How long would you play a version of the game before it becomes too unrealistic?

[FM2017Player]

Obviously with my username, the majority of my posts are about FM2017.  (I also play FM2019 but with one of the Mad Scientist's vintage databases).

I am currently playing the 2022 World Cup, which is being played in Canada in June, after it was suddenly moved from Qatar at some point in 2019... I wondered how many people had played the game so many seasons as to reach this point in the alternate football universe.

The most bizarre thing is that the international squads taking part in this are generally nothing like the ones you'd expect to be in Qatar this winter. For England, both Delle Alli and Saido Berahino are key players, Joe Hart is still the strongest goalkeeper and Jonjo Shelvey is still a strong squad member. Meanwhile, Kalvin Phillips is worth 300K for Crawley and Declan Rice has just been relegated to the National League with Eastleigh! I have more chance of signing him for my Stockport County side also in the NL than I would League One Paddy Madden!

Phil Foden, meanwhile, is in the Championship with Everton (who went down with a 10-point administration deduction after filling their squad with ineffective flops all on 100K a week... so some things are almost true to life). Trent A-A is in League One with Ipswich.

Buyako Saka doesn't even exist, neither does Haaland. Arsenal are PL champions with Oxlade-Chamberlain a key player - the only reason he isn't in the World Cup squad is that he is injured. MCFC have some really weird players, KDB being the only recognizable force in their side. They finished 4th.

Would such developments spoil your enjoyment of the game, and if you've been playing for five seasons or more, which bizarre developments have you noticed?

 

[Freakiie]

I don't enjoy FM until I've holidayed to 2040 and gotten rid of all these tiresome real players that do the same things over and over. Gimme that "unrealistic" FM!

[FM2017Player]

12 minutes ago, Freakiie said:

I don't enjoy FM until I've holidayed to 2040 and gotten rid of all these tiresome real players that do the same things over and over. Gimme that "unrealistic" FM!

Ha ha, that's kind of not unrealistic though. In my save there is a regen called Tom Doran who is fantastic at Leicester and made it into the England World Cup squad. It's entirely feasible that such a person could have existed and gone from being unknown in August 2016 to a star in June 2022, as Haaland and Saka have done.

I guess it's the 'Dele Alli is still one of the country's best players in 2022' sort of thing that is jarring... it doesn't normally affect my save for Stockport County, but this World Cup just looks weird. I haven't even seen Brazil and Argentina yet. (Obvs Germany is nonsense as ever).

[CFuller]

I don't think anything like that would spoil my enjoyment - if anything, I love the alternative universes Football Manager can create, and I get even more invested when things get crazier and especially once the newgens take over. FM is a fairly realistic football simulator, but the older games especially are never going to be ultra-accurate to real-life. You never know which players will break through out of nowhere or which former wonderkids will fade away.

I too have fond memories of FM17, leading England to glory at the 2022 World Cup in Morocco. We won THREE consecutive penalty shoot-outs against Poland, Italy and Sweden (which is unrealistic in itself! ) and then beat France 2-0 in the Final because Claude Puel decided to put Alphonse Areola in goal ahead of Hugo Lloris. 

Some of my World Cup winners included Josh Tymon, Lewis Cook, Jordon Ibe and Brendan Galloway. Phil Foden ended up at Hearts on my save. I'm pretty sure that Tammy Abraham went to Hull and switched nationality to Nigeria. Jordan Pickford stayed at Sunderland after they were relegated from the PL. Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham were obviously too young to be in FM17.

Meanwhile, Manchester United absolutely dominated the Premier League for five years under José Mourinho. They signed basically every world-class forward under the sun - Mbappé, Lewandowski, Isak, Memphis Depay, Ousmane Dembélé, Bernardo Silva - which meant Marcus Rashford could only get into the team as a central midfielder!

 

Also, I've just booted up my old FM13 save to see how the world looks in June 2022, and some of today's big names have had very different career paths - though to be fair, I doubt many people at SI predicted in 2012 that Jack Grealish would be a £100million player for Manchester City, rather than warming the bench for West Brom.

Virgil van Dijk ended up at Galatasaray. Mohamed Salah went back to Egypt after playing for the mighty FC Vaslui in Romania. Bruno Fernandes is a right-winger for Uniao de Madeira. Romelu Lukaku was released by Chelsea in 2021 after a load of injuries and never played again. Serge Gnabry was also wrecked by injuries, signed for my Romford team in the Conference South, and now plays in Milton Keynes. Joshua Kimmich was released by Stuttgart at 18 and retired.

Sure, those stories aren't entirely true to real-life - but that's FM for you, and I love it! 

[FM2017Player]

1 minute ago, CFuller said:

I don't think anything like that would spoil my enjoyment - if anything, I love the alternative universes Football Manager can create, and I get even more invested when things get crazier and especially once the newgens take over. FM is a fairly realistic football simulator, but the older games especially are never going to be ultra-accurate to real-life. You never know which players will break through out of nowhere or which former wonderkids will fade away.

I too have fond memories of FM17, leading England to glory at the 2022 World Cup in Morocco. We won THREE consecutive penalty shoot-outs against Poland, Italy and Sweden (which is unrealistic in itself! ) and then beat France 2-0 in the Final because Claude Puel decided to put Alphonse Areola in goal ahead of Hugo Lloris. 

Some of my World Cup winners included Josh Tymon, Lewis Cook, Jordon Ibe and Brendan Galloway. Phil Foden ended up at Hearts on my save. I'm pretty sure that Tammy Abraham went to Hull and switched nationality to Nigeria. Jordan Pickford stayed at Sunderland after they were relegated from the PL. Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham were obviously too young to be in FM17.

Meanwhile, Manchester United absolutely dominated the Premier League for five years under José Mourinho. They signed basically every world-class forward under the sun - Mbappé, Lewandowski, Isak, Memphis Depay, Ousmane Dembélé, Bernardo Silva - which meant Marcus Rashford could only get into the team as a central midfielder!

 

Also, I've just booted up my old FM13 save to see how the world looks in June 2022, and some of today's big names have had very different career paths - though to be fair, I doubt many people at SI predicted in 2012 that Jack Grealish would be a £100million player for Manchester City, rather than warming the bench for West Brom.

Virgil van Dijk ended up at Galatasaray. Mohamed Salah went back to Egypt after playing for the mighty FC Vaslui in Romania. Bruno Fernandes is a right-winger for Uniao de Madeira. Romelu Lukaku was released by Chelsea in 2021 after a load of injuries and never played again. Serge Gnabry was also wrecked by injuries, signed for my Romford team in the Conference South, and now plays in Milton Keynes. Joshua Kimmich was released by Stuttgart at 18 and retired.

Sure, those stories aren't entirely true to real-life - but that's FM for you, and I love it! 

Fab post! Perhaps I should just embrace the strangeness of this World Cup.

Interesting that your World Cup 22 was moved to Morocco, not Canada... but either way, someone decided that a winter World Cup in Qatar was just too disruptive or annoying and binned it off pretty quicky - if only someone in FIFA had thought like that!

I may post some details of my 2022 World Cup in one of the other forums (which is the best for this? I don't visit here too often). England play the first match tomorrow (I watch matches in full match format and am trying to stick to the actual calendar as much as possible), the game is against Jamaica and Jack Grealish will be starting! (But only because Dele Alli isn't 100% fit and will be needed v Argentina). Doran and Berahino will be the front pairing (Kane is also... guess what... injured).

[CFuller]

Just now, FM2017Player said:

Fab post! Perhaps I should just embrace the strangeness of this World Cup.

Interesting that your World Cup 22 was moved to Morocco, not Canada... but either way, someone decided that a winter World Cup in Qatar was just too disruptive or annoying and binned it off pretty quicky - if only someone in FIFA had thought like that!

I may post some details of my 2022 World Cup in one of the other forums (which is the best for this? I don't visit here too often). England play the first match tomorrow (I watch matches in full match format and am trying to stick to the actual calendar as much as possible), the game is against Jamaica and Jack Grealish will be starting! (But only because Dele Alli isn't 100% fit and will be needed v Argentina). Doran and Berahino will be the front pairing (Kane is also... guess what... injured).

FIFA weren't being entirely sensible in my universe, to be fair - some of the matches were played in a city that's actually in Western Sahara. 

If you want to share your World Cup details, there are a couple of places you can go: FM Career Updates if you want to include screenshots in your posts, or FM Stories if you're doing text-only updates (they have a strict no-images rule).

[Feddo]

I can't recall which CM's I've owned but from the FM's I stopped buying every version after 2008. I've played FM08 Fm13 Fm15 FMT17 & FMT20. FMT21 will probably my last version, so I'll play that one forever 😁

But I'm still enjoying 20 a lot. But to be honest I really start enjoying the game at the point where there are all most no real players. Don't know why, but there's something about newgens that I enjoy more then real players. So I to holiday until 2040 or something like that 😅

The only reason I update is because of new features. Not the database. 

[Draakon]

FM never predicts a career decline for established players (somebody who is already in England Squad, for example). If Hart and Alli CA is great in FM 17 they probably are in England team in 2022. Only cause of decline in FM world would be constant injuries (young talents like Grealish who are underrated by SI scouts and won't make it in the game because of that is completely another story) 

It would be extremely difficult to predict in FM world something that happened to Dele Alli. Goalkeepers are the perfect example of that - Kepa, or Loris Karius come to mind, in addition to Joe Hart. But players fade in real life - whether it's confidence issue, personality problems or just off the pitch issues but it happe s. How would you rate Donny van de Beek in FM terms (attributes) at the moment, after he's hardly played for ManU last season? 

[fc.cadoni]

I am 34 y.o. So starting at 2022 until reach 65-67 y.o for retirement plan. Around 2052 for FM22. Around 2051 for FM23 and so on. Feeling old already. 

[FM2017Player]

7 hours ago, Draakon said:

FM never predicts a career decline for established players (somebody who is already in England Squad, for example). If Hart and Alli CA is great in FM 17 they probably are in England team in 2022. Only cause of decline in FM world would be constant injuries (young talents like Grealish who are underrated by SI scouts and won't make it in the game because of that is completely another story) 

It would be extremely difficult to predict in FM world something that happened to Dele Alli. Goalkeepers are the perfect example of that - Kepa, or Loris Karius come to mind, in addition to Joe Hart. But players fade in real life - whether it's confidence issue, personality problems or just off the pitch issues but it happe s. How would you rate Donny van de Beek in FM terms (attributes) at the moment, after he's hardly played for ManU last season? 

Really good answer that explains a lot, thanks.

[Draakon]

One more thing - FM, as a simulation, is very straightforward and if you do your due diligence in the minimum level, you can't miss. In real life players can flop - whether it's a question of role, team, manager, league etc. but they don't perform on the expected level. They're not poor players per se (although it might happen that they're simply overrated). Let's take Romelu Lukaku - he can shine in the right club and be overlooked in other. But he did cost almost £100m at one point.

In FM, if you check your scout report and see a great player and you pay £50m for him, he will perform on the pitch. Attributes enable him and even if your instructions as a manager are not spot on, you'll get easily at least 90% out of his potential.  In FM you virtually can't miss the mark with transfers.

Not so in real life. Huge number of flops on different levels. Players with big transfer fees (relative to their level of football or league) will not perform as expected and it's difficult to spot, why exactly that happens. Have they lost any of their attributes? Perhaps, but not always - suddenly losing skills that are trained in 10 years doesn't seem very likely. Things just don't click any more, whether it's confidence issue or just poor luck in some games, but suddenly it seems that the next academy graduate takes away the place in the line-up from that £50m player and... that's pretty much it. Next on he'll be sold forward to a smaller club with 1/3 price tag even if there's just 2-3 seasons passed of his record sale. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Draakon

[Feddo]

1 hour ago, Draakon said:

Not so in real life. Huge number of flops on different levels. Players with big transfer fees (relative to their level of football or league) will not perform as expected and it's difficult to spot, why exactly that happens.

I've seen this happen a lot in FM too though. Buying a high performer for a high fee and then that player doesn't perform anymore and gets sold in 1 or 2 years. I've made a pretty penny with buying these players (back) for a small fee and selling them again for big profits. 

[FM2017Player]

8 hours ago, Feddo said:

I've seen this happen a lot in FM too though. Buying a high performer for a high fee and then that player doesn't perform anymore and gets sold in 1 or 2 years. I've made a pretty penny with buying these players (back) for a small fee and selling them again for big profits. 

I've seen it happen with Everton in this FM17 save - highly rated players signed for big wages eg Schmeichel, Fofana, De Ligt, Vardy, Tadic... but they couldn't qualify for European competition and the next season were battling relegation before a deduction sent them down the trap door.  Although I'm already managing Stockport, I think I will create a new manager profile to try and sort the Everton mess out by clearing the flops off the wage bill if I can and building around younger players... they need to get up first time or the EFL Fair Play rules will batter them.

[FM2017Player]

8 hours ago, Feddo said:

 I've made a pretty penny with buying these players (back) for a small fee and selling them again for big profits. 

Don't you get hit by the wages they are expecting?

[Brasilia88]

If you start low enough in a country, you´d have no idea who everyone is. Surely, you get the update once a week, for example that Ronaldo from PSV moved to a new club. However, by the time you crossed 6 league tables, most players have moved or quit already. 

For me the only reason to get a newer version is to be able to buy it (FM2020 was free) and to get a new mechanic, like the analysis button. 

[Feddo]

5 hours ago, FM2017Player said:

Don't you get hit by the wages they are expecting?

Some do, some dont. I always sign with the intention to sell and do take their salary in account with the selling price. And there are a couple of tricks to lower the salary, don't know if they still work in fm22 though. 

But a percentage of the transfer usually cuts a decent bit for example 

[rusty217]

I don't really see that issue happening for me. For starters I very much doubt the real world will catch up to my FM save again. Plus I get fully immersed in my own football world. I actually prefer my football world to the real one, so it being unlike the real world is a plus rather than a negative.

[Draakon]

On 13/06/2022 at 08:58, Feddo said:

I've seen this happen a lot in FM too though. Buying a high performer for a high fee and then that player doesn't perform anymore and gets sold in 1 or 2 years. I've made a pretty penny with buying these players (back) for a small fee and selling them again for big profits. 

In FM it's more often connected to AI-s inability to use them properly or just questionable transfer decisions. Different FM versions vary in their inabilities to simulate real world, but one example is buying AMC players while playing formation without AMC, or buying wingers and then playing narrow 4-3-3 etc. 

The second common issue is AI not playing their new players at all - it doesn't make sense to spend more than half of your budget on a player and then giving him just three starts in his first season, then finding that he's not that good after all and selling him two years later. You could argue that it happens in real life too - yes, it does, but only just a few teams have made those mistakes (Barca, Real, City perhaps), but generally player who has necessary attributes and has gelled into the team WILL deliver his abilities on the pitch and that's not what happens in real life, at least not with similar certainty.

[Jonthedon26]

I am the opposite of most people so far in this thread in that I hate when I get too far into a save and all of the real players start to retire and I only have regens. Saying that though, I don't really have time nowadays to make it that far before the next iteration has been released and I move on to that haha

[oche balboa]

The Virtual World is great. and if i can get invested into a save i could go on for 20-30 seasons. Bizarre things will happen as the moment you click continue the real world really goes out the window and its all about your world on this game

 

 

[phnompenhandy]

It would be a pity if the likes of Haaland don't emerge in the '20s, but you can get transfer updates for older versions of the game if you don't go too far back.

I'd be more than happy to see the '22 World Cup relocated, and even happier if Brexit weren't a thing!

I'm currently doing a lower league campaign in the 14th tier of Scotland in FM21, so none of all this affects me in any way!

[DP]

11 hours ago, oche balboa said:

The Virtual World is great. and if i can get invested into a save i could go on for 20-30 seasons. Bizarre things will happen as the moment you click continue the real world really goes out the window and its all about your world on this game

 

 

The thing that isn’t good is the ease of the game at the top level. If SI could somehow make managing the top clubs a challenge long term, I’d buy the game. 

[Uncle_mo]

43 minutes ago, DP said:

The thing that isn’t good is the ease of the game at the top level. If SI could somehow make managing the top clubs a challenge long term, I’d buy the game. 

I think a problem is when your team  has learnt the tactics blind and moral and their respect for you is high then you are just too good and too damn consistent. You almost need a thing in the game where the wheels come off for no reason at all, players fall out after a loss and you have to rebuild the team chemistry from scratch.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Uncle_mo

[Draakon]

11 hours ago, Uncle_mo said:

I think a problem is when your team  has learnt the tactics blind and moral and their respect for you is high then you are just too good and too damn consistent. You almost need a thing in the game where the wheels come off for no reason at all, players fall out after a loss and you have to rebuild the team chemistry from scratch.

This.

Combination of team morale, team cohesion and right team talks as a powerful recipe. If you add some AI flaws in squad building, then indeed it becomes easier in time.

I've found that my first year in long term save in one club is usually the most difficult one - we are more inconsistent, opponents are stronger and it needs time before we find our consistency and rhythm. But once we settle in, it's much more smooth.

[pdmalcolm]

On 13/06/2022 at 16:49, FM2017Player said:

I've seen it happen with Everton in this FM17 save - highly rated players signed for big wages eg Schmeichel, Fofana, De Ligt, Vardy, Tadic... but they couldn't qualify for European competition and the next season were battling relegation before a deduction sent them down the trap door.  Although I'm already managing Stockport, I think I will create a new manager profile to try and sort the Everton mess out by clearing the flops off the wage bill if I can and building around younger players... they need to get up first time or the EFL Fair Play rules will batter them.

 

Everton, that.