FM26 Review: The cons undermine the pros

Quick summary of our FM26 review:

• The graphics and the match engine are excellent
• The new tactics add depth to the game
• Creating a manager is fun
• Despite this, FM26 is too unrealistic
• The UI overhaul is disastrous

After two long years of Football Manager 24 (FM24) and the cancellation of FM25 in between, Sports Interactive released the beta version of FM26, the next installment of its prestigious football simulator series.

I, an avid FM player since the Championship Manager days in the early 2000s, was one of the many players happy to give FM26 a shot, especially after playing FM24 to exhaustion, 2396 hours, to be more precise. Still, unfortunately, the experience with the beta was far from the immersion I expected of an FM game.

The cons in FM26 undermine the pros, and this isn’t about game-breaking bugs or anything like it. Those are natural and expected during a beta. It’s because of Sport Interactive’s choices for FM26, which push the franchise in a new direction.

FM26 review: The cons

As said, I won’t be touching the bugs and crashes too much. I would rather focus on deeper problems, since most bugs and patches will be fixed in the coming weeks.

Here’s what I disliked the most about FM26 over the beta period.

The game feels too easy and unrealistic

Winning a tournament so quickly felt weird. Credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA

Picking up my first team in FM26 was really hard. I have some cool, more obscure save ideas for the long haul, but they were not ideal for this review. So, after putting some thought into it, I chose Everton, an English Premier League club that has seen better days.

Everton is predicted to finish mid-table, which was perfect for my experiment. I wanted to measure how much I could improve or ruin the club throughout one season.

To make things harder for myself, I didn’t sign anyone in the Summer transfer window nor promote a staff overhaul, which is insufferable to do, but more on that later. Contrary to all my beliefs, I also assigned 95% of the tasks to the club staff, including the squad and individual training, and set up a simple 4-3-3 Gegenpressing tactic with no individual instructions whatsoever.

I really enjoy the Gegenpressing approach in real life as I’ve grown up watching Jurgën Klopp’s teams. This mentality is all about pressing high up the pitch to recover possession as fast as possible and quickly hit the opponent with a counter-attack. It suited lesser-skilled teams in real life in the past, and I’m all about coaching underdogs in FM.

However, anyone who has spent some time in FM24 knows how overpowered it can be. I was hoping that Sports Interactive had nerfed Gegenpressing a bit, but it’s with great sadness that I reveal that this high-pressing system remains OP, at least in the beta.

Otherwise, how would I lead Everton to finish in 4th place? My only signing was the aging Memphis Depay after Manchester United poached Dwight McNeil, my starting left winger. I also sold Carlos Alcaraz, one of my starting midfielders, after Al-Ahli came knocking in the same transfer window. I actually weakened my squad halfway through the season.

However, instead of seeing a dip in performance, my Everton continued playing just as well, and we finished in fourth place, with the second-best defense in the league and the third-best attack. I continued clinching wins, even during January, when my goalscorer Beto headed to the Africa Cup of Nations.

My Everton kept up with Arsenal and Liverpool for over two-thirds of the league. Credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA

I should have never finished above Manchester City, given they’re coached by Pep Guardiola and almost all their starting players are better than mine. But it seems that the FM’s AI still can’t cope with a basic Gegenpressing tactic. My players also didn’t suffer too many injuries, despite the lack of squad rotation.

My short squad dealt well with the injuries and national team call-ups, to the point that I’ve also won the EFL Cup and put up a good fight in the FA Cup, where I was knocked out by Manchester City in the quarterfinals. Overachieving so quickly definitely killed that sentiment of immersion that we all seek in FM.

Editor’s note: In real life, Everton are currently in 14th place, with more losses than wins, which makes what happened in this save even more unrealistic.

The UI is unnecessarily clicky, transforming easy tasks into a nightmare

First of all, I understand why Sports Interactive wants to overhaul FM’s UI. The previous system has been used for far too many years, and one could argue that it isn’t too appealing to the younger generation.

But that UI was nearly perfect. Experienced players like myself knew all the important keybind shortcuts and could execute the day-to-day tasks in the blink of an eye, due to muscle memory.

I had seen screenshots of the FM26 UI before the game launched, and I thought the community reactions were far too negative. However, after testing it myself, I can only agree with the sentiment.

Everything is just so clogged that I find myself lost most of the time. Credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA

After my season 1 experiment with Everton was over, I naturally wanted to promote a major staff overhaul at Everton to strengthen the coaching, recruitment, and medical departments for our incoming Champions League campaign.

But, letting staff go in the FM26 takes way too much more time because of all the extra clicks to see your staff page and eventually offer a mutual termination. You can no longer see a quick overview of their attributes, or right-click to open a dropdown menu and terminate their contract. Not to mention that some buttons, like closing tabs or going backwards, simply don’t react to player input as they should.

I wanted to give up on doing it, and closed the game numerous times until eventually finishing this in time for season 2. In FM24, this squad overhaul would have taken no longer than 30 minutes.

Basic tasks such as looking for players, increasing the transfer budget, or setting up the training also got worse as a result of the UI revamp and the straight-up removal of features, which is well-documented by the community. Now, you can’t even know when your next game is before going to the fixture schedule.

I’ve always enjoyed this managerial aspect FM provided, above the graphics and the tactics. But, given how messy the UI is, I caught myself feeling the need to just press the space bar to advance and get to matches as quickly as possible.

That said, FM26 is far from unplayable, especially because Sports Interactive added some much-welcomed changes which I’ll discuss below.

• Don’t miss: Best FM26 Wonderkids to sign to your team

FM26 Review: The pros

There are more pros than the ones listed below, of course, but I focused on the features that really caught my attention during my playthrough with Everton in FM26 beta.

The graphics and the match engine offer a refreshing experience

FM26 is just more appealing than all the previous games when it comes to graphics. Credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA

In FM26, graphics are better than ever to the point that even an old-timer like myself doesn’t feel like watching the games in 2D anymore.

It’s not as good as EA Sports FC, for example, but now you can clearly see players dribbling past an opponent, for example, rather than just seeing them run faster. The goal below left me lost for words:

Beautiful Nathan Patterson highlight on FM26

The game’s observer is also considerably more responsive, as it provides the best angle to watch specific highlights, like a penalty or a free-kick. And, more importantly, the highlights are generated in more diverse ways than FM24.

One of my biggest issues with FM24’s match engine was that a lot of the goals I scored or conceded came from random set pieces, corners, or throw-ins. Throughout my first FM26 playthrough, I had the utmost pleasure of seeing my team build goals all the way from the backline, with harmonic 20+ passes.

Additionally, I also saw my adversaries having a hard time with my constant pressure and high defensive lineup. Not only that, but I was also caught off guard because of it at times. This was way better than seeing my adversary score because the game decided to show a random throw-in.

After seeing these improvements, I can’t see myself going for the “Instant Result” option as much as in the past, as watching the games has been very pleasant thus far.

The new tactical features add more depth to the game

We’ve witnessed a few tactical revolutions in football this century, but FM never really encompassed all those changes. Of course, it remained the best football simulator, but it wasn’t enough for the more geeky tactical enthusiasts.

However, the franchise has taken a step forward with the addition of a separate tactical shape for Out of Possession. This means that now players can have a clear vision of how their team will act once they’re defending.

It’s possible, for example, to build an offensive team and still set all your attacking players to help in the defense. I struggled in my first few games because I had not realized that one of my players wasn’t suited for the Out of Possession role I picked for him.

This led to my first opponents in the pre-season exploiting my left-hand side, but once I adjusted my winger’s role, you could clearly tell the difference in positioning and how the team was defending better.

Another improvement to the tactical department that I quite enjoyed is that now the player roles are explained in a better way. In FM24, it took me a lot of experimenting to figure out how the players behave in certain roles.

FM26’s player role screen

Now, the game will straight out tell you if a determined role for your winger will make him play as an attacker upfront, or if your full-back will leave the wide area to strengthen the middle.

“Character creation” is much more fun in FM26

Even though I wouldn’t outright describe FM games as role-playing games, there are enough aspects to argue that the game is an RPG.

We play in a fanciful world of football that we don’t have full control over and that offers numerous storylines. Our character must overcome diverse challenges to become stronger. And we interact with tons of NPCs throughout our journey, just like any other average RPG.

But, for years, Sports Interactive left the manager creation, or dare I say “character creation”, process untouched. We had to create a background in our own head, as all the game allowed was to set a coaching badge level and a previous experience in football, ranging from amateur to world-class player.

Now, there are plenty of options for you to choose from, starting with the previous experience as a player, and followed by your credentials. Your manager can be a coach, a director, a doctor, a football pundit, or even a referee. As you can imagine, I naturally went with the pundit option.

And the character creation keeps going. You now choose your managerial style and personality traits, which will help the game calculate your attributes, in addition to the coaching badge level.

This makes things much easier for those who appreciate the storytelling element of FM games, as you can be a different type of manager in each one of your saves.

• Read also: Best FM26 Scouts

FM26 Review: Conclusion

Even though FM26 overhauled the game engine, the tactics, and the character creation, these changes didn’t make up for how unrealistic my first season was in FM26, but more importantly, for the disastrous UI.

After all, FM26 is all about navigating menus at the end of the day. And, if we can’t find half of the stuff we’re looking for, or just take extra minutes to fulfill the daily tasks, the game can get frustrating really fast.

I’ve always thought it was weird to play FM — a game that gives almost 100% control to players — and not take charge of the club tasks, but at least for now, I’m considering just skipping to match days to avoid the headaches and enjoy the best part.

My gut tells me that this new UI is part of SI’s plans to attract a new playerbase for the FM series. Players who will install FM26 because the game has acceptable graphics and a UI that is more “controller-friendly,” and that will happily take things more casually than old-school FM aficionados. Otherwise, I can’t see sense in butchering an UI that many thought was close to perfect.

I won’t come back to FM24, but I’d not buy FM26 just yet. It’s not that I don’t have faith that Sports Interactive will improve the game. It’s just that I think it will take more than a couple of weeks of fixes for Sports Interactive to iron out the game. FM26 releases worldwide on November 4th.

Jaxon’s FM26 review score: 6.5/10

Disclaimer: Sports Interactive provided a code for this review.

Feature image credit: Leonardo Biazzi | © SEGA