Football Manager Quiz

The reason Wayne Rooney is a world-class footballer? He doesn't pause on the edge of the penalty area to ponder which Luton Town player's dad was in Showaddywaddy. At least, we think he doesn't. Maybe that's the reason for his lackluster performances for England recently.

In contrast, a working knowledge of the relationships between home counties football clubs and 1970s teddy boy revivalists is crucial to success in Football Manager Quiz. (The answer's Scott Oakes, by the way, if you were wondering.)

See, although it's based on the planet's best football management game on PC, console and PSP, Football Manager Quiz takes a different spin on the genre. Instead of taking your team to the top of the Premier League with cunning tactics and wheeler-dealer transfer skills, success is based entirely on your footie-trivia knowledge.

Here's how it works. You choose a Premier League team (sorry, Hartlepool fans), and then face a 19-game season, although you can also opt for a single match or a couple of other modes that we'll get on to later.

Once a match starts, you're presented with a top-down diagramatical view of the pitch, with one to three choices of directions to move the ball. These are represented by categories, including General Knowledge, International, History, Team and 2005/2006 Season. Choose one, and you get a question from that category, moving you up the pitch if successful, and pressing you back if not.

Get near the goal, and it switches to a top-down view of the pitch, and a goal chance, with you having to choose between three options (for example, a penalty lets you shoot left, right or straight down the middle). Pick the right one, and you score. And so it goes on, with a time limit ensuring you answer questions speedily.

There are three difficulty levels to choose from, and your in-game options are bolstered by having three passes to avoid a tricky question, and three 'try agains', which give you a second bite at a question you've answered wrongly.

It's slick, quick, and with 1,000 questions, it'll take a little while before any repetition gets on your nerves. The goal-chance scenarios are slightly limited – basically, a penalty, a corner, a free kick, a cross and a shot from just outside the box – but with the focus on the questions, this isn't a problem.

Achieved the impossible and taken Watford to Premiership glory on Hard level? Try the two additional modes. Quickfire mode has you answering questions in a three-minute time-limit, without the surrounding football gubbins. Meanwhile, Quizmaster mode is designed for multiplayer trivia fests in the real world. You hold the phone, and get fed questions randomly to ask your mates, and then get shown the correct answer. It's the perfect accessory for a night spent in the pub talking rubbish about football.

Football Manager Quiz is a great casual take on the trivia genre, with enough questions to keep any fan happy. The only criticism we can level at it is that it's not Football Manager proper, which has been beaten to the phone by rivals Championship Manager and LMA Manager.

Even so, if you think you're a football anorak, Football Manager Quiz is an essential download.

Football Manager Quiz

Well-designed football trivia game that hits the back of the net
Score
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)