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Football Manager 26 is the first game in the series that I’ve ever played. Well… that’s not quite right. Technically, I used to, back when the series was called Championship Manager, but that stopped after I graduated from secondary school. I mainly played to keep up with my friends in school (having no real interest in football), so without a reason to play, I just…stopped.
Over the years, I’ve tried to keep track of the series but somehow or other, other games have always distracted me from properly trying them out.
This is…until this year!
SEGA reached out and asked if I was interested in reviewing the game, and as I didn’t have much on my plate, I said yes.
So… this is the review of my first Championship Football Manager game in 25 years!
What is Football Manager 26?
Football Manager 26 is a football managing simulator developed by Sports Interactive and published by SEGA. It is available right now on the PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Our copy was graciously provided by SEGA!
I’d like to preface this review by saying that unlike my other reviews, this one will be one from a layman’s perspective. I don’t watch football (WWE is pretty much the only professional …anything… that I watch) and my knowledge of the players and state of the game pretty much ended in 2000.
I’m hilariously out of touch with football.
How out of touch?
When people talk about Manchester United players, I instinctively think of Eric Cantona and Ryan Giggs. That’s how out of touch I am.
That being said, the thought of managing a football club intrigued me. I took that intrigue into the game proper. When it asked me to create a manager and fill in his experience, I pretty much created myself. An inept and ignorant peasant who has no experience in football (other than playing it years ago) or football management.
So my in-game manager is pretty much me. Sadly, with the severely limited visual options in Football Manager 26, he looks like crap. Why aren’t there more customization options or even the feature to upload your own face?
But hey…at least I have an avatar to be proud of. Mostly. Even if he looks nothing like me.
He was a hit though.
A resounding success… of being rejected by clubs. I applied to a ton of them (even Tampines Rovers!) and was rejected by them all save for one teeeeeeeny club called Lleida.
It’s an all-female football club (which is a thing now apparently) and it somehow thought the resume of a man who has never played football professionally or had a job even remotely related to football team management was the perfect guy to hire for the team.
I approached Football Manager 26 like a serious job. When I got hired, I poured over the statistics of the players on my team. The game gives you a ton of stats and it’s up to you to make heads or tails out of them. If you’re not one for numbers and attributes, you’ll quickly feel your eyes start to glaze over.
That happened to me unfortunately.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t get my head into the nitty gritty details.
There’s a ton of info to wade through and the UI isn’t the most enticing. Presentation is dry and while the tutorials do a decent job, there are still aspects of the game (such as assigning players to your squad) they barely touch on.
Information overload is one thing, but most times, it’s also compounded by layers and layers of menus you have to click through just to get to something.
Tooltips are also non-existent for the most part. No idea what something means or what it does?
Tough luck.
If it’s not covered by the tutorial, you have to find out for yourself.
I want to manage, not micromanage!
The good news here is that you can delegate pretty much every aspect of the game that doesn’t appeal to you. In my case, that was pretty much everything. Like I said, I wanted to oversee the whole enchilada, no micromanage.
To that end, the AI staff is decent. If you don’t have a head for numbers or don’t want to think of the most optimal training regiment, they can do it for you. It might not be as good as a human’s decision making, but I managed to wade through decently enough with minimal direct input.
Maybe I’d change my mind if the UI and the info presented was more vibrant and entertaining (and more importantly, concise) but thinking on it, I’m unsure what can really be done to make it more fun and interesting.
Then again, I’m not a UI designer.
The game is 90% parsing information and then deciding how to use that information to further your goals for the club. You send out scouts to recruit promising talent, you schmooze with the media, give talks to your team and even decide team politics.
For somebody new to the game, there’s a surprising amount of detail covered here… it’s just frustratingly presented in such a way to be… boring.
All your choices, both major and minor, as just presented as text boxes.
As a result, even the biggest choices (such as being offered a job at a club) start to feel inconsequential after awhile. There’s no sense of gravitas, no sense of achievement. I never felt pride at guiding my team as I built them up from a disparate group into a formidable fighting force.
I didn’t even realize I won my first game until I looked at my inbox. Even then, I wasn’t even delighted at it because nobody else seemed to be hyped for it! The game doesn’t even give you a trophy or achievement for it.
Presentation issues abound for Football Manager 26, though it fares much better during matches, though that’s not really something to brag about. The visual matches are also the buggiest part of the game. I regularly get graphical issues while the match is being simulated.
It’ll randomly happen during match restarts. Sometimes during throw-ins, or maybe during kick-offs. None of the patches have helped. It’s not game breaking, so I’ll just bear with it in the meantime.
The player and environmental visuals are nowhere near EA FC’s series quality.
However, if you compare them to the rest of Football Manager 26 though, they look positively spectacular by comparison. Perhaps that’s the reason I didn’t mind so much when it came down to it.
Matches are played out in animated fashion, and you can even change your tactics on the fly. There’s a lot of minutiae you can tweak and track while a match is underway. I just sat and watched and changed tactics (from being defensive to all out offense) when I felt like it.
Tactical genius at work.
Again, the Football Manager 26 lack of pizzazz shines through, even here. Goal celebrations are tepid, and even after match results barely make note of it. It’s super disappointing to be honest and there are no options for post celebratory events.
Why can’t I take the players out for a night on the town to raise morale or something? So many options but player welfare is missing? Isn’t that part of a manager’s job too?
The Bottom Line.
Football Manager 26 has depth in droves, and is unmatched in that field. Armchair coaches who want to guide their favourite team have a lot of information to parse and utilize. It’s obvious that a lot of data was poured into the making of the game to make it as deep as it can be.
Unfortunately, all that depth is hampered by a positively boring UI.
Every single screen is covered by text, text and more text. You click through text boxes on what actions to take, you click on email text messages…it’s all done via text.
There are so many ways the developers could’ve picked to show off information, but all they did was choose text.
Something to break up the monotony.
I wouldn’t mind some graphs, or video packages! You know, some multimedia to liven things up.
That’s why the matches are such a breath of fresh air. They look shoddy by any other standards, but since you’re already thirsty for anything other than text, they’re superbly welcome when you get to match day. If nothing else other than a break to the monotony.
To be honest, I did enjoy my time managing. It’s a unique experience to bring up a club from the ground up, being responsible for so many aspects. It is unfortunate then the whole experience is packaged in something that will definitely put off new fans who are interested in trying out the game.
If SEGA didn’t pass me a free review code, I sure as hell wouldn’t be playing this judging on the screenshots alone. Football Manager 26 is in a league all of its own but it’s one that’s made it complacent.
TLDR:
A decent game buried under unintuitive UI and lots of text and menus to wade through.
The Good:
- Lots of detail.
- Lots of leagues.
- Decent tutorials.
The Bad:
- UI is dense.
- Dry presentation.
- Lacking tooltips.
- Buggy.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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