FM25 removes most-used feature as players will need to “relearn” how to play

Football Manager 2025 is ringing the changes by removing several age-old features that have been in the series for years, and a leading dev has explained to fans why these staple systems are being substituted.

Over the last 20 years since the first installment in 2005, Football Manager has become the go-to series for football enthusiasts who want an authentic experience. While the FIFA and EA SPORTS FC games are all about matters on the pitch, FM finds the fun in pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

During that time, fans have become accustomed to certain features that arrive in each installment. However, when FM25 was revealed back in June, the devs announced that a number of long-running systems and modes wouldn’t be returning for the new season.

One of the biggest is the Inbox page, which previously acted as the main screen that players would use to manage all the goings on in their team. In an interview with Eurogamer, Studio Director, Miles Jacobson, explained that realism is why such a core feature has been removed.

“It’s very rare that you see a football manager with a laptop,” said Jacobsen, but he also confirmed that players will still receive notifications like they did before, just on a new interface. “They’ve got their tablet, and they’ve got their phone, so we wanted to move into that more. The football world never really had email.”

Although he admitted that this change will mean that players might need to “relearn” how to play the game in many ways, the dev insisted that the “core loop” will still be very familiar.

The Inbox isn’t the only familiar system that isn’t returning from FM24, as touchline shouts are also gone. These were the main ways to interact with your players during a match, offering them words of encouragement or demanding more of them. But according to Jacobsen, there were concerns among the team that it wasn’t good enough.

“It’s not up to our standards, it didn’t work the way that consumers thought it worked,” he continued. “he continues. “So when we’re looking at that and going, well, do we port something across from our old game that isn’t good enough? The answer is ‘no.'”

Some game modes have also had their contract terminated in FM25, including Challange Mode and, most notably, International Management. This was partly based on data that revealed that the community just didn’t interact with either option enough, as only 0.5% and 5.6% of fans played each one respectively.

“We’ve looked really hard at international management in FM and determined that what we were planning to deliver wouldn’t reach our initial quality threshold,” added Jacobsen, before he confirmed that a more “feature-rich” version of international will return in FM26.

Football Manager 2025 has been delayed to “late November,” so we’ll have to wait a little longer to see how these changes go down with the community.