The World Cup brought a lot of new eyes to football (soccer, if you must), which in turn is sure to bring a lot of new players to Football Manager 27. But this simulation series is so realistic that it’s helped kickstart the careers of professional managers, its database is used by real clubs, and the greats of the game , on and off-field , are avowed fans. That commitment to realism means it could also seem overwhelming to get started for the very first time.
Ahead of the latest entry’s launch for XBOX on PC and XBOX Series X|S , with both versions available with Game Pass , I spoke to Sports Interactive Senior Features Manager, Ant Farley on the Official XBOX Podcast about how the game caters to new players as well as die-hard fans.
The joy and the challenge of Football Manager is that it offers the ability to do almost everything a real-life manager does: “It’s more of a strategy simulation title than an action title,” explains Farley. “You’re not controlling the players , really it’s about the core areas of what a real life football manager or head coach does: They’re making transfers, buying new players, training their team, setting the tactics, managing finances and budgets. What we’re trying to do is simulate the job of a real football manager.”
But with that breadth comes complexity, and there are measures in place to help players take on what they’d like to play with. “We have a lot of in-game sort of mechanics that help with that onboarding,” Farley continues. “Let’s just say you’re new to the game and buying players is something that really excites you , but maybe the training, not so much. That might be something you want to get around to a little bit later into your journey. We have the option to delegate that to your staff members.
“So you can kind of tailor their experience that you want from it. You could play an FM save where all you’re doing is picking your tactics and playing the matches, or you can really go into the big detail of taking care of everything, micromanaging every element of what goes on at your football club. We give you those options.”
Football Manager 27 has a new feature that can further help players to achieve what they want without navigating multiple menus mid-match: “We’ve introduced a cool new feature called Tactical Tweaks this year, which I think will be really helpful for people that don’t know football that well or don’t know FM that well,” Farley explains. “The tactical side of the match simulation can be a bit intimidating, so what we’ve done with Tactical Tweaks is effectively give you a single button to press that will make multiple changes.”
Developed after talking with real-life professionals, the new system is designed to better emulate what it feels like to be a manager barking orders to your players amid the din of a stadium. “What that button’s doing is making a bunch of different tactical changes in the system, but you’re not having to navigate those menus. And crucially, you’re doing that from the touchline, so you feel a lot more of an active participant in those matches.”
The thing about Football Manager is that, by emulating the real-life game, it also emulates its pure unpredictability. As Farley puts it: “We’re in a maybe unique position as a game where you can kind of make all of the right choices and all the right decisions and still lose the game, right? That’s how football is.”
But that in turn means that a new a player could be left a little lost about whether they’re doing the right thing.
“We’ve got this big, complicated beast, but we want to make sure that it’s not unfriendly,” explains Farley. “A lot of the redesigns that we took in place when we moved to Unity Engine [in last year’s game] were about trying to make it a little bit more friendly as an experience. That can be handled relatively well with in-game tutorials, and there are a lot of great content creators out there that put videos together that explain kind of how to do what you’re looking to do in the game.”
But Farley’s top tip is more unexpected , be patient. Just like a manager stepping into a new team, things might take a little while to gel. “Football is a game of marginal gains, right? So when that penny drops and you start getting to that reward of doing well , seeing the team you support grow and run up the leagues, or maybe taking a plucky underdog and killing a giant in a Cup game , that’s where you really start to learn the appeal of the game at that point. So if you’ve not got a pre-existing relationship with football, I think that requires a level of patience.”
Football Manager 27 comes in two forms, with both available through XBOX Game Pass. There are obvious differences , navigating the game from a mouse and keyboard or a controller offer unique takes on the game , but there are subtler, if not less important, changes between the two.
“Ultimately they both offer the same core experience,” Farley makes clear, “but the console version is a little bit more streamlined and faster paced. In this year’s PC version we’ve introduced some new options to let you articulate the pace of your gameplay , what happens when you press Continue? You might want to fly through matches very quickly, or we’ve got a more comprehensive mode which will take you to different areas of the game to allow for emergent narratives [beyond your club].
“The console version has some unique features as well that aren’t on the PC version, and vice versa. Console has a notion of pivotal moments, which is kind of putting some of these more drastic player choices front and center, which is a nice, cool bit of gameplay. [And there’s] some analysis or some statistics in the PC version that are more numerical, and the console version finds a more visual way of communicating that information.
“Regardless of which choice you make, you should still get that same core offering, but just slightly different flavors.”
Football Manager 27 launches on November 3 for XBOX on PC, with a free five-day Launch Preview beginning on October 29. Football Manager 27 Console Edition launches for XBOX Series X|S on November 10. Both versions will be available with Game Pass.