You know a soccer management game is getting serious when a real life pro club wants to use the game's database as a scouting tool.

Everton FC (which I believe is in Everton) has announced that they signed an exclusive contract with Sports Interactive, makers of the long-lived and popular series Football Manager, to use the game's database as a scouting tool for real life talent.

If you played a Football Manager game, you might not be too surprised to hear this latest piece of news. As far as truly 'hardcore' games go, Football Manager deserves a spot on the top of the list. It has an incredible wealth of data on players from all over the world in the game -- the database has 370,000 players in it, from 20,000 different teams across 50 countries worldwide. All this mass of info was gleaned from the world's largest talent scouting network that includes over 1,000 scouts worldwide.

Previous Football Manager games accurately identified the exceptional talent of future football stars, including 15 year old Wayne Rooney.

In Football Manager games, each player has a mass of attributes rated between 1 and 100. There are so many fans of the game, that just from the power of Internets, through forums and fan sites, Football Manager fans are often able to find real, real life deals -- players that are talented yet can be signed for a reasonable amount of money. 

Football Manager's Paul Collyer had this to say: “The game’s database is a valuable resource with the most extensive scouting network in football so Everton FC is making a top signing. I am personally delighted with today’s announcement as I’m a Toffees fan. Standing on the pitch with my signing on shirt is as close to my boyhood dream of playing at Goodison Park as I will ever get.”

Football Manager 2009 for PC and Apple Macintosh, and Football Manager Handheld 2009 for Sony PSP are both released today (November 14th).

This gamer tried Football Manager 2005 and immediately became addicted, finally managing to get the Dresden Dyanmos up into the first league. Even if you aren't much of a soccer fan, but like managing games, you might want to try out the game -- it can be a lot of fun.

For the first time in the series, Football Manager 2009 is introducing a 3D match engine, so you can watch your team either be destroyed or achieve glory in full detail.