How long is your longest game of Football Manager? 10 seasons? 20? Enough time that all the real footballers in the game have been replaced by newgens?
However long you’ve spent on the game, it likely doesn’t even come close to the achievements of Darren Bland.
The British gamer has broken the Guinness World Record for the longest ever FM game, taking charge of Fiorentina for a frankly outrageous 154 seasons.
We can only assume the game accounted for the evolution of the human race to the point that they will be able to live long into their second century, with Bland speculating that his in-game age would have passed 180 by the time he picked up his final Serie A title.
#FM10 fiend Darren Bland enters the @GWR Gamer's Edition for "longest single game" of FM: https://t.co/xLfn9fGyPd pic.twitter.com/ppZV8NVd4j
— Football Manager (@FootballManager) September 8, 2016
“When I start a game with a club, I finish it with said club,” Bland told the Guinness World Records site after leading the Viola to more than 150 trophies and once signing a player for £105m.
“Why abandon all the hard work just for some computer algorithm to muck it all up while I have to start the process all over?”
If you’re wondering how long 154 seasons lasts in game time, Bland spent nearly half a year in front of his screen (173 days 16 hours 51 minutes, to be precise), and the Football Manager Twitter account explains that there were rules over the amount of holiday permitted for the record to be broken.
That’s why it’s not quite on the level of the 1,000-year Football Manager simulation, which threw up some interesting results.
