Has Football Manager changed actual football?

Football video games are huge business, and there are few bigger than the Football Manager series – games where players don’t take to the pitch, but instead pick teams, create tactics and buy and sell talent from global superstars to obscure amateurs. The series has been played by millions worldwide, and the latest edition has added women’s teams to the game for the first time.

But as football video games have grown over the past three decades, have they influenced the way the game is watched, talked about – and even played? Do fans now have a better understanding of tactics and transfers than ever before, and does that affect what they want from the sport?

Dean Gibson is recruitment manager for women’s football at Southampton FC, who are challenging for promotion to England’s Women’s Super League, one of the richest leagues in women’s football. He tells the BBC’s John Bennett what video games do and don’t get right about the realities of football scouting. Games like Football Manager and the Fifa series – now known as EA Sports FC – are packed full of stats on a huge array of players, but how big a part does data play in spotting the next stars? He also shares his thoughts on how the reams of player data accumulated by video game companies relate to the outside world.

John’s also joined by Umir Irfan, the BBC’s tactics correspondent, who discusses how the language we use to talk about football has rapidly evolved. Even a few years ago, terms like xG and low block were almost unknown among football fans, but they’re now commonplace. Have video games turned us all into armchair experts?

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