my best mate had CM 97/98 and i played it a few times around his - leading me to borrowing his game (because you didn't need the disc to load/save)
he was trying CM out to compare it to Premier Manager series (which we were both fond of at the time) it didn't take either of us long to realise we had struck gold
Oddly my mate learned to play Guitar and it is by far his biggest hobby these days - he no longer plays football management sims at all, i think the last CM he bought was 99/00 (the blue one) - i always bang on to him that he should buy the latest version of FM.... He hasn't ever played an FM game, he has no idea what he's missing