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Football Manager 2023 review

The sports management sim returns

James Rushton
Friday 04 November 2022 10:38 GMT
Lead your squad to victory
Lead your squad to victory (The Independent)

It’s about that time of year. Leaves fall, and you boot up your laptop. It’s time for a trip to London, or maybe Spain. Iceland has been an unknown frontier for a while, so, maybe? Hang on – there’s a lot of news about crypto experimentation coming out of Crawley, and Hollywood has arrived in Wrexham.

Oh, there are places that only Football Manager can take you. Close down the package-deals, your actual vessel has arrived and there’s a huge sandbox for you to enjoy. Either way, Football Manager isn’t just the best sandbox – it’s the only one in a footballing sense.

Football Manager is so good because it came out swinging in the mid 2000s and didn’t ever look back. It hit hard then, and the only reason it doesn’t hit as hard now is because its target audience buy it and play it each and every year.

It didn’t look that far forwards either. While the initial instalment and this year’s arrival – Football Manager 2023 – are different games in their entirety, there’s not a whole lot that actually separates Football Manager 2023 compared with Football Manager 2022.

So, yes, in a sense, Football Manager is always going to be worth the investment due to the return you can get on it. In that same sense, it could’ve just been a cheap update to FM22.

How we tested

Our verdict on Football Manager 2023 is based on the PC version of the game that was available through the open beta. We played through as both Aston Villa and Wrexham, to experiment with different teams and tactics before progressing from one league to a multi-league setup. For our full review, keep reading below.

‘Football Manager 2023’

Football Manager 2023
  • Release date: 8 November 2022
  • Platforms: PC, Xbox, iOS and Android
  • Age rating: 3+

When you peek around inside, you’ll see for yourself. You’ll see the new squad planner, which makes recruitment easier; there’s a larger breakdown of supporter feelings; if you’re playing in Europe, you’ll be delighted by UEFA branding (right down to the theme tunes), and if you’re getting through the years after slamming your spacebar into dust, you can enjoy a new managerial timeline to look back on your best and worst.

The data-hub is back – staff meetings are too – and, of course, there’s the ever-improving match engine, where you can actually defend with a low block, goalkeepers finally act slightly better than stickmen and where opposition managers might throw a few tactical curveballs at you.

Read more: Best deals on Football Manager 2023

Wasn’t most of this hanging around from FM22, though? Well, yeah. Such is life for the Football Manager series. There’s no upheaval, just some solid additions to the existing formula. Last year’s ‘groundbreaking’ data hub is a little better. The match engine is a little better as well. You don’t need a notepad or a memory to plan your squad. You don’t need to blast the YouTube video of the theme song for the occasion when you’ve brought Blyth Spartans into the Champions League anymore. It’s all baked in now, and FM23 operates as the dream Football Manager sandbox.

FM22 did as well, though. It’s all only a ‘little better’ – so if you’re really enjoying your time with last year’s instalment, there’s no rush to upgrade. There’s very little in this package that will make FM23 worth buying, if you’re knee-deep in an FM22 save. Think of this as more of the definitive version of last year’s game. It’s that – but with a little seasoning. You get the planner and the tweaked match engine and a few new bits here and there but, really, it’s not all that different.

Read more: Football Manager 2023 comes to Xbox Game Pass

The same annoyances still exist. Media interactions are a grind. Inane transfer discussions border on lunacy – you’ll be asked for hundreds of millions, only for the target player to eventually move to a random club for 10 per cent of the fee originally requested. There’s the squad promises, where revolutions will be brewed if you only hire three coaches instead of four. There’s the matches where you pepper the goal, but leave with a 1-0 defeat that creates a morale death spiral.

In a way, all of these grumbles slightly reflect real football. Ask Wolves how they felt after laying Leicester to siege only to walk away with nothing. Players demand coaches they like and throw fits if they do not get them. Clubs will always play silly games with transfers and you can’t tell me that managers love press conferences.

Read more: FIFA 23 review

That’s football and, for that reason, FM23 is worth playing and buying (with caveats). If you love football, you’ll love FM23. If you love simulations and in-depth management games, you’ll love FM23. However, it’s a full-price release for not a whole lot of ‘new’.

After putting 300+ hours into every FM instalment since 2006, I cannot deny this is the best Football Manager game ever, but so was FM22, FM21, FM20, FM19 and so on. It’s a behemoth, and that’s because of the people who back it year in, year out.

Those people will find what they love in this edition. Football Manager has always been about the narratives created within the sandbox. FM23 makes it easier for fans to plot out long-term saves, thanks to the squad planner, but the real fun isn’t found in features, it is within the turning point. If you love the series, you know what I’m on about. A player will eventually get that save that they cannot stop talking about, the one that takes them deeper, and that will be that – hundreds of hours of gameplay locked in.

  1.  £44 from Xbox.com
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The verdict: ‘Football Manager 2023’

Next year’s addition to the series cannot afford to rest on its laurels. Small yearly improvements from its late 2010s instalments won’t cut it going forward. The hardcore will get frustrated, the casual will probably see no difference between yearly fixtures.

You will still have plenty of fun – and lots of it – but Football Manager2023 has hit its peak in its current design. More should be expected going forward, and more should be demanded.

Are you sitting comfortably? No? Well, we’ve rounded up the best gaming chairs

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