FM27 made its way through the Portuguese press in launch week, and it is worth putting it all in one place. On one side, Sports Interactive gave two interviews: Jack Joyce spoke to Bola na Rede and Tom Elliott to Notícias ao Minuto. On the other, Bola na Rede, Notícias ao Minuto and Maisfutebol published their reviews. Here is the best of FM27 in the Portuguese press: what SI explained, what the critics praised and where there is still work to do.
Jack Joyce to Bola na Rede: “the game is much harder”
Jack Joyce is SI’s Senior Product Owner and gave Bola na Rede the longest interview of the week. First, he admitted plainly that FM26’s tiles and cards did not work as the main navigation. The pop-ups were frustrating, so many became full screens, and tiles are now only for extra information. According to him, FM27 is closer to FM24 in that respect.
Joyce also explained the feeling SI wanted back: getting lost in the game world and only noticing it is 3am when it is already late. In FM26, he said, some of that was lost. So the new interface tries to show there is a whole world happening around your club.
Tactical Tweaks came, in fact, from a simple observation. SI sees many people start a match with a tactic that works and not touch anything until the final whistle. So the tweaks and the bench, which now shows the other manager’s changes more clearly, aim to turn every match into a tactical duel. Interestingly, internal testing showed that even experienced players use them a lot.
Tactical Effectiveness: three years for the last 10%
The most quoted line of the interview is about Tactical Effectiveness, which replaces the old familiarity. For Joyce, training in FM was almost only about developing attributes, when in real football it prepares the next match. Now, changing tactics every week no longer pays off. More than that, the last 5 to 10% of effectiveness can take three years or more to reach.
In other words, the choice when you join a new club changes. Either you play the system the squad is used to, or you impose yours and accept losing a few games early on. Likewise, a young prodigy you sign is not ready straight away, while an academy kid who has been at the club for years already knows how you want to play.
The Tactical Effectiveness tab, FM27’s big new feature (Image: Sports Interactive)
Joyce also warned attacking players: AI teams prepare better and their counter-attacks are much stronger. Finally, on Portugal, he said Portuguese clubs’ AI has the idea of developing young players and selling them at a big profit built in. He also noted that the research network now has well over a thousand scouts.
Tom Elliott to Notícias ao Minuto: “an excellent game”
Tom Elliott, Senior Research Coordinator, spoke to Notícias ao Minuto the day before launch. In short, he explained that the free week from 29 October to 3 November was meant to show the game to people who were wary after FM26. He also recalled that Miles Jacobson thought FM26 was good but not excellent, and that this year SI was confident it had an excellent game.
On tactics, Elliott gave a clear example: you cannot arrive at Barcelona and have the team play gegenpress without changing players or giving the ideas time. To do that, Tactical Effectiveness even uses some hidden attributes. He also admitted he used to delegate training to his assistant, but the new system changed that habit. Finally, he presented Shuffle Draft, the multiplayer mode that brings back Fantasy Draft with player cards that rotate between players.
The Portuguese reviews
Bola na Rede. Ailton Pereira’s review says the series is back on the right track. Its strengths include the more intuitive interface, Tactical Effectiveness, Tactical Tweaks, the reworked training and the return of cup draws, Transfer Deadline Day and pass maps. Even so, it flags the learning curve, press conferences and the match engine as areas to watch.
Notícias ao Minuto. Davide Rodrigues Araújo concludes that Football Manager is really back and that FM27 is what FM26 promised to be. He liked the interface, the stadiums with fans waving flags and scarves, and the cup draws. On the other hand, he makes two criticisms: the game got much harder for amateur clubs that train little, and Liga Portugal player values are inflated.
Transfer Deadline Day, one of the returns every review praised (Image: Sports Interactive)
Maisfutebol. Finally, Alberto Lapa focuses his review on the higher difficulty. For him, signing a wonderkid and putting him straight into the team no longer works, and assistant managers now play a decisive role. Above all, he liked seeing the team grow match by match until it played as planned in June. He also calls Liga Portugal a gold mine, with names such as Froholdt, Prestianni and Issa Doumbia.
Where the press agrees
All in all, the three reviews say much the same. FM27 fixes FM26’s interface, Tactical Effectiveness is the feature that changes the game most, and the returns the community asked for make a difference. Likewise, all of them warn that the game is more demanding, which matches what SI itself said in the interviews. The doubts, meanwhile, turn to the match engine and to what happens off the pitch.
Steam reviews tell the same story (Image: FMPortugal)
If you want to compare with the players’ view, we gathered it all in our FM27 Steam reviews article. To get used to the most talked-about feature, we also have a guide to improving Tactical Effectiveness.
Our view
We liked seeing SI talk so openly to the Portuguese press, and hearing it admit what went wrong in FM26. In practice, the idea of three years to fine-tune a tactic is the one that changes how you play most, especially in long careers. So if you are starting out, pick a club where you have time and patience, because this time the wonderkid shortcut is not enough.
