Football Manager 2025 is removing as many features as it’s adding

Kenneth Andersen

Published June 27, 2024 5:01pm Updated June 27, 2024 5:01pm

Football Manager 2025 gets a new engine and a facelift (Sega)

Football Manager 2024 asset (Sega) — Football Manager 2025 gets a new engine and a facelift (Sega)

Fan can expect a new game engine and a new look in Football Manager 2025, while the social media page and shouts are being axed.

Every year Sports Interactive puts out a new Football Manager game, which is usually only minimally different to its predecessor. But this year’s Football Manager 2025 sounds like it could be a much bigger step forward than fans are used to.

Football Manager 2024 is very good, but this year’s sequel is being made using a new engine, which studio head Miles Jacobson told Metro last year ‘is going to give us the possibility to do some of those things that we might have had technical issues trying to get across the line before.’

And now Sports Interactive has revealed what fans can expect in Football Manager 2025, and which features are being thrown in the bin – such as touchline shouts and the social media page.

‘In essence, FM25 is the starting point for the studio’s next 20 years,’ Jacobson says in the blog post, referring to the use of its new engine, Unity.

‘Moving to the Unity engine is a huge undertaking. It gives us incredible building blocks to create new foundations, unlock our potential, and power our future vision for Football Manager, with enhanced graphical fidelity and more efficient development processes.

‘In the future and with more experience, it will lead to faster creation and implementation of game features and design-led tweaks, he said in a new blog.

Part of the revamp of the Football Manager series, is that quite a lot of features are being removed.

These include touchline shouts and the data chalkboard, the social media page, as well as game modes such as create-a-club, versus mode, challenge mode, and the fantasy draft.

On the other hand, one of the new features coming to this year’s game is an improved user interface and user experience, made possible by the Unity engine.

FM25 will look and feel a lot different to its predecessors (Sega)

Another significant change is that the traditional inbox, which is essentially your email feed, is being replaced by what’s called ‘Portal.’

‘The Portal will be a richer window to the wider footballing universe. It’ll give you far better tools to develop your story through the Agenda and Messages sections, but also deliver you more insight into what’s happening elsewhere via News and Matches,’ Jacobson says.

Buried in the blog post is an announcement of a partnership with FIFAe, FIFA’s esports department, to host a FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager with $100,000 (£79,000) in prize money.

The tournament will be held in Liverpool from August 29 to September 1, 2024, and will be played in Football Manager 2024. If you want to sign up, you can do so here.

Finally, Jacobson reveals that the release date for Football Manager 2025 will be announced in early September, with pre-orders open at the same time.

This is no surprise though, as each of the last three Football Manager games have been announced in that period, and all with a release date a week into November.

The latest update focuses heavily on what is being removed and the new user interface, rather than gameplay or match graphics, which we’ll certainly hear more about before Football Manager 2025 comes out.