Jimman23 is the manager of FC Bruggenhof and the winner of the ultimate SoccerProject Trophy, the title in A Division. I catch up with him a few days after the festivities. I congratulate him and ask how it feels to win the title: “Very special actually. I feel relieved mainly, thé goal has been achieved, nobody can take that away from me now. I’m definitely going to try again, but at least I did it once already. I started in B3 on June 24th 2004, a few days before the first season would start, I stayed for three seasons, went to A Division for one season, moved back to B1 for two seasons and since then I remained in A Division. Winning the title in A Division has always been the most important goal of all.”
I recall the beginning of SoccerProject very well myself and I want to know how jimman23 experienced that time: “that was really something, those early days. I had been playing Championship Manager for about four years or so, but that was not an online game. I had never even heard of Hattrick of other online manager games, I didn’t even know they existed. By coincidence I read an article about SoccerProject on the forum of Belgian first division team Westerlo. Not even an hour later I had my own team and I had told the entire village (Betekom) about SoccerProject. It was like a dream for me, I had often wondered why there wasn’t an online version of a Championship Manager-like game.”
Jimman23 actually organized the very first “invite your friends”-action on SoccerProject: “Yes, right after I started there were also pelsen, kenny, akki, Artoisboys, dino23m, racingbjorno and Aura who started their own team. (Also my sister and about five other mates of mine, but they all quit by now) I was completely sold. For six months on end I printed my players’ rating pages every day, until SPMT came along. Thank goodness it did, because I would have had a huge paper bill going! What appealed to me most was that I was playing against real people instead of a computer, I also looked forward to the friendlies against my friends. On top of that there was the fact that SoccerProject was made by a Westerlo fan (Sjarel) and I digged that as well. Now that is not that important anymore, but in the beginning I really enjoyed doing another Westerlo fan a favor by getting his game known to other people. Here at Westel, we’re all one big happy family, you know!”
The conversation continues about jimman’s hobbies: “I only started going to Westerlo games when they got into the Belgian first division. Before I didn’t have the time for it. I was into cycling and that took nearly all my time. I was a good sprinter, but most of the youth races were won by someone who could get in a break-away, so I usually raced for second or third place. By the time I was 19, I hadn’t been to more than 3 parties, or even once in a bar. I lived for my sport, went to bed by 9.30 pm, watch my diet and trained six days out of seven. When I became 18, I was hoping for a transfer to a better team, but when that fell through, I had enough. The motivation was gone. A few years later I started playing soccer, amateur football for FC Bruggenhof in Betekom.”
Jimman23 is the partner of Aura (manager of Mira in B.2). I wonder what it is like for both people in the same household to be possessed by SoccerProject: ”it’s fun to share it with her. I think I would have difficulty to cope if she were to quit playing. I’d have to talk about my team to our gerbils and I’m not really up for that. 
SoccerProject is not the most important topic of conversation around the house, but it is one of the regular topics. Especially now, with my title and Aura’s relegation battle.” When I remark that a lot of managers would be jealous of this type of relationship, he replies: “Yes, I understand, I’m lucky having her and not only as far as SoccerProject is concerned. I met her in café De Pomp, that name should ring a bell. It is the name of kenny’s team, also an A division manager.
Aura came there along with a bunch of her friends and you might say that it was love at first sight. Besides SoccerProject we share other hobbies as well. We go to watch Westerlo games together and when I play for Bruggenhof, she comes to watch with Mira (the dog of her parents).”
Jimman23 works as a train conductor for the Belgian railroads company, punching tickets come rain or shine: “I studied economics in high school. I liked it, but only because of the girls that were in my class. I really hated studying, I was smart enough alright, but too lazy. I tried twice to get a higher degree, but then I quit for good. After a few jobs I could start for the NMBS (Belgian national railroads company). I don’t quite know how that happened, but the people at the interview seemed to like me, probably fell for my looks. 
I’ve been doing the work for six years now and I like doing it. The shift schedule isn’t really a problem, we can choose our own hours and I hardly ever start before 10am, I do however often get home only at 1am, but that isn’t a problem for me. It’s just that sometimes I see Aura when she’s already asleep, but luckily she’s very beautiful then as well!”
We talk further about SoccerProject: “the best time on SoccerProject is always when I get a new player, in fact the whole concept of transferring. I spend quite some time going over the transfer list, but I only buy when I’m sure the player is good or when I’m sure the player will bring something extra to my team. The most annoying part of SoccerProject? There is something, when I was in the lead in A Division, I got a huge amount of messages from other managers, sometimes even up to 25 messages a day. You can’t imagine what some people dare ask. It’s like everyone all of a sudden thinks I can do something with a player of theirs. Ok, NOT true!! Yesterday I had one guy asking me to buy his 28-year old RF for a large amount of money. You should know that he had only 70% global rating. Do those people really think that you become overall Champion by buying mediocre players from everyone? I do try to stay polite though.”
Jimman23 is also SoccerProject Sheriff: “being Sheriff is not always easy because there are a lot of difficult cases, but I like doing it. I know I’m helping out Sjarel with it, checking out transfers, figuring out links between different teams, that sort of stuff. But it happens that I get it wrong, then another Sheriff or Sjarel has a different opinion and I have another look at the whole thing. There are three of us in the meantime, bats1903, krcgenk and me, and we communicate a lot, which helps. And if it’s really decision time, Sjarel steps up to the plate.
As an extra tool, we get the possibility to look at team budgets and to see who has logged in on the same computer. We come across some funny things as well, like a manager who reports his own second team, out of fear of being caught, but we see that right away of course. And there once was an English guy who had created hundreds of teams. Strange hobby that guy had, huh?”
In the meantime the simulation of 10pm had passed: “I’m not bothered anymore by a few minutes more or less. I used to be though, before, when a simulation took two minutes longer than average, I started to panic. I’d imagine that Sjarel and ReesinG had quit or something. When Aura was away at university and I was still living with my parents, I was online the entire evening playing SoccerProject. Don’t ask me what I was doing, but I was online the entire time. Back then I was severely addicted to the game, now I’m only normally addicted.”
If that isn’t a nice closing statement for this interview! I say goodbye to Jimman23, but deep in my heart I know this isn’t really goodbye. I dream of dozens of meetings with Jimman23 and Aura and many seasons of pure SoccerProject fun.
By Isis
