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Home»Football Manager»Beginners Guide to Football Manager 2023 | Setting Up Your Save
Football Manager

Beginners Guide to Football Manager 2023 | Setting Up Your Save

How to setup your first Football Manager 2023 Save - A beginners guide
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Beginners guide to Football Manager 2023 - how to set up your save

Are you brand new to the Football Manager game? Maybe you’ve played FIFA by EA Sports but want to branch out into a soccer simulation game where you can channel your inner Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp or Ted Lasso by putting strategic thinking and tactical planning in front.

To help you get started on Football Manager, we are at your service providing you with this beginners guide to Football Manager 2023. Today we’re going to look at how you can set up your first Football Manager save, and all that entails.

For anyone new to the game, Football Manager might seem highly complex with all the different game mechanics: scouting, training, squad management and player interactions incorporated besides tactics and tactical analysis. But fair not, we got you covered with our Football Manager 2023 beginners guides.

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Football Manager select career game mode

This FM23 tutorial will walk you through everything you need to know to get your first Football Manager save up and running. From the different settings to improve the user experience, what to consider when creating your manager profile, or when selecting playable nations and active leagues, to the different advanced options when starting on a new save.

NB! This beginners guide to Football Manager bases off on selecting the Career Mode in FM23.

Not yet decided on your FM23 save? Browse our articles of Football Manager 2023 save ideas and teams to manage on FM23.

Customizing the Preferences

Before starting a new game, it could be advantageous to spend a minute or two looking through the game’s preferences. Here you’re able to customize the look and feel of Football Manager, from selecting your preferred Football Manager skin, its language and currency to match graphics quality and other changes to the game’s interface.

Football Manager preferences

Whilst, it’s not necessary, or required, to make any changes to the Football Manager’s game preferences to enjoy the game, selecting certain preferences can tailor make the look and feel of the game, which finally enhances your user experience.

The most important areas to consider tweaking:

  • General Preferences < Size of Text & Images; using the Standard text size or zooming to 110% or higher/lower will depend on your screen resolution and vision.
  • General Preferences < Language & Currency; lets you choose between 18 languages from all around the world providing you the ability to play the game on your native mother language, and with the currency used in your nation.
  • General Preferences < Use Auto Saves; This is turned on by default with the game saving at a weekly interval with 3 rolling files. This helps to recover the game if there are any bugs and crashes.
    Changing this to every Fortnight or Monthly will help to reduce the number of files stored – handy if you got limited storing capabilities on your computer.
  • Most Common Preferences < Skin Colors; in here you can change the attribute threshold and colors of excellent, good, average and low attributes for players and backroom staff. Personally, I change the threshold to an interval of 5 between each levels rather than the default of 4. Changing the colors of the attributes helps to make those excellent attributes stand out more and you can quickly glance over key attributes for a player role duty.
  • Interface Preferences < Team Screen & Competition Screen < Landing Pages; Able to select between whether you want to go directly to the Team’s or Competition’s Profile screen, or the Squad or Stage screen (Table) is all up to you.
    • Personally, I prefer to head directly to the Squad screen rather than the Club Overview screen when clicking on another clubs name. It saves me from an extra click of a button.
  • Another screen worthy to visit is the Formats Screen. here you will be able to choose the format of staff and players wages (Weekly, Monthly or Annually) or how you want players height, weight and date of birth be represented in the game. At the same time, it’s here you can change the format of distances, match odds and how digits / financial figures are represented.
  • Match Preferences < Graphic Quality; What you select here depends on your computer. You can either go by the recommended settings for your PC, or select an higher graphics quality to enhance the match engine experience if you got a high-end dedicated graphics card that can handle 3D graphics. You will need to experiment with these settings according to the quality of your computer.
  • Match Preferences < Highlights; Herein, you’ll be able to determine a default highlight mode or camera type for a specific manager or for all your future saves. This gives you the chance to select the match speed (during and between highlights) and whether you want to use the 2D or 3D match view once and for all. Personally, I prefer to use Comprehensive Highlight Mode which shows you more of the action within the game (chances and goals) at the expense of each match taking more time to finish.

With a comprehensive highlight mode, you’ll be better able to make more informed decisions to make tactical tweaks, or respond to the opponent’s tactical changes. With AI Managers improved for FM23, they will be more likely to make more realistic adjustments according to the on-going scenarios of the match which makes it more likely using Extended, Comprehensive or even Full Match highlight will be beneficial.


Career Game Setup – Selecting Playable Leagues

fm22 starting job

The next step is to simply click the Start a New Save button and actually going through the process of setting up your first save.

Football Manager gives you the ability to select whether you want to be a Club Manager, International Manager, taking charge of both Club and Country, or start Unemployed. In this case, we want to use the default option ‘Club Manager‘.

Then, the real fun begins!

Football Manager 2023 enables you to manage in 53 nations across the world. From South Korea in the east to Chile in the west. Across any of the top nations in Europe or South America, to minor nations such as Hungary or Latvia.

In the first screen you will be able to do a quick pick of a team to manage on Football Manager. In my case, I want to manage Le Havre on Football Manager 2023, so you can click on the drop down menu moving the cursor over Europe > France. Then click Ligue 2 and pick Le Havre.

Quick Start or Advanced Setup?

From here you have two options. Either do a Quick Start or going for a more Advanced Setup.

By clicking the quick start button it will start the process of setting up the save by loading the database and determining the number of players and staff available to you.

The quick start option will load the game with a minimal number of active leagues and playable nations. Frankly, the game will randomly fetch some recommended major nations that could be handy for you to sign players from, whilst also maintaining the highest game speed.

Based on the nations you’re managing in, Football Manager will behind the surface select a few major nations, some neighboring nations in additional to a possible nation of interest.

The save will be loaded in a Small Database size meaning you will be limited to between 20,000 – 30,000 players and staff in your scouting pool. The result is that some players and backroom staff won’t appear in Football Manager as ‘minor’ teams is represented by generated players. Which players that will appear in the game is a question of their reputation compared to yours, and the knowledge level the game believes you have over players according to your reputation, past playing experience and level of player knowledge. These are all factors you will determine once setting up your Manager Profile.

Closer Insight to the Advanced Setup

The Advanced setup gives you the ability to tailor your save according to your own preferences and needs. There are many reasons why you would want to set up your next save through the advanced setup. Let’s go through some of them.

1. Choose Nations of Interest

The main reasons for choosing the advanced setup of your Football Manager save is to choose the nations and leagues of YOUR interest. Which nations and leagues you select as active and playable depends on the type of save, your vision for your save and where you are going to manage. It’s useful to have a plan for your save relating to recruitment of players and whether or not you’re going to install a specific transfer policy in your save.

Personally, I prefer to activate the biggest nations in the world, like England, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Italy regardless of where I’m managing. This will give you around 45,000 players with a large database.

Then, I consider the level of the league and which areas of the world I can potentially attract players from. For instance, it’s not useful to add a lot of minor nations if you’re going to manage one of the biggest clubs in Europe. This will only make Football Manager run slower. The players in these leagues are rarely good enough either to be signed as their best players current ability is lower than a backup option for any of the top sides.

Instead, I have four criteria when selecting playable leagues and active nations:

  • The club’s geographical placement. You will want to add neighboring nations and leagues where it’s potentially easier to integrate players int your squad based on a cultural and social aspect. For instance, if you’re going to manage in Croatia, I would have picked, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Serbia and Hungary. If I would manage in Norway, I would add England, Scotland, Sweden and Denmark.
  • The nation’s historical and cultural legacy both in terms of language spoken at the moment and previous emigrations and colonies. For instance, if you’re going to manage in Italy, it could be purposeful to add Argentina and Brazil. Players from Argentina often holds a Italian passport as Italy are their second nation. This means that they won’t count towards the non-EU work permit rule.
    If managing in Spain, you’ll want to include Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil due to the history of signing players from these nations.
  • The Squad Registration rules relating to work permit rules towards the number of foreign players is also something to take into account when picking playable nations. No need to include the nation of Israel, Hungary or South Korea if you’re managing in England with the current Brexit rules as it’s less likely they will gain a work permit as long as the reputation of their league and number of international appearances are low.
  • The nation’s or its league’s reputation and thereafter its quality of players compared to your team’s. for instance, it might be more beneficial to load third division of Portugal and above if you’re playing in Spanish First Division since the level of current ability is roughly the same, as well as the availability of players increases when there is a neighboring nation. On the other hand, the nation of Cuba won’t be able to attract the best players in Europe. At the same time, it’s fewer potential signings in Bosnia who are likely First Team options for any of the top 5 European leagues.

How many divisions in the pyramid to activate?

  • It all depends on where you are going to manage and which teams to take on. If you’re going to manage in any of the top divisions, it’s less likely you will need to load any of the bottom divisions of nations far away from you.
  • Loading divisions beneath or above your playing level is recommended as you can loan out players to clubs below you so they can gradually increase their playing experience.
  • IMPORTANT! When deciding on the number of active leagues, it’s important to not go overboard. The more active leagues you got, the more processing power the game requires. Keep in mind your PC’s hardware such as RAM and Processor when setting up your save.

2. Increase / Decrease Database Size

The Advanced setup lets you increase the player count by selecting a larger database by adding thousands of additional players and staff. You will see the option to selecting your preferred database size on the right side of the screen by clicking the approximate Player Count button.

Football Manager have three different database sizes; small, medium and large

Additionally, you can select a Custom Advanced Database by loading players and staff from a specific nation, region, continent, or division. For instance, if loading all players from top division clubs in Europe, you will see an increase in the approximate player count.

Football Manager advanced database custom setup

By selecting fewer active nations but loading all players from a specific region you can ensure the game loads and runs quicker than if you should select all nations in Europe and its available divisions. Basically, the more playable leagues you load the slower Football Manager runs as it requires more processing time to simulate all matches in the background.

By loading the top 10 nations in the world, the player count will be around 60000 players compared to 80000 if you add players from top division clubs.

If you got a high-end processor with 16GB RAM , or more, you can easily load a save with 10 nations active and up to 120000 players loaded, and it will run Football Manager quickly.

3. Recruitment of Players

Until now I’ve talked a lot about the player count and database size. For a beginner to Football Manager you might wonder why. The short answer relates to the recruitment of players. A bigger pool of players increases the chance of finding potential signings that fits your playing level and are basically affordable to you.

Another subject relates to the accuracy of statistics and data relating to players within playable leagues.
When simulating matches in playable leagues the games will be simulated with the Full Match Engine ensuring more accurate results.

Simply put, you can scout players based on statistics and data as these metrics are more accurate.

You can learn more about the difference between the Quick Match Engine and the Full Match Engine in this article about how to increase realism in Football Manager.

Which Advanced Options to use?

When selecting the active leagues for your upcoming Football Manager 2023 save, you will see some Advanced Options to select from in the bottom of the screen. Here you will have different options to enhance or reduce the realism of your save. Rather than explaining each and every one of them, as you can hover your mouse cursor over the information icon to learn about each of these settings, I will go through the most important ones (at least in my opinion).

Ticking Add Players to Playable Teams can be a useful option if you’re intending to start a save in the lower leagues where teams might lack enough players to make up a full 21-man squad. It might be databases created within the editor which unlocks new nations or divisions where players and staff have not been added. By enabling this option you will ensure sufficient number of personnel (players) are added at the start of a new save.

In the case of managing in the lower leagues, make sure to leave the Do not add Key Staff unticked. Key backroom staff, such as assistant managers and coaches, will then be added to teams who do not have them.

Ticking Disable First Window Transfer Activity will enhance the realism of your save. Since Football Manager starts a new save in the same pre-season that have just happened in the real world, a clubs squad and transfer budget reflects what’s happened in real life. By disallowing transfers in the first transfer window you will ensure you’re not allowed to make any additional transfers in the same transfer window as what’s just happened in real life.

Leaving the Disable Player Attribute Masking ensures information that you normally wouldn’t know, unless you scout the player, is visible in their player profile. The player information might include player’s level of attributes, value and/or asking price or current and potential ability. The player attributes will then either be represented in ranges or if no knowledge displayed as ‘-‘.

It maintains a level of realism as the game assumes the Human Manager not necessarily know everything about every player in the world. You can improve your knowledge about players around you by scouting the player or interact with him in various ways to learn more about him. Ticking this option lets you see all players actual Player Attribute Level.

Game Start Date

The game start date let you decide on the length of pre-season and from when your managerial career shall begin. Personally, I prefer as long pre-season as possible, despite you might not be able to schedule friendlies or call the players back from holiday to begin their pre-season training. Which nations start date you prefer is all up to you. There are no other consequences than a later or earlier game start date.

How to Add / Remove Leagues in Football Manager?

Do you find the database size when clicking Quick Start setup too limited, or wish to expand the number of active nations and playable leagues by increasing the number of approximate player count and potential destinations to manage in?

Football Manager gives you the opportunity to Add or Remove leagues or playable nations. You can find the option by clicking on the FM main menu inside the game, then select Add / Remove Leagues.

add remove leagues Football Manager

Be aware that any nations or leagues you active or remove will only be playable at the start of the next season – meaning you have to wait until the country’s next game start date. Leagues like Norway, Brazil and Argentina will have a game start date in December, January or April meaning you will need to wait a few months before they get active, meanwhile most other European nations will only be available the next summer, as they follow the normal football calendar.


Setting up the Manager profile

The beginners guide to Football Manager continues by looking closer at setting up the manager profile which is the natural step after selecting the playable leagues.

After selecting the playable leagues, it’s time to create your manager profile. When creating a manager you will need to determine your biographical details and physical appearance. The first section let you select anything from personal info, the managerial look (including attire and body type) and your past experience.

DID YOU KNOW?!
The body type, skin colour, hair and attire can be customize at any point within the game, for instance if you want to make the Manager look older as you advance further into your career. To make changes to your Manager, simply go to:

Home > My Profile > Edit Manager Appearance *

*represented with a small pencil in the upper left corner of the Manager’s face.

From here, you can save your current Manager model for future saves, or load a previous model you have created.

How you create your manager profile in Football Manager can both give you certain advantages and disadvantages within the game – basically determining the challenge level of your game.

Nationality: Your chosen primary and secondary nationality will determine your level of scouting knowledge within those nations, something that will aid the club’s knowledge about a nation.
This means that whichever nation you select will have an affect of the number of players and staff represented to the club you’re in control of and how much information about them that are available/visible to you.

how human managers nationality affect club's scouting knowledge

Experience Level: If you’re brand new to Football Manager 2023, ticking the box ‘Teach me about key management concepts‘ can give you some valuable tips about Training, Scouting, Tactics, Dynamics and much more.

These so-called Football Manager Inductions’ will be provided to you in Inbox Messages within the first week of your manager career giving you a deeper understanding of the different screens and what you need to pay attention to in each areas of the game.

Preset Staff Responsibilities when setting up your manager

If you feel rather educated in the various aspects of the job, leaving it un-ticked enables you to preset what kind of responsibilities you shall have before starting the game. You can quickly handle or delegate control over Media, Staff Recruitment, Scouting, Transfers & Contracts, Training and Tactics.

For instance, perhaps you would like to leave the control of press conferences to your Staff, or on the contrary ensure you are responsible for assigning scouts at recruitment focuses.

Choose Staff responsibilities when creating human manager profile in Football Manager

By setting up the staff responsibilities when creating your manager you can once and for all choose the responsibilities you’d like to handle and whenever you load a new save with that Manager Profile, it will be selected – meaning you don’t need to visit the staff responsibilities screen after creating your save.

Along with being able to preset the staff responsibilities, you’re able to choose the selected tactical style and preferred formation – coming into the game with more experience towards the club and its players.

choose tactical style and preferred formation - FM23 Manager creation

By selecting your preferred tactical style and formation before setting up the game, your chosen tactical style and formation will automatically be selected in the Tactics screen – saving you from additional clicks where you need to go through the ‘Create New Tactics‘ process.

This is handy if you know you’d prefer to use the Tiki-Taka preset or play a style very similar to the Catenaccio tactical style.

Football Manager preset tactics & tactical style

Choose Managerial Style

The final step in the process of setting up your Football Manager save is provide some sort of background story to your Manager. When creating the managerial profile, an important step is to determine your theoretical level of experience both relating to your ‘playing career’ and coaching qualifications.

The coaching badge you select, alongside your past playing experience will not only determine the number of managerial attribute points you will be allocated to distribute between Coaching and Mental Attributes but also theoretically set the difficulty level of your save.

Selecting a Continental Pro Licence and International Past playing experience when managing a smaller team will make the game easier while no badges and Sunday League Footballer (which most of us are) will make the game more challenging.

If you ever should be unsure which coaching badges and past playing experience to select, the ‘Suggest badge’ or suggest ‘experience based on’ sets an appropriate option for the club you’re in control of according to their playing level (league and nation).

Tactical Manager vs Tracksuit Manager?

create manager on Football Manager - Tactical vs Tracksuit Manager

Even though you can style your manager however you want, there are two general types of Managerial styles in Football Manager 2023 to select from; Tracksuit Manager and Tactical Manager.

A Tactical Manager will often put a greater emphasize to his past playing experience focusing on his mental abilities relating to tactics and squad management over coaching qualifications. With a greater level of past playing experience comes a higher level of reputation.

A Tracksuit Manager will put greater focus to his coaching qualifications meaning he will be more likely to live and breathe every second of play with their players. They will see player and youth development as an important part of their coaching philosophy. As a prominent figure on the training ground they will oversee and be in charge of training, using their coaching qualifications to their advantage to improve the player’s abilities.

How will the level of experience and reputation affect your game?

Your past playing experience will basically determine your level of reputation within the game.

Your reputation will have an extensive influence over your career and how “easily” or “hard” things will be for you in your save. With a higher level of reputation, your name will carry more weight and other clubs and players around the world will recognize you more easily. When hunting for a job, you will be able to attract the attention of bigger clubs. In terms of recruitment of players or staff, they are more likely to join your club as you got a name in the footballing world that makes them wanting to work with you. This enables you to make more prestigious signings, or basically get the players on your shortlist as long as the finances are in order.

However, the higher expectation the more demands of success is set on you. The board will be less patient with you in terms of performances and achievements and will be less forgiving when things go wrong as they want the targets to be achieved in a shorter period of time.

Basically, they expect to get return of their investments by reaching their seasonal goals agreed upon in the Club Vision and Expectations Meeting that you will be invited to at day one of starting a new save, or at certain points throughout the season (half-way and end of season).

More about Coaching Qualifications

Your coaching qualifications will basically determine your ability to coach various areas of the game in training. Your coaching attribute points needs to be distributed between Attacking, Defending, Fitness, Goalkeeper (Handling, Distribution & Shot Stopping), Tactical, Mental, Technical and Working With Youngsters. Which area you put the greatest emphasize on depends on your preferred playing style and what type of football philosophy you wish to instill at the club.

In Football Manager there are 8 levels of Coaching badges. These coaching qualifications influence on your knowledge level and ability to work within the game. From worst to best, these are;

  • None
  • National C Licence
  • National B Licence
  • National A Licence
  • Continental C Licence
  • Continental B Licence
  • Continental A Licence
  • Continental Pro Licence

With a greater degree in coaching qualifications, together with a higher experience level, brings more coaching points available to you to distribute. No badges will mean you are “useless” or poor in that specific area while a Continental Pro Licence ensures you are on the top of the game by being both a great resource at the training ground and able to work worldwide regardless of the level of the league.

Allocating Coaching Points

When choosing your managerial style you’ll be able to customize the level of attributes for each department within coaching and mental coaching – whether you wish to put greater focus on Tactical Manager(Mental Attributes) vs Tracksuit manager (Coaching Attributes).

You can remove coaching points in one area of the game to increase it in another more relevant area, or you can move the slider to allocate more points from mental attributes to coaching attributes or vice versa to fine-tune your Manager Profile to your needs.

How you distribute your coaching points will also have a greater affect on the save and finally your teams ability to play a certain brand of football.

By putting a greater emphasis at Attacking, Technical and Mental, you will be able to see your team getting more comfortable at playing an attacking brand of football with an higher priority surrounding the possession-game. By improving the players mental aspects of the game, the players’ will enhance their knowledge relating to Decisions, Teamwork, Anticipation and Vision.

If you change the focus from Attacking and Technical to Defending and Tactical, the team will get more comfortable at playing a Jose Mourinho type of football where tactical flexibility and parking the bus is most important.

If you wish to develop young players, it’s important to allocate more points towards Working with youngsters – ensuring they will develop better under your stewardship.

Explaining the Different Mental Attributes

While the coaching attributes seems enough to understand how works, the mental attributes are a bit more complicated as they have more wide-reach affect throughout the game. In terms of the mental side of management there are 7 important areas relating to the Human Manager.

Adaptability – is an important attribute for any journeyman Manager. It describes his abilities to settle in a foreign country and adapt to foreign languages and cultures – something that’s important if you’re considering to bounce around the world. A low value will mean that the manager will need longer time to settle in and finding it more difficult finding employment in a foreign league (outside his birth nation). At the same time, their approach will also more easily be integrated into different countries around the world.

Determination – The level of Determination can have a huge impact on your save, and your opportunity to build a club from the ground up. Basically, it describes how adept the manager is at getting their own way with the board. A manager with low levels of Determination are less likely to convince the Board to upgrade facilities and get the other board requests granted. Your level of Determination will also rub of onto your players – meaning they are more likely to be more determined on a day-to-day and match-to-match basis.

Player Knowledge / Youth Knowledge – Are you considering taking scouting and recruitment in your own hands? If so, your levels of player and youth knowledge is of importance. With a higher levels of player or youth knowledge you’ll be able to assess individual players attributes more precisely. This means that more of a player’s attributes is visible outside your own club as your knowledge level of them is greater.

People Management – Want to be skilled at playing mind games, or perhaps use private chats and interactions with players, staff and agents as a way to garner success, then it’s important to have a higher level of People Management. This attribute includes how well you’re able to manage training overall by assessing players training happiness and intensity. The manager is better able to interact with players on a individual basis – an important part of squad management.

Level of Discipline – This attribute does not only concerns how strict you are as a coach, but also how likely a player is to bring their concerns to you. When you’re strict a player is less likely to bring up minor issues and shy away from causing even more troubles.

Motivating – an important part of Football Manager is to manage a players morale. A manager with high Motivation will be better able to motivate your players as a group whether it being team talks or team meetings. Basically, you will have better influence over your players something that is more likely to increase their happiness and morale. A lower level of Motivation might turn your players against you earlier and quicker as you will have poor influence over your squad.

You can learn more about how to find the best coaches and how the allocation of coaching points will affect their best abilities in this guide. Our guide to staff attributes in Football Manager will give you a deeper insight to the Manager Attributes and their meaning, alongside giving you the low-down on manager tendencies and non-tactical attributes.

Management Style Focus & Templates

Football Manager also includes a number of pre-made templates concerning the Management style focus. There are 6 different templates that gives you an unique ability to create the manager of your desire quickly and efficiently.

Disciplinarian – a strict manager who doesn’t tolerate fuss. With a higher level of discipline, the player’s are less likely to come to you with their concerns and bring up minor issues. The manager is also better at coaching the mental aspects of the game in training.
Real-life examples: Alex Ferguson and Louis van Gaal

Motivator – a manager who are able to motivate his players in team talks and team meetings. The manager is also better at coaching the mental aspects of the game in training making them better prepares for the intense psychological battle. These coaches also got great Determination and expect more from their surroundings. These manager’s are great at interacting with players on an individual basis.
Real-life examples: Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp

Youth Development – a manager who is capable of developing young players. He’s great at identifying young players with potential and is skilled at coaching the Technical aspect of the game.
Real-life examples: Rodolfo Borrell, Norbert Elgert and Lars Ricken

Knowledgeable – a manager with great knowledge both in terms of tactics and players. Most likely, he has been “around the world” giving him immense knowledge of player’s individual skills and tactics. He’s able to educate his team to be more tactical flexible and is able to get the best out of their players.

Tactician – a manager who has great knowledge about the tactical side of the game. He’s able to be more versatile in learning and switching between various tactics, educate his players into the requirements of his system and basically work on the player’s mentality on the training ground to make them psychological strong in matches.
Real life examples: Marcello Lippi and Carlo Ancelotti

Taskmaster – is a manager with greater abilities and knowledge about the physiological side of the game. Like Jürgen Klopp he’s proficient at coaching the player’s fitness and mental areas of the game. The manager will also have top class Determination as well as high-end Level of Discipline and Motivating skills – perfect if you’d like to play an intense high-pressing football just like Marcelo Bielsa or Jürgen Klopp’s gegenpressing.

You can use these templates of managerial style focuses to create a manager profile which is based on real-life examples, or based off of a certain managerial style. Regardless of how you decide to set up your managerial style there are no size fits all and you won’t do anything wrong by customizing it how you see fit.
However, some things will make the game harder while some things might make the game appear easier – such in the case of Motivating and Determination.

READ MORE | 5 Further Tasks to do at day one | Football Manager Squad Management tips

On the contrary, if you have a lower level of experience and thereby reputation, the board (and its supporters) will be more patience early in your career and give you more time before expecting better performances. At a bigger club it might give you longer time to incorporate a certain football philosophy or make thorough changes as you rebuild the club, at the expense of struggling with attracting the interest of prospective staff and potential signings.

Embarking on the ultimate challenge in Football Manager is in many ways a zero to hero challenge where you start of your career with no coaching badges and the least possible reputation – meaning you need to improve your coaching qualifications by taking coaching courses and improve your reputation by getting results as you work your way up from the lowest tier in the pyramid by making promotions and eventually, or hopefully, winning trophies.


Welcome to Football Manager 2023!

We hope you have found this guide to Football Manager 2023 useful and that it has enhanced your knowledge about the game mechanics around starting your first Football Manager 2023 save. It’s nothing else for us to do by now than to welcome you to Football Manager. Let the fun begin and we wish you lots of success in your FM23 save!

Now that we have come to the end of this beginners guide to Football Manager 2023, it’s time to download some essential add-ons for your save.

To improve the experience and efficiency within your Football Manager career, we have created a number of useful tools to identify the best players to sign in Football Manager 2023, by using custom views or search filters to identify the best staff in Football Manager 2023. Browse our Football Manager 2023 essentials containing files to get the real names of competitions and clubs in Football Manager, custom views megapack and a large range of shortlists.

If you got some additional tips or things you like us to cover in the next episode of beginners guide to Football Manager, use the comment field below.

Stay tuned for more Football Manager 2023 content coming to you soon! If you got feedback or some specific tips you’d like to share, or simply want to discuss FM 2023 with like-minded join our official Discord server or tweet us a message via Twitter

Thanks for reading!


Disclaimer: Illustrations within this guide may be slightly different to what you’ll see in Football Manager 2023

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Owner of Passion4FM since 2012. Football Manager content creator with a special love for tactics, wonderkids and player development.

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