First glimpse of Football Manager 2025 along with what we can expect from landmark new version

“FM25 is the starting point for the studio’s next 20 years.” That’s what Sports Interactive head Miles Jacobson said in a new development blog for the 2025 edition of the most famous management sim of all time.

It’s been rumoured for a couple of years now that Football Manager 25 would see a significant change from what’s come before. While it’s by no means old, the annual edition, which from the outside can sometimes seem trivial to all but the most ardent virtual managers, has been a staple of the franchise for over a decade.

Football Manager 25 A lot is going to change and it may even break some things along the way. But I don’t think Jacobson and SI are afraid of that. This is a project that has been planned for many years. The dev blog also talks about what will be removed from the existing series, as well as new features.

The team has taken a good, hard look at Football Manager using analytical data from those who chose to share it, and put a sword to the neck of a number of features that most people didn’t use. That doesn’t mean that no one used them, and it may be a source of irritation to some long-serving fans of the game, but they’re gone anyway. They’re either gone because they’re rarely used, or gone because FM25 couldn’t improve them enough to include them. The cutting room floor is a serious trip hazard.

Some cut features are coming back – Jacobson says Challenge Mode will return in Football Manager 26 or 27.

Fantasy Draft will be missing from the launch of FM25, but will be added at some point during the year, as it won’t be ready in time.

no shouting

Other features like Touchline Shouts, where managers could give immediate instructions to the team, are gone forever. Possibly. “The most used feature that will not be included in FM25 is Touchline Shouts and it will not be coming back in the near future,” he says.

I was surprised by this. I’m always used to them, but Jacobson’s explanation makes sense, “Shouts have been in the series for many years and to be honest I’ve never been happy with them. A “shout” should happen immediately, but they only took effect once the ball went out of play. It was also unclear to players how long the shouts lasted. So, for the time being, touchline shouts are missing from the game.”

Well, the problem might be that not every player will get to see this explanation and might wonder why something they’ve always been used to is now cut and given the standard internet insult of “making the game dumber”.

With cuts also comes new things, though. Changes to the Unity engine allow for massive changes to the graphics, not just during matches but also to the UI. Football Manager’s abundance of screens can seem overwhelming to many, and many of them are never even seen.

A new panel and tile-based system aims to improve this. When I read this I naturally feared Microsoft/Windows 8 inspired tiles, but it’s clear SI has put years of work into this in conjunction with Unity engineers and I’m hoping fewer clicks = a more streamlined approach to the data I want to use.

Talking about the release time, its date will be announced in early September and pre-orders will also start at the same time. For the last few years, this game is available on Game Pass on the very first day.

New gameplay elements will be unveiled shortly after. Read Miles’ full analysis of what’s happening with FM25, and we can’t wait to see this latest stop in this famous old franchise.