First of all, some have mistaken you for Daddy Pig in the past. What do you have to say to them?
I can't remember if it was Stephen Woodhead or Peter Waddell who started that, but what I do have to say to them is unprintable, haha.
You have been in only two teams all this time at this game world and you managed to be much more competitive in your current Italian spell than in your previous German team.
How did you manage that?
The Lazio team was already setup to win titles once the players matured. I think we've finished 3rd, 2nd, 1st and 1st under my reign so it was just a case of finding the right players within our squad and the tactics required to play the formation and style I wanted to play. A lot of credit belongs to the previous managers and I've already mailed them to say as much.
Hertha Berlin was a completely different job; it wasn't about being competitive. Coming out of the old CH games, I'd just been managing Parma and they brought about 10 very good to world class players through their youth academy, so I was just having fun at Hertha trying the same thing. The Hertha experiment was to build a squad predominantly of German players, mostly from our own youth academy. But it would seem the German youth system was as productive as the Italian one and for the first few years we only had 6 youth at a time as well, not the 15 we can have now.
Comparing your time in Lazio with your time in Hertha, which of the two jobs have been the most fun to you and why?
Hertha. By a country mile. Because winning games with a team you've developed through your own youth academy is much more fun and rewarding than buying a team to win titles.
What are your plans with Lazio?
I was going to quit at the end of last season, but with all the new economic changes BK has brought about I think I'd like to give it another season, just to see how it effects the big clubs. From what I've seen so far our wage bill has gone up about £170k per week and combined with the new stadium attendances I think the economic factor is going to be much harder to balance. So a fresh challenge for Lazio. Long gone are the days when we had £700m+ in the bank!
You are one of the oldest managers to be around in Managersim. What keeps you in the game after all this time?
The community. The friendships that have been made over the years will stay for life and that's something I'll always be grateful for.
Talk us about your past in Soccersim/Managersim history.
Crikey, I started playing in the old "Green and White" days and I used to have a lot of dealings with then programmer/co-owner Peter Strand as I accessed from a Sega Dreamcast, not a PC as 99% of the other players did. He wanted to develop the game to be accessible from web devices that weren't PC's ... I guess he foresaw Tablets and more consoles having internet access! I remember the game was full of around 1,200 players and the only team I could find vacant was Leiftur in Iceland. It's weird how stuff like that sticks in your mind some 15yrs+ later, but Soccersim has always been able to do that to it's players. If you ask any manager who's been around since the old days, they will all have tales to tell and remember things like that.
I don't know how it came about, but I then was asked to be a GM for the Slow One game world, which is where I came to meet a lot of the Brazilian managers I still speak too regularly now, which just goes to show that Soccersim really can bring people together the world over. That's what it's major pull is for me, the community. Other GM's at the time were BK, Peter Waddell, Stephen Woodhead, Paul Skelton, Dave Wallace and Stu May (I think).
Reality Games bought the rights off Peter Strand and Martin Bresson and the game went "Pay to Play" and I managed Millwall (my team in real life) in those days. Peter Strand still kept a version of Soccersim running away from the RG site and I was invited on to that as a beta tester for some new ideas. There was only a handful of managers there at that time, about 20 or so as I'm not even sure whether he (Peter Strand) was supposed to be running it, or whether it was a side project in case Reality Games went down the pan ... and we know how that turned out.
Everybody was invited back to the "side project" soon after RG went down and it continued for a fair time until Peter closed it down for good ... until BK's relentless efforts (I can't tell you how long it used to get a reply from Peter Strand for a basic question, let alone what BK was trying to negotiate with him!) saw the game return and continue to be developed by BK himself.
Do you think titles are that important?
Not in the slightest. To win a title you need to be able to log in on every single tick to adjust training/stamina, make sure nobody was injured on the tick prior to your match so that a key player isn't missing from your line-up, scout the transfer- and free transfer-lists for the undiscovered star players ... and not everybody has the time to do that.
So for me, titles mean nothing. As long as you can have fun playing with your team, your way, then that's all that's important.
Sep 01 2014
Jun 01 2014
Jun 04 2013
Apr 11 2013
Mar 01 2013
May 01 2012
Apr 01 2012
May 01 2011
Apr 21 2011
Apr 19 2011
Apr 01 2011
Mar 01 2011
Sep 01 2010
Feb 01 2010
Jun 13 2009
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Became league champion with Lazio.
Became league champion with Lazio.
Won Champions League final against Real Madrid ( with Lazio )
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Lost UEFA Cup final to Roma ( with Lazio )
Won Coppa Italia final against Inter ( with Lazio )
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Named Manager of the Month with Lazio
Resigned as manager of Hertha Berlin. Hired as a manager for Lazio.