“Being a football manager makes you lose your hair,” former Chelsea Champions’ League winning coach famously said while launching the Guinness Football Manager Fantasy game in Kampala in August 2013.
Capped 34 times for his country, Roberto Di Matteo as he is famously known played for several teams across Europe before becoming a manager, most famously at Chelsea, where he led the team to their first UEFA Champions League win in 2012. He was in Kampala in August to launch the game show.
Since the launch of the game, thousands have taken part in the game show that gave them the chance to prove their soccer prowess by managing their own teams and scoring points to win fantastic prizes every week.
One thing for sure though is that many of them didn’t lose their hair as shown by the resilience portrayed by Dennis Moini who emerged Manager of the Season.
Moini, a third year student of Information Technology at Kyambogo University in Kampala proved that he knew his football and has thus bagged the UGX 5,000,000 that had been staked. His trick; research as well as help from colleagues. And well, he hasn’t lost his hair.
“They (colleagues) would always help me out, advising on the players to look out for. At the beginning of the season, I used players like Wayne Rooney (Manchester United) and Liverpool’s Mignolet. I later on dropped them opting for more consistent performers like Luis Suarez and the Manchester City’s players,” Moini said while receiving his cash at the Uganda Breweries Limited head office this morning.
Adding, “Of course I have to do something for my colleagues; they helped me out a lot during the English Premier League season. At the moment, I have not yet decided what to do with the money. I will do that when I get home.”
Similarly, while receiving his Manager for the Month of March Award, Moni was rather satirical suggesting that his tactics would have helped Arsene Wenger lift the Barclays Premier League title.
“I had the right mix of players in my team and had he (Arsene) borrowed a leaf from me, that title would have been Arsenal’s.”
Participation in the game show was made simpler; soccer fan could use any basic text phone to participate.
This was the first game of its kind to be available on a simple SMS basis where, for the price of one SMS, one could play the game on any network in the same way that one tops up airtime.”
During the season, Roberto Di Matteo would choose a footballer who had helped his team during an English Premier League weekend who would then be his ‘Player Made of More.’
Any manager who had that particular player in their teams earned extra points.
Phoebe Nakabazzi, the Brand Manager Guinness at UBL said that the participation in the campaign met their expectations with thousands taking part in the game show.
“Every week, we computed the top 105 players and rewarded five players every month. So in the ten months, 51 players were rewarded. We are now planning for something bigger next season,” she said.
