Sports Interactive have borne the brunt of their fair share of criticism ever since the release of Football Manager 26 at the start of November. Whether it’s the much-changed User Interface (UI), missing features at launch like international management, or the various technological bugs and glitches that render the game borderline unplayable — take your pick.
But there’s one issue I have encountered that doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention. Something that has negatively affected my FM26 experience, and leaves me crossing my fingers for a future update or patch – like the one currently being tested on Steam.
As a storied Football Manager fan, one of my favourite aspects of the game is being able to play an online save with my close friends.
We’d start at a club in a random European country and see who can get the best out of their team – spoiler, it’s never me as I’m often on the chopping block as quick as Shane Long’s goal against Watford back in 2019.
This year was no different, and after each of us finally got their hands on FM26, a save in France’s Ligue 1 would follow, but it took little to no time for any fun we were having to reach a grinding halt.
In the middle of a match, between the 30th minute and half-time on average — yes, it happened more than once — everything would freeze.
Players started to look like they were playing a game of stuck in the mud, not moving, with the timer also paused, leaving you in limbo.
No rewinding or changing the game settings would fix it, leaving the only port of call to be the new ‘Instant Result’ button that simulates the rest of the game with you hoping your team did enough to win.
Quite regularly, the opposite would happen, however. For example, one of my friends was 2-1 up when the issue occurred, and after simulating the rest of the 90-minutes, he’d find out his side somehow lost 4-3 thanks to a last-minute strike.
This is an issue that led us to to leave the network save until it was fixed, a truly heartbreaking decision to make.
We have reported this problem to Sports Interactive and are awaiting further correspondence on when it will be fixed. After all, I love Football Manager, and just want to effectively manage my team, like I could in previous years, while having a great time with friends along the way.