German lower-league side TC Freisenbruch have turned simulation game Football Manager into reality by allowing users of their official website to decide the starting XI's formation, signings, entrance fees and even the price of beer at a game.
In an attempt to reverse a slow decline in recent years, the Essen-based club, founded in 1902, turned to Football Manager by allowing subscribers who paid a monthly fee of €5 to make important decisions on their behalf.
A few months into the Kreisliga B season, the second-lowest division in German's league system, Freisenbruch have won all but one of their 16 games, and top the table with an eight-point lead, and the community is slowly growing.
"We now have managers from Austria, Switzerland. There's one from Vietnam, and only yesterday a guy from Oslo signed in," the club's sporting head, Peter Schafer told ESPN FC, adding that they are currently working on an English version of the manager game.
The members of the Freisenbruch manager game receive real-time information on training performances and the fitness level of every player, and the club also offers videos from every match as well as financial statements after every match day, but in an interview with Reviersport at the beginning of the season, Schafer said that he was a bit disappointed with the feedback he received so far.
"Maybe people got the impression that this only addressed at members and fans of the club," he said. "But that's not the case."
He added in Suddeutsche Zeitung: "We want that people in Munich for instance are close to the team and its surroundings and can judge the players with all their strengths and weaknesses.
"We can vote whether we make an offer for Cristiano Ronaldo. We can't make a €100 million bid, but rather a crate of beer," he said.
Prior to the season, Freisenbruch convinced former Schalke player Mike Mollensiep, a member of the 1997 UEFA Cup-winning side, to join the club as a coach.
"I am only in it because we have this concept," he told Suddeutsche. "I played online football managers back in the days and wanted to know if it could really work. And it does, also because the cooperation with the managers is good."