Short cut keys:

National manager in the first season
You want to be national manager, but it's boring for you to wait until your appearance is good enough? Then start a new game, choose a national team and key in the name of the real manager! Special for CM2 Germany: you have to go to 'add more managers' and type the name of the actual (in the game) manager of germany. (Works also on all the other old CM2 versions, I think) But there seems to be a bug in CM2 Germany, you can't change your nationalteam squad :(

Get a player for free
Look out an interesting player which is available, and make an offer which is so high that it becomes accepted directly. Now choose 'Adjust Offer' and take it down to 0, then choose 'Cancel'. When the player is interested in a move to you, you get him for free.

Get more money if you sell a player
When you sell a player, and you want to get more money for him, do this: Press 'consider' for the first offer. If another club offers the same as the first, refuse it. Mostly the next offer will be higher, then consider it again, otherwise refuse it. Do this until you get no higher offers, then accept the highest.
Or be manager of two clubs and sell the best players from club 2 for a slice of bread to club number 1, and the worst for millions from club 1 to club 2 (enough money?). When club 2 is bankrupt, retire from the job (and search a new).

Get good young players
Look out for top players older than 32! They usually retire at the end of a season when their valuation is not too high. Make an offer for such players one day before season update (The day after European or World Cup finals, in seasons between around 15th of june), when he retires you will get a (mostly) young top player.
TIP: Release your older players on free transfer before season update and make an offer to sign them again!

Keep players with big-club release clause
It's always annoying when your best player wents to another club, because he had a big-club release clause. If you want to keep such a player, just list him for loan and refuse all offers. You also can raise the asking price up to millions for keeping him. But when the contract expires, there is no way to prevent him from leaving the club, when he wants.

Better chances to win
- Use the direct style
- Players should have high values in creativity and passing, especially in the midfield
- More goals- more fun! Play with at least 2 strikers
- Don't ever look on the values- look on the average ratings
or try this, when you really can't loose, and have the time: Save before every match, when you lose quit without saving (*), and play the match again!

Play with an extra-player
Pose a player in the left defence position and you can play without a goalkeeper. You can have an extra field-player then, because the left defender will play as a goalkeeper and defender! But I'm not sure if your team is really better then, so please mail your comments!

For users of CM2 Germany
When you want to edit the data with Boah's CM2 Editor, you must first rename the *.db1 file you want to edit (without the 'g', e.g. pldata3g.db1 to pldata3.db1), otherwise the editor can not find the file. But don't forget to rename it again to the old name before you start a new game!

CM2 hangs up?
My CM2 Germany sometimes hangs up in august. If you have the same problem do this: Reload the game and choose 1 to 6 days before the date it hangs up 'manager holiday'. But after a week come back from Hawaii! Your team needs you...or not?

Friendlies
In the manual for CM2 (germany) they don't explain how to arrange friendlies, so I'll try to explain it:

1. Go to the "SQUAD DETAILS" and choose your team.
2. Then select "FIXTURES & RESULTS" and click on "FULL SEASON CALENDAR".
3. Click on HOME or AWAY, now you can choose your opponent (click it).
4. Now scroll through the dates with "PREVIOUS/NEXT SCREEN" to find a "FREE DATE FOR A FRIENDLY WITH XXX", when you found a free date, click on it.

That's all. When you never get Juventus for a friendly: Big clubs don't really want to play against minor teams.

Never arrange too much friendlies, CM2 hangs up then. When you get this problem, use the trick with the holidays!

amototxt2 1
When you get this message, you really have too much money. I noticed this error until now only with CM2 Germany. When you've more than 100 million DM, it kicks you off with this message when you try to buy a player. If you want to resume your game try this:
Download Dan Nagle's Saved Game Editor, and copy the file "svged.exe" into your CM2 directory. Now type "svged savedgamenumber f", e.g svged 7 f for saved game number 7. Now choose Team Data, look for your team and halve your money.

Thanks to Yannis who found out another easy way to solve it: Release one of your players on a free transfer. Then sign him again, give him 50.000/week for a 5 year contract. Release & and sign him again, until you reach 99.999.999 DM or less due to the penalty clauses paid.

Manage any international team in CM97/98
Thanks to "AnnBillyRolfe" for this cheat: You can manage any international team in this version of the game. All you have to do is go to the data editor (tmdata), find the international country you wish to manage, e.g. brazil, then change their division to whatever league you want to run, e.g. if you want to start an english league as brazil, then enter their league as EPR.
You also need to assign a manager to the country in mgdata, so you use that name when selecting the country, just as you would if you were managing england regularly.

You know another trick? Please mail me!

Thanks to all who helped me with this page!