Maxim Tsigalko

A Championship Manager Legend

Maxim Tsigalko

If you’re relatively new to the Football Manager universe, you’ve probably never heard of Maxim Tsigalko.

Maxim Tsigalko, whose name is probably more properly romanized as Maksim Tsyhalka (Максім Цыгалка in Belarusian), is one of the legendary wonderkids of Championship Manager 01/02. He’s such a legend, in fact, that articles like this one pop up right away if you search for the name of the game.

As this archived article describes, Tsigalko starts out as an 18 year old in Championship Manager 01/02, and is available for relatively cheap. You can sign him for pretty much any playable team. And he certainly will reward you — sometimes by scoring over 100 goals in a single season.

Images like this are actually pretty common on Championship Manager 01/02 forums:

As you can see here, Maxim starts off with high Pace and Acceleration attributes, which we now know is the best indicator of success in Football Manager:

Some things never change, I suppose.

Unfortunately, Maxim passed away in 2020. He never achieved anything close to the success that Championship Manager predicted.

But, like Championship Manager 01/02, he still lives on in the hearts and on the computers of fans.