First look at Football Manager 2020 gameplay reveals this year’s new features

(Image credit: Sega)

Sports Interactive has given us our biggest look yet at Football Manager 2020 with a livestream deep dive into this year’s game. 

The team on the stream, which included studio director Miles Jacobson, went over some of the key new features by starting a career with Championship stalwarts Brentford. You can watch it all – if you have a spare 2 hours – below. 

One of the key takeaways from the stream is that the team are focusing on long term players, with the new Club Vision feature focusing on players who sink months into the game. Dealing with the board now will see you working with a 5 year plan for your chosen club, as well as paying attention to the Club Culture, where you’ll need to produce a style of football that fans expect of that team. For Brentford, that meant an attacking and possession type of game. We can’t wait to see what type of football you’ll be expected to produce at Stoke City...

Jacobson explained why he wanted to bring in Club Vision on the stream: “I felt we hadn’t really done that much for the long-term [players]. We had been adding a lot of features that were “whee, doesn’t this look incredible” when you first boot the game… [but] this year, I wanted to make sure that people were still discovering things for months after they’ve played.” 

Later on in the stream, the new Development Centre was shown off, where you’ll marshal your army of wonderkids through training and loans, as well as a look at the improved graphics in matches, and playing time pathway feature that helps you set how much time a player is expected to play in a season. 

While you’ll probably already know whether or not you’ll be playing Football Manager this year, these new features look like they’ll give you even more control over your path to the top or, in my case, taking Everton to the heady heights of 7th in the table. 

Can’t wait to prowl the touchline in pursuit of glory? Get ready for Football Manager 2020 with our look at everything we know so far. 

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Ben Tyrer
Contributor

Ben Tyrer is a freelance games journalist with over ten years experience of writing about games. After graduating from Bournemouth University with a degree in multimedia journalism he's worked for Official PlayStation Magazine as a staff writer and games editor, as well as 12DOVE (hey, that's this website!) as a news editor. He's also contributed to Official Xbox Magazine, Edge, PC Gamer, GamesMaster, PC Games N, and more. His game of the year - no matter the year - is Rocket League.