Regulated like Swiss cuckoo clocks, the English of Sports Interactive are once again taking advantage of the beginning of November to update what remains THE benchmark for sports management games. Football Manager 2022 is also very alone in its niche since all its competitors signed Eidos or Electronic Arts have stopped the costs. Except improbably missed, it will be, this year again, a high quality title and the whole question will be about the relevance of the “big news”, the interest of the small modifications.
8
View PriceRead ConclusionFootball Manager 2022
- Clarity and precision of the interface
- Wealth of the database
- Data Center Inputs
- Staff and meetings to know everything
- Minor novelties
- Gegenpressing still overpriced?
- Unconvincing 3D engine
- Gaps in licenses
Test carried out from the PC version of the game, using a code provided by the publisher. Football Manager 2022 officially releases November 9 on PC/Xbox. It will be available from that date in the Game Pass.
Football Manager 2022 is the 18th installment in a series that began in 2004 after the divorce between the British development studio Sports Interactive and its publisher Eidos Interactive. In reality, however, the franchise is much older still and dates back to the early 90s with the release of Championship Manager in 1993. From that time, Oliver and Paul Collyer had the idea of ​​​​offering an annual release in order to stick to the seasons. of football and thus update a database which has become the major asset of the game, despite the absence, always noticed, of the official license of some competitions, but especially of some clubs like Juventus.
Have one goal in life
At the base of a Football Manager 2022 is therefore the idea of ​​​​not having us play on the field, but "behind the scenes". Rather than embodying the Messi and other Ronaldos, with the ball at their feet, we put on the costume of an Alex Ferguson or the tracksuit of a Marcelo Bielsa. We control training, the definition of tactics, the promotion of young people, the search for rare pearls on the transfer market, the negotiation of new and renewed contracts as well as relations with the management of the club. As its name suggests, Football Manager 2022 puts us in the shoes of a… manager. CQFD.
Inevitably, such a role singularly limits the "aesthetic" options available to Sports Interactive and the franchise has often been described as the "Excel of football" for its numerous statistical tables or its stacks of figures to define the holding of a defence, the regularity of the players or the effectiveness of an attack. From this point of view, Football Manager 2022 is obviously not a revolution and its general interface has changed very little for several versions already. The set is built around a bar of side "menus" which brings together the main areas of action of the player.
For neophytes, it is obviously from there that we will be able to consult its workforce, manage tactics, turn to the transfer market or simply check the season calendar. For the most accustomed, it is above all here that we discover one of the main new features: the Data Center. More than any other section of the game before it, this field is a wealth of information for anyone who doesn't want to manage on instinct, but rather on the basis of accurate statistics. He tracks the performance of each team, of each player so that we can (try to) find the solution to our current problems.
The data center is not content with statistics on the propensity to score – the famous xG indicator – but distills information on all the compartments of the game, all the positions. It is also possible to request reports from his staff, to analyze the past behavior of our team or to study that of our next opponent to better adapt to it. As with the vast majority of the interface, things may seem austere at first glance and you actually have to get used to the “activity report” side. Still, all the information is given clearly using perfectly readable graphics.
Another novelty of this 2022 version of Football Manager is linked to a particular moment in the life of a football club, especially for clubs of a certain importance: the transfer window and, more precisely, the last day of the transfer window. Admittedly, most of the time you will have already done your shopping before this deadline arrives, but today it constitutes a kind of game within the game that can be skipped entirely or left to play out, hour by hour. , with that stressful countdown, last-minute offers from agents or the culmination – or failure – of a major contract for the rest of the season.
Mercato or pious progenitor?
Not always very receptive to this kind of accessories intended to artificially create tension, we rather appreciated this "last day of the transfer window" which, let's remember, is completely optional: at any time, it is possible to stop the progression of this day to leave for the post-mercato in a more classic way. More classic precisely, the adjustments proposed by Sports Interactive on the system of meetings. Faced with an ever richer, ever more complete game, these have each time made it possible to keep abreast of everything that can evolve within the club.
Especially if you decide to take charge of one of the greats in Europe, it is not easy to have your eyes everywhere and the meetings are therefore an opportunity to take stock with all the other members of the staff. Thanks to a format that we will qualify as “collective”, the information presented by our colleagues is easier to understand and we come out of these meetings with clear decisions to make. The members of the staff present various points of importance and propose possible solutions / improvements that one is free to validate or refuse. Of course, this can have various consequences on other “areas” of club life.
JVFR
For example, the assistant coach may very well advise changing the status of a player recruited as a “star” player who, in the end, is better suited as a “rotation player”. We suspect that such a decision risks, if not making people furious, at least questioning the player in question and it is then preferable to discuss with him to calm the situation... or to escalate things if you want to get rid of it after all! On this point, however, we must recognize a tendency to "easy irritation", especially when we wanted to impose a fine on one of our players: it is often difficult to calm things down.
In another register, we can also criticize a certain tendency to runaway game around transfer compensation. Bringing a player still under contract to his club is increasingly ruinous, but in the end it is only like what we see in reality. In addition, we are happy to see a certain rebalancing in the demands of artificial intelligence, whether it is from other clubs, players' agents or the players themselves. We can also play much more on the various clauses to bring to a conclusion a negotiation which seemed badly started.
JVFR
Digital Catenaccio and Iron Defense
On a more tactical level, the novelties are much less numerous. Sports Interactive has however set up the position of eccentric defender who "is instructed to prevent opposing attackers from playing and clearing dangerous balls" with however this "offset" side which allows him to participate in the offensive phases in the manner from a side. The position is interesting and comes, logically, to bring some new blood to the tactics that can be put in place. Note, however, that most of the tactical work of the developers has precisely focused on a certain balancing of the game.
Football Manager 2021 has been widely criticized for a certain preponderance of gegenpressing so dear to Jürgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola. It was a bit of a "magical" strategy, but today the exhaustion of the players is taken into consideration more and from the start of a second period you will see the heart of energy of your proteges emptying very quickly. Do not think that gegenpressing has become useless – it remains formidable in its effectiveness – but it involves more careful monitoring of player fatigue, risk of injury and, in doing so, it requires frequent rotations in order not to finish the season with a half squad.
JVFR
Since we are talking about matches, it is worth mentioning a point on which Sports Interactive insisted a lot during the promotion of the game: the new 3D representation of matches. So, it's true, the animations are indeed a little more elaborate, natural and they give the whole a more fluid side. However, there is no need to veil the face and the whole still has a very "robot" side. Difficult, as the developers can do, to speak of the “beginning of a new era” or else these beginnings are still very timid with reactions that are still very unrealistic during dribbling, overflows or contacts.
JVFR
Before and after the matches, Football Manager 2022 does not stop the flood of conferences which come on top of the countless meetings already mentioned and which give the whole game an extremely "chatty" side which could confuse many players, especially those who have not touched a Football Manager for 5 or 6 years. If the meetings have a real interest, as we have said, the conferences and other unexpected interventions of journalists to ask a question are hardly exciting. The exchanges are repeated tirelessly conference after conference – how is that realistic? – and we do not feel any real importance in these appointments that we end up, invariably, by skipping.
Finally and if we had mentioned the thing at the start of the test, we regret that Sports Interactive does not manage to have an absolutely complete database. Of course, it's not easy at the time of football business, but it's always a shame to do with Zebre instead of Juventus or to have certain competitions that don't have the right name. Fortunately, we take this opportunity to salute the incredible work of the community on Sortitoutsi, a small patch corrects all the names that are wrong and multiple packs allow you to add missing photos, update logos or jerseys .
JVFR
Football Manager 2022 : l'avis de JVFR
Year after year, Football Manager evolves without ever denying its DNA. In fact, each new version sounds more like an adjustment of the previous one with the introduction of new features in a trickle to test the reaction of fans before committing too much. Still, the formula put in place by Sports Interactive is once again devilishly effective. Football Manager 2022 can always count on a formidable database to make football fans dream… like pure managers.
Consideration of contracts, finances and payroll are aspects that should not be overlooked even if things are still decided mainly on the ground. There, we regret the lack of novelties. The 3D rendering of the matches is in progress, but you have to be very indulgent to speak of success. Fortunately, Football Manager 2022 is also an opportunity for good quality rebalancing on the tactical and artificial intelligence side. A convincing opus which will be blamed above all for questionable accessibility: the neophyte is likely to retreat from the abundant side of the simulation.
F8
Over the years, the Football Manager promise has evolved in small steps, so it is difficult to take offense at the few new features of the 2022 opus. The richness and precision of the simulation are always there, the clarity of the interface too and Football Manager 2022 is a success, but maybe it's enough to monitor the game every two or three years?Most
- Clarity and precision of the interface
- Wealth of the database
- Data Center Inputs
- Staff and meetings to know everything
- Stress of the “last day of transfer window”
- A busy community
The lessers
- Minor novelties
- Gegenpressing still overpriced?
- Unconvincing 3D engine
- Gaps in licenses
- No women's football side?
