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Hello! We’re here to explain how one of gaming’s biggest soccer brands went sideways for a season and how it’s trying to bounce back.

On the way:

📅 Football Manager’s torrid year

🆕 Mourinho leaves Fenerbahce

🤝 Chelsea agree fee for Garnacho

⚾ Son pitches for the Dodgers

Game over: Why Football Manager 25 was cancelled

(Photo: Alex Livesey – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

University was where I nurtured a solid addiction to Championship Manager. In pockets of free time, I’d think about leaving the house and going to lectures.

Championship Manager spawned Football Manager in 2003 and under that title, it soon became a market leader for gamers everywhere; virtual coaching for the man in the street. But at the start of this year, something peculiar happened. Football Manager’s 2025 edition failed to appear.

Delay after delay led to a complete cancellation, which, commercially, was as good for business as the Champions League taking a 12-month recess. Beyond an apologetic but light-on-detail statement, the gaming community was in the dark about why development had hit the wall, and whether the entire franchise was in trouble.

They’re in the dark no longer because The Athletic has an interview today with Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive, the firm that creates Football Manager. The good news for the likes of me is that the 2026 version is on the way, and if you’re thinking that Art de Roche’s meeting with Jacobson might be advertising fluff, think again. It’s a full-on mea culpa and an explanation for why one of the planet’s biggest gaming brands suffered the embarrassment of a year off.

‘It was pretty embarrassing’

Football Manager’s problems haven’t caused it to shed much of its popularity. An online teaser for FM26 on X drew 1.4 million views in an hour. But it has affected its reputation and, inevitably, the decision to pull FM25 rattled the stock market value of the parent company of Sega, which publishes the game.

Jacobson spelled out the reasons for the cancellation, of which there are several. One was that Sports Interactive underestimated the laborious job of switching to a new game engine (like switching from Windows to Apple, to use his analogy). A second was that when Jacobson first tested FM25, certain features, such as youth team systems, were hidden from view. “I couldn’t find things in my own game,” he said. “It was pretty embarrassing.”

A third reason was a legal issue that he’s restricted from saying a great deal about. A fourth was a further development that he can’t discuss publicly at all. Hold up piled on top of hold up and in February, Sports Interactive called the whole thing off.

Jacobson described the saga as a “disaster” financially, but said FM25 could not have been allowed to go to market. “You can’t just put s**t in a box and expect it to sell,” he said. He retained his job but concedes he would have been “first out of the door” had FM26 not shown shoots of recovery. “I don’t think I’ll be allowed to forget what happened, and I shouldn’t be either,” he told Art.

Something tells me the franchise will bounce back because it’s too big not to. Whether consoles are your bag or not, there’s a lot to take from the story of a huge football brand veering down a mountainside. It brings to mind one of the sport’s oldest cliches: that you’re only as good as your last game.

News & transfers
He arrived to huge crowds and an almighty fanfare, but after one full campaign, Jose Mourinho has packed up and left Fenerbahce. They fell short of Champions League qualification this week.
That’s the second big change in Turkey in the past 24 hours. Besiktas head coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was sacked last night, a consequence of them failing to reach the Conference League.

The Champions League group-stage draw got there in the end yesterday, after the usual messing about on stage. You’ll find every cough and spit on this section of our website. Our writers have had their pick of the ties (above), and for me, it has to be Real Madrid away at Kairat. File that under ‘out of their comfort zone’.
Alejandro Garnacho from Manchester United to Chelsea is on. United have accepted a bid of £40m ($54m) for the winger. That one’s been bubbling all summer.
Kobbie Mainoo wants to leave United, but not permanently. He’s asked to go on loan (which, if nothing else, would buy some time before another potential change of head coach). The club don’t look like granting his wish, though.
Champagne corks are popping at St James’ Park: Newcastle United might just have landed themselves a centre-forward. They’re lining up to pay £65m for Stuttgart’s Nick Woltemade, which, looking at his record, strikes me as quite a lot of money.
Tottenham Hotspur want RB Leipzig’s Xavi Simons, who equally wants out of Leipzig. Spurs offered £51.8m last night and the Germans gave them the thumbs up. It suits all parties.
Show Viz

Nothing sums up Manchester United’s general cluelessness better than them turning up at Grimsby Town on Tuesday and asking where the manager’s changing room was. If you’ve ever seen the inside of Blundell Park, you’ll know why that’s funny.

They’re also in the process of negotiating with Royal Antwerp for goalkeeper Senne Lammens, but as cover for Andre Onana, rather than a replacement. What Ruben Amorim definitely needs is a different goalkeeper on the bench. Don’t worry about the elephant in the room.

But what of Amorim himself? Because the tide is turning against him and after the debacle of defeat at Grimsby, Oli Kay is questioning United’s faith in him. The idea that another managerial switch would cure Old Trafford’s ills is blind to their years of malaise, but one glance at the graphic above shows how feeble Amorim’s Premier League record is. His stoic devotion to 3-4-3 isn’t proving to be a virtue.

Frankly, I don’t see how binning him changes much. It just invites another soul into the meat grinder. But awful results, confused thinking and moping comments from the Portuguese? It’s not a cycle that can continue indefinitely.

Around TAFC 🔄

The Athletic’s Alternative Premier League Table is going to be a fun feature during 2025-26. If goals could only be scored from penalties, Wolverhampton Wanderers would be piling the titles up.
Old enough equals good enough, but in the Premier League, there are actual rules on fielding and safeguarding under-18s such as Arsenal’s Max Dowman and Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha. As an example (and sensibly), they cannot change with adult players. Eduardo Tansley picked over the regulations.
There’s some excellent insight from Ahmed Walid here on the recruitment trends of Europe’s major divisions. It turns out that the French are buying less and less from France.
Arsenal are good at many things. Selling for a profit isn’t one of them. In this window, Liverpool have clawed in £188.5m from outgoing transfers. Arsenal’s income stands at £6.9m. It’s a shortcoming they have to change.
Matt Slater’s Business of Football column includes a bizarre story highlighting the way in which things such as TV rights agreements are negotiated on WhatsApp — and how WhatsApp messages can be legally binding.
Quiz question: tells us which four Englishmen played in the Champions League in the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s. Clue — they might have worn red. Answers here later today, and in Monday’s TAFC.
Most clicked in Thursday’s TAFC: Grimsby’s famous night.
Catch a match

(Selected matches, times ET/UK)

Friday: Championship: Leicester City vs Birmingham City, 3pm/8pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/Sky Sports. Serie A: Lecce vs Milan, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, Fubo, DAZN/DAZN.

Saturday: Premier League: Chelsea vs Fulham, 7.30am/12.30pm — USA Network, Fubo/TNT Sports; Leeds United vs Newcastle United, 12.30pm/5.30pm — NBC, Fubo, Peacock Premium/Sky Sports. La Liga: Real Madrid vs Mallorca, 3.30pm/8.30pm — ESPN, Fubo/Disney+; German Bundesliga: Augsburg vs Bayern Munich, 12.30pm/5.30pm — ESPN/Sky Sports. Serie A: Napoli vs Cagliari, 2.45pm/7.45pm – CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, DAZN/DAZN; MLS: Cincinnati vs Philadelphia Union, 7.30pm/12.30am — MLS Season Pass/Apple TV.

Sunday: Premier League: Brighton vs Manchester City, 9am/2pm — Peacock Premium/Sky Sports; Nottingham Forest vs West Ham United, 9am/2pm, Liverpool vs Arsenal, 11.30am/4.30pm, Aston Villa vs Crystal Palace, 2pm/7pm — all USA Network, Fubo/Sky Sports. Scottish Premiership: Rangers vs Celtic, 7am/12pm — CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Fubo/Sky Sports. La Liga: Rayo Vallecano vs Barcelona, 3.30pm/8.30pm — ESPN, Fubo/Premier Sports.

And finally…

When he landed in Los Angeles, Son Heung-min came in hot. LAFC, the club he joined for a Major League Soccer record this month, are shifting Son shirts hand over fist. In the week when he signed, his jersey was the best seller of any athlete worldwide.

To drive the hype further, LAFC reprised a classic mash-up by sending Son to pitch at the home of the LA Dodgers (above). I know nothing about baseball, and some in my office reckon he needed to put his back into it, but to my eye, that’s a good straight throw, no?

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(Top photo: Annice Lyn/Manchester United via Getty Images)