The greatest thing about Football Manager is that much of it exists only in your mind. Whether by design or by necessity, the series always presents enough information about the world of soccer to stimulate your imagination and make you notoriously immersed. A simple spreadsheet of statistics becomes a human player who actually feels an emotional response. A menu displaying all-time winners of a particular national trophy will make you stand tall with pride. And the best thing about Football Manager 2024 is that its new features deepen rather than destroy fantasy.

New feature of the year. Suddenly it's like FIFA or using the Unreal Engine" Don't be silly. It's the same yin-yang of informative menu screens and text-based interactions, where your tactical creations regularly give way to a 3D match engine unfolding on the pitch. There, the late nights continue into the wee hours of the morning, and the cussing continues.

And often, that's enough. Even the weakest entries in the series can be pushed to save hundreds of hours by the slow-paced, methodical consumption of ultra-accurate data from the soccer world and the adrenaline-fueled match-day sequences.

"Football Manager" has an off-season for one of three reasons: either the new elements don't move the needle and feel like a season update, or the new elements feel like a chore, or worse, the cardinal sin of breaking immersion Either way, FM24 gets a top-bin with new features after a tough release last year that didn't feel short on features.

This year, creating certain set plays is much easier. Much like the Formation and Tactics Wizard that SI added a few games ago, there is now a Set Play Creation Wizard that breaks down all the considerations for setting up a corner procedure that actually works. While it has always been possible to specify whether a set play kick should be an inswinger or an outswinger, FM24 makes it a little easier to follow a consistent logic by providing step-by-step instructions on how to create it.

There is also more feedback on set plays in the game and more focus on set plays in the way training data is presented. While I can't prove it, there may be slightly more goals scored from corners this year. When a goal is scored from a corner, it makes me feel more proud because it feels like I set it up.

On the pitch, the players' animations have really stepped up a notch. The basic running animations look more natural; maybe even more natural than the FC24 bowlers who walk about 10 steps per second. Also, the way the players transition from running to turns, jumps, tackles, and backtracks is really eye-catching. Everything seems just a bit more fluid.

Here's a reality check: the match engine itself still looks very basic. It is closer to "Virtual Striker" than to the latest soccer games when it comes to the number of polys and quality of lighting for players and stadiums. But SI's priorities here are absolutely correct - animation is more important than per-pixel beauty. There are two things to look at. Identify the players and focus on the skilled ones, and see how the formations and team instructions play out on the pitch. The more natural each player's movements are, the more refined your sense as a coach of what is working and what is not.

For example, I could not let Paulo Dybala score on a save by Roma. The two talented wingbacks, Spinazzola and Karsdorp, were constantly supplying aerial balls into the box, but the problem was not the direction. Tiny little Paulo was being burst out of aerial challenges by the giant Serie A center backs. The solution, of course, was to put a ground ball into Paulo instead. However, in the past, FM's animation was a bit rough and it may not have been clear whether a player lost a challenge because he was not fast enough, strong enough, or could not jump high enough in the air. Paulo can be as fast as he likes and jump for Argentina. But he can't go toe-to-toe with a rugged DC like his colleague Romelu Lukaku.

The lighting is a little better and adds depth to the stadium scene. However, with a major visual overhaul planned for FM25, this year's release will not set the RTX 4090 on fire.

Criticisms of Matchday Presentation" Oh, then let's continue. I have yet to use sports data like heatmaps on a regular basis, and to be honest, the sheer amount of information is overwhelming; maybe it's the pure nature of Championship Manager 01/02 that has stuck with me, but I don't think I need to see so many stats during a match. The screen displays the stats of one Sky Sports studio, complete with match ratings, energy levels, and moods of all 22 players for Zidane.

Not that all of this information is irrelevant; it's like having five cell phones Sellotaped together and scrolling through different social media feeds on each phone at once. My brain needs someone or something to curate the information more selectively. To be fair, many of the views within the match engine and beyond are customizable, but I have yet to find a view that really cuts through the noise.

Another perennial problem remains when it comes to the day-to-day running of the club away from the match engine. One could go on vacation between matches and try to speed things up, but in the end one would only end up lamenting 300 emails and a definite missed opportunity.

Man management falls somewhere between the fun and the tedium of FM, but the introduction of individual player targets has brought it even closer to the former. When a player asks for more top team play or a higher salary, I can now challenge them to achieve a specific goal rather than simply giving in or turning them away. Tammy Abraham, score 10 goals in the league for me.

In fact, and this may just be my stubborn Roma team, I found that most players did not want to agree to set goals. They wanted money or soccer right now. On the rare occasions when they did agree, however, it seemed like there was an incredible exchange between the players and the coach.

SI also said that the logic that empowers the interaction with the players has improved. I am not going to dispute that. It's just that there are a lot of young Italian soccer players who harbor genuine resentment towards me. Apparently, I reneged on my promise to give youngsters a chance at center back and let 19-year-old Giorgio Scalvini play in that position for most of one season. Still, I can sense their individual personalities in my dressing room. I may not like them all, and they don't like me. But they are actual soccer players in my brain as I click through the menu.

Agents are different, though. Agents are not people; FM24's agents are blood-sucking parasites who will only be truly happy if they ensure the financial ruin of the soccer club for years to come. Put another way, the transfer mechanics have been overhauled this year; AI managers are clearly smarter and have more variables to consider when identifying transfers, such as reputation and form.

As a result, it has become really hard to get good players. If you target a high-profile player and start talking turkey with multiple clubs, you could get caught up in a transfer battle. And that means dancing with the devil, offering reckless agent bonus fees, etc. to get a deal done. I have not played enough seasons yet to assess how intelligently other teams recruit. However, in the few seasons I have played, I have not seen any totally ludicrous transfers, nor have I seen a team whose fortunes fluctuate wildly from season to season. Tragically, myself included. Roma fans, I can only apologize for my pathetic team of spoiled divas and glass hamstrings.

I have an old problem. It's still too late to finish the season and part of my brain turns liquid when I look at the match engine stats display. However, considering the scale of the project that SI has worked on for FM25, this year's game feels like a pure value-add. Importantly, it feels different and new, both on and off the pitch. The mechanics of transfers, the way set plays are made, the interactions with players remind us that we are playing a new game in between matches, and the brilliant new animations in the match engine remind us, above all, that this is truly a beautiful game.