When two young brothers from rural Shropshire set out to make a football management computer game in the early Nineties, they tried to produce a simulation that imitated reality. Sixteen years on from the first version of Football Manager, their creation is influencing reality. Not just because the game is so addictive that it has been cited as a factor in divorce cases, but because one Barclays Premier League club have admitted to what others have been doing on the quiet for years: using Football Manager’s player database as a real-life scouting tool.

On Friday, it was announced that Everton have signed an exclusive deal with Sports Interactive, the game’s developers, to give the club special access to the full database. At a stroke, David Moyes’s scouting team gained details of more than 370,000 players and staff at 20,000 teams in 50 countries. Why Everton, when other clubs had approached the makers about a similar tie-up? It helped, no doubt, that Paul and Oliver Collyer, those brothers, are diehard Evertonians.

Much of the database is hidden to normal users, because Football Manager requires virtual managers to “scout” obscure players before revealing complete dossiers. Among the many categories are: players’ best positions, languages spoken, career histories, contract details and dozens of skill and personality attributes quantified by being rated out of 20.

While the information is not perfect, much is accurate because it has been compiled by more than 1,000 researchers worldwide. And so, down the years, the game has predicted the rise of players such as Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tévez, David Beckham and Carlos Vela.

Even Chelsea are scaling down their worldwide scouting operation, so at a time when football is facing up to the economic downturn it is not hard to see why clubs might prefer to search for a tall and pacy teenage left back by using a PC rather than paying for someone to spend weeks and months trawling the leagues of Eastern Europe, South America or Africa.

Three quarters of Premier League clubs and 50 per cent of those in the Coca-Cola Championship have signed up with Scout7, a Birmingham-based company with offices in Germany, France and Argentina as well as full-time researchers in the Netherlands, Poland and Chile. Scout7 offers services such as player databases and tailored research to help to organise and objectify a club’s scouting network.

Because it is aimed at proper managers, it will not allow you to become manager of the Los Angeles Galaxy and sack Beckham or take charge at Stamford Bridge, strip John Terry of the captaincy and hand Nicolas Anelka the armband. Or replace Arsène Wenger at Arsenal, sign Emile Heskey and Rory Delap, set your passing style to long ball and tell your players to kick the opposition.

All of which you can do in Football Manager 2009. It is still a game, after all. As usual, the annual update is more sophisticated than its predecessor. The most eye-catching new feature is the chance to watch matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and fast-forward or rewind the play. Managers can also teach their wingers to do Cristiano Ronaldo-style stepovers, and there are pre and postmatch press conferences where you can shape your image to be as bland as Avram Grant or as bold as José Mourinho. Or you can spend your time watching what Moyes does in the transfer market. Do I mean the real Everton manager or the virtual one? These days it’s getting tougher to tell the difference.

Football Manager 2009 is out now on PC and Mac; Football Manager Handheld 2009 is available for PSP.

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