Gameloft to launch Real Football: Manager Edition

Alas, poor Mourinho. We loved his tantrums well (and are still hopeful that he'll be in charge at Spurs within a month). However, Jose's parting of the ways with Chelsea is renewed proof of the perils of football management – especially if you fall out with your mega-rich chairman.

But you don't have to be Jose to find that out. Mobile users are well-served with management sims, such as Championship Manager 2007, and LMA Manager 2007, after all. And now Gameloft is entering the fray, with Real Football: Manager Edition.

"We really want to pull out all the stops and become the new benchmark for manager games on mobile," says Cyrille Reboul, Gameloft's head of sports games marketing. "Our game features more stats, leagues, players and tactical options than any competitor, as well as a very visual and easy-to-pick-up game."

Here are the stats: The game has the top two divisions from England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France, with over 4,000 players. And yes, it does have a FIFPro licence, meaning that all those players have their real names. Meanwhile, each individual player has 14 specific stats, plus special attributes for top players.

"For example, Rooney has 'born scorer', and Cristiano Ronaldo has 'magic feet'," says Reboul. "Also, players have different playing styles, so some are more prone to dribbling than others, for example. You can give individual instructions to each of your 11 players, and customise your formation as much as you want, changing every player's position on the field to achieve the best balance."

The other big selling point of RF: ME is that it uses the Real Football match engine for games, enabling you to watch your team's silky skills (or clodhopping idiocy) play out over the course of 90 virtual minutes.

"Watching the full match is the outcome of all the gamer's actions before the match," says Reboul. "It means that you cannot cheat the gamer. We spent a large part of the development time focusing on making sure that each decision taken by the player would have a real impact on the game."

As an example, if you're into nippy wingers pumping crosses into the box for the big man up front, you'll see this play out in the match engine, which Reboul says is proof that the game's AI works, and that you're truly in control.

Apparently, Gameloft has been planning its management sim for years, since the start of the Real Football franchise, which has helped the company refine its data-crunching to squeeze all those players and stats in, as well as working on the match engine.

"All the work done on Real Football has been a huge asset for developing the Manager Edition," reveals Reboul. "We were able to simulate realistic matches between two teams right from the start of the ME project. So, our team could focus on features specific to the manager, like setting up the transfer system, training structure or players' development features."

We're genuinely excited about Real Football: Manager Edition. Feast your eyes on the screenshots above, and click 'Track It!' to see how it turns out when we review the game.