Underwhelming Football Manager stats motivate Harry Kane to succeed

Video games and football are synonymous with one another. Plenty of kids have become football supporters after picking up a copy of the various game titles available on the market. One of the most popular games out there is a football simulator called Football Manager.

In the game you take control of a team and manage every aspect of their day-to-day operations just like a real life professional manager would. Some of the world's biggest athletes still play these games even though they've reached the actual pinnacle of the sport in reality.

Tottenham Hotspur striker, Harry Kane, is so invested in his own Football Manager statistics and ratings that he admitted to the one of the creators of the game that his effort in actual matches was affected by his low ratings in the game.

"Harry Kane. We did always have him as all right but I have personally said sorry to him because there was a long period where he was on loan at other clubs and we didn't think he was going to reach the heights that he has done.

"I met him at the London Football Awards and he is known for playing a lot of computer games and I said 'we get 0.5 percent wrong, you were one that we got wrong,' and he said to me one of the reasons he was trying so hard was to make sure his stats were better in the game!"

-Mike Jacobson, sports director of Sports Interactive; Source: Daily Mirror

It's quite humorous to think about professional footballers, some who make millions of dollars a year, obsessing over their virtual statistics in a video game. It speaks to how successful these games are in the footballing culture and how they are perceived by those who matter. Come 2016-17, we think his ratings should finally be pretty good...