Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson on FM24, the franchise’s future & spending six years on save imports

We're so close to the release of Football Manager 2024, and fans are itching for their chance to get hands-on, shirts-on, and Champions League music blaring before their debut.

Thanks to SEGA and Sports Interactive (SI), we headed over to the Football Manager headquarters to play this year's game, see many, many football shirts, and most importantly, speak with Miles Jacobson, Studio Director at SI.

With Miles, we spoke about all things FM24, including its pre-order numbers. We also chatted about the current state of Football Manager 2025's development, getting DM's and bribe offers from players and player agents, alongside identifying and recommending wonderkids.

Before jumping in, be sure to read our preview of FM24.

Compared to previous years' editions, FM24 feels the most feature-rich. Would you say that it's maybe the most complete Football Manager?

Well, that's been used in a lot of blogs so yeah, not my words, though. When we first started talking about 24 and knowing what we were going to be doing with 25 as well. We really set aside, and again, this is a line that I've used before, but we set about wanting to make a love letter to football and a love letter to Football Manager.

That second one was really important because it's the end of an era, and because we've announced that it's the end of the era of the game as it is now, we wanted to make sure that we went out with a bang, not with a whimper.

That's akin to any manager at any football club - if they know they're leaving in the summer, they still want to win those last three games, right?

So we wanted to make sure that it was the best experience possible. And as part of the work to move to FM25, and actually, as a result of the pandemic, where we grew a lot as a studio, there's a lot more people here than there were before the pandemic, we've changed the way that we're working, and it's worked really well this year.

So, the reason why you today are playing the game a month before release, and you're saying that it feels complete, it's a lot more polished than it normally is - even at release - now. And we've got another few weeks to go, so it's really exciting for me to see how people react to it.

When we announced earlier in the year [that] FM25 is going to be brand new, there were loads of people who said that, 'well, I'm not going to bother with FM24'. Good luck avoiding it.

The amount of people that we're now getting is, you know, people going, okay, so with these features, I'm now persuaded. Seeing our pre-order numbers, which are incredibly strong, just shows what the reaction has been to it.

Games are pretty used to having big numbers on their first weekend, and then they're dropping off. We're going to find this year that, word of mouth, word of mouse, whatever you want to call it, it's going to be incredibly strong on the game, and we'll pull a lot more people in. So we're fully expecting FM24 to be the most played game we've ever had, despite the fact that everyone knows that we're moving to something else next.

You kind of mentioned those pre-order numbers there - is it sitting higher than the past few years?

Pre-orders are higher than we were expecting for this stage.

With the feature list that you have each year, how much of a balance do you try and find between adding those features for seasoned players versus making it accessible for new players?

So we have half a dozen different cohorts, personas, whatever you want to call them, that we design towards. So two of those are the hardcore and the new player, and then there's four in between as well. So we were very transparent that we weren't happy with FM23, and one of the problems with 23 is that we didn't spend enough time ensuring that all of those cohorts had features that they were going to like.

There's still a good feature set on FM23, but there were things that were missing that we should have done that didn't get done. So for 24, we've spent a lot more time looking at that to ensure that there is a good spread for people. So there are some features that are there for everyone. There are some features that are literally just there for the hardcore.

Of course, there are some things to try and bring new players in. There are many features on Football Manager that are there just for new players. There's things for new players that others will enjoy that might be different on Football Manager Mobile and Football Manager Console when we start talking about those.

FM25, Unity, Women's football, is there more of a focus on 25 as far as a percentage split of the team's focus as there has been in the past?

If you look at the FM teams, probably around 25 percent of the team have been working on 25, 75 percent have been working on 24.

As people have been finishing their work on 24, they've been moving across to 25. So that's probably gone up in the last week from 25 percent of the team to probably 27 or 28. Then come, November the 7th, it will be more like 75 percent of the team on 25, 25 percent of the team on 24, still looking at any of the player feedback to see whether there's anything we still need to tweak.

But the idea is that from December, everyone is working on FM25. Most of the devs team stay on the previous year's game until April or May. So that's a big change for us. And it's why it was so important for the game to be in the state that it is before launch so that we could move more and more people across.

Do you have an FM24 save on the go? If so, who are you playing as?

I'm 577 hours in at the moment, and I'm splitting my time mainly between a Watford save, my beloved, and a Yokohama Mariners save to see how the J League is working. I've had saves in a couple of other countries as well just to test things out. By release I'll be 700 hours or so, I would have thought - I've got a busy few weeks ahead of us.

Then probably another 700 to 1,000 once the game comes out as well, until I start getting FM25 builds and then I'll be busy.

You mentioned the J League there. That has been known as kind of a long-term goal for you to get - is it a fist-pump kind of moment?

Oh, it was incredible. Yeah, when we got the indication that it was all gonna get sorted, we had some of the code ready, because we've been talking about it for a while. It was awesome I was lucky enough to be in Japan a few weeks ago and talking to the people at SEGA Japan about it and quite how excited they are to be getting a proper release of the game.

The amount of interviews that they got lined up was an interesting challenge as well... a lot of talking going on for a couple of days. But it also showed me just how passionate they are about the release. And it's kind of strange for us in a way because we've been part of SEGA for a long time.

We've been working with them for 20 years, been part of them for 17 years, and haven't had a full domestic release for them. Seeing their excitement for how the tables are reversed. SEGA Europe has done a really good job with the Atlus games and the Yakuza games over the years, and now Sega are taking a Western title and wanting to break that into Japan.

Hopefully, it can break down some barriers there for the whole of the Western industry. Games like Grand Theft Auto do very well in Japan as well, but there aren't that many simulations that have done really well over the years. So hopefully we've got a good crack at the market. We're in it for the long term.

Not expecting miracles in the first year, but it's a really interesting new market for us.

Another league that is kind of in FM is the Saudi Pro League. Is that one that the team has sort of set the horizon on of being a playable league in the game?

Our dream is to have every league playable. For 24 it's not there, but we've done a lot of work on the transfer system, So, you know, that's replicated in game.

For FM24, the new league is the J League, and then for the first time, The Gibraltar league is actually in the game from day one rather than being a free update on Steam. So, [there are a] couple of new leagues for people to play. And J League as well, it's not just J League 1, it's J League 1, 2 and 3, and we're the first game ever to have J League 3.

I'm really excited about a lot of things at the moment. It's kind of worrying.

Out of the feature list this year for the die-hard fans, the 15-20-year saves, what do you think is going to be the one that stands out to them the most?

For the hardcore, save game compatibility, which is something that we haven't even mentioned in the last few weeks. [It was] mentioned in the blog earlier in the year, but you know, that's pretty groundbreaking for the hardcore, but even things like the new national pool and squad planner for national teams is quite a big thing for the hardcore because they're the most likely to play international football alongside playing club football.

Then you've got the graphical improvements, which again, you would have seen already the player movement looks so much better. Ball physics looks so much better. The lighting looks so much better.

And being able to take your game from FM23. That save that you love so much and seamlessly play in the new game with all the new features kicking in. It's really special. We've been working on that for six years.

We've had a team working on that, yeah, so to finally get that breakthrough this year was, was pretty damn.

The AI and the way that they work in the transfer market now has mainly been overhauled, hasn't it? Is there anything in there where teams will look at your transfer activity and see maybe you're targeting this player, we'll just do it, you know, out of spite of you and kind of keep an eye on things that way?

Well, that can definitely happen in game. They have to actually know that you're looking at them first. The intermediary feature this year is more about selling players. So for them to help you sell players and get that wider thing going. If you're being offered a player by an intermediary, which does happen in game, they're not just talking to you.

They are talking to other clubs as well. The idea of a club buying a player just to stop you getting a player was actually more likely to happen in previous versions of the game. Because with the AI being that bit more intelligent in the squad plan, they're not going to sign another left-back to stop you.

With the database, do you ever feel like there's an element of pressure to get things right? Have you ever had anybody knocking on your DMs and just be like, 'why is my crossing so low' or something like that?

I had one just yesterday. I had an email yesterday from a player, who said, 'I know I'm playing in this league, but I should be playing much higher, so why isn't my data higher?' My response is exactly the same, which is we have someone watching you every single week. We independently rate.

I've been offered bribes in the past by agents to make players better, and thankfully I'm unbribable. I've always been unbribable. So we've never changed data for that. The only times that we've changed data in the game [is] based on requests are when players turn around and say, my age is this, not this, which tends to happen more for staff, you have random stuff in there, um, heights and weights, if the players send us those through, great, we'll change them happily - the same if clubs send those through.

There was one time when a player turned around and went, 'I'm faster than this guy and you've got him as being down as being faster than me', and my response was have a race and film it, and they did, and the one that said that he was faster, was faster.

But, to be fair to him, he also turned around and said you've got my dribbling as being better than his, and that should be the other way round. So we changed that as well. But it's evidence only.

That's pretty cool. Downgraded by request.

Over the years there’s been some really good wonderkid predictions. What's your favourite one that was right on the nose?

Every time, Messi, because Messi was in the years before certain laws were in place that stopped us having under 16 players in the game. So we had him as becoming world-class when he was 13. Best prediction, you know, you can't get much better.

There are lots that I'm proud of though. I'm very happy with how Odegaard has turned out, particularly with the lengths that we had to go to get him in the game. Before release with getting a picture from his dad, giving permission for him to be in the game, which was a classic Twitter moment back in the day.

I'm also pretty happy with the way, just from a selfish perspective, that Joao Pedro is turning out and how well he's doing because we had him as being great before he came to Watford, he then came to Watford, my beloved, has now moved on to Brighton and has had such a good start for them as well.

So, I'm proud of those close to home as well. But yeah, can never beat Messi.

You know the guys at Watford really well. Have you ever seen something from some of the scouts about a wonderkid and said to Watford, have you seen this guy?

Yeah.

Have they ever acted on it?

Yeah, they have. But, asking that question about Watford, that's on a personal basis. A lot of football clubs license our data from us. We work with a lot of clubs. So there are clubs that we have meetings with about this stuff.

So it's not just on the Watford level. I think it's probably more pleasing for me when a Champions League club that we're working with or a Europa League club that we're working with bring in a 19-year-old. Having started the journey of looking at that player via our data. Because no one should ever sign up purely on our data.

There needs to be a process. But when those things happen, and you know that it's happened, but you know that you can't say anything to anyone in the world.

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