Football Manager 2005 - Copyright Issues

Copyright Issues

Due to various copyright disputes and restrictions certain alterations had to be made to the game data which took away some of the game's famous realism. Noticeable changes included the following:

• The name of the famous German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn had to be removed and was replaced with the name Jens Mustermann (Mustermann translates from German into English as Sample Man and is the German equivalent of John Doe or Joe Bloggs - see Placeholder name). This is because Kahn does not allow his image or name to be used in certain computer games and it is speculated that his name was changed to Jens in the game (the name of his main goalkeeping rival, Jens Lehmann) as a light-hearted dig at Kahn.
• The German national team never picks 'real' players and instead only ever uses 'greyed-out' fictional players.
• The names of all French league teams had to be changed from their full names to simply the name of the city they represent. For example, Paris Saint-Germain became Paris and Olympique de Marseille became Marseille.
• The names of Japanese league teams were changed to completely fictional names such as Niitsu Unicorn and Katano Blaze.
• The name of the Japanese J. League was changed to the N-League or Nihon League.
• The names of the major European trophies were changed to fictional names. The European Cup or UEFA Champions League became the Champions Cup, the UEFA Cup became the Euro Cup and the UEFA Intertoto Cup became the Euro Vase.

Thanks to the way these data changes have been made through using simple instructions in plain-text files called EDT files and LNC files, it is possible to reverse these changes, either by modifiying the files or by deleting the appropriate file).