Even if you like Football Manager 2026, it’s hard to argue it hasn’t been controversial. Love it or hate it, it has split opinion in a way the series rarely has with it becoming one of the worst-rated Steam games of all time.

That might feel new for Football Manager, but it’s nothing new for football games as a whole. Over the years, the genre has produced some truly dreadful efforts. Games that arrived half-baked, were ripped apart by reviews, and had players hovering over the refund button within hours.

I’ve gone back through the archives to dig out some of the most infamous examples. Some you might barely remember. Others will instantly bring on cold sweats. These are the football games that probably should never have been released at all.

eFootball 2022 (2021)

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S

Konami’s eFootball 2022, a free-to-play rebrand of the long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series, launched in autumn 2021 to an absolute nightmare of a reception. The response from both critics and players was swift and brutal. Complaints centred on atrocious visuals, a lack of basic content, and a seemingly endless supply of bizarre glitches. Within a day, 92% of its Steam user reviews were negative, briefly making it the worst-rated game on the entire platform. On PC, it limped to a Metacritic score of 25/100 and topped countless “worst games of the year” lists.

Social media did the rest. Timelines filled with hilarious but horrifying screenshots of melted player faces and physics that simply gave up. It went viral, just not in the way Konami would have hoped. The company was forced into a public apology and delayed updates while it scrambled to fix the damage. A series once praised for its quality and authenticity became a cautionary tale on how not to launch a football game.

Right now, the game is better after a large number of patches and annual roster DLCs, but it’s still far from the wonder that PES used to instill in the PS2 days.

Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival (2016)

Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita

This was supposed to be a triumphant return. Instead, Kick Off Revival became infamous almost overnight. Designed by Dino Dini, the creator of the original 1989 Kick Off, it aimed to revive old-school arcade football for a modern audience. What players got in 2016 was an unfinished, borderline unplayable mess.

Basic elements of the sport were missing entirely. No yellow cards. No red cards. No offsides. Game modes were stripped back to the bone. The controls were barely explained, with no proper tutorial or even a clear control guide, leaving players completely lost. Bugs and AI issues made things worse. Goalkeepers would occasionally carry the ball into their own net, without it even registering as a goal.

VICE didn’t mince words, flatly telling readers not to buy it and calling it the worst football game of all time. Patches eventually added some of the missing fundamentals, but by then the reputation was beyond repair. Not every classic needs reviving.

Street Power Football (2020)

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Released in 2020, Street Power Football tried to tap into the nostalgia for arcade-style street football, clearly hoping to fill the gap left by classics like FIFA Street 2. The ambition was there. The execution really wasn’t.

Reviews were mostly negative, with the game sitting around a miserable 41/100 on Metacritic. Visually, it looked cheap and outdated, often compared to a low-end PS2 title. Animations were stiff, character models were poor, and nothing ever felt quite right. On the pitch, things didn’t improve. Physics were inconsistent, mechanics were shallow, and matches became boring far too quickly.

It offered several modes, including trick-shot challenges, 3v3 matches and a freestyle-focused option, but almost all of them were badly designed and wore thin within minutes. The final insult was the price. Launching at around £40, it asked far more than its quality justified. Even the menus and UI were awkward to navigate. Painful to play and instantly forgettable.

FIFA Soccer 64 (1997)

Platforms: Nintendo 64

When EA Sports brought FIFA to the Nintendo 64, the result was a legendary flop. Released in early 1997, FIFA Soccer 64 is regularly cited as the worst FIFA game ever made. Some go further and call it one of the worst N64 games, full stop.

Rushed out to capitalise on the new hardware, it suffered from dreadful performance and laughable gameplay. The frame rate lurched along, the ball frequently ignored the laws of physics, and the controls were clunky to the point of parody. At times, it barely resembled football at all.

Everything felt half-finished. Players moved at a bizarrely slow pace, except when the game randomly sped up. Animations were jerky, the AI was brain-dead, and the whole experience felt chaotic. That it launched alongside Konami’s International Superstar Soccer, which was miles ahead in almost every way, only made things look worse.

Codemasters Club Football (2003)

Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows

In 2003, Codemasters tried something genuinely unusual. Instead of releasing a single football game, it launched Club Football as 22 separate, club-specific titles. Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan and many others each got their own version, complete with official branding and cover stars.

Under the hood, though, every single release was the same generic football game with the names swapped. It’s now a textbook example of a marketing gimmick backfiring. Rather than drawing in loyal supporters, it confused buyers and split the audience.

Gameplay reviews were lukewarm at best. The engine was functional but uninspired, nowhere near the standard set by FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer at the time. The presentation was decent enough, but the action on the pitch was stiff and forgettable. With no single, unified release to build momentum, the idea fizzled out. After a follow-up batch the year after, the series was quietly cancelled.

Glenn Hoddle Soccer (1985)

Platforms: Amstrad CPC

Going right back to the mid-80s, Glenn Hoddle Soccer earns an honourable mention for all the wrong reasons. Even setting aside the odd decision to stick a player’s name on the box, the game itself was painfully poor.

Graphics were bad even by 1985 standards, sound was minimal, and the gameplay was completely broken. It was trivially easy to stroll the ball straight into the opponent’s net every single time, removing any sense of challenge or realism. Unsurprisingly, it flopped and went down in history as one of the weakest releases on the platform.

Today, it’s the kind of game that only ever comes up in pub quizzes or conversations between very committed football nerds. The one mercy is that it didn’t damage Glenn Hoddle’s own reputation. He’d later manage to do a perfectly good job of that on his own.

Conclusion 

That’s a grim little tour through some of football gaming’s lowest points. If nothing else, it should make even the roughest modern releases, like Football Manager 2026, feel a bit more bearable. Have I missed an obvious horror show? Are there any games that you remember playing once before never touching again? Let me know in the comments.