Football Manager 26 recruitment “revamp;” new paint, similar idea

Sure, it is a revamp, but it is like going round to your nan’s house and she’s told you “I’ve redecorated,” and all she’s done is put up an old pair of curtains she flung in the wash last week. Listen, I am excited for Football Manager 26; my editor wants to strangle me for how much I talk about it. However, Sports Interactive and SEGA are taking some liberties with the reveals now – the latest being “Recruitment Revamp; Powered by TransferRoom,” which I’m even asking what the point of this reveal is in the guise they’ve shown it.

There is no actual trailer on YouTube this week. Instead, we have a blog post, most of which is an advert for the tool used by actual clubs during and leading up to the transfer window. There is a clip on Twitter, mostly of UI moving and PR-friendly buzzwords. However, let’s be honest, it tells you nothing that screenshots aren’t already.

“FM26’s overhauled UI is all about clarity without compromise, making everything simpler to use and more intuitive to navigate. For scouting and transfers, that meant consolidating what used to be multiple different areas of the game into one Recruitment hub within our navigation bar,” notes the blog. Followed by a screenshot of Man City’s Recruitment Overview screen, a screenshot that everyone I’ve shown it to nearly vomits due to nearly every detail.

Contracts are a massive box of names that I’m never going to learn unless they’ve been at the club and in the first team rotation for a while. The Squad Planner is far too big, but at the same time, not aligned with either “tile” to the side of it. Man City is once again playing silly buggers with contract clauses to sell, valued at £164 million; if Man City isn’t interested, I’ll take it. The final quick moan I’ll have is the animated version on Twitter showing Recruitment Budgets, with a graph showing dots, and under it is what you’ve spent, while the main number shown is what’s left.

“Clarity without compromise,” what is being shown is a UI overhaul of the things we’ve been comfortable with for at least 2 years (plus) now, albeit now with whatever you want to call this overview screen. That, I think, is the problem with the marketing of Football Manager 26 right now. We have the animated clip on Twitter, which isn’t the game in action, and we’ve seen a decent bit of the match engine with screenshots of the UI. We’re a week away from Advanced Access or whatever you want to call the Beta, and we’ve not seen (at the time of writing) someone sit down and click through the UI, playing FM26.

“FM26’s two biggest recruitment additions, powered by our partners at TransferRoom, can be found in the overview screen. TransferRoom is football’s online transfer marketplace, a digital platform where clubs are able to simply and directly communicate their recruitment needs and desires with other clubs. We began our collaboration with them in FM24 by giving you the option to offer your players for sale via TransferRoom. That’s still there[,] but [TransferRoom’s] integration has levelled up in FM26 with the addition of two new features modelled on the real-life functionality they provide to clubs around the world – Requirements and Pitch Opportunities.”

Just so we’re clear, this is a “revamp” of the Recruitment Focus within scouting for FM24, but now under Transfers and your Director of Football within Recruitment. It is quite literally a tarted-up bit of that same UI, now with “Powered by TransferRoom” and both In Possession and Out of Possession. On the backend, it may be a bit more technical and to the point, similar to your Director of Football’s suggestions. Most importantly, now you can focus those requirements based on playing time instead of morale management. Not an unwelcome change, but again, we’re not seeing it in action.

There is also a list of details on how scouting is smarter, not only for you, but for the AI squads, too.

Changes to how clubs sign younger players to satisfy Club Visions
Further tweaks to AI squad building
FFP [has] more of an impact on AI recruitment
New transfer clauses for individual player awards
Better logic surrounding preferred positions in loan negotiations
More loans with future fees and buyback clauses
Improvements to when and why AI clubs recall players from loans early

Listen, I think like most after last week’s in and out of possession announcement and this one, we’re all just waiting to get hands-on or simply see the game functioning. Not the match engine, not the bit you’ve put all your work into making the team function well together, we’re talking about playing the game, I’m talking about the game as we play it, not a screenshot, not an animation of menus. How the hell are we expected to make informed purchases and pre-orders when all we’re seeing is screenshots, animations, and highlights from the match engine? Maybe if I say practice 22 times, that reference will catch a few more foreheads.

I think that is emblematic of Football Manager 26‘s promotion thus far; we’re getting all the filtered PR lines and little else to acknowledge what has or hasn’t been rumored. Shown off the new match engine look and match day experience, great, but that was kind of known because of the engine, new UI was known, Women’s football was confirmed long ago, in and out of possession was leaked ages ago, but little of that is what’s on certain fans’ lips. So with the Tokyo Games Show taking place a few weeks ago, Miles Jacobson gave a now infamous interview to South Korean publication, Dongo Game.

Which is loosely translated by users on Reddit, and the focus is, of course, on international management. You can tart up a pig to look like a show pony all you want, but the reality of FM26‘s launch is that it is FM25 with several more months in development because the UI/UX was terrible. We knew FM25 wouldn’t have international management, and it does annoy me that in a year of Women’s football being introduced, we don’t get Women’s national sides. Or at least that’s the assumption.

Sure, do the interview for the South Korean place, that doesn’t bother me. What does (somewhat) is the idea of acknowledging something like this in one place, but not doing a similar interview, or at least acknowledging this same thing in the English language. It basically hasn’t been acknowledged since the blog post announcing its reveal for FM25, so it should have been reiterated by now in some public fashion by Sports Interactive. Otherwise, as has been the case, you get people’s hopes up; acknowledge it, give a state of where development is on improvements, and if possible, set out a timeline.

As I say, from what we’re actually able to see, this “revamp” is more of a UI-centric thing that will be more apparent when we actually see the game being played, or when we are actually playing it. We’re so close to that point right now that I am genuinely sure my editor can’t wait for the release, just so I shut up for a couple of hours. Of course, as has been noted before and hinted at here, if you happen to pre-order Football Manager 26 before that November 4th official release date, there are approximately two weeks of “Advanced Access” to get your grubby mitts on.