Sports Interactive shared some important details today on Football Manager 25, letting us have a sneak peek at the new UI and talking about some of the tough decisions they have had to make to bring the most revolutionary installation of Football Manager to life.
As you may already know, Football Manager 25 is much more than a yearly update for the series. The new game is powered by Unity Engine, which allows Sports Interactive to create a visually superior experience while having more freedom in designing a brand-new UI for the game.
The new UI system will use Tiles and Cards, as Sports Interactive likes to call it. So, all information about the matches, players, clubs, and everything in the game will now be represented in tiles with different sizes. Now, if you need more information about a certain topic, you click on its tile, and it reveals the corresponding card, which brings up all the data about the topic in a new window.
Moreover, the developers have decided to remove the Inbox tab from the game. Instead, your home screen will now be called Portal, which is much cleaner than Inbox and also comes in different tiles. You can now spot new messages, club goals, upcoming matches, the calendar, and the overall news on the media in a single screen without exposing all of their details on your face.
Next up, Sports Interactive also shared a shot from the in-match screen that will be displayed between match highlights, providing a comprehensive collection of match info, including stats, the opponent team’s players and formation, the pitch map, and the suggestions you receive from your assistants.
Features That Will Be Removed From Football Manager 25
First off, Sports Interactive will remove Touchline Shouts from the fame for the foreseeable future. Even though it is a fun feature to yell at your lads on the pitch, Sports Interactive believes that the feature is not functional, as there is a massive delay between the time you select a shout and the time it is performed. Also, the duration for which the shout lasts is not clear.
These reasons have led the development team to remove Touchline Shouts from the game until they can find a better and more functional replacement for it.
Social Media Screen and Data Chalkboard are other gameplay features that will not be present in Football Manager 25. The data from the Social Media Screen will be scattered around the new map, while the Data Chalkboard retires to give its place to the already successful Data Hub system.
Moving on to the game modes, Sports Interactive also removes Create-A-Club and Versus modes from the game. The developer reveals that only a very small percentage of the players (below 5%) run these two game modes, which is why they are out of the plans for Football Manager 25. However, Sports Interactive is committed to bringing Create-A-Club back with Football Manager 26. The Versus mode, however, will remain on hiatus until the developers find a more suitable format for it.
Challenger Mode is the other removal from the game in Football Manager 25. The latter was exclusive to the Console, Touch, and Mobile series, but only had 0.5% engagement overall.
The Fantasy Draft mode will also be absent when Football Manager 25 launches, but Sports Interactive plans to add it with a post-launch update. This is because Sports Interactive is working with FIFA’s esports division to design a new Fantasy Draft for Football Manager 25 that will lead to the esports tournaments of 2025.
Currently, there is a FIFA World Cup tournament planned for August 2024, where Football Manager 24 veterans will come together to fight for a prize pool of $100,000.
A similar competition will be held in 2025, and the Fantasy Draft will hold the qualifiers for Road to the FIFA eWorld Cup 2025 in the Football Manager 25 field.
Sports Interactive will share more details about the gameplay of Football Manager 25 in September 2024. Currently, there is no official release date for the game, but we do know that it will be released on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and mobile.
