Fans of Football Manager 2005 are about to receive an unexpected gift in the form of a free data update, which will be made available by Sports Interactive and SEGA Europe on Wednesday, March 2nd to co-incide with the release of the second and hopefully final patch for Football Manager 2005.

The data update, which will be available free-of-charge from www.sigames.com, brings the game right up to date by including all changes in personnel that have occurred in the world of football since the game's initial release on November 4th 2004 and the closure of the recent transfer window on January 31st (a total of more than 160,000 change of player, coaching and managerial staff and stats).

"We are very happy to offer our fans this 'thank you' in recognition of the support that they have shown to us and it's great that SEGA has given us the green light to do it," says Miles Jacobson, Managing Director of Sports Interactive. "Football Manager has become the game of choice for all football fans because of the level of realism that it offers its players and this update can only enhance the experience."

The update will be available in a number of forms, combined with the latest (and final) FM 2005 patch in standard, RAR and Torrent format (the patch will also be available as standalone file for those who do not want the update). The patch will be about 15MB without the data, and 80MB with the data. The torrent version will go live early on Wednesday afternoon, with the other versions to follow later in the day. It will be available for both PC & Mac, with seperate patches/updates for Worldwide Soccer Manager. The version being released will not work with the Korean or Czech/Polish versions of the game, and we'll have more information on versions for those as soon as we are given it!

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