Let’s Make a Soccer Team doesn’t allow you to take on a pre-existing team – like the title suggests you’ve got to make your own. You can select from six different European leagues – English, Italian, Spanish, French, German or the Netherlands. Each country will have a number of cities that are looking for a new team, so you must make a decision based on the information provided that indicates whether the city will be appropriate for your team’s needs, growth and future popularity.
That's about as deep as it gets
What sets Let’s Make a Soccer Team apart from traditional soccer management games is that it has a plot. Yes, that’s right, a soccer management game with a plot. When the game begins, a wealthy media baron Mr Leonard (who looks suspiciously like one of the Weinstein brothers) is interested in buying a soccer team, and the media suggests that he is interested in yours. Using your managerial wit and soccer knowledge, you have to guide your team through a promotion tournament so they can get into the next level of leagues. Lose the tournament and you lose your team – win the tournament and the game continues. It’s an interesting element to add to the standard soccer management game, but unfortunately, it is easily undermined.
The reason for our disappointment is Let’s Make a Soccer Team’s real lack of depth in its approach to being a manager, both on and off the field. On-field, you only have a limited number of different strategies and plays available, and it’s very difficult to attempt to turn the course of the game around given what you’re provided. Off-field, the game does manage to get the basics right, but never tries to give players more than any other soccer management game on the market. Statistical depth is very limited in comparison to Sega’s own Football Manager game, which really makes one wonder why they needed to stick two fingers into the one pie. Let’s Make a Soccer Team also lacks the licensing power of all of the other soccer management games on the market, so you won’t be seeing all of your favourite stars in the game.
Moments later, the ball tore through the keeper's chest, ending the torture
Let’s Make a Soccer Team’s other big weakness is its presentation. Players have to navigate their way through an awfully cumbersome menu system which is plagued with seemingly unnecessary load times. On top of that, if you decide to watch your matches in order to hand out commands on the fly, you’re presented with what is quite possibly the ugliest attempt at on-field soccer action we’ve seen in this generation of console hardware. It basically pales in comparison to soccer titles which launched with the PlayStation 2 over six years ago, which really is saying something – players with little in the way of detail, terribly limited animation and a distinct lack of atmosphere within the stadium are probably the most offensive factors. The game does feature commentary, which is a bit of a surprise, but its positively painful, which isn’t such a surprise. Fortunately, the commentary is available in six different languages, so flip it over to the Spanish announcer, who’s a little livelier than our English-speaking friend.
Ultimately, it’s really that lack of depth and bad presentation that does Let’s Make a Soccer Team in. It is fun to have a bit of an incentive to perform various tasks within the soccer management game (other than the obvious ‘win lots’), however you can have all of the greatest concepts ever imagined in a game, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you can properly execute them. Sega should just stick with Football Manager and save itself the cost of developing what is essentially an unnecessary addition to their software lineup.
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