Football Manager: Man who holds record for longest game won nearly 1000 trophies

Everybody who has played it will admit that Football Manager (FM) is one of the most addictive games of all time.

Many of us spent countless hours playing FM and its predecessor Championship Manager (CM) during our younger years.

Time that should have been spent revising for exams was instead used on trying to win virtual silverware with the legends like Tonton Zola Moukoko, Cherno Samba and Richard Pacquette.

The game even featured an ‘Addictiveness Rating’ depending on how long your save was.

This included amusing sentences like ‘Time to order another takeaway pizza’, ‘Your relationship has expired’ and ’Turning your underwear inside out saves on washing’.

But if you sometimes feel bad about the amount of time you spent playing CM/FM, here’s someone who might make you feel less guilty.

Sepp Hedel is the man who currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest Football Manager game - and his stats are seriously impressive.

The German broke the record in October 2019 after reaching his 333rd(!) season in the game.

This equated to 1,940 hours of real-world play time - or 80 full days!

Sepp started the FM save in December 2017 while working in Africa away from his friends and family. Rather than reading books or learning a new language, he decided to set his sights on breaking a record on his favourite video game.

"The majority of the in-game years I played in Africa. When you are far away from home you don't have much impact on what's going on at home," he told Guinness World Records.

"I played Football Manager since 2015, so it was something familiar and the game helped me to distract and keep occupied.”

His progress was limited once he returned to Germany but Sepp still found time every day to continue playing