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Online Football Manager (OFM) is for Online football managers. It is a browser-based, football management game Massively Multiplayer Online Game or MMOG).It has over 268 000 registered users as of December 3rd, 2006.It is modelled after its Dutch counterpart Online Soccer Manager, in which you virtually control your favourite football team and compete with other managers from around the world.

Matches are played daily. The matches are simulated by the OFM engine, which creates a virtual world in which the football matches are played. The matches are calculated using the OFM engine which provides realistic gameplay based on historic results, team strength, luck and other factors. This method makes OFM one of the most realistic online football managers ever created. Your goal is to get the best possible results out of your team and prove yourself to be a better and more efficient manager than the other online managers, by winning a championship or accomplishing a certain goal preset by your team's board of directors.

The game is completely free to play, though it is possible to buy so called Season tickets. If you are in the possession of these tickets, you will have much more options available to you than when you play with a free membership.

Starting the game

Selecting a League:
When you begin the game, the first thing you will have to do is choose the league you wish to participate in.
There are several countries and leagues to choose from such as the English Premier League, The Championship and Football League One, Spain's La Liga and Segunda División, and the Italian Serie A and Serie B, not to mention some of the lesser known world leagues such as the top divisions from Serbia Serbian Superliga, Austria Österreichische Fußball-Bundesliga, Australia A-League, Israel Ligat ha'Al and Uruguay Primera División Uruguaya to name just a few. To date there are 42 world leagues to participate in.
Simply choose which nation you would like to play in by selecting the country flag, and then choose which division to compete in. You will then be given a choice to play in one of the leagues that have been set up by users within the game.
There are thousands of leagues either in the preparation stages or that have already started.

Selecting a Club:
After choosing the desired league, you will be given the choice to accept one of two contracts on offer from teams within that league. You have an option to choose which teams you would like to take control of, by accessing your player profile and changing the two teams found there.
Once a team has been chosen, you are ready to play.

Taking Control

After you have taken control of your team, depending on how good or bad your players may be, you will want to trim the team to your liking.
There are various options available from the outset.

>>Viewing Your Team: Here you can view the players available to you; you can also see their age, defensive, attacking and overall abilities, positions and values. Transfer listing players is also an option from this screen.

>>Formation and Tactics: From the Team Drop Down Menu you can choose your favoured formation, such as a 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-4-3 and many more. Also found here is the tactics options which include the style of play desired, the overall match tactics and specific advanced tactics for areas of your team.

>>Specialists and Line-up: Also available under the Team Drop Down Menu are the specialists option which enables you to choose who should be captain, the penalty, corner and free kick takers.
The line-up for each match is also available allowing you to choose 10 outfield players and goalkeeper as well as up to 7 substitutes.

Game Features

Buying/Selling Players: After selecting a team you can work on improving the team by selling unnecessary players. The players you wish to sell will be kept on the Transfer market, where other teams from your league may buy them or other leagues may buy them. Only four players from your team can be kept on the transfer market at any one time. You have the option of selling your players for a higher price than the value price. Buying works opposite to selling players. You can buy players from the transfer list. Once you buy the player he will be automatically added to your squad. You can buy as many players as you want but you cannot buy more than one player from the same team per game week. If you are a season ticket holder then you get the option of scouting for other players from different leagues.

Season Tickets

Becoming a season ticket holder or premium season ticket holder gives you access to more options and you'll be supporting OFM in the development of new features.

As a season ticket holder, you will gain access to all kinds of advantages, and avoid advertisements. A special icon will be displayed in your profile, so that everyone can see that you are a season ticket holder. Ticket holders have a lot of advantages. Premium Ticket holders can request their own league, add a premium profile, protect their league and much more. Ticket Holders also have the priority of selecting teams first. Limited users have to wait a day before they can join the league. You also get access to the scoreboard which gives you every detail of the match such as bookings, injuries and goals. There is a Season Ticket Forum which only ticket holders can access. Ticket holders also get managerpoints and are ranked. You can see where you rank in the whole game and where you rank among managers in your own country as well. Below are some features that ticket holders can access in this game.

Scouting: Scouting is an option only available to ticket holder. Before you go around scouting you must hire a Scout. You can only hire one scout per team. The Scout will scout for players from other countries. However the scout can only scout European countries for now. More countries will be added soon. For example, let's say you're currently playing in England as Liverpool F.C and you want to buy Iker Casillas from Real Madrid, a club in Spain. By entering the player data such as his position, age, and an estimate of his price your scout will search for him and return back in 1 game week (1 day) with the result.

Stadium: When you are assigned as the manager of the team you get the option of modifying your stadium. You can change the name of your stadium and improve your stadium in many different ways. You can improve your stadium capacity by increasing it. The higher the capacity the more profit you make after every match. You can also improve your pitch which will increase your team performance in home matches. The training field can also be improved. This will help train your players faster. Last but not least, you can improve your food cart which will benefit you when you play a home match by selling food to the fans who attend the game. The profit will be added to your overall finance.

Commercial Manager: As a season ticket holder, you can hire a commercial manager. The commercial manager can attempt to get extra money from the sponsors. Money is needed for important transfers, or that little extra financial impulse needed to join the top of the league again.

Subaccounts: If you are a limited user, you can only have one account. But when you become a season ticket holder, you will get the opportunity to create a subaccount, through which you will be able to play in two leagues at the same time. A premium season ticket holder will even be able to create 3 subaccounts while a season ticket holder can have 1 subaccount.

Special Leagues: Online Football Manager has a number of special leagues available:e.g. UEFA Champions League and Nostalgia leagues. These leagues are exclusively accessible to season ticket holders. In the Nostalgia leagues you will have the opportunity to manage a great winning team from the past. The World League gives you the opportunity to manage a national team.

Crews: If you are a season ticket holder, you and your friends can join a crew. This way, you can show everyone that you play OFM together, having your own logo, motto and crew page. If you are a premium season ticket holder, you can also start a crew of your own, and invite your friends to join.

Popularity

OFM is becoming very popular because of its simplicity and realism. The leagues are based on the actual football leagues of the countries. The teams have squads which correspond to the actual football squads. The players are all rated in attacking and defensive capabilities realistically. This means a more realistic game for everyone. The average number of people joining this management game is around 1000 a day.

History of Dutch Online Soccer manager (OSM).

OSM has now been around for 5 years. In that time there has been much that has changed. More players have joined and the game has been increasingly further extended and has improved. You will see that at its place we now at this moment OSM is at the best level. This is due in important degree to the volunteers and staff who have volunteered themselves in the course of the years for OSM. Season 2001-2002 The early beginning of OSM is conceivable with difficulty if you have got used to the current game. The design was spartan, options were not many, and there were only a handful of managers. To give an impression: you could give only your players and your formation as tactics. Your stadium could not be extended, only the Dutch competition could be played and there were no objectives. The basis in these first OSM nevertheless was already strong. It was possible to buy players on the transferlist, the engine did its work, and you could start competitions. All this was played by the first group of managers with much enthusiasm. With their suggestions OSM was directly already improving. One of the largest improvements at the beginning stage was the possibility also in other countries of playing. OSM became from time to time very slow (sometimes it lasted as much as a couple minutes to examine a page!) and it was looked out to other hosting. These were found eventually and OSM persevered. Season 2002-2003: The season 2002-2003 was a particularly good season for OSM. There was a positive recent development of a new improved design. The number of options was strongly extended. The stadium option came, the sponsors, the newspaper, the governing board and the forums. In spite of all these improvements nevertheless finished the season in minor. Because there so many managers recovered it became eventually always more difficult find hosting and no longer succeeded this. OSM had a couple months from air. But we would return more strongly! Season 2003-2004 To continue the game the season ticket holder option had to be introduced. Managers could against payment of a small amount get stipulated advantages to get which a free user did not have. This was a large change with the previous situation in which the game was free for everyone. This was made possible due to hard work to make several updates and the site was differently arranged. The complete site was translated of English to Dutch. It became a truth metamorphosis! Most of the managers who play OSM for a long time have joined in this period. Season 2004-2005 In this volume OSM carried on growing steadily and became especially more professional. Bugs were removed, the settlement of complaints and problems became better and the staff were reorganised. There came just like each year updates and also a lot more possibilities for moderators, the scoreboard, the cup tournament, the scout and large update of the stadium. Season 2005-2006 In the previous season much has also happened. The number of servers is increased from one to eight. Of updates such as the Fantasy League, the renewed newspaper and the new scoreboard with commentator we are very pleased. Still much will have to be done. And now we can celebrate therefore the 5 year old jubilee.

External links

• Online Football Manager: http://www.onlinefootballmanager.co.uk
• Online Soccer Manager: http://www.onlinesoccermanager.com
• Dutch Online Soccer manager: http://www.onlinesoccermanager.nl
• China Online Soccer manager: http://www.onlinesoccermanager.cn

• Article about the game: http://www.tribalfootball.com/article.php?id=11032
• Comments from users: http://www.tribalfootball.com/comments.php?id=11032
• Rating of the game: http://www.gamesites200.com/gaming/details-1095.html
• Rating of the game: http://www.worldonlinegames.com/index.php?page=8&gid=845

• Screenshot of a player's Chelsea team http://img109.imageshack.us/my.php?image=utennavnyr2.png