As someone who has been playing football managing games since Premier Manager on the Sega Mega Drive. This is a genre I sink hundreds of hours into every year, but does Football Manager 2020 do enough to make it stand out from the previous games in the series?
How to Download Football Manager 2020
You can download the game from Steam. Click on the Download button at the end of the review. You should also read our review of the previous iteration of the game.
The Game Review
I know this sounds like a cop-out, but if you liked the previous Football Manager games, you will once again be happy with what Sega is putting out. If previous years have failed to grab you then you might as well keep on walking down the tunnel like a player who has just been sent off as it is certainly more of the same, but with a few changes for the better.
The licensing is once again great, with most of the major European leagues and teams being well represented here. A few notable holdouts are still here such as Juventus from Italy, but for the most part, the “authenticity” is pretty darn spot on and I say this as a guy who watches a ton of football.
One of the things that I always like about the Football Manager series is that there are so many ways to go about it. You can start at the top with a major club with a fat transfer budget or you can try and take a team from the lower leagues to glory. In all honesty, I always like to do both as they are as equally as fun.
The first thing that they have introduced in Football Manager 2020 that I am a huge fan of is Club Vision. Here, when you take on the role at a new club, you will be shown what the club sees its five-year plan as. This gives you a “goal” to be working towards and it is an aspect of the game that I really like. Hearing about a five-year plan is something many actual clubs like to talk about so that being in the game is pretty cool.
Another aspect of this year’s game I really like is the way it handles your youth squad. This is called, the Development Center and it makes taking care and nurturing younger players so much easier. As good as it is, when you promote, let’s say an 18-year-old rising star, they are removed from the Development Centre! I wish this was not the case as the Development Center makes tracking young players’ progress much easier.
Overall the game plays similar to how it always has done, but things like the Club Vision and Development Center do make it better. Another way that Football Manager 2020 improves things is by letting you delegate some of the other “managerial” tasks to assistants. This is something I took full advantage of and probably always will.
So far, I have given this game a glowing review, right? Well, yes, I have had a great time with it, but there are two things that bug me. First of all, strikers when one on one with the keeper I would say ¾ will make the wrong decision and it is very frustrating. Also, the talking to the media aspect in the game was not fun last year and it has seen no improvements here.
Overall, Football Manager 2020 is a fantastic football management sim. As someone who loves football and these styles of games, I think this year’s game is awesome. The Development Center and the Club Vision really do go along way to making it feel kind of new. There are still a few things I would like to see changed or worked on for next year’s games, but this is still great!
