But does it model the wanton violence and fan deaths that is important to all organized sports, but especially to football? The petitioning for government handouts?

Not to mention money laundering, doping, bribing and other activities... It would be nice if some game included all this kind of shit, without taboos.

Got to have WAG's too. Nothing better than a bit of nasty gossiping and catty bitching between the bleached-blonde, botoxed, boob-jobbed partners of said footballers. Purrr!..

Who needs doping when you can already do this in the Street Fighter 6 character creator?!? :P

Exactly! It's like racing games without damage are weird. So are sports management games without corruption.

Swipe Soccer Manager has all that ;-)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.swipestudios.swipemanagersoccer2

So, here's my thoughts:

Sports management games are just spreadsheets for people who don't have a menial job in fields such as accounting or the boring parts of manufacturing.

Oh, and don't forget the officials who bribe, rig, or otherwise fix games because they have money to pay off the entire team.

Nice - looking forward to it and hope it turns out well. And ya really hoping the early access turns into a "we getting valueable feedbackfrom our fans and further optimizing the game" and not into a "we needed quick money and releasing a game in a broken state" EA mode

Is there even a such thing as a "first rate" football manager?

you probably mean: football manager... FIFA manager was discontinued in 2014 :)

Football Manager up to 2012.

No, I meant FIFA Manager exactly. Screenshots give the same feeling, i.e. football manager full of secondary fluff but severely lacking in the main things like match AI, tactics and training etc.