Let’s get it out of the way early: Football Manager 26 has had a rocky start – and that is putting it mildly. After the never-released Football Manager 25 was delayed twice last year before being scrapped entirely in February, director Miles Jacobson admitted his team had bitten off more than they could chew in trying to deliver a new game engine within their usual one-year cycle. Instead, they were taking the financial and reputational hit to focus all their efforts on making 2026’s edition up to the quality the series’ fans expect.
However, if the origins of the latest entry in Sports Interactive’s long-running football simulation series weren’t turbulent enough, the release of the full game earlier this month has seen a whirlwind of debate and opinion in the game’s loyal online community and – let’s face it – a not-altogether positive reaction among some of those playing it on Steam.
In fact, of the over 11,000 reviews on the platform at the time of writing, just 25% are recorded as being positive. Of course, it goes without saying that reviews on Steam should always be taken with a large helping of salt, but even using the metric as a base guide, it’s usually a clear symbol that something, somewhere, has got lost in what was once a guaranteed yearly hit for Sega and the talented individuals at Sports Interactive. Even when sections of the community had their favourite eras of the franchise, there was always a universal acceptance that each iteration had furthered the goal of advancing this portrayal of managing nearly every professional football club in the developed world. While the latter remains the case in terms of the scale, it is hard to argue that FM26 is a forward leap for the franchise – at least in its current form.
That said, while the package has plenty of room for improvement, there are some significant innovations here that could prove absolutely game changing going forward. The first of those comes in the addition of tactical shapes and instructions, which are set up for both in and out of possession. Previously, tactics were static choices that applied in all scenarios and felt very rigid and unrealistic compared to the actual portrayal of the game and how managers set up their teams. It’s not an overestimation to describe this as a game-changing addition.
Want to have a high-pressing team in the style of Jurgen Klopp off the ball, which then pivots to a slow and methodical possession side like Pep Guardiola while in possession? It is entirely possible now. Add to that the numerous new positions and styles players can occupy for each area of the pitch, and the granular level of control – in terms of tactics at least – has never felt more immersive. Equally, when it comes to immersion, the signature feature touted during the endeavour of ripping up Football Manager was to incorporate a revamped match day engine. New lighting, a ton of new animations and just a general clean up across the board make FM26 without doubt the most aesthetically pleasing in the franchise.
Add in many fully licensed leagues, complete with a great deal more care when it comes to match day presentation, and it’s clear that graphically things have improved. The animations are a particular highlight. While there is room to grow as the engine develops over the years, players on the pitch move in a much more realistic fashion. Have a tricky winger who uses a bit of skill to beat a player? It’s represented much more visibly than it ever was before.
Where it would be great to see further development is in the stadiums, where yet again there are simply too few to accommodate so many different teams at so many different levels. However, the transition to the Unity Engine has allowed the modding world to pick up some of the slack there, with the community’s fans already dedicating a lot of time in recreating and working real-life stadiums into the game.
While it is great that the action on the pitch looks a lot sharper and more dynamic, within the matches comes the exposure over just how many features have been stripped away from Football Manager 26 that all add up to leave the package feeling very light. For example, within matches managers previously had the ability to influence their team with shouts to the players. Losing a match? It was possible to fire the players up with a shout or encouragement and try and boost enthusiasm and morale. Holding on to a slender lead? Telling the players to focus helped with seeing the result over the line. How much any of these shouts played into the overall result is something no one outside of Sports Interactive will know. However, losing them suddenly means the tangible ability a manager has to influence things during a match is squarely limited to making subs or changing tactics. It also just kills a little bit of that immersion that is central to an experience like this.
Speaking of missing features, some of the biggest omissions also include international management (albeit this is returning as a content update in time for the World Cup) and the removal of the social media feed. Was the latter mindless fluff that didn’t add much? Some would argue maybe. Despite that, though, its removal yet again just kills another part of that jigsaw of immersion that made Football Manager 2024 so great. There is a whole host of other features missing – some bigger than others – and some of more consequence to some fans above others.
Speaking of missing features also leads neatly onto the user interface changes. Removing the old inbox system arguing it no longer represented how modern managers work, Sports Interactive has given the UI a radical shift into a tile-based system. Most of the core areas of management are now along the top of the screen with the portal now acting as the default screen. Inside each of these screens, more information can then pop up by clicking on the various tiles. On the face of it, it looks neatly packaged and should in theory provide more information at hand.
The problem is that so much information is hidden behind so many of these tiles and different clicks, and those clicks take so much longer. Where previously switching screens happened instantly, there is a noticeable sense of sluggishness when transitioning between squads, training, tactics and the many other screens. Add to this the many bugs, buttons flat-out missing, or at one point during a match, the ability to make player substitutions just disappeared – there is a significant amount of patching and clean up that needs to happen over the coming months. Some people might also assume a lot of their most loved features or information has been removed from the game, not realising it is actually just hidden behind so much of the clunky interface and banished down a rabbit hole.
The reality is that all those irritations would be relatively minor inconveniences that would be less problematic if they didn’t have the combined effect of making the day-to-day management so isolating compared to previous entries. In FM24, even when scrapping it out day to day while managing in the lower league with no money and a failing team, it still felt like the UI always kept things connected to the wider football world. Following the stories of other teams around the world as the Football Manager save spiralled from real life was half (or more) of the hours of fun.
Finding a hidden gem who had scored 30 goals in the Bulgarian league and was suddenly being touted as the next big superstar was just one of the many magic stories that naturally emerged and which so many of the series’ most loyal fans often shared. Those stories still exist in FM26, but they are hidden behind so much of the difficult UI that it becomes too much of a chore to bother with. Instead, the loop of the game just becomes moving from match to match without any of the organic world building that makes the franchise so intriguing.
