport managers is that they are quickly becoming old. Not only because team squads are being changed but also because every year new editions are being released. Despite course of time and changes in football rules, CM 00-01 is still worth playing. If you have got a lot of patience, you can add some current changes with editor added to the game.

I strongly advise this game to Championship Manager beginners because edition 00-01 do not have so many extended options like present versions.

My opinion: 9/10