No, not American Football, European Football, aka footie, aka soccer etc. Yes, this is a MMOFS (Massively Multiplayer Online Football Simulator, I made that up myself! ) and IGN has a nice little preview of the title. Here is some of the UK IGN report on the game (from the Liverpool offices):
Football Manager is one of those games that you either entirely ignore, or slavishly devote every spare minute of your life to. A regular fixture on the gaming calendar, it comes out on the same Friday each year to widespread acclaim from a legion of hollow-eyed addicts. So when developer Sports Interactive invited the gaming (and football) press to its new East London office for "the most important announcement since Football Manager," speculation was rife.
Shrouded in secrecy since its inception, even former Liverpool and Ireland midfielder Ray Houghton - a tactical consultant at SI - revealed that he still hadn"t told his kids about it. But as the assembled hacks gorged themselves on pie, chips and beer while watching the 1984 FA Cup Final, the clever money was on a massively multiplayer online football management game.
For more information on the game, features and some screenshots of the game in action, check out IGN"s report. Right now the game is scheduled for a 2008 release for the PC and Mac only, though the developers do want to see the game on other systems (including the Xbox 360 and PS3 for starters) and considering the game will be around 11 megs in size that is certainly possible.