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Football Manager

Sports Interactive's series, the continuation of Championship Manager under an old name

Classic GamesSource-checked

When Sports Interactive left the publisher Eidos, Eidos kept the Championship Manager name and the studio kept its game. It bought the rights to the name of Kevin Toms's 1982 Football Manager, and Sega published Football Manager 2005 in November 2004. Sega bought the studio in 2006. The series has come out almost every year since, with a database of real players built by volunteer researchers that a Premier League club signed up to use for scouting in 2008. Football Manager 25 was cancelled in 2025, and Football Manager 26 followed that November.

In November 2004 the best-known football management game on the PC changed its name without changing its makers. For more than a decade Sports Interactive, the studio of the brothers Paul and Oliver Collyer, had made Championship Manager for the publisher Eidos. When the two parted company, Eidos kept the name and Sports Interactive kept the game. It needed a new title, and it went back to the game that had inspired the Collyers in the first place: Football Manager, which Kevin Toms had written for the ZX81 in 1982. Sega published Football Manager 2005, and the old name has belonged to Sports Interactive’s series ever since. The series does not descend from Toms’s program. It is Championship Manager carried on under a borrowed title.

Fast facts

  • Developer: Sports Interactive, London. Studio director: Miles Jacobson.
  • Publisher: Sega, which bought the studio in 2006.
  • Predecessor: Championship Manager (1992 to 2004), developed by Sports Interactive and published by Domark, later Eidos.
  • First release: Football Manager 2005, November 2004, for Windows and the Macintosh.
  • Consoles: Football Manager 2006 also came out for the Xbox 360 and the PSP.
  • The database: in 2004 Sports Interactive said around 2,500 volunteer researchers watched league football for it in 40 countries.
  • Later history: Football Manager 25 was cancelled in February 2025; Football Manager 26 came out in November 2025.

From Championship Manager

The Collyers began the game in their bedroom as schoolboys in Shropshire. “It was not made as a commercial game originally,” Miles Jacobson told Retro Gamer in 2006, “just something for the brothers to do for a bit of fun, and it was their mates who persuaded them to send it off to publishers. Football Manager was the game of the era and the inspiration.” Domark published Championship Manager in 1992, and the management game entry tells the story of its lukewarm first reviews. The series grew anyway, through yearly updates and full sequels in 1995, 1999 and 2003. Championship Manager 3 raised the database to 25,000 players, and Championship Manager 4 added a two-dimensional view of the matches, which Edge said “revolutionised the tactical element”.

The split came in 2003, when, as Retro Gamer put it, it “was announced Sports Interactive would no longer develop games under the brand Championship Manager as this was owned by publisher Eidos”. Eidos set up its own studio, Beautiful Game Studios, to make Championship Manager 5; Edge reported in 2004 that many of its 30 staff came from Silicon Dreams, a long-time Eidos developer that had recently closed. Sports Interactive kept its code and signed with Sega. Edge later described Football Manager as “the Sega-published continuation of the CM code base”.

The new name came from the other end of the genre’s history. “It was acquired from Prism Leisure, who bought Addictive back in the day,” Jacobson said. “When we knew that we were leaving Eidos, we went through a long period of coming up with names, none of which were good enough, and our lawyer knew people at Prism, so approached on our behalf.” He had also exchanged emails with Toms, “whose Football Manager I loved”.

Football Manager 2005

The first Football Manager looked unfamiliar and played like the old game. Australia’s Hyper noted “a brand new interface”, “the first truly major overhaul of the menus and buttons in years”, and a new way to talk to the press about the next opponent. It scored the game 90% and called it “the kind of game you can play for years”. PC PowerPlay saw the same thing as a new layer of “Manager Mind Games”: what a manager said to the media, to a player or to a rival could now change the morale of the squad.

The game also found trouble abroad. In December 2004 China’s Culture Ministry banned it because it treated Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet as countries, which the ministry called “content harmful to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. The game had no Chinese version and was not sold there, but Hyper reported fines for websites offering downloads and for internet cafés that failed to stop customers playing it.

Eidos’s Championship Manager 5 arrived in 2005. Readers voting in that year’s Golden Joystick Awards could choose between them in the PC category, which Edge called “the grudge-match-in-waiting of Football Manager 2005 versus Championship Manager 5”. Jacobson played the rivalry down: “Some sections of the press have tried to build up a rivalry between the two studios, but there isn’t really one, or certainly not from our side.” In 2006 Eidos’s own producer admitted to Edge that Championship Manager 5 had been “pretty unfinished”, and the magazine said that it had widely been considered a failure.

The database

Most of the game’s appeal lies in its data. The research began as a hobby: Jacobson had produced unofficial data updates for Championship Manager in his spare time while working in the music business, and was asked to look after the British database. He “also had a network of people who had offered to help out with the updates”, he told Edge in 2004. “Those teams merged together to form the UK team and we used the same process to find the head researchers for other countries, who all build up their own networks in their own countries.” By then there were around 2,500 volunteers watching football in 40 countries.

Real football noticed. Edge’s 2004 feature told how Bristol Rovers signed the left-back Robbie Ryan after the son of the club’s chief scout, Paul Molesworth, remembered having him in his Championship Manager team and knowing he was out of contract. Two Norwegian players of the game applied to manage Norway’s national team and received polite rejection letters. In November 2008 Everton signed an agreement with Sports Interactive to use the Football Manager 2009 database, which then held more than 370,000 players and staff, for scouting. Reviewing Football Manager 2010, Edge treated such claims with care, calling them “PR puffery” but “plausible because the stats are so comprehensive”.

Every year since

Sega bought Sports Interactive in April 2006. The series had already begun to reach beyond the PC: Football Manager 2006 came out for the Macintosh on 4 November 2005, at £29, and for the Xbox 360 and the PSP. The pattern held for the next two decades: a new edition most autumns, a larger database, and a match view that moved from two dimensions to three. Edge gave Football Manager 2010 8 out of 10, found its 3D matches still stuttered, and concluded: “For some people, FM2010 is no less than another way of living.”

By 2010 the studio had more than 70 full-time staff. Jacobson described to Edge how every suggestion, from the forums, from Sega and from inside the studio, went into one features database; of 1,500 features, 1,200 were scheduled for the next few editions. The game’s rules sometimes ran ahead of real football’s. “The squad regulations that have come into play in the Premier League this year, we had them in the game last year,” he said.

The run broke in 2025. Football Manager 25, which moved the series to the Unity game engine, was delayed from November 2024 to March 2025 and then cancelled. “We currently haven’t achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game,” Sports Interactive told its players in February 2025, citing playtests that showed “the overarching player experience and interface is not where we need it to be”. Football Manager 26 came out on 4 November 2025, the first in the series built on Unity and the first to include women’s football. Its reviews were mixed.

Sources

  • Retro Gamer issue 32, 2006, pp. 31–37: football management feature (Jacobson on the Collyers’ origins and inspiration, the sequels of 1995, 1999 and 2003, the 2003 announcement, the name bought from Prism Leisure, the rivalry with Eidos).
  • Retro Gamer issue 4, 2004, pp. 53–56: history of football games (the split from Eidos, the Football Manager name, Football Manager 2005 to be published by Sega).
  • Edge issue 140, September 2004, pp. 76–83: “The beautiful game” (Championship Manager 3’s 25,000 players, Championship Manager 4’s 2D match engine, Beautiful Game Studios and Silicon Dreams, the name “originated by Kevin Toms”, the 2,500 researchers in 40 countries, Jacobson’s data updates, Bristol Rovers and Robbie Ryan, the Norwegian applicants).
  • Hyper (Australia) issue 136, February 2005, p. 60: Eliot Fish’s review of Football Manager 2005 (Sega, the new interface, the media, 90%). Same issue, news section: the Chinese ban and the fines.
  • “Taiwan reference gets sports game banned in China”, Taipei Times, 10 December 2004 (web, secondary): the Culture Ministry’s notice, no Chinese version, release on 5 November 2004. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/12/10/2003214443
  • PC PowerPlay (Australia) issue 109, February 2005, p. 68: David Wildgoose’s review of Football Manager 2005 (“Manager Mind Games”).
  • Edge issue 154, October 2005: 2005 Golden Joystick Awards shortlists.
  • Edge issue 160, March 2006: Eidos preview of Championship Manager 2006 (Championship Manager 5 “pretty unfinished”; Football Manager as “the Sega-published continuation of the CM code base”).
  • Hyper (Australia) issue 145, November 2005: Football Manager 2006 preview (PC, PSP, Xbox 360; due November).
  • Macworld (UK), November 2005: Football Manager 2006 for the Macintosh, 4 November, £29.
  • “Everton to use Football Manager for scouting”, MCV, 17 November 2008 (web, secondary): the Everton agreement and the database of more than 370,000 players and staff. https://mcvuk.com/business-news/everton-to-use-football-manager-for-scouting/
  • Edge issue 209, Christmas 2009, p. 104: Football Manager 2010 review (8/10, “PR puffery”, the 3D match engine, “another way of living”).
  • Edge issue 221, December 2010: “Managament report”, interview with Miles Jacobson (70 full-time staff, the features database, the Premier League squad rules).
  • “Sports Interactive”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Sega’s purchase of the studio announced on 4 April 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Interactive
  • Sports Interactive, “A Message from Sports Interactive, An Update on Football Manager 25”, 6 February 2025 (web): the cancellation and the playtests. https://www.sports-interactive.com/news/message-sports-interactive-update-football-manager-25
  • “Football Manager 25: Sports Interactive cancel release of popular game”, Sky Sports, 7 February 2025 (web, secondary): the two delays and the planned move to Unity. https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13304515/football-manager-2025-sports-interactive-cancel-release-of-popular-game
  • “Football Manager 26”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): release on 4 November 2025, Unity, women’s football, reception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Manager_26

See also

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