Regardless which club you chose to manage from the seven national leagues on offer, you'll find the players are current (updated with January transfer information, so the Spurs midfield is now at Pompey and wunderkind Walcott is at Highbury) and also uncannily realistic. And the whole thing moves briskly along, at least by football management simulation standards (it will still take you a solid day to complete a season), with none of the loading delays too common on PSP.īetter yet, behind that slick front end lies a football-shaped heart. The control system is immediately accessible. The presentation, though essentially just a series of text menus, is always clear. Just as the bespectacled Swede is likely to keep faith with the tried-and-tested Beckham, Owen and Campbell over fresher talents like Sean Wright Phillips and Marcus Bent, SI Games has harked back to the earlier incarnations of their management sim, putting aside the more involved elements to create a slick simulation. Perhaps it's not surprising that SI Games' solution is in line with what we expect we'll get from the England coach. And ultimately, like Sven, they're unlikely to keep everyone happy. Like Sven, they've got a hugely passionate fan base to appease. Like Sven, they've had to make tough decisions to streamline the world's most in-depth football management system into a portable form. We suspect the developers of Football Manager Handheld could offer their sympathies.

Picking just 23 players from the hundreds eligible is a tough task – with a nation of opinionated fans poised to explain how they could have done it better, it becomes something of a poisoned chalice.

On May 8th, England manager Sven Goran Eriksson will announce his squad for the World Cup Finals.

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