I suppose football manager is a little like NFL head coach. However, in soccer you don't have to call plays as such, you just set tactics and the players will act accordingly. Therefore you try and play to strengths.
The biggest thing about football manager IMO is the same as OOTP which is the management part. Scouting, contracts, expectations and all those in depth tweaking is where it really shines.
I know it wouldnt make much difference with graphical representation as the play-by-play is great. But if you're curious have a look at some online vids for football manager gameplay. Something like that would be a game clincher personally for me. My wife is amazed at my obsession with these hard core stat driven sports games.
If only she could have seen the paper stats I kept as a kid on lakers vs celtics and the really early madden games.