It feels like everything to do with the upcoming release of Football Manager 26 is positive, especially with the quickly approaching early access period. There’s so much hype around the launch, with people just excited to finally get their hands on a new Football Manager.

However, there’s trouble in the recent paradise. Football Manager 26 has no international management, despite the fact that it’s World Cup year. This is a huge blow, although the game is bolstered by the introduction of women’s football, and many players have express their disappointment.

Even worse, developer Sports Interactive didn’t even announce the news to the wider fanbase. Instead, the lack of the feature was quietly announced in a Korean-language interview, making it inaccessible to most fans.

“Of course, there’s the big market of the World Cup, but I thought it was more important to improve the game’s quality,” said director Miles Jacobson in a translated version of the original article.

It’s not just ordinary fans that have expressed their annoyance at the lack of international management for such a huge year for football. Five days ago, the biggest Football Manager content creator, the one and only Zealand, dropped a bombshell video about international football.

What was Zealand’s video about?

In his latest upload, Zealand delivers an incredibly passionate and well-reasoned rant about the absence of international management in Football Manager 2026, a decision he finds particularly baffling given it’s a World Cup year. It’s safe to say he doesn’t hold back.

The YouTuber acknowledges the official reasoning: that international management had poor user engagement and was fundamentally broken. But he argues that fixing it should have been a top priority, especially with the World Cup approaching and women’s football being introduced to the game for the first time.

What frustrates him most, however, is the timing and execution of the decision. Zealand questions how something so central to the football ecosystem could be dropped while the developers found time to focus on things like lighting changes, background trees, and UI tweaks.

My thoughts

I completely agree with his point on communication. Sports Interactive aren’t an “indie studio” anymore. Considering the size of the company and the massive fanbase behind the game, discovering such a major change through a random Korean interview just isn’t acceptable. I’d guess that less than 1% of the player base speaks Korean and the only reason it was even discovered was because the Football Manager community is full of internet sleuths. It felt like something Miles Jacobson and SI would rather just quietly sweep under the carpet.

Additionally, the fact that it’s World Cup year is another massive blow considering how important it is to capitalise on moments like this to attract new players. But there’s a wider issue here: Football Manager is meant to be the most realistic football management simulation in the world. If it doesn’t include one of the core components of global football, then surely it’s not meeting its fundamental objective.

That said, I do have to disagree slightly on just how big of a deal this is right now. I’ve looked into the numbers and the reality is that far fewer people play international management compared to club football. For example, only about 6% of players have ever won the World Cup, compared to 18% who’ve won the Club World Cup, and almost 40% who’ve won a top continental competition. Obviously, the flip side of this argument is that the reason the player count was so low is that the game mode was so broken, so the priority should have been to fix it. 

While it’s disappointing to miss out and I’m sure there are hardcore international management fans who’ll feel a key part of the game is gone, I don’t think it’s evidence of a deeper problem. After the calamity of last year, it seems like SI are just trying to get the series back on track and focus on the fundamentals before slowly reintroducing features that weren’t up to scratch. It would be far more disappointing if they’d spent months fixing international management but failed to deliver the visual and gameplay improvements that FM26 has clearly prioritised.

What Sports Interactive need to do from here

The most important thing SI can do from here is improve their communication and transparency. The hype around FM26 proves that the fanbase is a very forgiving one and that they can be won back quickly when things are handled well.

If SI were to be upfront about why certain features haven’t made it in, they probably wouldn’t win everyone over, but they’d at least gain some respect for their honesty. This community values transparency as much as innovation.

In an ideal world, SI would announce international management as a post-launch patch, ideally timed for after the January transfer window. That would give them a few extra months to polish it while still making it playable before the World Cup kicks off. Even better, they could start sharing regular developer notes to keep players informed on what’s being worked on.

At the end of the day, for 90% of players, this won’t have dampened their optimism, but Sports Interactive need to take these legitimate criticisms seriously.