It’s exceedingly rare for an annual sports game to skip an entire year, but that’s exactly what developer Sports Interactive did when it canceled Football Manager 25. With so many changes–including switching game engines to Unity–and numerous delays, the game simply wasn’t up to standard in time. Couple this unforeseen gap year with the promise of a brand-new foundation built on an improved match engine and a completely overhauled interface, and Football Manager 26 quickly became the most highly anticipated game in the long-running series. Unfortunately, the end result is a cliched game of two halves. While the match engine is as impressive as advertised, the UI debuts with significant teething problems. Throw in some missing features and a multitude of frustrating bugs, and FM 26 would be disappointing even if expectations weren’t so high.
It’s not all bad news, though. As I mentioned, one of the game’s two halves plays some excellent football, starting with a tactical revamp that significantly alters how you set up your team on match day. It’s a long-overdue shake-up, as even back in 2016, when I reviewed Football Manager 2017, I bemoaned how rigid the series’ tactics had become. “The tactical side of Football Manager would benefit from giving you more control over how your team functions, especially during specific phases of play–perhaps letting you fluidly shift from one formation to another depending on whether your team has the ball or not,” I said. It might’ve taken nine years, but this exact scenario is the basis for FM 26’s tactical overhaul.
There’s now a clear delineation between when your team has possession and when it doesn’t. If you’re so inclined, you can set up to attack in a particular formation and then fluidly switch to another when defending, giving you more granular control over your team’s structure. As manager of Arsenal Women–FM 26 adds 14 women’s leagues for the first time–I mainly used a 4-2-3-1 formation in possession, then transitioned to a 4-4-2 shape when I didn’t have the ball. As the defending team, this allowed my two forward players to lead the press while the rest of the team sat in two banks of four, providing a solid base that could also spring a counterattack whenever I won the ball back. When this happened, the three midfielders gave me more control in the middle of the pitch, and this also allowed players like Olivia Smith and Frida Maanum to play in their more natural positions behind the striker.
