Football Manager 26 review: One step forward, two steps back

You don't know what you've got until it's gone. That sentiment very much sums up my feelings about Football Manager 26.

A yearly game like FM needs to evolve – of course it does – and the switch to the Unity engine promised to be the jolt in the arm that FM deserved, if perhaps it didn't necessarily need it.

A technological leap forward for the series, Unity would bring the graphical update fans had been clamouring for, as well as lay the foundations for a new era for the series.

Following a chaotic two years in which FM25 had to be scrapped, FM26 is finally here. The graphics may have been updated, those foundations laid, but has all that trouble and strife resulted in a better game? For me, sadly not.

Let's start off with the good, shall we? Those graphics are indeed a huge step up for the game.

Gone are the repetitive blank slate players of the past, replaced with more detailed and lively ones, replete with animations that feel far more like you're watching a real football match.

Now and then, that added realism does swerve a touch into the uncanny valley, when a particularly odd animation or player decision occurs, but for the most part, it's hard to argue that SI hasn't done a bang-up job here.

I will miss the option to take a grainy webcam photo so that the game can make my manager's face a grotesque baby man, but I'll let it slide.

Another great addition is how tactics have been changed, now giving players the option to choose players positions and roles both in and out of possession.

In practice, there are still some exploits that need tweaking, but it's a nice extra bit of flexibility, even if I do currently hate all of the new role names.

We also finally have the addition of women's football, which has been implemented excellently, and I can't wait to see more leagues added into the game in future years so I can manage my beloved hometown of Rugby Borough.

Unfortunately, when it comes to new changes, that's about it for the good.

That, of course, begs the question of how FM26 still gets three stars. Well, that's because, despite all the changes, at its core this is still Football Manager.

And while not a huge amount has fundamentally changed about the actual core gameplay, that does mean that it's still extremely solid, and good fun.

That is to say, if you gave me this game with the exact same custom skin UI I used in FM24, I would be having as good a time, if not better, than I had with FM24.

If you've read any coverage of FM26 so far, or indeed tried out the beta for yourself, then you will already know how shockingly poor the UI is.

For most games, a poor UI is a very minor part of the game; an annoyance that has little bearing on the overall experience.

Unfortunately, Football Manager's UI is an overwhelmingly important part of the game, and it's very hard not to find it extremely off-putting.

When visiting the SI offices last month, I was told that because of the switch to Unity, the entire UI had been rebuilt from the ground up.

Initially, I felt like this was just a matter of getting used to a new layout, the more I have played, the more it feels like it really is just poorly implemented.

While this update provided a chance for SI to reinvent the wheel, it also meant that decades of quality-of-life changes, added incrementally as the UI was tweaked from year to year, were gone.

Some of these missing features that I found most frustrating during my preview have since been fixed, but many other glaring omissions are still missing.

It's simple things like saving your team selection so you can quickly reload it later, or being able to mash the spacebar to sort through your emails.

Some things that required me to click one button in FM24 to do now required me to embark upon a veritable odyssey through a sea of different menus and pop-ups.

Individually, these are minuscule complaints, and I do feel a tad whiny for making them, but these issues stack up, and the minuscule issues I and many others have with FM26's UI are so numerous that they are truly impossible to ignore.

Another issue I have with the game is how it runs. Again, if you had given me this game in a vacuum, I would have said that it ran pretty well.

But this game doesn't exist in a vacuum, and in comparison with FM24, which has run extremely smoothly, and more importantly extremely quickly, for me over the past two years, there is a very noticeable drop in performance.

Everything from navigating menus to waiting for the results of other matches and leagues to load simply feels slower.

FM24 was a phenomenally optimised game, and whether I had one league loaded or ten, I felt as if I was gliding through seasons at lightning speed, while FM26 feels rather more sluggish.

Again, these are minor qualms, and they are ones that I imagine I wouldn't be making of a standalone title.

But this is far from a standalone title. FM26 was billed as the beginning of a new era of Football Manager, a series that has been around for two decades – three once you include Championship Manager.

The three stars I'm giving FM26 are by virtue of it being Football Manager, a game and series that I love, and one that's core gameplay is strong enough that despite my issues, I still cannot call this a bad game.

But what it is, is a game that feels like it needed more time in the oven.

I empathise deeply with the developers at SI, as they have been put in a rather impossible position.

Having cancelled last year's game, I can't imagine that a delay to FM26 was ever on the cards, even if it would have resulted in a more polished game.

The fact that international management is not in the game from launch, instead returning as a revamped new mode later in the year speaks, at least for me, to the fact that this is not a game that is ready to launch to the standard that the developers at SI want and expect.

Just as we have the Championship Manager stalwarts who continue to refuse to make their way onto the Football Manager bandwagon, I think it's an inevitability that a similar schism is about to take place between 24 and 26.

I am confident that we will get the new era of FM that we have been promised eventually.

In the short-term, we will hopefully soon be able to paper over the horrendous UI with a custom skin reminiscent of FMs of old (two years ago).

Across the year, SI will deliver us fixes and tweaks to further improve the game, ironing out some of the creases and adding back in some of those missing features.

I wholeheartedly believe that by FM27, and certainly by FM28, we will well and truly be in the midst of the new era of FM that we were promised; a golden age, if we're lucky.

For now, the new era of Football Manager is off to a rocky start. While the ever-moreish gameplay loop will no doubt eke another 1,000 hours out of me while I laze in front of the telly, I cannot truthfully say that this is the game I had hoped to wait so long for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a česká fotbalová liga trophy calling, and I intend to answer.

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