Editor’s Note: Some elements of this article are not for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

Word on the street is that I’ve gotten heavily into Football Manager, particularly FM24 (I wonder why), and there is a new one set to come out this year. (Hopefully!) So, with more than 500 hours of game time, a third-tier Scottish team taken to and won the Champions League, have a save where I’m actively developing Scotland for a World Cup (laughable in real-life), and an easy-going Pentagon, I want to talk about what I want to see from the next Football Manager game. At the time of writing, the announcement of FM26 has come, but we don’t have all the details, so take this as speculation, assumptions, and general desires.

Women’s Football –

First off, I need to address the elephant in the room, full of crusty young and old men who can’t bend over to touch their own toes. Not that I’m endearing myself to them. The Women’s game was set to come to the franchise officially for the first time with FM25 — the now canceled and long-dead FM25. Well, it is kind of dead, but if we’re realistic, we have to acknowledge that FM26 is going to be FM25 with a bit more polish (hopefully). That (theoretically) means we’re still getting the Women’s football addition after all.

Now, alongside getting heavily into FM24, I’ve also gotten heavily invested in Women’s football far more than the men’s side. Mostly because the men’s side I “support” (read: Have interest in) is a lower-tier 1/major tier 2 side. It might not be part of the game that everyone is invested in, but I am hopeful that the Women’s football side of FM26 is more than just a light re-skin, particularly of a lower-end sort of B-squad for the main men’s teams. Something I’m sure the crusty ones would prefer, as they suck on a Norwegian man’s toes.

It’s actually becoming more common that the Women’s game, particularly on the international stage, is gaining massive amounts of popularity. Probably because that’s the only English team that can win a tournament. Before I get death threats, it is easy to assume the first Women’s league that comes to mind for the team at Sports Interactive is, of course, the Women’s Super League, with some of the best players in the world in that league alone. Notice I didn’t say “best Women’s players.”

Yes, I’m banging the drum of Hasegawa Yui, because by god, she’s so great to watch. However, you also have Bunny Shaw, Lauren James, Erin Cuthbert, and, of course, Daphne van Domselaar, to name a few. One league isn’t going to cut it, though, so you have to have the surrounding top leagues, and you’re looking to players like Caroline Weir, Lindsey Horan, Giulia Gwinn, Lea Schüller, and Manuela Giugliano, to stick with the European-centric idea here. Yes, though I think (and I know) the US collegiate system works wonders for the national side, I don’t think the US leagues are a great focus right now.

Honestly, I have to be realistic and understand that, chances are that the Women’s game within FM26 is going to be limited as the database hopefully grows and the game expands with the idea of Women’s football in-game. However, I don’t want it to just be the top few leagues: WSL, Serie A Fem, Primera División, Division 1 Fém, and the Frauen-Bundesliga. I’m not asking for the whole English pyramid either; that’s completely unrealistic. I can’t help but want some of those “lower” leagues though, in particular the Scottish Women’s Premier League, personally for the teams but also the players.

If you’ve played FM24 in the J Leagues, you know that teams are ultra competitive: It’s easy to sit at the top with a long unbeaten run, and it goes completely wrong with one or two injuries. Well, last season’s SWPL top four were within 5 points of each other before the split, and the top three were so tight the title fight went down to the final game of the season. Not that the whole Scottish pyramid is even, the SWF Championship relegation fight was clear with Hutchison Vale losing 27 of 27 games with a goal difference of -208.

Again, it’s not that I want to see every women’s league from every European football pyramid out the gate, but a healthy balance of those top ones and ones that are often forgotten is needed for a healthy system. If only the Americans could figure that one out. You don’t get the very best players in the world without those secondary or third-tier teams having a good run of form. The trouble there, of course, is that not even the top tiers have all full-time professional teams.

Manager’s wage means something –

Look, I’m not going to do a Lollujo, go on a mortgage calculator, and poke around a Japanese family’s house on whatever your nondescript real estate portal is; I already do that enough in the bushes outside your house. Really, get the screwdriver out and fix that toilet roll holder; it is wonky. Nonetheless, when you’re on those saves where you are paid slave wages to manage a club that was financially operated so poorly you’d think it was an American bank in 2007, you’d think you could use some of your own money for player progression.

You might get the job driving the team bus for the under-18s at Accrington Stanley FC, with a side gig for £20 a week of managing the young lads. However, the only way you’re taking over the job from Johnnie Jackson at AFC Wimbledon is by getting your coaching badges, and if we’re honest, some teams are a bit stingy with handing out the money for them. Sure, it is £480 for your National B, and the team did just spend £400K on signing that emergency goalkeeper you needed since your first choice has man-flu and the second broke his hand six months ago in a pre-season friendly.

You don’t need that license, though. I get it, you’re supposed to role-play to get the highest possible offer you can from the club, but let’s be honest, why? If you’re on a weekly wage of £1.7K and you’re still on a National C as the team is in with a chance at promotion, you should be able to go around the board’s decision with your £88K a year. At a grand and a half a week, I might as well pay for the course myself and give the teacher a piece of my throat while I’m at it. If I’m on a journeyman save, I’ll journey a man if I have to.

Yes, realistically, teams have to be involved for the more significant, continental badges that get you the top jobs. I’m not entirely arguing that idea. It is when you’re in a job for long enough and you’ve got the team out of their relegation battles, you’ve got them in good financial standing, you’ve signed good players, you’re expanding the coaching staff, you’re in a title fight, the board couldn’t be happier with you, the fans want to kiss your feet, and you’re told to go swing from a rope when you ask for a little bit of experience added to your character.

If you’re being paid three times the median annual salary of the country in general, you’re in good standing with the club, and you’ve seemingly settled in with the area, you’ve got a lot of funding. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to use that salary to fund at least the lower badges. I mean, with a National C (madness) I signed for £19,500 a week to manage Qatar’s national team – Ok, I only did it for 2 months then quit (later returning for £14,750), but still! There are EFL Championship managers who would get down on their knees for that money. I have your Monopoly money, let me use it!

Figure out a better way to explain the MLS –

Speaking of Monopoly money and Candyland rules, the MLS is a broken system made exclusively to appeal to the egg-chasing, brain dead, NFL fans. “J-E-T-S… JETS! JETS! JETS!” Yes, while I can reference a chant to my NFL team, I can’t reference my SPFL team’s chants because America is a land of cringy optimists to a fault. Nonetheless, I’ve written 30,00+ words in unreleased editorial drafts on why the US in particular is abhorrent to the sport of football. Starting by listening to idiots from Oxford that shortened Association to “Assoc,” then did their favorite thing of adding -er to the end before chopping off the A.

The second big failure of proper football in the US and generally North America is the money is simple. You people get funny the second someone else shows they can spend more than you. I thought that was the point of capitalism? Without doing a long history lesson, capitalism ruined football (not the concussion Hunger Games) following the 1966 World Cup, as a Cold War of leagues were formed by eccentric rich men who saw gold in them there hills. All of which was after the “Soccer Wars;” trust the US to turn everything into a war.

My point is quite simple here: In 1975, Steven Ross killed US “Soccer” forever. That was the year Ross’ New York Cosmos signed Brazilian star Pelé, then Italian star Giorgio Chinaglia, then der Keiser Franz Beckenbauer, and to round out the team as right-back, Carlos “Capita” Torres. Sure, it sold out games, but at what cost? None of the stars were home-grown, with the last US World Cup appearance being 1950, and they wouldn’t return until 1990. The NASL is the reason the MLS is a broken, awkward system of Americanisms and heavy restrictions.

To my knowledge (which is limited), the MLS, the Canadian Football League, both A-Leagues, and the Chinese Super League are the only football systems with active salary caps. The MLS (as well as the A-Leagues) also has the Beckham Rule, which lets you claim one (sometimes more) players that don’t count towards the salary cap. This is on top of General Allocation Money and Targeted Allocation Money, and this is before we even talk about how none of the MLS teams “own” their players, despite the fact that they pay their salaries.

FM24 explains all of this in legally-approved lawyer-speak that makes no sense to anyone with two functioning brain cells left after the egg chasing. All because one man who had the fortune of WarnerMedia was playing Addictive Games’ Football Manager several years too early, this terrible system is in play. The MLS rules and regulations (especially the draft) need clearer and concise lessons on why America is forever ruined. I didn’t even get to talk about the lack of relegation.

Sure, the system works for the people who enjoy it; it isn’t a terrible league to watch. It isn’t the Champions League, but we know that. However, those heavy restrictions and rules that limit your every move make it an undesirable job to take up. There needs to be something enticing about taking the job in the MLS, or we just continue to only play awkwardly in pentagon saves before returning to Europe. South America, Africa, and several Asian leagues have restrictions, but nothing as soul-destroying as the 400-page legal document with missing, torn, and misleading pages.

Make the media comments worthwhile –

For the first couple of times playing FM as a new player, talking to the media can be interesting, especially if you roleplay as Ted Lasso. However, the media comments either in press conferences, in newspaper questions, and pre/post-game TV interviews don’t really do anything. Maybe a player has a mardy moment because you say they didn’t play as well as they could have. Sure, that has a small effect on the gameplay experience, but it is minimal.

This is one of the far-out desires, especially since no one else would want it, but maybe a personality matrix? So you’re going up against a rival team, you are asked about the other team’s manager, and you have one of those “Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit” memes. I’m not saying turn the game into references to football memes, I just mean put something in there that gives the manager a sense of personality that you have those moments. Maybe walk up the touchline and punch the 4th official out, giving you a 12-match ban.

Media responses in FM24 are like a politician’s aide speaking for the boss: Scared to upset anyone, and if you say something “out of turn” with the “additional response” option, it doesn’t really do anything. I’ve sworn in there, I’ve called the other manager several things, and none of it matters. You can storm out of TV interviews, to what effect?

It could make job interviews far more interesting… “There is a rumor you punched the Director of Football at your last club,” “You called the chairman of your last club a ‘f[expletive] idiot!’ before smashing a full coffee cup against the wall,” and “you decided to strip naked at the championship final and run on the pitch after the final whistle, can you explain this?” I mean, this will never happen, but how much better would that be? I’m not suggesting major scandals like snorting a mountain of blow out a hooker’s anus, just fun stuff that gives you personality.

A personality that some fans of the club are willing to look the other way with if there is a dodgy result during a match. Just something that is maybe a little more “immersive” to the personality side, something that fills out the biography section a little more. Hell, do that as well: let me say how boisterous I was as a player if I was a player before turning into management. Just a little something that’s maybe a little rare but adds some spice to the blandness of “we did our best and our best wasn’t enough” vagueness.

Make signings more… in line with reality –

This was a difficult one to name because the second I explain it, it is going to sound like lawyer-speak or corporate nonsense. Nonetheless, signing players in FM24 is easy enough; either you give the opposing club far too much money, give the player a couple of promises, then deal with a player revolt 6 months down the line, or you get the Director of Football on it. If the player is really good, they’ll reject you based on your reputation. Sure, I get that, signing Lamine Yamal for £3.50 a week to Doncaster Rovers is impossible.

However, when you’re willing to sign a decent player and maybe they are just a touch outside of that reputation window, it does seem a bit odd. Why not let me lay out the club vision for the player, then, because I’m just such an amazing manager with a great personality that throws coffee cups at walls, let me lay out my vision as a manager? The team might be looking to avoid relegation, and the media says we’ll end the season 19th and be relegated, sure. Yet in reality, I’m out here with 14 wins, 4 draws, and a single loss halfway through the season, top of the table.

I think run of form, manager’s vision, and things like this are far more in line with the reality of why some players sign with certain clubs. It isn’t always the reputation of the club or the league, but what will help certain players grow and improve their game. Maybe it is because the formation the manager wants to use will benefit the player, like using young players and playing a 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress in Japan. Maybe it is the manager’s greater ambition than the board’s. Something worth the time it takes to sign a difficult player.

It could also feed into a system of players who are known for coming in on loans, or players who are out of contract, to push a team over the line into the championship battle or out of the relegation zone. Something a bit more rounded in that regard to make it – I hate saying realistic, but more in line with that idea of players with a vision. I get it, it is all numbers at the end of the day. A percentage here or there, but as a system, it could make FM feel a bit richer.

Overall, better polish –

It is sort of a meme now, but Football Manager 2024 is the most complete and most well-ironed version of the game in history. You and I know that there will, of course, be bugs now and then, but there are still “oh, Football Manager!” moments nearly every save. Be it player registration having a moment where it freaks out, the MLS rules conflicting and making it impossible to do things that are stated in plain text, or even bits in the match engine where you feel not only hard-done by it but confused why a decision went that way despite appearing to do the opposite.

I’m being vague with exactly what the “problem” is here because there is so much of this “Why didn’t I get to finish off those transfers before deadline day?” and so on. The type of thing you reload a save for, not just because you feel hard-done by it, but it just freaked out and didn’t know what to do. With the latest update being, I want to say very early this year, after the FM25 cancellation, the sort of 2-year development cycle on FM26 at this point, I kind of want it to have some of the polish.

Something where you’re not under a player revolt because you only have three goalkeepers for the season ahead, and everyone else thinks there isn’t strength in depth. The focus on Morale being so big in FM24, when that isn’t entirely the point. The easiest comparison I have to this in recent times was 2K’s WWE series. 2K20 was famously broken, buggy trash that couldn’t even find sales in a bargain bin now, but Visual Concepts went on to not only polish, refine, and define the modern wrestling games with WWE 2K22. That time to polish was important, and I hope that is part of FM26’s story, and not the mess that was 2K20.

Truth be told, there could be hints of these ideas already ruminating for FM26 or even 27, but most likely some of these “wants” aren’t going to happen in a million years. To wrap up here before I bore you and my editor any longer, the general idea of FM25 is probably in FM26 so far, and maybe a few things that we didn’t know about initially. For example, FM25 was meant to remove international management, but at this point, can you really do that with an extra year of development? More importantly, can you do that with the CUM World Cup coming up?

Being a lot more realistic, I want a few extra leagues, maybe a few extra in Africa in particular, a good depth of Women’s football, and international football back on the table. That and a little bit of polish will sedate me from my desire for a new game. Honestly, the new game itself will probably sedate me as I am, and I think that’s true of a lot of people. I’m not going to argue against doing some of these suggestions, these wants, these desires to add a richness and depth to the game as is.

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