Let's Make a Soccer Team!, known as Pro Soccer Club o Tsukurō! Euro Championship in Japan, is a PlayStation 2 football management sim developed by Smilebit and published by Sega in 2006. Part of the Pro Soccer Club o Tsukurō! franchise ("Let's Make a Professional Soccer Club!"), it was the first game from said franchise to be released outside Japan, and the only one that was a console title (2018's Sega Pocket Club Manager and 2026's Sega Football Club Champions were both mobile games).
The game (and the franchise as a whole) differs from the likes of Football Manager in three key ways:
- As the name implies, rather than managing an existing football team, you create and run your own in one of six European leagues (England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, or the Netherlands). While some other football management games, such as LMA Manager and FIFA Manager, gave you the option to do this, Let's Make a Soccer Team! makes it mandatory.
- You play as the club's founder and chairperson, rather than the manager, who is instead a separate employee that you can hire and fire like any other. This justifies your ability to expand the club's facilities and determine things like ticket prices, which would usually be above a manager's station.
- As well as the usual emergent narratives of sports games, the game features an actual narrative involving the CEO of the Big Bang conglomerate (whose name changes in each playthrough). After you refused to sell your team to him, he instead purchases your local rival team, with whom he is determined to humiliate you. Besting him serves as a major source of motivation both in- and out-of-universe.
Aside from that, the game boasts a full 3D match engine, with commentary from Scottish broadcaster Alan Green, over 400 clubs with fully-licensed squads, and connectivity with Smilebit's other football title Virtua Pro Football; players created in that game can be imported into this one, and your created teams from this game can be imported back into Virtua Pro Football.
Let's trope a soccer game:
- Anti-Frustration Features: You must win the promotion playoff at the start of the game before you gain control of most aspects of managing your club, but you're given a starting team that is much stronger than the other three in the playoff. Whilst this doesn't guarantee victory, the player would have to get extremely unlucky to need more than one retry if they lose. This starting team is also stronger than several second division clubs in each country, subverting Early Game Hell.
- Artistic License – Physics: Pitches seem to have unnaturally high friction, meaning that when the ball is played along the ground, it slows down and stops much quicker than it should do.
- Artistic License – Sports:
- The game (excluding the tutorial) starts in the 2006/07 season, but the league rosters are as they were in the 2005/06 season.
- No matter which country you create your team in, you start the game in a third division promotion playoff; in reality, only England, Italy and Spain had such playoffs in 2006. Also, your club and your rival get added to the second division afterwards, but do not replace any existing clubs in the division, meaning the league you start in has two more clubs and 4 more fixtures than it would normally have.
- You can create teams in Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland and have them compete in the English league system. While a few Welsh teams do compete in England due to the Grandfather Clause, Scottish teams have been explicitly banned from competing in English competitions since the 1890s, and Northern Irish teams competing in England is completely unheard of, for a mixture of logistical and political reasons.
- Despite nominally being the chairperson, you're able to do all the usual things that a manager would do, like picking the matchday squad, adjusting the team's tactics before and during matches, and buying or selling players. The team's actual manager is practically a figurehead whose only real responsibility is taking charge of training sessions.
- Artificial Stupidity: The AI in the game's match engine has a few noticeable quirks.
- When a player passes the ball, the game will sometimes decide that a player 40 yards away will be the one to receive it, even if there are players much closer, resulting in the match screeching to a halt for a few seconds as everyone just stands there waiting for that one player to run over and collect the ball.
- When a player receives the ball from a throw-in, they have an alarming tendency to run straight off the side of the pitch with it and gift their opponents a throw-in.
- Defenders often fail at basic defensive tasks, such as marking nearby opponents and keeping a flat defensive line so that an attacker behind the line isn't played onside. This however may be intended behaviour due to the matches only lasting a real time 2 minutes (plus injury time) per half.
- Bewildering Punishment: One of the possible reactions a player can have to being fired is to complain that they don't understand what they did to deserve it.
- Character Name Limits: Player names are restricted to a certain length, meaning some players (such as Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink) have their first names reduced to just the initial(s), and others (such as Andy van der Meyde) have it omitted entirely. The surnames displayed above players' heads during matches are further truncated to eight letters; the aforementioned Hasselbaink, for example, has his name displayed as "Hasselba".
- Crowd Chant: Par for the course for a football game. Some are performed in a garbled Simlish so they can be used in any of the playable leagues, while others (such as the crowd criticizing the referee or cheering for a specific player or team) are language-specific.
- Disc-One Nuke: The transfer list, specifically a large number of 'free agents' that are better than most of your starting players. Signing a few of them makes promotion or even the second division title possible in your first full season... but even the best free agents peak just short of being able to challenge the top first division clubs, so the player cannot solely rely on them.
- Egopolis: Your rival team's stadium will always be named after its chairman, with his face plastered all over the ad hoardings for good measure.
- Hate Sink: The Big Bang CEO's role is to be as much of a Jerkass towards you and your club as possible, in order to spur you on to beat him. He'll mock you if you go on a losing streak, mock you if you're slow to upgrade your stadium, mock you if his team beats yours...
- Mad Libs Dialogue: The match commentary is an especially egregious case. Alan Green will call a goal with a flat recording of the player's name (or more commonly, his shirt number), then a very noticeable pause, then Suddenly Shouting, "DELIVERING AN AWESOME SHOT!"
- Non-Standard Game Over: Finishing the season with a negative bank balance will net you a game over, as you've driven the club into bankruptcy. Finishing bottom of the second division for two straight seasons, however, will also end the game - and given how strong your team is likely to be after two seasons of training, you have to be going out of your way to do that.
- Old Save Bonus: As noted above, players you've created in Virtua Pro Football can be imported into this game as youth players (though you can only have one such player on your team at any given time), and teams you've created in this game can be imported into Virtua Pro Football to let you play as them.
- Opposing Sports Team: Played with. Setting aside the fact that they're from the same city as your team, your rivals are no more antagonistic or prone to playing dirty than any other team, and are roughly equal to yours in talent. Their owner, however, is an unrepentant Jerkass who takes every opportunity to brag about his team while insulting or dismissing yours.
- Personality Mechanic: Several. For example, players on your team can complain about not liking other players, either due to the complainer being easily irritated or the target being particularly unlikable (and it's not always obvious which one it is). Another example is that players have preferred play styles, and can become upset over time if the manager's preferred vision is too misaligned with their own.
- Save Scumming: The game attempts to prevent this. Your team's matches are seeded, such that they will always play out the same way unless you adjust your tactics and/or lineup, but your opponents' matches are predetermined and will always yield the same results. If you need a rival to lose, and they win 2-0, you can reload your save file as many times as you like, but the outcome will never change.
- Unlosable: Unlike almost every other sports management game out there, this is averted: if your results or finances are bad enough, your team folds and the game ends, with no way of continuing other than reloading an old save file and trying again.
- Vanity Project: One of the random articles that may appear in the newspaper reveals that the Big Bang CEO is working on a movie that he's not only
writing, directing, and producing himself, but also starring in. As in, he's playing every single role in the film. Naturally, the article goes on to state that the project has just been delayed due to his perfectionism... again. - What the Hell, Player?: Firing a player or staff member, or putting them on the transfer list, will cause them to get visibly angry or upset. Players will also grow unhappy and complain to you if you keep playing them out of position or pay them less than they (think they) deserve.