Review

Football Manager 2020 review: an intoxicating gateway to an alternate footballing reality

Football Manager 2020
Football Manager 2020 is out now for PC and Google Stadia. The streamlined Football Manager 2020 Touch is out now for iOS and Nintendo Switch

You may notice that this review of Football Manager 2020 is coming rather late. I’d like to offer some righteous excuse, some heartfelt mea culpa, instead I’m going to shift the blame: it is entirely the game in question’s fault.

Every time I open my laptop to scribble some thoughts on Sports Interactive dugout simulator, it is waiting for me, usually still open, with a match to be played or press conference to answer. Resistance this year has been futile. “Ooh, I’ll just do this match,” I boldly proclaim, hours later abandoning any notion of doing anything else. I sneak of to play at lunchtime, I snatch moments of it cooking dinner and while the kids watch TV.

Yes, it’s late, but at least you know I’m being thorough.

There are, I think, several reasons why Football Manager 2020 has grabbed me more forcefully than most of the (excellent) editions of the game in recent years. At its best, Football Manager is one of video games’ greatest dream factories. In amongst its sprawling databases, player skill stats and training spreadsheets is a gateway to an alternative footballing reality.

Thus when your team is struggling -like the complete basket cases at the bottom of the Premier League with 9 points and one win for instance- its potential becomes particularly intoxicating. In the last few years, Watford’s IRL performances have left this supporter generally satisfied. Hence attempts to get the Hornets into Europe on FM didn’t seem so fanciful, leading to other forays into non-league and foreign climes.

Football Manager 2020

Now, of course, the respectable top-half finish I carved out in my first season looks like nirvana. While the blistering Champions League challenge after a minor squad rebuild -funded by the big money move to Arsenal of Abdoulaye Doucoure- is dreamworld. Nigel Pearson has a lot to live up to.

So there is a great deal of personal investment to confess in this year’s FM, but there is no question that the changes to this year’s game have made it more compelling in and of itself. But this is also because it fuels that fantasy of building an alternative reality. ‘Club Vision’ is the box-friendly name for its most compelling new feature, which tasks you with building a legacy at a club that doesn’t just take into account what happens on the pitch.

If you are Watford, you are also judged on buying in young talent, developing them and selling them on for profit. While, all the while, trying to push the team to be ‘best of the rest’ in the Premier League. Go to Man City, and you might be pressured to play beautiful football as well as cleaning up on the trophy front. Travel further down the leagues and the objectives change further still, depending on your standing, finances, fan expectation and owner ambition.

These objectives adapt and change over seasons, while you can look to force your own (if you have the reputation to do so). It seems like a basic thing, particularly as football has separated further into the haves and have-nots and priorities are changing all the time. And it’s true it is implemented with a certain straightforwardness: you are given a different set of criteria and are rated on both your short and long-term goals.

There is a good chance that many managers were already looking to fulfill their vision without needing the grading as a feedback, but it adds a compelling layer of narrative to know that you are working towards something. Football management, it seems, has become as much about walking that tightrope between on-pitch performance and negotiating expectations with the board.

I certainly took to my task with aplomb, having a very different approach to the transfer market and moving players on than I perhaps would have otherwise.

Youth development, too, has been overhauled to help you towards your long-term goal. A new screen helps you keep track of your most promising youngsters and advises you on next best steps. Players out on loan, meanwhile, are given more prominence within this screen to help you track their progress away from the club. You can even hire in a Loan Manager to help you find the right outlets for emerging talent.

Football Manager 2020

It is a more holistic approach to managing a club that you didn’t realise was missing. Or, at least, one that has been brought to the fore this time around. My impression of Football Manager is that its most successful yearly additions open a window on new approaches, letting you become as involved (or not) as you choose to be. In some ways, the abstraction of its text and number heavy menus are what fires the imagination -perhaps more so than the glitz and authenticity of football games such as FIFA and PES. But giving you a peek behind the curtain helps to encourage involvement.

Sometimes this comes in broad strokes, like Club Vision, and sometimes it is almost imperceptible tweaks to existing features. The squad dynamic, introduced a few years back to illustrate the relationships within a squad, seems to have become more pronounced. One transfer of a hotshot Belgian centre-back (Standard’s Zinho Vanheusden, if you’re wondering) was nearly scuppered because I didn’t bring in a ‘friend’ to help him settle, as I had promised. One cheap signing of a Standard utility player later and all is well. (And, as it turned out, I ended up with a perfectly decent reserve full-back).

Perhaps it is my own investment in the footballing tale unfolding, but these little mini-dramas seemed to appear more frequently. On the pitch, Football Manager 2020 remains a bewitching sprawl of feedback and intervention, while still keeping you distant enough to feel the frustration when your team just… won’t… SCORE. The match engine has had its annual buff and polish, still far from perfect but offering a better view of the match unfolding. There is more fizz to it all, goalkeepers pulling off spectacular saves and a more pleasing variety of goals.

Certain gripes still remain. Media interaction in press conferences and tunnel interviews is incredibly repetitive. And I still find that only very specific options in pre-match and half-time team talks have any real effect one way or the other.

Still, these moments of ennui seem a small price to pay in light of the improvements and commitment to variety elsewhere in the game. And maybe they remain part of the long-term vision, part of unfolding football narratives that you can make your own. The work is never done. But as my board like to say: we are pleased with the progress being made.

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