My Football Manager Christmas Wish List
5 Things I'd Love To See
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Football Manager Christmas Wish List
It’s that wonderful time of year again. The weather has cooled off, storms are blanketing the east coast of the United States, and I’m in the mood to stay inside and dream about what might be.
There’s something about Football Manager that brings out wishful thinking in each of us. From irrational hopes that our young signings will actually turn into something one day (preferably someday soon) to our hopes that some of our fundamental gripes with the game have actually been addressed in this year’s version, it seems that we spend a lot of our time wishing for things that simply aren’t going to happen.
In that lovely spirit, here are five long-term wishes that I have for Football Manager – 5 changes I really hope we see in the future.
More Leagues
Okay, this is kind of an obvious throwaway. Everybody wishes that there were more leagues. And, yes, it is true that you can add every country in the world with the right add-ons.
Still, I really would like to see Sports Interactive sign a contract with the J-League, for instance. It would be a lot of fun to be able to play with more African and Middle Eastern teams out of the box, rather than waiting for the modding community to come out with a solution.
Even for a game that includes over 100 playable leagues in dozens of countries, it really feels like we should have more. Hopefully SI will focus on expanding its offering in the future.
Improved Difficulty
This sounds kind of funny coming from a manager whose team simply can’t buy a victory. I mean it, though. Football Manager out of the box is simply too easy, and the AI is too easy to predict.
I know that it’s not easy to train the AI to respond to every possible contingency, and I know that players will always have the upper hand. Still, there surely must be some way to prevent the AI from constantly choosing defensive, unimaginative tactics, right? There must be some way to stop the AI from foolishly selling its best young players for pennies, right?
As I’ve mentioned before, there are game mods that significantly increase the difficulty level. The fact that these mods work so well tells me that Sports Interactive could really use some help in this regard. I know we don’t want the game to become impossibly difficult – but, seriously, if you start managing in the Bundesliga or the Premier League, it should feel like a major challenge.
Better Long-Term Save Tracking
Do you know why so many of us want to start our own Football Manager blogs? Quite frankly, it’s usually the only way we can create a meaningful long-term record of our saves.
This is especially a problem if you change teams during your save. Football Manager allows you to see the trophies that you’ve won and a few very generic statistics, but that’s it. How does this game have no real long-term save statistic tracking system after going through so many versions?
Changing Cultures
It’s always fun to start a journeyman save and see where you wind up in the world. It’s particularly fun to go from region to region, starting someplace like Oceania or Africa and moving on to other regions when the time is appropriate.
Unfortunately, though, you’ll learn that the game really isn’t much different no matter where you play. The basic game mechanics are exactly the same, whether you play in France, Japan, Algeria, or Fiji. Nothing changes – not the nature of press conferences, not the tactics you have at your disposal, not really even the players you have to choose from. You’ll realize after a while that the players are really just numbers with pixelized exteriors – cardboard representations of the real thing, digital fakes that know no culture nor language nor anything.
I’d love to see this change.
Can you imagine what it would be like to actually manage a club in a country like Kiribati? Imagine having to fight for use of the single sand soccer pitch in the country with the other clubs, trying to do whatever you can to give your players an advantage.
Just think of how it might be if Football Manager’s mostly ignored language system were actually meaningful. As a manager, spending more time in country and actually knowing the language would give you a lot more influence over your players. And imagine if certain managerial styles worked only in certain cultures – after all, you probably wouldn’t manage your Korean team the same way you’d manage a team from Iceland.
This doesn’t exist in Football Manager right now. Sure would be nice, though.
Playable International Management.
Of all the recommendations I’ve seen, this is the one that is most obvious – and the one that is most desperately needed.
I don’t touch international management. It’s not because I don’t like watching international football, or because I’m opposed to the idea. No – I don’t touch it because I know what a mess it is.
Football Manager’s international management system hasn’t been updated in many years. It’s missing simple and obvious options, such as easy ways to scout players who are eligible for your country, training options, and other things that are absolutely necessary to play within the match engine successfully.
The whole system needs to be overhauled, and has needed work for years. It’s particularly confusing that Sports Interactive missed its chance to update this feature in this year’s version of the game to coincide with the World Cup. We deserve better.