How Football Manager 26 is helping change perceptions of the women’s game

How Football Manager 26 is helping change perceptions of the women’s game

Since its rebrand, Football Manager (FM) has allowed millions of fans to step into the virtual world of football management and experience the game through a world built on real data.

Users can take control of almost every aspect of running a football club. They can sign players, negotiate contract extensions, manage injuries, adjust tactics and scout for talent in a player database that spans over 450,000 players across 145 leagues.

In 2021, Sports Interactive — the company behind the game — announced plans to integrate women’s football. Tina Keech, the Women’s Research Lead at Sports Interactive, spoke to Her Football Hub about the addition of women’s football to Football Manager.

“The women’s game was growing and the WSL became professional, and generally it felt like a good time,” she said.

Tina joined the company in May 2021, when she was hired to spearhead the ambitious project of introducing women’s football.

The decision to integrate women came at a time when the women’s game was reaching new highs.

When Sports Interactive began work on the women’s database in 2021, England were still more than a year away from winning their first major senior trophy. However, the game was already showing signs of significant growth, which continued after the Lionesses’ triumph at Euro 2022.

For example, the average Women’s Super League’s attendance in the 2022/23 season was 5,272. A 174.1% increase from the previous season.

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Aware that women’s football was still unheard of by much of FM’s existing customers (males between 20–40), the game’s Managing Director, Miles Jacobson, was prepared to take a financial risk, believing that the company needed to ‘take the jump’ and improve representation.

“He was always open with the fact that we might lose money at the start. But it’s the right thing to do,” Tina said.

For a game deep-rooted in men’s football, bringing women into the same virtual world offered a unique opportunity to expose an established player base to women’s players, clubs and leagues they’d never encountered before.

That opportunity, however, depended on getting the representation right in a project that cost millions of pounds.

How did Football Manager build their women’s database?

FM’s database is the information on which the game relies. It tells gamers who a footballer is, their individual qualities, who they play for, contract length and injury status.

For the men’s game, that database has been built up and developed over 20 years, so for the women, Tina and her colleagues had to start from scratch. However, building the database proved more difficult than Tina imagined.

Even basic information such as dates of birth were difficult to find, forcing researchers to ‘think outside the box’ and contact people within the game for missing information.

“If we googled Harry Kane’s sister’s dog, we’d probably find it. If I googled someone’s date of birth, there’s no way!”

And with more than 12,000 women’s players in Football Manager spanning 14 leagues and three continents, the process is still very much a work in progress, with researchers regularly correcting information when new details become available.

‘It’s all about realism’

Their women’s football research team, consisting of 40 individuals, provided insight to make the game as close to reality as possible. The inclusion of shorter contracts and lack of release clauses in the women’s version of the game is representative of this.

Additionally, gender differences are particularly stark when it comes to injuries. Therefore, real-world data has been used to accurately portray the longer recovery time for female athletes, particularly regarding ACL injuries.

That’s why Tina says Sports Interactive couldn’t simply copy the men’s game.

That same thinking influenced Tina’s decision not to include female players’ weight. Included in the men’s game, she questioned why they needed to display a number that fluctuates heavily and ultimately didn’t affect gameplay.

“As a woman, I felt really uncomfortable about including weight. It turned out it didn’t affect a player’s performance, so I questioned why we were adding it.”

For Tina, accurate representation is ultimately about giving existing players the chance to authentically discover women’s football. She has already seen the game change the views of friends who previously showed little interest in the women’s game.

“I’ve got guy friends who don’t really care about women’s football. They’re all of sudden coming up to me asking about players because they’ve been playing the game.”

Inspiring the next generation of female coaches

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Beyond increasing awareness among existing users, FM could also influence the future of coaching within the women’s game.

The game has long inspired real-life success stories, with former Southampton manager Will Still saying FM sparked his interest in coaching. The 33-year-old played the game heavily as a teenager and has since coached in Belgium, France and England.

Tina believes introducing women’s football could create similar opportunities for female fans and supporters.

“I’ve spoken to players out there and I’m like, ‘please share, this is the way forward’. It gives them a little bit of exposure to the scouting world, for example, how to think tactically.”

These opportunities could be increasingly important following FIFA’s new ruling. The sporting body now requires every team competing in its women’s competitions to have at least two female staff members on the bench. One coach occupying the role of head or assistant coach.

As the demand for female coaches currently exceeds the supply, introducing more women to the tactical nature of FM provides another route into the sport.

Scouting hidden talent

Tina also hopes the game’s database can have a practical role beyond developing future coaches.

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