Football Owner Review

Though it’s not as complicated as the likes of Football Manager Handheld, Football Owner is more the kind of soccer management game that you can dip into for a few minutes and still accomplish a surprising amount. It comes at the price of immersion, leaving you feeling occasionally detached from the process, but at least you'll get somewhere quickly.

Football Owner notably doesn't have any official names of teams or players, but it's generally simple enough to figure out who's playing when it's Chelsee versus Men Utd. Numerous tabs divide up the action from your inbox that tells you what's going on to squad lists. There's plenty of room for financial analysis too, with a section devoted to upgrading your stadium, which is quite key to profit and success.

While you can buy and sell players easily enough, there's the sense that Football Owner is more about the business side of soccer than the beautiful game itself. That's particularly noticeable when participating in a match as all you actually witness is the final result. There aren't any match previews or clips here. Such an omission means you feel more like a businessperson than a keen sportsperson, which takes away some of the emotion gleaned from sport.

Having said that, at least it means that Football Owner is a new take on the old format. It also means that you can get a lot done in a short space of time. A season can, theoretically, only take a few minutes to complete, which is a huge change from the tens of hours you can spend on Football Manager Handheld. There's something to be said for dealing with the money side of things, even if it's not as romantic as scoring a goal in the final few minutes or mastering the perfect tactic to defeat Barcelona. Just don't expect it to captivate you in the same way.