There are five things I want from Football Manager 27. An immersive game world. A clear vision for the future. An intuitive interface. Reliable communication. And, perhaps most importantly, the desire to play the next match.
None of these requests involves revolutionary artificial intelligence, photorealistic blades of grass or the ability to watch my reserve goalkeeper argue with a traffic warden outside Lidl. I am not demanding miracles. I simply want a football management game that makes me feel like a football manager again. That sounds straightforward. After FM26, it is anything but.
The temptation for Sports Interactive will be to treat FM27 as a restoration project. Bring back a few familiar screens, move some buttons, restore missing features and present the whole thing as a triumphant return to normality. That would probably earn some goodwill. It would also be the safest possible response. For me, it would not be enough.
I do not want FM27 to be FM24 wearing a cleaner tracksuit. The old formula was successful for a reason, but it was also becoming increasingly predictable. The series needed modernisation. The problem was never the ambition to change it. The problem was attempting to rebuild the house while people were still living in it, then acting surprised when someone discovered that the stairs no longer reached the first floor.
The first thing I want is an immersive game world. Football Manager has always produced its best stories accidentally. The youth player who scores on his debut. The veteran who complains about playing time despite moving with the speed of a wardrobe being pushed uphill. The rival manager who criticises my tactics three days before losing 4-0 to them.
Those moments matter because they make the database feel alive. Yet immersion requires more than an enormous collection of players, clubs and fixtures. I want the world to possess a memory. Rivalries should develop. Journalists should remember previous answers. Supporters should respond to the identity of the club, not merely the latest result. A former player returning as an opposing manager should feel different from facing a randomly generated stranger in a tracksuit.
The game already contains most of the information required to create these stories. What it often lacks is the ability to connect that information in a meaningful way. I do not merely want FM27 to tell me what happened. I want it to understand why it matters.
My second requirement is a genuine vision for the future. That means deciding what Football Manager is supposed to become over the next five years. The introduction of women’s football showed me the value of expanding the football world rather than merely adding another decorative layer to it. Future development should follow that principle. Better personalities, more dynamic club cultures, smarter recruitment environments and stronger consequences for long-term decisions would deepen the experience without turning it into a different game.
I do not want Sports Interactive to be afraid of moving beyond FM24. I do, however, want the studio to understand why people loved it. I was never emotionally attached to grey boxes and spreadsheets. I was attached to clarity, control and the sense that my decisions mattered. Preserve those qualities and the game can evolve. Lose them and even the most impressive new technology becomes a very expensive screen saver.
That brings me to the interface. An intuitive, frictionless interface does not need to be spectacular. It needs to disappear. The best interface is one I stop noticing because the information appears where I expect it, when I need it. FM26 too often made ordinary management feel like trying to find a light switch in somebody else’s house. The information usually existed, but reaching it required extra clicks, unfamiliar routes or a brief archaeological expedition through the menus.
I want consistency. If clicking a player’s name opens a profile in one area of the game, it should do the same elsewhere. Important information must be visible without turning every screen into the cockpit of a commercial aircraft. Customisation should allow me to create my own working environment instead of forcing me into somebody else’s supposedly streamlined routine.
This is not about returning every button to its 2024 location. It is about respecting my time. I want to spend my evening deciding whether to invert my full-back, not trying to remember which menu contains his training rating.
Reliable communication is equally important, both inside and outside the game. Inside Football Manager, conversations remain one of the weakest parts of the simulation. Players frequently react like hostages attempting to communicate through coded newspaper clippings. A reasonable promise can create a dressing-room crisis. A harmless answer can offend half the squad. The system does not always feel unpredictable because human beings are complicated. Sometimes it feels unpredictable because the logic is hiding behind the curtains with a hammer.
I want clearer context, more proportionate reactions and consequences that make sense. Disagreements should happen. Players should be emotional, stubborn and occasionally unreasonable. That is football. I just want to understand what caused the problem and have a credible opportunity to resolve it.
Outside the game, I need the same clarity from Sports Interactive. The early communication around FM27 does give me reasons for cautious optimism. There appears to be a greater willingness to explain design decisions instead of merely announcing features. That is encouraging. I do not expect perfection, but I do expect honesty about what will be ready, what is still being developed and what will not make the final game.
Ultimately, however, my fifth requirement is the most important. FM27 must make me desperate to play the next match. That feeling has always been the engine of Football Manager. One more match becomes three more matches. A tactical adjustment needs testing. A teenager deserves a debut. My centre-forward has not scored for nine hours, but this home fixture against the bottom club is surely where everything changes.
The match should feel like the culmination of every decision I made during the week. Recruitment, training, tactics, morale and squad management should all flow towards those ninety minutes. Better animations will help, but visual improvement alone cannot create tension. The match needs context, consequences and enough tactical clarity for me to understand why events are happening. I do not need Football Manager to become an action game. I need the urge to watch two collections of digital footballers chase a digital ball to feel unreasonably important again.
These five wishes are not separate demands. They form a chain. A living world gives my matches meaning. A coherent vision gives the series direction. A frictionless interface allows me to manage. Reliable communication rebuilds my trust. Together, they create the urge to keep playing.
I do not want FM27 to erase FM26. Nor do I want Sports Interactive to retreat apologetically into the past. I want the studio to learn from what failed, retain what worked and continue moving forward with considerably more care. I am not asking Sports Interactive to reinvent football. I am asking it to remember why managing it became so difficult to stop.
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Guido
Guido is the founding father of Strikerless and main nutjob running the show.
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