It lives in that strange zone of games-about-games, simulations of sports that are, themselves, simulations of combat. I have been playing some form of fantasy football since I was a 1970s kid, when I would write out the names of 64 English clubs on tiny strips of paper, and put them in a pot, to be drawn out. The games would be played with dice, round after round, FA Cup-style.
I'm a huge fan of FIFA games and have been playing football-based video games since Football Manager on the Sinclair Spectrum, back in the early 1980s. Before that, I played Subbuteo. It's not just football that attracts this kind of behavior, but all major sports. The thing itself is never enough.
Soon after that first auction, I remember interviewing then-England Manager Terry Venables, at his London nightclub 'Scribes.' I mentioned Fantasy Football in passing.
"Yeah, I've heard about this," he said. "Some of the lads play it. I don't get what it's about."
