Reputation 1. The general estimation in which a person is held by the public. 2. The state or situation of being held in high esteem.
thefreedictionary.com

Just like in real life, reputation plays an important role in football. Higher reputation allows the players to aspire to play in better clubs, the clubs to sign quality players while the leagues or national teams can acquire more generous sponsors. Repuation constantly changes, at least in real football. Thanks to the European competitions, such as Champions League or UEFA Cup, clubs may become famous within a season. By participating in the competitions regularly, a club, together with its players and the domestic competition that it plays in, may enjoy higher prestige. What it is like in Football Manager? Well, it appears the competition reputation stays the same all the time!

A topic posted by MachinegunHead on SI Forum has started an interesting discussion. His assumptions are based on a test, which he has carried out to analyze the way reputation system works in Football Manager. At the very beginning of a game, the user put down all the relevant data to make use of it when comparing with values after a 10 year in-game period. After winning top Icelandic League 8 times and qualifying to Champions League with his Vikingur club, he could summarize the test and arrive at some interesting conclusions. First of all, let's take club reputation - SI should not change anything in this matter as the way club reputation changes reflects the reality well. However, competition reputation is a different story. Competition reputation has been static throughout the game, so that the Spanish, Italian, English and German leagues were still the strongest ones. This makes the game a bit unrealistic. It actually means you may never attract medium-quality players to lower reputation leagues, and you may even struggle with keeping own players, who will be ready to accept less paid jobs in better leagues.

The author of a topic has decided to share his own vision on the reputation system. He argues that the repuation level should change depending on the achievements. He is also of the opinion that league reputation should dictate the amount of money that clubs get for winning leagues or domestic cups. Another question raised by the user are newgens, whose potential at the moment is actually limited by the club and league levels.

SI staff has also decided to speak out on the matter. They explain the problem is more complex, as every small change in the system would have to tie in with other areas of the game. A good news is that the proposals of potential changes in the system have not been rejected, although it was stressed it is something that is not that easy to accomplish. Let' s face it - we will not see any changes in the reputation system in Football Manager 2009. What changes is SI going to introduce in FM 2010? Is anybody waiting for 4D? I do not think so. Well, maybe the reputation system will undergo some changes then? Let's hope so.

Topic on SI Forum