Football Manager 2021 Review
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need to know
What is it? A football management simulation game with a database used by actual football managers.
Expected payment: $50/£40
Developer: sports interaction
Publisher: Sega
Comment on: i7 9700K, RTX 2080 Ti, 16GB RAM
multiplayer game: No
Association: steam
Since the ’90s, Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series (née Championship Manager) has walked the fine line between showing you what’s going on and letting you fill in the gaps. For those unaffected by its gravitational pull, it’s easy to break free from all the spreadsheets and match engines that still can’t match PS2-era FIFA, but they miss the point. The beauty of FM is that it makes you so convinced of its world that your imagination pours into all the cracks.
It’s all good. But when Football Manager 2021 comes along and brings a new detailed match engine and sports analytics data to disambiguate any ambiguity you have about tactics, the seasoned manager faces some culture shock. You’re no longer imagining the exact swing of Jadon Sancho finding space in the Champions League final, you’re seeing it word for word. It’s not exactly Dylan Goes Electric, but it’s still a landmark moment in the series.
(Image credit: Sega)
And, if there’s any ambiguity, it’s a positive. Because despite all the charm of FM’s ethereal nature, when it comes to which strategies work and which hit you hard, you quit angrily, reload, and add a new manager called “Vengeance, You Tw*ts” , gave them your job at the opposing club and sold all their good players and got a youth striker to shoot – sorry I’m stuck there. While there is charm in its mystery, there is also a lot of frustration.
Inefficient or ridiculous tactical systems now have nowhere to hide. You can see where they crash through a set of initially confusing heatmaps and graphs showing the areas your players cover, where passes go astray, why you don’t cross into the box , and why you should bring everyone who visits your home in those rarest moments.
Tiki Tactics
Because you’re empowered with new-found powers to discover the inner workings of formations and tactics, it’s not enough to just sign incredible players, send them on the field and expect them to trot back to the locker room with three. Honestly, you can have Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar in your starting XI, but even a mid-table team like Arsenal can let them down if they don’t get the ball to them.
With some UI tweaks and more complex tutorial stages, FM21 makes it easier for you to get tactical enlightenment. After taking over a new club, you will be invited to build a tactical approach from scratch. It started not with a formation, but with a philosophy: the passing Tiki-taka used by Barcelona and the Spanish national team in the 1900s had such a huge impact. Klopp’s Gegenpress. It is still the purity of alliance two of route one. Each approach requires your team to have different talents outside of their positions, tied to specific roles – if your full-backs are the stay-at-home type, then you build a team based on their sprinting up and down the pitch , the tactic of overlapping wingers is unwise and engaging in attack.
(Image credit: Sega)
Your behind-the-scenes staff will have some advice on which approach and formation work best for your current team, but as always, you are free (and often sensible) to disagree with them entirely. After all, maybe you’re planning to bring in some new talent to fully implement a new system.
Another big change to the FM21 comes when you do. Agents can now be contacted directly for transfer negotiations, and while they have had your personality and opinions in many editions, these stats and values have taken on new importance this year. Because if you can develop a good relationship with one of these terrifying blood-sucking parasites, the entire player portfolio becomes easier to sign. Agents can quickly assess the temperature of a potential transfer, letting you know if a player is interested and what their salary requirements might be. After all, there is no point in paying a transfer fee with a manager if your target has no intention of moving.
(Image credit: Sega)
unsightly gesture
If you’re really mad at your primadonnas, you can just kick a water bottle to make a point.
Of course, it’s not just the agency relationship that matters. As odd as it sounds, this year’s update lets you add gestures to interactions, in addition to the classic tone options (in seven years as Fulham manager in FM13, I don’t think I’ve said a word that’s ‘t’confidence’ ). So if you’re really pissed off at primadonnas in the locker room, you can now kick a water bottle straight to the point.
These are welcome features, and they help add depth to the series, and you’ll need James Cameron and his mini-sub to draw that depth. But they also contributed to the scourge of the FM business: Wading Syrup Syndrome. Getting through a calendar week that used to take about four clicks in CM days: now it will take you through a national lockdown. There’s so much information here, FM21 just doesn’t know which one is really relevant. Dealing with locker-room rebellion and post-game interviews becomes tedious a few months later, but as time goes on, your inbox will pop up every now and then with a story about a player you were shortlisted for seven years ago with a strained hamstring . You can unsubscribe from a lot of FM spam, but that’s a chore in itself. Sports Interactive has been shrewd in adding valuable features in recent years – perhaps now is the time to fuel the gears of its huge machine to make it easier to pass time between matches.
(Image credit: Sega)
However, the urge to play the next game is as strong as ever. In fact, maybe there are more /more/ than ever, thanks to a revamped matching engine. You can see the difference in quality between the second and top leagues and between the weakest and strongest players on the pitch like never before.
Well, another year, and Sports Interactive has somehow made a convincing case to bring you back to a franchise that probably spent 500 hours last year. These differences may seem subtle to outsiders, but they can change your decision-making on a profound level. While cleaning out your inbox every week is tougher than ever, FM21 continues its winning streak.
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