Football Manager 26
Encounter with the Interface
Manchester United is a trophy-winning English club that reached worldwide fame during the reign of the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson. During that glorious period, the club would regularly lose its biggest stars, yet under Ferguson’s leadership, United constantly remained at the very top of world football. Over time, the main driving force behind Manchester United grew old, and it was known that he would eventually have to be replaced – he even personally chose his successor. However, United did not fare well in that transition. What followed were numerous changes, and despite grand promises, the fans became increasingly dissatisfied. Nothing at United was ever the same again as it had been in Ferguson’s golden days.
Last season was written off before it was even finished. And now we have a situation where the current United manager, after a poor result, insists that his approach is not wrong and that he doesn’t intend to change it. Some say: let’s give him time – major transformations can’t happen overnight. And major transformations are exactly what United needs, something many Football Manager fans will take as a challenge to solve in the latest game — the one that has now downgraded United’s reputation from world-class to merely continental.
The reason for opening this Football Manager 26 review this way is that the story of Manchester United’s rise and fall serves as an allegory for what’s currently happening with the Sports Interactive series itself. FM26’s transition from its old engine to Unity went about as well as United’s post-Ferguson era — full of ambition but also riddled with confusing changes. The result is that players are dissatisfied, as clearly reflected in the flood of negative reviews on Steam. Everyone involved seems aware that, just like United, FM will need a lot more work before it can return to its former glory.
Let’s see what went wrong.
We don’t have the knack, we don’t have the drive
Let’s start by acknowledging one thing: Football Manager has, until now, been built on very old foundations. The series has been dragging along the legacy of the old Championship Manager for two decades, and for a good 15 years it was designed almost exclusively as a PC game. Nowadays, FM is released on every console and mobile device imaginable, which has naturally expanded the workload for an annual series. In that sense, it’s hard to blame Sports Interactive for deciding to switch to the widely used Unity Engine. It should, in theory, make it easier for them to find developers, and thus allow for faster implementation of new features in future releases.
With that said…
Sports Interactive took the transition to a new engine as an opportunity to make major changes to the user interface. I mean, let’s be clear – they mostly changed the layout and positioning of certain elements. But when you have an interface that players have been familiar with for years, even those small tweaks can completely disrupt the game experience. People generally don’t like change – that’s just a fact – and they like it even less when those changes don’t seem to bring any real benefit.
The interface changes in Football Manager 26 fall squarely into that category. One of the new features in the UI is the addition of pop-up windows. The idea is that certain sections no longer need a full, separate page. For example, if you want to check the training section – it now opens as a pop-up. It no longer takes up the entire screen, but the benefit of that is… well, basically none. When a pop-up window comes into focus, it still covers most of the screen anyway, and it closes the moment you click anywhere outside it.
And as if that weren’t enough, there’s a lack of consistency in how these pop-ups are used. Some sections marked as pop-ups (they even have a little icon next to their names) actually open as full pages instead.
When a pop-up comes into focus, it still blocks most of the screen, and it still disappears the moment you click outside it.
Pop-ups, however, are actually the least of the interface’s problems. The general design philosophy here is the complete opposite of what Football Manager has used before. In previous games, the interface had plenty of breathing room — now, FM26 seems almost terrified of empty space. Everything has to be filled with something, so every screen is crammed with as much information as possible. The developers clearly want everything to be accessible everywhere — the result is that you end up not knowing where anything actually is.
It doesn’t help that the game keeps bouncing you between sections that use different names for the same thing. For instance, in the Squad section you’ll find “First Team,” but when you go to the Match Day tab, it suddenly calls that same group “Match Squad.”
If you think user interfaces in games can’t be confusing, you really need to try this one. Football Manager 26 feels like some kind of bureaucratic office, where everyone’s buried under piles of paperwork and convinced their job is incredibly complex — when in reality, it would be perfectly simple if they could just organize their papers properly.
The developers want everything to be accessible everywhere — but with so much clutter around, you end up having no idea where anything actually is.
Not only are sections scattered across a hundred different screens, and not only are those screens crammed with both useful and utterly useless information, but FM26 also lacks any consistent internal logic when it comes to how individual elements of the interface work.
For instance, the club form timeline runs from right to left, while the player form chart runs left to right. Why, for the love of God? The messages you receive can be filtered by “new” and “unread,” which is absurd because every new message you get is — obviously — unread. Bravo, UI designers! Why not let me filter messages by topic instead — say, transfers, injuries, or training updates?
But probably the worst thing about this dreadful interface is that some of the features you’d expect to find are simply gone. For example, I want to check the recent results of my next opponent. If anyone has figured out where that’s hidden, please let me know. Also, let me know when they bring back the option to permanently display player ratings on a graph.
Actually, never mind the missing features — what’s even worse is that half of what’s left doesn’t even work properly. I’d like to use the extra mouse buttons to move forward and backward in the menus: sometimes they work, but most of the time… not so much.
Probably the worst thing about this dreadful interface is that some of the features you’d expect to find are simply gone.
And if the new interface were at least faster thanks to its new layout or a more streamlined in-match view — maybe it could be forgiven. But no, it’s quite the opposite! Everything opens three times slower, which really doesn’t do the game any favors.
There’s also no longer any support for ultrawide resolutions.
The only genuinely positive thing I can say about the new interface is the ability to create your own shortcuts to specific sections. And I suppose navigation with a controller is now a bit smoother on consoles.
Overall, the interface clearly feels designed for consoles first — and you don’t need a better example of that than the fact that this is the first Football Manager on PC to support native gamepad controls. Not some half-baked mouse emulation — actual gamepad controls, just like the console version.
I’ve already spent half this review complaining about the new interface, and I haven’t even reached the pitch yet. And honestly, things get even worse there.
You can’t view match stats while the 3D match engine is running. You also can’t check them after halftime or full-time if you’ve entered a team talk — those screens simply block access. You can’t see the league table during a match at all. Some menus can be expanded for more information, but they never stay that way — they always collapse back to their default state.
When your coaching staff recommends a substitution, you no longer see basic info like the player’s fitness level or match rating, as you could in previous games. Overall, this version is stingy with information during matches. In older FMs, you could see everything — heat maps, shot locations, frequency charts — you name it. Here, the most detailed post-match analysis you get is basically an xG chart and a momentum graph.
This game is, overall, stingy with information during matches.
Even if you knew nothing about football or management sims, you’d still assume that in a game like this, the most important thing is having a simple system for making substitutions. In FM26, it’s anything but simple.
You’ve got, what, three different ways to make a substitution — and not one of them is ideal.
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In one method, you click on a player and swap them with one of the suggested options — but the game doesn’t tell you who’s best suited for that position, nor does it show accurate fitness data.
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The second method involves dragging one player over another on the full team list — but the interface only shows six substitutes at a time, so you have to scroll for the rest.
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The third way is via the tactical screen, where you drag and drop players directly — except again, there’s no feedback on who would be the best replacement.
Want to give individual advice to each player before sending them onto the pitch? You can — but for some reason, only once. And whatever you tell the first substitute will automatically apply to everyone else you bring on afterward. Brilliant.
Even worse, they’ve completely removed in-match communication with your team. You can no longer shout encouragement or criticism from the sidelines. All interaction is now limited to before the match, halftime, and after the final whistle.
THAT WAS A TRIPLE PENALTY, NOT A PENALTY — A TRIPLE PENALTY!
Enough about the interface — the public will want to hear a proper statement from you.
Of all the sweeping changes, it’s actually surprising that press conferences have remained almost untouched. It took maybe ten matches before the questions started repeating themselves over and over — the same topics, the same dialogue options, and me parroting the same answers again and again.
You don’t need to be psychic to notice the vacuum these questions come from. They’ll ask, for example, “What do you think about the performance of the opposing player?” — I reply, “I don’t want to talk about other players or the opponent’s performance.” The very next question: “How would you comment on the goal scored by that same opposing player we just mentioned?”
→ STORM OUT!
Actually, I have to say a bit more about the interface. This time, questions are on the left, answers on the right. You constantly have to shift your gaze back and forth. I’m thinking: is it really so hard to follow the format of absolutely all dialogues in every game — question at the top, answers below? But no — apparently for Sports Interactive, it’s more important to show the seating arrangement of journalists at the press conference. Layout. Seating.
Of all the sweeping changes, it’s actually surprising that press conferences have remained almost untouched.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that in the same year they removed a ton of features from the game, they decided to add women’s football. And generally, I have no issue with that — go ahead. But here’s the thing: they remove the option to manage national teams, arguing that only 4% of players used it, and instead dedicate time and resources to women’s football, which probably won’t be played by even 2% of the player base. It feels like their priorities aren’t exactly aligned.
The only thing I can genuinely praise is their work on licenses and presentation. Among the “big five” leagues, the only missing licenses are the Italian and Spanish leagues. The English Premier League, the UEFA Champions League, the FIFA World Cup — all of it now comes fully licensed from the start, with official names, logos, player faces, trophies, and so on.
The switch to the Unity Engine has brought a noticeable improvement to the 3D match visuals, so at the very least it now looks decent. Player animations are far more varied, and stadiums are more detailed — on the bigger grounds, you really get the sense that you’re in an actual football cathedral. Customization options for creating your own manager or manageress have also been expanded, though don’t expect anything close to an RPG or Sims-level experience. The 3D-generated portraits are still pretty poor and stand out painfully, especially today, when even basic AI can generate much more convincing images.
From a technical standpoint, I haven’t experienced any crashes or major slowdowns, but minor bugs are everywhere. From weird, Naruto-style running animations during stoppages to some interactive UI elements becoming unresponsive. Damn interface!
SEASON LOST
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet: we finally have separate formations for possession and non-possession play. Very useful. There’s also an “instant result” option, letting you quickly finish a match if you’re comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind and don’t want to waste time. Another genuinely helpful addition.
It’s clear that FM26 does have some good new features — it’s not all bad news.
Unfortunately, all of these major interface changes overshadow the positives, and I have to admit that playing this year’s manager quickly became a chore. What used to be fast and easily accessible is now buried in a forest of confusing menus, often 3–4 clicks away. Everything is bigger, yet somehow more cluttered.
The series has clearly taken a wrong turn if Sports Interactive truly wants a unified interface for both PC and consoles. Instead of designing the interface around the control scheme that management games have used for over 30 years, it’s now tailored to the limitations of a gamepad, intended for viewing on a screen several meters away. No wonder the PC audience is angry.
That said, I don’t believe all hope is lost for the manager. The problematic interface can be simplified and improved, and missing features can be added later. It will just take time — and at this pace, it might even make more sense to wait another year for the next game rather than be disappointed with the current state of FM26.
