I’ve been feeling in a nostalgic mood lately… so I reckon it’s time for another Retro Review of a football management game from years gone by.
Today, I’m taking you to the 2001/2002 season – a time when Liverpool were challenging Arsenal for the title, and an English midfielder was firing Real Madrid towards continental glory. It was also a time when Championship Manager still had plenty of competition to contend with, even if some of their early rivals had fallen by the wayside.
So what happened when German developers joined forces with a Scottish footballing legend to try and challenge England’s top dogs? Let’s take a closer look at Ally McCoist’s Director of Football.
BACKGROUND
Up until around the mid-2000s, almost every football management game worth its salt was made in either the United Kingdom or Germany. You can thank the Germans for this one.
Endorsed by a popular German football magazine, kicker FUSSBALLmanager was first released in late 1999 and created by Heart-Line Software (later known as Greencode). A sequel was released the following year, but that’s not really relevant to this title.
Empire Interactive published the original game in the UK two years later with updated squads and a new name – Director of Football. That was a peculiar choice of name, seeing as the DoF or ‘sporting director’ role was common at top European clubs, but not so much on these shores until over a decade later.
And who better to put their name to this football management game than… er, Ally McCoist? Back in 2001, the newly-retired former Rangers and Scotland striker had never even tried his hand at management. Indeed, McCoist was better-known as a jovial team captain on BBC quiz show “A Question of Sport”. Just don’t ask about his short-lived acting career.
An English-language version of the 1999 game surprisingly resurfaced on Steam about two decades later. I bought it, couldn’t get it running on my Windows 10 PC at all, and quickly got a refund.
So instead, I’m revisiting the McCoist version, having picked up a second-hand copy on eBay for about £3. I’ll be playing it on my old Windows XP laptop, for the optimal post-millennium experience.
STARTING OUT
In the default database, you can manage in any of the top four leagues in England – as well as the top divisions in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland and Spain. There are other data sets that allow you to manage further down the French, German and Italian pyramids, though these sacrifice the English lower tiers instead.
When starting a new save, you can add up to 12 managers… if you have that many friends, obviously. Ally’s old “A Question of Sport” rival John Parrott was otherwise engaged, so I’m playing this game on my own.
You can customise your new game further, such as by choosing which division your team starts in. You could move Luton from Division 3 straight to the Premiership… or you can take Charlton in the opposite direction. It’s even possible to move between countries, and manage Celtic or Rangers in the English leagues!
Likewise, there are other settings that can change the game’s difficulty – such as giving your club more or less money, or by making your team stronger or weaker. If you want the challenge of inheriting a Manchester United team with no cash and mediocre players, DoF can set that up for you.
DoF also comes with three ready-made challenges. In these, you can attempt to qualify for Europe with Tottenham, avoid relegation with Derby, or get Manchester City promoted. (That’s right, kids – Manchester City were NOT a Premiership team in the 2001/2002 season!)
As the name suggests, you won’t just be managing or coaching your team. You’re also expected to take charge of matters off the pitch – like expanding the stadium, improving the facilities, signing sponsorship agreements, etc.
WHAT I LIKED
You’ll soon notice that the club badges have a unique, simplified look about them – like the Footbe logos that some people use on their Football Manager saves. These logos are recognisably based on the originals, but are just different enough to avoid infringing copyright. I kinda like them.
And even though this is a small(ish) game from 2001, I’m impressed with the amount of statistics available at your fingertips. Player stats can be sorted to include league and/or cup matches, and league tables are similarly customisable – even allowing you to see which teams play the best in the second halves of matches.
The match engine is… fine. The ‘isometric’ pitch view is not something I’ve seen very often (outside of the earliest FIFA games), and the cartoonish player graphics have a certain charm about them.
You can set instructions for both your team and for individual players, and I sense that they at least try to follow your orders. There are also a load of buttons on the bottom-left, where you can ask your players to shoot – and to pass or move upfield or downfield. Unfortunately, they DON’T specify whether they run towards your goal or the opposition’s, so it’s annoyingly easy to send them the wrong way.
Other features in the match view do work out slightly better. You can replay a previous highlight, fast-forward through a match, or leave early and skip to the end. You can even switch between other matches in your league that are going on at the same time – so while my team is busy smashing Sheffield Wednesday to pieces, I can watch our title rivals Bradford struggle to beat Rotherham instead.
And at the end of each match, you get a rundown of all the results, followed by the updated league table. It’s all displayed very nicely and adds to the immersion of being in a long title fight.
WHAT I DIDN’T
I do have some issues with the graphics. There’s not much variety in terms of how the players look, so I ended up with half my Millwall squad being white-skinned with ginger hair. These included players like Tony Warner, Steven Reid and Leke Odunsi, who in real-life were… well, they definitely weren’t pale redheads.
And while many German-made football video games take a light-hearted approach to the sport, Director of Football is particularly goofy. For one thing, players don’t just walk off the pitch after being sent off or substituted – they literally teleport off it! “Beam me up, gaffer!”
The way player injuries are announced is just as silly. When one of your charges gets hurt, you’re presented with a picture of a medicine cabinet – and a semi-scary slapstick sound clip that seems to have come from a 90s kids show such as “ZZZap!” or “Art Attack”. You should probably turn the sound off to avoid any ‘art attacks of a different kind.
Of course, there are more serious complaints. Like the bug that meant my Division 1 team was not entered into the Challenge Cup (the game’s equivalent of the FA Cup) in the first season.
I also don’t like how transfers work. When you make a transfer bid or offer a player, the outcome of that offer will be decided in an auction – even if there is only one club involved. Even worse, this auction usually takes place several weeks after the initial offer, meaning you are often waiting a long time to get your transfer targets.
Then there’s the cumbersome user interface. The buttons aren’t labelled very clearly, so it’s tricky to find exactly where you want to go to. But it’s not just that – it also took me a long time to figure out just how to save or even quit the bloody game! (Turns out that you right-click on the screen to open up a drop-down menu which has those options.)
My biggest gripe, though, is that it’s VERY difficult to gauge exactly how good your players are. Your players are rated on three categories – Condition, Technique and Intelligence – and are given overall ratings based on their average scores in these categories. However, you can only see precise ratings for their strongest attributes, so you have no idea about which weaknesses they most need to work on.
WE MUST TALK ABOUT…
Finances. As the director of football, you will be in charge of various tasks that can help you grow your club or generate income.
There are various options to expand your stadium and training facilities, with some companies offering quicker builds in return for more money. They will also occasionally offer discounts, so you can save an extra 10%-15% if you wait for the right deal.
You can sell advertising board, shirt or equipment sponsorship deals to various companies (including a few real brands such as Gillette) to generate a steady flow of monthly revenue. Setting your expectations higher will attract more companies and better offers – but if you don’t meet those targets, they won’t renew the contracts once they expire.
You can also buy or sell shares in fictional businesses in the London and New York stock exchanges, or in top-flight football clubs. Use these wisely, and you can get very rich very quick.
Also, at the end of the season, you are given a large tax bill. You can try to evade 50% of it and save yourself millions, but beware – if the taxman finds out, you’ll get a huge fine instead! Even Craig Whyte would find that a bit too unscrupulous for his liking!
SUMMARY
A decade after this game’s release, Ally McCoist went back to Rangers and managed them for nearly four years. Just one season on Director of Football was enough for me.
DoF does go into more detail than most of its early 2000s rivals, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Sadly, the tedious transfer system and the confusing UI take away too much of the enjoyment for me, to the point where even winning promotion didn’t give me much of a buzz.
You can still buy this game on Steam if you wish – or you can find a physical copy online or download it on some abandonware website. And play it on Windows XP. You’re better off having an affair with Patsy Kensit than trying to get this running on Windows 10 or 11.
FULLER FM RATING: 2.5* – Football League.
Thanks for reading this review. If you remember playing this game, please share your thoughts in the comments below – or tweet me @Fuller_FM. Now, if you don’t mind…
Fuller FM 
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