So…was it worth the wait? After two years of FM24/FM24 with mods/FM17 because you couldn’t do any more FM24…has Football Manager 2026 made it all okay?

Sort of.

First, the same caveat I’ve laid down for every version of Football Manager I’ve ever reviewed: No one knows how good (or bad) this game is today. It is not a one-day game. We won’t be able to assess its claim for a place on the podium (FM17, FM22, FM07, for me) for a couple of months at least, by which point we’ll know how true she plays.

But seven hours on an incomplete early version is, I hope, enough time to pick out some strengths and weaknesses.

Let’s start with the visuals because that’s the bit that’s got everyone excited. Well, most people. I am old and so the recent online kerfuffle about poor graphics meant nothing to me. I have always been of the opinion that the majority of this game unfolds inside your own head. I like 2D Classic mode because I can see the shape of my team better and it preserves my battery on long train journeys. But even I was impressed with the improvement here. The players look far more human, the movement is much more natural, there’s visible swazz on the ball now. This is indisputably a great leap forward.

There’s also a pleasing RPG element to the game. Instead of limiting yourself to the role of ex-player with coaching badges, you can now enter the game as anything from a badged up global legend to an unqualified chancer who’s never played the game at any level. You can set personality traits too, and they all play a part in calculating your managerial skills or lack thereof.

I entered the game as a 47-year-old nationally known journalist (hey, I used to do the papers on Talksport on Sunday mornings, that’s got to count for something, right?) who counts a successful trial at Falmouth Town (third team) in 1997 as evidence of ‘lower league’ experience and has all of his badges (I’m not here to study).

Starting unemployed with these settings saw me immediately rejected by Rangers, Ajax, and Borussia Monchengladbach which is as it should be. Football Manager is at its best when you feel you have to earn your job.

So like any good out-of-work manager, I attend a few games in this alternative universe where Alexander Isak opens his Liverpool account after five minutes of an opening night victory over Bournemouth. There isn’t a button for appearing on former players’ podcasts or outlining your tactical brilliance to Jamie Carragher and Dave Jones on a Monday night, but this is what I mean about the game being played at least partly in your head.

Eventually, I wash up at Coventry where Virtual Frank Lampard has had a stinker. And this is where I am plunged into a maelstrom of information. It’s important to note here that all new systems take time to learn. The FM24 interface may be second nature now, but it would have been daunting to a first-timer on release.

But by thunder, there’s a lot of stuff and it’s not always a comfortable experience. Some pages are horribly cramped and require too many clicks and too much scrolling. Some clicks take you down blind alleys and the only way out is to return to the main menu and start again. Some information simply isn’t available, like U21 fixtures (and before you accuse me of taking this game way too seriously, surely everyone wants to know when their U21s are playing so that they can give out of shape first teamers some minutes?). Hopefully these are matters that can be resolved with the inevitable flood of patches that will follow release.

In more pleasing news, Tactics have been overhauled, there are new positions and there’s a return to the in/out possession options last seen (and barely used) in Championship Manager 2001/02. This is a good development and one that reflects the trend of teams playing, for example, a 4-3-3 variant on the ball, but reverting to a 4-4-2 when they defend. It also opens up interesting real life tactics like Chelsea’s occasional use of Marc Cucurella as a left-back/number 10.

It is slow going, though this is not a new development. It takes me over an hour to move from appointment to first match and that’s without spending any real time on training, staff, scouting or youth teams (which don’t appear to be playable, though this may be a limitation of the alpha version, believe me when I say that panicked enquiries have been made).

And then there is the game itself. And I am pleased to report that I could find no real flaws here. Players move realistically, the cursory instructions I give them are mostly followed and when I lose my first match to a snapshot and a wonder goal, despite matching my opponent in most departments, it feels okay, it feels plausible, I do not feel the urge to hurl my laptop through the window. I win the next game and that feels right too. When I urge them forward, we create more chances, but look more vulnerable. When I call them back, the chances diminish, the highlight ticker races ahead and we see out the result.

So, and again I stress that my experience is limited to a pre-release version, it appears that Sports Interactive have got at least some of the big calls correct. The game looks good, plays smoothly and promises to once again smash the ‘One Hour of Entertainment Per £1 Paid’ scale I’ve always used to calculate value.

I’m not comfortable with the User Interface yet. After several months of breezing through FM17 (leave me alone, I am old and comforted by relics of the past) navigation through these menus feels treacly and unrewarding. But that may change in time. It’s also a little annoying, given the enormous delay, to see some of the same old threads of text used in press conferences and meetings. This has been a Herculean rebuilding effort, but not all of the parts are new.

Is it a classic? Ask me again at Christmas when it’s had a few patches and I’ve racked 250+ hours. Cosmetically, it looks like the real deal. Time will tell on the rest.

FOOTNOTE: A line or two on performance: My 2020 with 8GB MacBook Air struggled. It was just about playable with one nation and 2D Classic graphics, but the laptop got very hot, very quickly and I was concerned it might scorch my desk. There were no such problems with my 2024 16GB Lenovo Legion. I ran nine nations and full graphics without any issues at all.

ANOTHER FOOTNOTE: When you set up a save and add some nations, say England, Italy and Spain, the game automatically sets up the corresponding womens’ leagues as well. You can turn them off again, but most people won’t realise that immediately. Did SI do this deliberately to rage-bait their online tormentors? If so, I’m kind of impressed.

Click here to read the latest episode of ‘FM Classic: Return to Goodison’ and click here to read the first episode.