Not all of these objectives are mandatory, but even the "favoured" ones can get you into the board's good graces - which can be helpful in the case of an Unai Emery-style slump. These targets actively changed the way I approached every seasonal milestone - as I approached my first January transfer window I knew I needed to start blooding more youngsters in the first team, so I resisted the urge to splash out on new signings. The expanded "Club Vision" system is one of FM2020's finest additions (Image: SEGA) The first, the full-fat version, offers painstaking levels of granularity - you can try and coach David Luiz out of his marauding runs forward, or get Harry Kane to work on a new shooting regime that may see him get ever deadlier in front of goal. It captures the emotion of football better than most sports titles, but you wouldn't have thought it - it's entirely menu-based, and the game's 3D match engine (while taking a few steps forward again this year) feels more functional than anything, a slightly more visual barometer of how well you team heeds your instructions.Īs with the past few years, Football Manager 2020 is essentially two games in one.
We're pleased to report, then, that Football Manager 2020 might be the franchise's best outing in a long time.ĭespite a fascination with data and stats, Football Manager has always been about the heart in mouth moments of scoring a late winner, or squeaking into top spot at the end of a challenging season.
Despite this, the series has legions of fans that pick up a copy every year - safe in the knowledge they may not need to buy anything else. While games push for increasingly better graphics or more consistent frame rates, its almost spreadsheet-based nature makes it feel refreshingly sterile.
Football Manager as a franchise is something of an anomaly.