Review of Football Manager 2023
Although Football Manager remains the best sim, FM23 is showing signs of a slowing down in major improvements.
The news spread quickly throughout the footballing world. Southend United, a Vanarama National League team, had just appointed the most decorated manager in history as their new boss. The same Phil Iwaniuk, who led Parma to two Serie A titles in the mid ’90s and a Champions League win in the ’90s. The charismatic figurehead who led Newcastle to Premiership glory in 01/02 and then turned Abramovic’s dirty billions into a decade worth of Chelsea silverware. In charge of the Shrimpers, this enigma never managed to win more than two seasons in three decades. They couldn’t believe their luck.
A Guide to Football Management
The core of this simulation series is the same: Create a manager profile and join a club to manage its tactics, training, player transfers, and other aspects as you strive to achieve club goals. The size of your club and its goals will have many variables. However, the core concept is to control the details and watch the matches unfold according to your instructions.
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Football Manager 2018, was the first game I reviewed in this series for PCMag. I reviewed its appeal and gameplay in detail, as well the potential of Football Manager to be used as a platform for emerging narratives. You can read the full review if you aren’t familiar with the series or would like to get a better idea of the things you do in these titles. These simulations are among the most complex of any kind, offering a vast array of real-world data, including real scouting and ratings of players, actual club staffers and other small details.
So while the core game remains the same, each year’s iteration focuses more on features, UI and player database changes. Here’s a list of 2022’s highlights. This year’s update includes major updates to the match engine, an improved implementation and presentation for advanced analytics, as well as new versions of Staff Meetings, Transfer Deadline Day, and staff meetings.
Review of Football Manager 2023
- Developer: Sports Interactive
- Publisher: Sega
- Platform: Played On PC
- Availability Available on 8 November for PC. Beta now available for pre-orders. Coming soon: Console edition for PS5, Xbox, Touch, Mobile, and Arcade versions of Switch, Android, and iOS.
We all have had remarkable and illustrious careers in football management. This is not only the 19th edition of Football Manager since SI split with Eidos. It also marks 30 years since the debut of the original Championship Manager in 1992. Once upon a time, it was quite magical to taste continental victory for the very first time. Even with the new CL presentation and that song ( The Championiooons!), you feel like you are retracing your steps when you defeat PSG in final. Football is a game of clichés. And with FM23’s arrival one such cliché seems particularly relevant: familiarity breeds contempt.
This is the core conflict of any studio that works to an annual release schedule. Nobody has an answer. Sports Interactive is not responsible for the acceptance of incremental releases. There comes a time when culture is too much. You know it’s over when you start a review by saying that this new version has Champions League presentation elements.
There are plenty of other content. These new features aren’t exciting, but it’s not all that bad. New squad planning menus. A revamped fan confidence system that doesn’t have a significant impact on how you do business. Reworked AI managers that, according to the game’s marketing materials, responds to your tactics with better decision-making. It’s not a contradiction. I just think you need to look so deeply into graphs and heatmaps to see the details. I don’t feel compelled to go back to work for another 300+ hours. I am not suggesting that SI’s highly talented and dedicated team haven’t done the work. Rather, the new features I don’t have just don’t make a difference to the way I play the game enough.
The reason that titles like these are so popular is that the experience is still fundamentally sound. It’s still Football Manager. This means that it can still captivate you in absolute terms and foster an obsession with numbers over 15. It still revolves around a massive player and staff database that is so detailed that data analysts and real scouts use it to recruit.
This allows for a hands-on approach to building a team and a support system, with more roles than anyone really understands. If you asked me to play as a Segundo Volante on a football pitch, I would run away and cry. Yet, I ask the same thing of fifth-tier players all the time.
It still captures your imagination. It’s easy to dream up grand plans for any team you are in charge of. Now you just have to see them become a reality. It’s compulsive to a degree Destiny 2 would wish it was. It’s hard to focus on the next button when you’re in the middle of an FM save.
Football Manager is definitely not broken. This isn’t a COD campaign that you spend seven hours a year with. Every release requires a lot from you, and every little annoyance becomes more prominent over time. In this way, FM can be compared to a marriage.
The fact that gegenpressing seems to still be so effective and has such a minor effect upon stamina, even though players have pointed it out and expressed their desire to see it fixed, feels like a larger deal than it may otherwise. Set piece management screens are still fragile and fussy. They can be prone to reshuffling players at any provocation. This has been the case for many releases. You’ll also have your very own grievances if you’re an FM player for a long time.
You might be curious to know that Southend was promoted twice in a row. The manager who lifted the Champions’ League trophy for Fiorentina and took York City to the Premier League is a great example of what he can do. We pushed our way up the leagues and maintained an impressive grasp on a complicated tactical system that revolved around a 5-5-2-3. This formation was never changed in over two-and-a half seasons.
If I were a data analyst, you’d know exactly why it was so successful and why, despite its newfound reactive decision-making, it was unable counter it. But I am not. Heatmaps make me afraid. Although I can understand the shots attempted diagrams and passes, I don’t know much about the heatmaps. In reality, all I get from them is the decision to click the “work ball into the box” button. FM’s longevity is due to its ability to evolve alongside football and create the culture of the game. Right now, that culture is rooted within data analysis. It’s fitting that SI made it a focus for the last titles, as well as VAR, post-Brexit work permits and Bosman ruling throughout the years.
The overall effect is quite overwhelming, with the amount of data available at any given time. My inbox screen displays not only 20+ news stories and staff interactions but also four league tables, the list of recent transfers and upcoming events. The match engine overlays a frightening amount of information between highlights. The bottom of the page shows all my starting XI’s condition levels and player ratings. There are eight different match stats below the score at the top left. The middle of the screen displays the feed of assistant managers suggestions and scoresline updates from other leagues. The ‘tablet’ is located to the right. It’s actually a modular system with six customizable menus. Blood is what I hear, see and smell.
FM’s presentation is a trending topic for over ten years. The series is bound by an annual release schedule. There’s an underlying sense that the ever-growing number of readouts everywhere is trying add value, making life easier, and communicating progress. It is a noble intention. It gives me headaches. Champ Man 01/02 was my lockdown companion for several months. I didn’t miss any of the information on every screen.
It feels like a good time to take stock of FM’s current state, 30 years since Champ Man’s debut. This is a highly engaging management game that has depth and detail that threatens to spill over onto the screen. It was created by a studio who have unrivalled talent and knowledge of the sport’s intricacies. This PS40 game is a great way to spend a lot of time. It’s true.
What would we have thought of the match engine in its original form in November 2008? It is hard to imagine that we would agree that it was 14 games of progress.
If the game’s creators didn’t have to reinvent it and re-release, I would love to see what this game could become. I can live without a new game for at least a year. I would pay half the price for an updated database if it meant that I was supporting something that felt like a significant step forward. It was like I said to Southend prospect Max Haygarth, in my office, during the opening season: I’m giving you a break now so that you can reach your full potential later.
The (More!) Beautiful Game
Football Manager’s match engine is at the heart of its simulated games. You don’t have direct control over the action, but you can watch it unfold on simple field views or 2D. You can change the style or substitutes during matches and have your players follow the tactics and formations you’ve established.
The game’s back-end engine simulates the outcome based upon your players’ attributes, health, and how well your tactics match the opponents’ (and your own) setup. This is evident in the animations and decisions of your players, and the new match engine makes them look more realistic and varied than before.
This There are many options for animations to make first touches, spins and passes. You can make plays more exciting if you don’t know what you’re going to see. Even though the animations and player models look more real, the animations and animations actually make the players feel more human.
Even though players make more mistakes than real players, I don’t mean bugs or match-losing moments. The mistakes made by real players were replicated in the simulators. Sports Interactive has modified presses and sprints to make them more effective when fatigue sets in. Although the digital athletes are able to reproduce your tactics more effectively than previous editions, it is still very much possible for them to do so. However, the simulation feels a lot more natural.
However, there are some peculiarities. One example was that one of my teams wanted to spamming crosses despite my narrow, through the-middle style of play and my instructions to them to cross less. The players also don’t always square the ball in a box to make an easier shot, even when it seems obvious. They choose instead to take a bad angle shot.
The match engine still looks and works better than before. This year’s update has made the match engine a major focus. It’s still a big win, even though it won’t completely change the series. Except for a major overhaul to the core systems, it is unlikely that any individual features will be added at this stage. It is more likely that the series will become iteratively improved over the next several years.
A Deep Data Dive
The Data Hub is the most important addition to the screen, located in the tab on the left-hand side. Advanced analytics have exploded in real world football. This is true both within clubs and externally, in terms of viewing on broadcasts or social media. It is much more common to see a leader metric such as Expected goals on Premier League broadcasts or hear managers mention it in press conferences. Clubs often hire consultants or internal teams to analyze the huge amount of data about players from both within and outside their club. This can be used to improve set pieces or tweak a tactical system or to set transfer targets.
This is all to say that there would be a huge blind spot in the game if it didn’t have a simple and flexible data system. Football Manager 2022 allows you to dig deep. The Data Hub contains a variety of metrics that show your team’s tendencies, as well stats for individual players. To compare players, you can ask your analysts to pull data later.
While none of these are necessary for playing the game, it is a great way to get a deeper experience than FIFA’s Career mode. The data can be used to identify areas of weakness in your strategy, or you can simply look at the whole thing and see if your results are consistent. The Expected Goals were added to a previous entry. However, it and the other metrics can be easily accessed and customized this year and are incorporated into the game’s menus. Although there is more to data implementation than I can describe here, it is useful as a tool to both summarize what has occurred and to project what you can do better in the future.
More efficient management
It wouldn’t be an entry every year without a UI upgrade, and this one is a great example of how to do that. It has a dark background and pleasing pink highlights. Major menu pages underwent minor layout changes, which resulted in menus that are more intuitive and easier to navigate. The most recent editions have added too much clutter. This seems to be the best compromise of both the old and the new styles.
Transfer Deadline Day, and Staff Meetings are the two largest individual beneficiaries of this year’s update. Both are not essential but they are better than the previous versions. Transfer Deadline Day is not an unhelpful media event. It’s more functional and has a dramatic wrapper. This day is a great opportunity to pack more negotiation into it, and move one hour ahead every time you click the continue button.
This is a great example of how clubs squeeze deals into real-world deadline days, which is consistent despite all the planning and negotiation. It won’t be necessary every window, but it can come up late, making it exciting to race against time to close a deal. It’s a solid and new experience, especially when combined with the custom deadline day visual treatment.
Although staff meetings have been around in many forms, this year’s are very detailed. You can place these meetings on your calendar whenever you like (unless they are turned off entirely) to discuss various aspects with your staff. Your coaches, the player development and recruiting teams, will bring you their statistics and advice.
These suggestions include training focuses for players and new staff hires. They also suggest who should be awarded a new contract. These suggestions can be taken care of immediately by clicking a button in the meeting, which is double-utility. This allows you to choose whether to ignore the message or have them remind your in two weeks. This makes this process flexible. After a few seasons, I noticed that I was skipping more than I had at the beginning of my time with a team. You get an idea of how much you can do, so you just need to decide what you want. Some suggestions may not be necessary or even good.
The Big Picture
These are the new features in this year’s edition, so they’re the obvious focus of the annual release review. This could be interpreted as praise for FM22. However, my view is based on the fact that Sports Interactive’s base product is already excellent and the additions make it even better. There are still some issues with the series. While I won’t pretend that this year’s edition is perfect, I will not ignore the shortcomings. However, the negatives of this edition are not new. Except for the ones I mentioned, the most prominent criticisms are pre-existing.
Even though it is understandable, the main disappointment remains in the absence of licenses, badges and images for players. These licenses are extremelyexpensive to obtain, often held by larger game publishers and often only as part of the deal. Most player profiles don’t include a photo of the player. Club badges are replaced by generic looksalikes and some competition names may not be 1:1 with the real world. However, there are instances when the developers own the rights to photos or official names.
Although the animations and engine have improved, there are still moments in game where players make poor decisions. This is not due to their stats. These are the same situations that top-flight players would make in real life. They might not throw the ball 30 yards backwards in the middle or square the ball at all. Yet, these happen in game. These situations are less common in FM22 but still frustrating.
The transfer AI is generally quite good and this is arguably the most important. This area has seen significant improvements by the developers, which I can confirm. Clubs are reluctant to let top players leave, and often refuse any offer. Young talents are the same. While you might have been able to get a good offer in the past, clubs now demand huge fees for their top prospects. Sometimes, it can be too much. As a smaller club you are not likely to accept an offer of EUR80 million for a 19-year-old. However, it makes it more difficult to negotiate and it is harder to quickly get several stars.
You can build a fantasy team with a bit of persistence and help from a wealthy club. Did I mention you can negotiate a free transfer to Kylian Mbappe immediately? He may have been lured to my Chelsea team by the fact that he started the file. Although this is part of the appeal of playing at a large, wealthy club, it can cause saves to feel the same across clubs as the best goals are achievable. It’s time to move down the league and try your hand at a promotion bid. This will bring you satisfaction and frustrations.
Any game AI that’s negotiation or relationship-oriented still has its share of quirks. Even if you are doing well overall, your board can give some very strange and sometimes harsh interpretations of the situation. Players can become too concerned about situations that do not involve them and insert themselves in situations they would never choose to. This has been an issue in the past. These instances, along with other demands from your players to play more (sometimes even despite starting often), or for a new contract soon after signing one can be frustrating to micromanage.
Can Your Computer Run Football Manager 2023
Although Football Manager is not a difficult game visually, it can look very appealing. Although the in-game graphics are simple, it doesn’t require a powerful GPU. However, the game can look sloppy and blurry with lower-end cards. It is not necessary to have a high-end gaming rig (the minimum GPU requirement for the game is an AMD Radeon HD3650, Intel GMA X4500 or Nvidia GeForce9600M GT), but a higher GPU is highly recommended.
The simulation crunches many numbers and it’s your processing power that will make or break your FM 2022 experience. You will experience longer wait times if your computer does not meet the minimum requirements for the game. You need at least 4GB RAM to run the game, but more RAM will give you noticeably better performance. You will also need at least 7GB storage for the game and Windows 7.
My high-end gaming computer (Intel Core CPU, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 3080 GPU, Nvidia GeForce RX 3080 GPU) can play FM 2022 at its maximum settings. However, even with this horsepower, the in-game simulation speed rating was not maxed. The sim was very fast, however, regardless of how many players and staff you load to your game. It ran flawlessly on both a gaming laptop as well as a laptop with integrated graphic. However, anything older will fail. You should also consider the game’s resolution. If you are playing on a QHD, 4K or HD PC, it is important to keep the game running smoothly.
Nomination-Winning Form
Football Manager 2022 offers the same thrills and lows that make this series so captivating to players around the world. Although the seemingly endless string of graphs, menus, and numbers may seem overwhelming to some players, it is a great investment.
It’s easy to see why some people don’t want to invest in all the releases of an annualized series. While each entry is basically the same game, this edition stands out as one of the best. It doesn’t matter if you are an annual buyer or haven’t upgraded in a while, or if this edition is your first attempt at playing, it’s clear that the simulation’s slick design, enhanced match engine and advanced data additions make it a robust and deep simulation.
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