‘Football Manager 26’ evaluation: Enjoyable to play, terrible to have a look at

Since I used to be a child, I’ve been obsessive about sports activities administration simulation video games — to an absurd diploma. Whether it was Total Extreme Wrestling, Out of the Park Baseball, Draft Day Sports: College Basketball, World of Mixed Martial Arts, Eastside Hockey Manager, or Front Office Football Nine, I’ve performed (or at the very least tried to play) all of them.

All that to say: this micro-genre of very area of interest video video games is my real love. Football Manager is not any completely different. I’ve poured hundreds of hours into varied editions of Sports Interactive’s iconic collection and fashioned a whole lot of parasocial bonds with gamers who, technically talking, don’t exist. (They’re actual to me, dammit.)

Despite what you would possibly consider a glorified spreadsheet simulator, these video games aren’t grindy — they’re meditative. They reward endurance and planning, demanding long-term imaginative and prescient, whether or not you’re clawing your manner up from the decrease leagues or assembling a squad for a run in Europe.

But Football Manager 26 calls for a unique type of endurance, one which asks longtime followers like me to just accept pointless change to get to the great things. There’s brilliance right here, buried someplace underneath the muddle, however discovering it requires religion bordering on masochism. In different phrases, the brand new UI/UX overhaul makes it more durable to get pleasure from what’s in any other case an thrilling evolution in gameday presentation.

After round 20 hours, I’m left wanting extra — or at the very least desirous to look at one thing else. Which brings me to the query no fan desires to ask after a two-year wait: was this actually price it? Don’t we, the devoted, deserve one thing higher?

Football Manager 26 has a brand new engine, new look

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

On construct alone, Football Manager 26 is an enormous improve — it’s the primary within the collection to run on the Unity engine. That shift, although, got here with main inner challenges, which is why the initially deliberate Football Manager 25 was scrapped in February final 12 months. It marked the primary true cancellation within the collection’ historical past, one thing we hadn’t seen since Championship Manager 4’s delay a long time in the past, which, fittingly, was additionally brought on by an engine change.

So, after two lengthy years since Football Manager 24, we’ve lastly arrived on the Unity-powered way forward for the franchise. And it appears…nice. You’d count on that additional growth time to ship flashy new bells and whistles — and sure, there are some, significantly within the new Match Day presentation. But past that? The relaxation feels, properly, kinda meh.

Let’s begin with the 3D supervisor and participant fashions, a weak spot that has haunted the collection for years, and sadly, that hasn’t modified. When creating my supervisor, the fashions are nonetheless tough across the edges, and the hairstyles seem to have been unexpectedly sculpted in Blender. I’m not anticipating EA FC ranges of hair physics or texture, however might we at the very least get greater than three Black hairstyles — Fade, Dreadlocks, and Afro — all with equivalent, receding hairlines? The identical concern plagues the creation of feminine managers, the place choices boil right down to 10 variations of the identical middle-parted bob and perhaps two pure kinds for Black girls — certainly one of which appears suspiciously like a stretched-out rectangle glued to the mannequin’s head.

Minor gripes, positive, however these things issues as a result of immersion is what makes Football Manager particular. It’s the beating coronary heart of the expertise, the factor that turns a spreadsheet simulator right into a residing soccer world.

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

Speaking of immersion, I genuinely recognize how Football Manager 26’s revamped supervisor creation system leans more durable into your character’s lore to form their stats. In earlier editions, you’d merely choose your teaching badges, stage of enjoying expertise, and administration model focus — decisions that translated into talent factors to distribute throughout attributes like Attacking, Motivating, or People Management. It was a exact, hands-on strategy to outline your supervisor’s identification and, extra importantly, their popularity, which influenced all the pieces from which jobs you possibly can land to how the board responded to requests and even how gamers approached contract negotiations.

Now, that sense of management is gone. You cannot manually allocate factors anymore; attributes are locked in primarily based on the popularity presets you select. The acquainted 1–20 numerical scale has been changed by round icons that fade from crimson (“unsuited”) to inexperienced (“outstanding”). Reputation is now decided by a three-step course of: first, deciding on the height of your enjoying profession, from Global Superstar to Amateur; second, figuring out any non-playing roles throughout the soccer world, whether or not as a coach, scout, or pundit; and third, deciding how well-known you’re in that area. These selections set your baseline Coaching and Mental attributes, although the latter has been pared again — “Level of Discipline” is now “Authority,” whereas “Player Knowledge” and “Youngster Knowledge” have been quietly eliminated.

To additional tweak your supervisor’s strengths, you then choose “Tendencies,” which is a pleasant contact — I like having extra narrative context behind my avatar. But the trade-off is a lack of flexibility. It appears like SI has simplified an already easy system. If immersion is what defines why I really like Football Manager, then simplification is what defines my rising frustration with Football Manager 26’s new UI.

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

It’s not simply that the brand new UI is unhealthy to have a look at — although, for the report, I’m not precisely a fan of the purple and blue gradient both — it is that you could really feel the design philosophy behind it. This is not a UI made for longtime gamers; it is one constructed to simplify issues for newcomers. That philosophy has been in movement because the first reveal of the now-cancelled Football Manager 25, which aimed to unify the collection throughout all platforms. Now that FM has totally embraced its cellular and console ambitions, the result’s an interface that appears and feels prefer it was made for a pill first, PC second.

Everything has that iPad app aesthetic — modular pop-up home windows, tiny textual content, outsized spacing — and on a bigger monitor, it is straight-up punishing on the eyes. Many of the participant and agent interactions now are styled as textual content messages. The intent is evident: make the sport extra accessible. However, in doing so, Football Manager 26 has compromised the identification of a collection that when prided itself on depth and element.

If I have been handy out thrones and roses for Football Manager 26, I’d begin by giving credit score the place it’s due: I like that the builders took a extra fashionable method to the UI design. It’s clear, glossy, and visually in line with different modern sims. I additionally recognize the intent behind it — a real effort to streamline the expertise and get gamers onto the pitch sooner.

And…that’s about it for the roses.

Football Manager presents loss of life by a thousand dropdowns

I’m making an attempt to not sound hyperbolic after I say the brand new UI adjustments type of destroy what I really like about Football Manager. For many people, calling FM a “spreadsheet simulator” isn’t an insult — it’s the purpose. The pleasure comes from immersion: years upon years of knowledge, historical past, statistics, and tales. I need to reside in that information, to get misplaced within the archives of gamers and golf equipment and see how soccer’s alternate historical past unfolds. But the brand new interface makes that more durable. The recreation now feels actively immune to exploration, slowed down by redundant home windows, tabs, and submenus that bury easy data behind too many clicks.

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

Case in level: in certainly one of my saves managing Cheonan within the South Korean Okay League 2, I needed to verify the Okay League 1 desk. In FM 2024, this was simple — simply click on the arrow subsequent to the league emblem and leap straight as much as Okay League 1. In FM 26, that fast motion has was a labyrinth. I now need to hover over “Competitions” → “Asia” → “South Korea” → “Men’s” and then choose “K League 1.”

It’s loss of life by a thousand dropdowns.

Things that have been as soon as immediately accessible on the left-hand panel — competitions, scouting, funds — at the moment are buried behind layered menus and pop-up home windows, making me surprise what precisely was occurring within the design conferences. Even viewing the competitions your group is concerned in, as soon as a one-click affair underneath “Competitions,” now requires a trek by Portal > Overview > Stages earlier than you’ll be able to even search for the competitors you need.

Plenty of what made FM’s interface environment friendly and customizable is just gone in Football Manager 26. Basic features like reloading skins, clearing cache, or altering attribute colours have vanished, together with small quality-of-life settings that permit gamers determine how menus behaved — like the place the again button led or what default display membership, nation, or participant pages opened to. Even long-standing visible instruments just like the attribute graph, passmaps, heatmaps, and scatter plot numbers have both been buried behind tiny pop-ups or eliminated fully. The identical goes for participant comparability, function attribute highlights, employees comparability, and a number of other key finance and coaching choices.

Match Day and squad administration haven’t escaped both. Essential navigation instruments, such because the spacebar-to-messages shortcut, Match Day calendar, and standings, in addition to the traditional sideline digicam, are gone. You cannot filter or toggle replays like earlier than, match stats throughout highlights are restricted, and helpful interface particulars — the little “i” subsequent to participant names, the short health hearts, or the “Best XI” and “Where Are They Now?” options — have all disappeared. Even staples just like the Development Centre, mortgage and worldwide experiences, and deadline day have been watered down.

When a recreation constructed on information instantly hides that information behind friction, it loses its soul. And for a collection as detail-obsessed as Football Manager, that’s not only a UI concern — that’s an identification disaster.

Match Day Experience nonetheless sings in Football Manager 26

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

Sorry you needed to hear me bitch and moan about navigating the UI, but it surely needed to be executed. Now, let’s transfer on to the meat and bones of the Football Manager expertise.

If half the enjoyable of FM is getting buried in information to construct the proper squad, then the opposite half is crafting the proper tactic. And fortunately, in Football Manager 26, that half nonetheless sings. After lamenting the dearth of granularity in supervisor creation, it is refreshing to see that tactical customization has as an alternative been expanded. The new In- and Out-of-Possession ways system gives gamers with far higher management over form, construction, and tactical fluidity, together with extra streamlined (but deeper) participant roles.

In earlier editions, each phases of play have been baked right into a single tactic. Player roles had fastened “modifiers” equivalent to Defend, Support, or Attack, and these got here with hidden, unchangeable directions. So in case you needed a full-back who attacked aggressively however nonetheless challenged for the ball defensively, you needed to accept Full-Back (Attack) or Wing-Back (Attack) and hope all the pieces behaved roughly the best way you envisioned.

Now, that is modified. You can assign twin roles — one for when your group is in possession, and one other for once they’re not. That means your Full-Back (Attack) on offense can grow to be a Pressing Full-Back out of possession. It’s a significant shift that makes your ways really feel alive, adapting dynamically to the sport’s stream.

As somebody who’s not precisely a tactical savant, I really like this method. I’m a easy man who runs a 4-3-3 and calls it a day — however now, when defending, I can drop my three central midfielders into defensive midfield roles so as to add additional cowl, particularly since my full-backs like to bomb ahead. It feels intuitive, versatile, and genuinely rewarding.

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

New to Match Day is the Instant Result button, a longtime characteristic of customized pores and skin mods that have been typically buggy or unstable. In previous video games, you couldn’t really simulate matches until you took a “vacation,” and even then, these wins have been credited to your assistant coach. Personally, I’ve at all times been an Instant Result consumer — with out it, enjoying by a single season might simply take 20–25 hours. With it, that drops to round eight–10 hours, and relying on how deep the habit runs, I can crank out two full seasons in every week.

That mentioned, I may be rethinking my stance now that the brand new Unity engine makes the in-game motion genuinely nice to look at. “Pretty” may be overstating it, however FM 26 appears considerably higher.

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

Lighting is improved, digicam angles are extra dynamic, and participant animations have been overhauled. Granted, these animations can nonetheless be janky — it’s painfully clear that these are 3D fashions with restricted physics each time there’s bodily contact. Players clipping by one another throughout tackles or dribbles stays a jarring sight.

Still, I don’t have many main complaints in relation to really sitting by a match. Compared to older editions, FM 26 is well the best-looking entry but — for each the lads’s and ladies’s sides of the sport. Even higher is throughout moments the place the sport is simming the motion, there is a 2D match engine that exhibits the stream of the sport, making it simpler to see what is going on on between highlights.

Women’s Leagues are right here in Football Manager 26

Credit: Screenshot: Chance Townsend / Sports Interactive

One main factor I haven’t talked about but is the inclusion of Women’s Football within the recreation for the primary time. It’s been teased since 2021, with SI acknowledging it could take years to combine the ladies’s recreation correctly — and now, it is lastly right here. I fairly prefer it. As with any new league, the problem lies in studying how this aspect of the soccer world operates in comparison with what you already know. The database of gamers is totally new to me, however I recognize how FM handles it: the stats system treats males’s and ladies’s attributes on equal footing. A “20” in any talent means the identical factor, no matter gender — it isn’t scaled down or adjusted to make girls seem inferior.

Both males’s and ladies’s leagues load into the sport collectively and cannot be separated. So in case you begin a save in international locations like England or France, you may routinely have each their home leagues working concurrently. That mentioned, there are variations between the 2 experiences. SI clearly tried to replicate the real-world dynamics of ladies’s soccer — decrease switch charges, smaller budgets, extra participant motion, and shorter contracts. Even damage traits are represented realistically, with girls being extra liable to long-term ACL accidents in comparison with males.

Beyond that, although, a lot stays the identical. The acquainted points persist: damaged participant interactions (“What do you mean this player wants a new contract with four years left on his deal?”) and repetitive press conferences that begin to really feel like déjà vu after your tenth match week. I’ve over 1,000 hours in FM 24, and it is the identical conversations. Please, lord, make it cease.

Is Football Manager 26 price it?

Yes — however with an asterisk the scale of a Match Day ways board. The basis right here is undeniably robust. The transfer to Unity has given FM its greatest technical leap in years; the in-match presentation is genuinely improved, and the inclusion of ladies’s soccer lastly delivers on a promise SI made way back. Tactics really feel smarter and extra versatile, and there’s a stage of polish underneath the hood that means actual ambition for the place the collection is headed.

However, for each step ahead, FM 26 takes a step sideways — largely attributable to a irritating new UI that prioritizes simplicity over depth. The new UI is glossy, very like an empty condo, but it surely strips away the intuitive complexity that made FM such a pleasure to get misplaced in. Longtime gamers will really feel that friction instantly; the sense of immersion that when pulled you into its spreadsheets and stat traces now feels diluted, hidden behind additional clicks and menus that simply don’t have to exist.

And but, regardless of my complaints, I do know I’ll maintain enjoying. Because that’s the factor about Football Manager: it will get its hooks in you. You can gripe in regards to the interface all day, however the second you discover that one wonderkid or pull off a last-minute equalizer in a cup remaining, the magic returns.

So sure, Football Manager 26 is price it — not as a result of it is excellent, however as a result of even at its most irritating, it nonetheless captures the wonder, chaos, and heartbreak of soccer higher than the rest on the market.