Underworld Football Manager interview: Syndicates explained

The most important skills to have in soccer: bribery, corruption, violence… No, this isn't another Panorama documentary about FIFA, but Underworld Football Manager, possibly the most popular football game you haven't heard of.

It's a casual footie manager game with criminal elements, including a pawn shop where you buy items to attack or defend other managers (which could be as silly as laxatives to poison their team with). The game's been updated a number of times, most notably a couple of weeks ago when version 3.0.4 introduced Syndicates – basically, a clan or guild model. First launched in 2015, the main game still has 7,000 active daily users. "We're definitely popular with European players, from quite a variety of countries," says Stanga Games' guv'nor Anthony Copus. "We first launched in the UK, but quickly found demand from users all over! However, there's still lots of room for us to grow as we add and improve and add more and more features in the game."

We caught up with Stanga Games at GDC and have waited until this latest release to quiz them about what they've added to it this year.

Pocket Gamer: How is Underworld Football Manager different from other football managers? Anthony Copus: There's a lot that can be said here! But in essence there's more to it than just developing your team like many of the other games. In Underworld Football you can: bribe, attack and vandalise your rivals to get an upper hand; team up with friends to get advantages (like getting broken out of prison if you've been arrested); create a super-team with other players in the Syndicates; invest in your city, and your own skills; strategise as to how you want to develop yourself or your team - are you going to spend more time training, upgrading, or attacking?; and of course, this is all on top of the training, signing and developing players, and general team improvements of more traditional manager games. What does Syndicates add to Underworld Football Manager?

Syndicates introduce a new way to play with other club managers. You can recruit the best allies to form a super team - each manager contributes their top two players! These super teams compete to be the top ranked. Matches can even be affected by investing time and earning PR Points, or coordinating attacks and bribes against your rivals.

Why did you want to expand the game with Syndicates this month?

Underworld Football Manager has been a very socially-orientated game from the get-go, as we've seen users ally with one another and team up on strong rivals, as well as gifting each other. The Syndicates mean we can not only facilitate these social aspects further, but also add in something unique which encourages teamwork and strategy between friends.

What sort of feedback have you been getting from players?

It's been great! On the whole they're enjoying it and the Syndicates are all very active. Naturally, we've received some feedback on aspects players would like us to improve. For example, we quickly added live chat and more rewards from the matches. And quite a few things we'll make easier in the UI in our next update.

If you had to give us one top tip for playing the game well, what would it be?

Choose your rivals wisely!

The next update for Underworld Football Manager is due "in the second half of April", so keep your eyes peeled – the developers are teasing "another big change". For more information about the game, visit the official website. If you're an Underworld Football Manager player, let us know in the comments what you make of the Syndicates update.