From The Times
It says everything about quite how extraordinary Vugar Huseynzade’s story is that the part where he takes Tamworth to the Champions League final is among the more plausible details. “This was always my dream,” smiles the polite, personable 22-year-old, a little bashfully. “And now I have it.”
It is more than just his dream, though: it is the dream of a whole generation of football fans, those whose experience of the beautiful game is not simply watching it and playing it, but simulating it, too, thanks to a raft of computer games which have allowed ordinary supporters to take on the stresses and strains of management.
Thanks to a mixture of gall, gumption and a dash of good fortune, over the last year Huseynzade has lived out the ultimate Boy’s Own tale for the video game age, an astonishing rise from business student to football powerbroker, buying and selling players for his very own club.
In the summer of 2009, quite by chance, Huseynzade – a Swede of Azerbaijani extraction – was introduced to Hafiz Mammadov, an Azeri billionaire and the president of FC Baku, one of the country’s leading clubs.
Both men were clearly impressed: Huseynzade recalls the entrepreneur’s bottomless charisma; Mammadov told his teenage guest to get in touch once he had finished his education. Perhaps, he said, he would be able to find a job for him. “It was a joke, I think,” says Huseynzade. “He was being diplomatic.”
The younger man took Mammadov at his word. When he finished his degree in Business Management and Administration at Boston University, he applied for a job at one of Mammadov’s firms. In January last year, he was invited to move to Baku and take up a post as a risk analyst.
It did not last long: Mammadov soon discovered that not only was Huseynzade a passionate football fan – going to watch FC Baku’s games in his spare time – but also a devotee of Football Manager, a computer simulation so addictive as to be dangerously narcotic, in which players take control of a team and attempt to guide them to glory.
“I’d been playing it since 2002,” says Huseynzade. He was pretty good, too: this is where Tamworth come into play. “You win most things when you have been playing it so long. I once took Tamworth to the Champions League final. I had seen them on television, in the FA Cup, I think, and they were sponsored by their fans, so I thought I would see how I could do with them.”
That was enough for Mammadov. When, in October last year, FC Baku’s results nosedived, he offered his young protégé the chance to become the team’s “manager”, not in the English sense, but the continental one. “I am not a coach,” Huseynzade says, quickly. “My responsibilities are everything else: the contracts, the salaries, the transfers and the bonuses.
“The first month was very difficult. I was really nervous on my first day. Nobody wants to work for a director who is younger than them. We have 30 professional players and it was hard to handle everything. They did not look at me as a professional. I had lots of complaints in those first few weeks.
“But after a while, I showed my personality, showed that I love football. We had a problem with team spirit, so I made sure I took the players out for dinner, all together, or to a movie. Now we all have a very good relationship, one of mutual respect.”
It has helped that results have been good: FC Baku finished fifth in the Azeri top flight, narrowly missing out on a place in Europe, much to Huseynzade’s disappointment. That fine campaign was helped in no small part by the arrival, in December, of Marius Pena, a 28-year-old Romanian forward who scored five goals in his first six games. He was Huseynzade’s first transfer.
“I found him on Football Manager,” he says. “The game is not always right with the way it assesses who is a good player and who is not, but it is fine maybe 60 per cent of the time. On the game, Pena has great technical attributes but he lacks pace; that is true in real life.
“We got in touch with his agent, watched some DVDs, scouted a couple of games he played for his former club, Otelul Galati, decided we liked him and then – in consultation with the head coach and the scouts – signed him. He is on an 18-month contract. He worked out pretty well. He is a good guy.”
This is the question, of course: is Football Manager – as all of Huseynzade’s fellow enthusiasts would hope it is – suitable preparation for a career in real life football?
“It is realistic in some ways, but less so in others,” he says. “I learned a lot from it, about things like contracts, bonuses, signing-on fees. In the last few editions of the game, they have made it important to have the right atmosphere at your club. That is right, too.
“But there is another side that it is harder to capture: I never thought players were so emotional. I have learned that it is best to be cool after a game, not to say anything, and to discuss things the day after. You have to be as much a psychologist as anything. You have to realise that we are here to keep them happy, not the other way round.”
Then, of course, there is the pressure, of the media, of the fans, of the absence of the option to reset the computer and try again after a particularly disappointing defeat.
“The fans have been OK,” he says. “It is a young football culture in Azerbaijan, so maybe they are more open to new ideas. The press, when we lose, is bad, but they are just doing their job. You are responsible for helping a big team to win. If you mess it up, it is blamed on you.”
Despite the steep learning curve, Huseynzade is enjoying his new life, the one he simulated for so long. He will be working with a new head coach next season, while FC Baku’s link with Atletico Madrid may yet bring a welter of Spanish players to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Together, they will try to guide the club past Neftchi Baku, Khazar Lankaran and Gabala, all flush with cash from the country’s oil boom, and into Europe.
It is an all-consuming life, he says. “It is 24/7. I live at our training base. It has taken over completely. It is far more than a job.” How then, does he relax, so far from family and friends?
“I still play Football Manager. I was playing it on the flight over.”
It is more than just his dream, though: it is the dream of a whole generation of football fans, those whose experience of the beautiful game is not simply watching it and playing it, but simulating it, too, thanks to a raft of computer games which have allowed ordinary supporters to take on the stresses and strains of management.
Thanks to a mixture of gall, gumption and a dash of good fortune, over the last year Huseynzade has lived out the ultimate Boy’s Own tale for the video game age, an astonishing rise from business student to football powerbroker, buying and selling players for his very own club.
In the summer of 2009, quite by chance, Huseynzade – a Swede of Azerbaijani extraction – was introduced to Hafiz Mammadov, an Azeri billionaire and the president of FC Baku, one of the country’s leading clubs.
Both men were clearly impressed: Huseynzade recalls the entrepreneur’s bottomless charisma; Mammadov told his teenage guest to get in touch once he had finished his education. Perhaps, he said, he would be able to find a job for him. “It was a joke, I think,” says Huseynzade. “He was being diplomatic.”
The younger man took Mammadov at his word. When he finished his degree in Business Management and Administration at Boston University, he applied for a job at one of Mammadov’s firms. In January last year, he was invited to move to Baku and take up a post as a risk analyst.
It did not last long: Mammadov soon discovered that not only was Huseynzade a passionate football fan – going to watch FC Baku’s games in his spare time – but also a devotee of Football Manager, a computer simulation so addictive as to be dangerously narcotic, in which players take control of a team and attempt to guide them to glory.
“I’d been playing it since 2002,” says Huseynzade. He was pretty good, too: this is where Tamworth come into play. “You win most things when you have been playing it so long. I once took Tamworth to the Champions League final. I had seen them on television, in the FA Cup, I think, and they were sponsored by their fans, so I thought I would see how I could do with them.”
That was enough for Mammadov. When, in October last year, FC Baku’s results nosedived, he offered his young protégé the chance to become the team’s “manager”, not in the English sense, but the continental one. “I am not a coach,” Huseynzade says, quickly. “My responsibilities are everything else: the contracts, the salaries, the transfers and the bonuses.
“The first month was very difficult. I was really nervous on my first day. Nobody wants to work for a director who is younger than them. We have 30 professional players and it was hard to handle everything. They did not look at me as a professional. I had lots of complaints in those first few weeks.
“But after a while, I showed my personality, showed that I love football. We had a problem with team spirit, so I made sure I took the players out for dinner, all together, or to a movie. Now we all have a very good relationship, one of mutual respect.”
It has helped that results have been good: FC Baku finished fifth in the Azeri top flight, narrowly missing out on a place in Europe, much to Huseynzade’s disappointment. That fine campaign was helped in no small part by the arrival, in December, of Marius Pena, a 28-year-old Romanian forward who scored five goals in his first six games. He was Huseynzade’s first transfer.
“I found him on Football Manager,” he says. “The game is not always right with the way it assesses who is a good player and who is not, but it is fine maybe 60 per cent of the time. On the game, Pena has great technical attributes but he lacks pace; that is true in real life.
“We got in touch with his agent, watched some DVDs, scouted a couple of games he played for his former club, Otelul Galati, decided we liked him and then – in consultation with the head coach and the scouts – signed him. He is on an 18-month contract. He worked out pretty well. He is a good guy.”
This is the question, of course: is Football Manager – as all of Huseynzade’s fellow enthusiasts would hope it is – suitable preparation for a career in real life football?
“It is realistic in some ways, but less so in others,” he says. “I learned a lot from it, about things like contracts, bonuses, signing-on fees. In the last few editions of the game, they have made it important to have the right atmosphere at your club. That is right, too.
“But there is another side that it is harder to capture: I never thought players were so emotional. I have learned that it is best to be cool after a game, not to say anything, and to discuss things the day after. You have to be as much a psychologist as anything. You have to realise that we are here to keep them happy, not the other way round.”
Then, of course, there is the pressure, of the media, of the fans, of the absence of the option to reset the computer and try again after a particularly disappointing defeat.
“The fans have been OK,” he says. “It is a young football culture in Azerbaijan, so maybe they are more open to new ideas. The press, when we lose, is bad, but they are just doing their job. You are responsible for helping a big team to win. If you mess it up, it is blamed on you.”
Despite the steep learning curve, Huseynzade is enjoying his new life, the one he simulated for so long. He will be working with a new head coach next season, while FC Baku’s link with Atletico Madrid may yet bring a welter of Spanish players to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Together, they will try to guide the club past Neftchi Baku, Khazar Lankaran and Gabala, all flush with cash from the country’s oil boom, and into Europe.
It is an all-consuming life, he says. “It is 24/7. I live at our training base. It has taken over completely. It is far more than a job.” How then, does he relax, so far from family and friends?
“I still play Football Manager. I was playing it on the flight over.”
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