After the end of the FIFAe World Cup feat Football Manager tournament was over, we managed to get an interview with the Football Manager World Cup Champions by speaking to the Indonesian team. However, as you all might know, every final has two stories and today we’ll get a unique chance to discover the other side of the trophy.
Today you’ll be able to meet the FIFAe Football Manager World Cup Finalists; Sven and Tery who represented Germany in the tournament. They finished on an honourable second place after a great performance in the group stages managing Yokohama F. Marinos – totalling the most points across the four groups.
On their way to the finals, they won the AFC Champions League in all three seasons as well as winning every possible trophies you could imagine incl. the Club World Cup! In the last season, they didn’t even lose a match despite facing European top teams such as Roma, Porto, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and RB Leipzig in the Club World Cup.
Their unbeaten run and marvellous records immediately caught my attention – making them one of the favorites to win the entire tournament.
Today you’ll get a better insight to how the experience of participating in the FIFAe Football Manager World Cup for Germany was, what they thought about tactical decisions and basically get an unique insight to two of the best Football Manager gamers across the globe!
Quick Background to the FIFAe Football Manager World Cup Tournament
The FIFAe Football Manager World Cup tournament enabled us to enjoy five days of spectacle where some of the biggest Football Manager content creators across the globe knocked head-to-head in a fantastic battle to become the first-ever Football Manager World Champions!
It challenged managers and their assistants to navigate the complexities of traditional football management. This included handling media interactions, engaging with fans, and developing strategies and signings under pressure.
After a group stage over three seasons racking up as many points possible and entering the final stages of the tournament moving over from Career Mode to Draft Mode, it was the Indonesian team who won the tournament after a nerve-wrecking final day!
NB! If you want to catch up upon the event by re-watching streams or discover how the different nations did it, you can browse the FIFA.gg website for all you need to know about the FIFAe World Cup feat. Football Manager.
Re-watch the finals of the FIFAe World Cup feat. Football Manager battle between Indonesia and Germany in this stream on YouTube!
We hope you’ll enjoy our interview with the German team and how they experienced the finals of the inaugural FIFAe World Cup feat. Football Manager championship. So without further ado, lets meet Sven Golly and Tery Whenett and see what they has to say about their participation.
Question 1
First of all, congratulations on a massive achievement reaching all the way to the finals of the very first FIFAe World Champions featuring Football Manager! How does it feel coming so close? Share with us how the overall experience was!
Sven: Thank you so much! It was a great event, we felt at home in the group stages and it was just the right mix of anticipation and excitement for the final. It’s obviously disappointing to lose in the final, but we’ve been playing FM long enough to know how football works sometimes.
Tery: Thank you! The final result looked clearer than it was and we wouldn’t have done anything different – therefore we are very proud of our second place and that we have played such a big role in the first ever Football Manager World Cup. The tournament in itself and everything around it was the best experience in my FM life – I’ve met so many incredible people (one of them Sven, who I didn’t know before) and the organisation was world class. I really hope it becomes a regular thing.
Question 2:
Now we all wonder, who are you and how long have you been playing Football Manager? Tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you started playing Football Manager.
Sven: I’ve been playing FM since around 2010, when the 3d match engine was introduced. I’ve skipped very few iterations and I don’t think there’s been a year where I haven’t played at least a hundred hours of FM. In FM23 I’ve started to participate in online communities and online career modes. Playing the game online with other managers has breathed new life into FM for me. With a strong background in computer science, data analysis and data science, I’ve also started to look at the data part of football and FM, which has certainly helped to improve my skills.
Tery: My first Football Manager was the 2006 version, which I bought randomly on eBay. From that on I played the game regularly and became part of the very small German FM community. As the game wasn’t sold nor advertised in Germany and we had big competitors until 2013 that was a very small niche.
With FM14 I brought to friends of mine to the game – and they had so many questions that I couldn’t answer, that I started to read every piece of FM content I could get my hands on. As a result of that I startet FM.Zweierkette.de as a blog in 2015 to help new people get into the game. With FM19 finally being released in Germany I started to stream on Twitch, dipped into YouTube and build up the FMZweierkette Discord, making FMZweierkette the one-stop-shop for German FM content and support.
Question 3:
In the tournament, you guys had different roles and tasks, or areas of expertise. Looking back at the tournament what did you enjoy the most with the FIFAe World Cup? Any positive personal experiences you can share with us?
Tery: I loved how FIFAe made the least fun part of Football Manager – the press conferences – to one of the most entertaining of the whole tournament. The mixture between world class gameplay and entertainment at the World Cup was something special. It gave the players the opportunity to show their personality and to create storylines. I’ll never forget the South Korean assistant manager gone missing or the PKs I attended together with my Belgian college Michael (laughs).
Question 4:
A major part of Football Manager is tactics. As one of the finalist we are curious to know if you could describe your football philosophy? What tactical style do you enjoy, or prefer using in your Football Manager saves? Do you got a favourite formation or player role, or combination you like to use?
Sven: Unfortunately, the current iteration of the game was never intended to be played as a MinMax-heavy PVP game. It is virtually impossible not to play very high intensity pressing football in these types of events if you want to compete.
As a result, I think the only tactics we’ve seen in the group stages of the World Cup are very close to the top tactics of FM Arena. In my experiments, I’ve only managed to find one approach that can at least compete with these 4-at-the-back systems, and that includes a libero, which most people find difficult to include in their own systems.
That was the tactic I used in the final – I don’t blame anyone for using a slightly modified version of the Hall of Fame tactics (I used similar stuff in the group stage), but for me it would have been much more satisfying to win the tournament with my own tactic than to always have the thought in the back of my mind that I only won because I used someone else’s system.
Tery: I personally like to try out different tactics in every save or at every club I manage. I’m a huge fan of runners from deep, so I regularly use a Segundo Volante or CM-A.
Question 5:
Representing your home nation at such a massive event within the Football Manager Community is huge. Did you go through lots of preparation to get ready for the tournament and if so, what did you focus on in the weeks leading up to the event?
Sven: The focus of my preparation was on the group stage. As I’d already prepared for and won the national qualifiers in draft mode, I’d already done my research.
For the group stage, the preparation was mainly about checking the league rules and formats for each possible nation, making sure I understood all the potential levers in terms of training schedules, player transfers and contracts, etc., and finally making sure I could play at the speed required to get through a season in 9 hours, despite some leagues like Japan having more than 70 games per season.
Question 6:
In the FIFAe World Cup you managed in Japan and absolutely smashed it entering the finals as a slight favourite. Where there abit of overconfidence or did you feel the pressure of coming up against Indonesia who had made some remarkable wins.
Sven: That’s the way football works sometimes. I think we had about twice as many corners with the better set up and better players in the air, but still Füllkrug managed to score three goals and win 1v4 in the air against opponents with better attributes.
Add to that two goals from basically unforced errors and an amazing free kick, and there’s not much you can do about it. I think everyone who plays FM knows that these games are going to happen. Not just in FM, but in real football. In the end it’s a game of statistics, you can only do what you can to maximise your chances and hope for the best.
Tery: I don’t think we were overconfident, just as well prepared as we could be. You just can do so much to improve your chances but in the end there are still centimeters and milliseconds, that decide if the ball hits the post or your striker is offside. The number of disallowed goals was ridiculous – but that’s football.
Pressure wasn’t a topic as well. We earned our spot in the final and – again – were well prepared. I mean in the end we could to what we love do to: play Football Manager. Everything around us didn’t really play a role in how we approached the game.
Question 7:
Mean while Indonesia where up against RDF Tactics, you faced South Africa in the semi-finals. Your attacking 3-4-2-1 tactics led to a 4-0 win but in the second leg you drew… did you feel your tactics had been exposed and did you consider approaching the final differently than before considering you would be up against a 4-2-3-1 system with more numerical superiority in the middle of the pitch?
Sven: In the current iteration of the game, there are basically two viable tactics to get close to the optimum, the 4-2-3-1 and the 4-2-4 as seen in the fm arena. The only reason the 3-4-3 I used is competitive at all is simply because players with high physical attributes perform better in the match engine. And since there are more players with these attributes in the central defender and central striker roles, it is the only way to compete with the other two approaches.
The second leg against South Africa was an away game with two of our most influential players (Raum and Dumfries) on the bench, and we still had the momentum for most of the game.
In the final, I can’t remember a goal that was created through the middle, I think the most dangerous highlights were from set pieces and failed clearances, as well as individual errors by players who accidentally passed the ball to Füllkrug, probably thinking he was on our side ;-)
Tery: The 4-0 is a good example – we scored those goals with less than 1 xG. So South Africa was incredibly unlucky to lose by such a big margin – the second leg was much more realistic in terms of their abilities.
Question 8:
Then, in the finals, you came on the back foot immediately from the first leg as you lost 3-0 to Indonesia. Did you feel you had a chance to turn it around or did you have the confidence that it was possible?
Where there a plan B tactic that could pose a threat to the solid 4-2-3-1 system? You didn’t feel your attacking Segundo Volante’s would cause a weakness in the defensive transition?
Sven: I think this has already been answered in question #6. I’ve tested hundreds of tactics in thousands of games to find tactics against the 4-2-3-1 meta. The squad was built around playing against it, as I’ve played against the exact same tactic at least a dozen times in the last few weeks. In both games, Indonesia’s first two shots found the back of the net. That’s football for you.
Tery: We would have had a chance, when we would have scored an early lead in the second leg. But after Indonesia went in front, the game was lost I think.
Question 9:
What was the biggest challenge you came across in the FIFAe World Cup tournament? Secondly, are there anything you regret now that you know the outcome of the tournament? If you got a second chance, are there anything you wished you had done differently?
Sven: I think the hardest part was dealing with league playtime for key players in the group stage. In FM, for some reason, only league games count towards squad status happiness. In Japan, the league was extremely one-sided from the very first season, so in reality your star players would be more interested in playing in the other competitions. But in FM, everyone still wants to be a starter in every league match. This led to a very exhausting micro-management of playing times in a competition where the winner was already decided before the season started.
Given a second chance, I would probably do almost exactly the same thing. We got all the points we could in the group stage and the draft was pretty much set in stone as soon as I decided I didn’t want to play someone else’s tactics. I think in the future I’d probably invest less in substitutes and more in the first team, but then again, if you’re unlucky with yellow cards or injuries, I’d probably say the opposite. So all in all I am pretty happy with the decisions I made – and with the result, even though we did not win everything.
Tery: The days were really long – and the excitement kept me awake the first nights. I didn’t sleep at all in the first night, the second night it was three hours and after that about five. So that was a challenge in itself. Besides that: no regrets and nothing I would have changed.
Question 10:
In the final stages, Career Mode was swapped out for Draft Mode. The Indonesian team talked about the pros of having a large squad and the difficulty for the opposition to take out all their best players, what was your thoughts when trying to build your squad? What type of players did you look for and why?
Sven: The basis of any good FM player in the game is athletics. I took a rather math-heavy approach, where I basically calculated a score for each role to roughly assess how useful the player is based on his attributes, and then put that in relation to the price he has.
Then I’d plan a squad with the right mix of cheap players and a few stars, where the money I spent would give me a player with attributes that were much better than other players in the same price range. I also needed to ensure that their hidden attributes such as Big Matches, Consistency and Pressure were up to the task. Finally, I needed a plan A and plan B for set pieces.
Question 11:
In this tournament you met Football Manager Content creators from all over the world and as you have got time to land back home and are looking back at the tournament, do you feel you have learned something new about Football Manager?
Sven: Less about FM, more about different views on how to enjoy FM and which countries have huge FM player bases. Who would have thought that Indonesia had such a large and vocal community? There was so much going on in the chats and on twitter/x, it was great.
Tery: Sitting right next to Sven while he was playing Football Manager was an amazing experience. I definitely took some hints and tips with me – but if I had to play the game like that in my personal saves I would quit tomorrow (laughs).
Besides that it was a pleasure to meet so many people that share your passion about the game, talk to them and make new friends – as well as a name outside the German FM community.
Question 12:
Finally, if you should give a word of advice to all the newbies to Football Manager, what tips could you share with us that would immediately help them out to become a better manager?
Sven: Just try to have a good time, really. Don’t just try to imitate stuff you might have seen at the World Cup, because some of that stuff really breaks the immersion. Because I’ll never get tired of saying this: There are two skills in Football Manager: “Being good at Football Manager” and “Being good at having fun with Football Manager”. You have to master the latter first, otherwise the former is pretty pointless.
Tery: My advice would be to be patient with the game and play your career – and not a club project. The best stories happen, after it has gone wrong. Who would have thought that Leicester City and Claudio Ranieri would write Premier League history?
That’s all the questions I have! Thanks again for participating in this interview and for taking the time as soon as you landed back home to answer our questions!
I hope we will see alot more from you for Football Manager 25 and I hereby wish you all the best for the future!
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Want to continue the journey on making Yokohama F. Marinos into a global powerhouse or get a closer look at how the German team managed the Japanese club in the FIFAe Football Manager World Cup? Download their season 1 to season 3 save game file below!
