Football Manager 2021 still coming this year despite coronavirus setbacks

(Image credit: Sega)

Developer Sports Interactive is readying "new Football Manager games" for release this year despite production setbacks caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Studio director Miles Jacobson discussed the studio's plans in a recent blog post. While he withheld details on the grounds that some plans are still up in the air, he did confirm that "despite all the problems going on in the world, there will be new Football Manager games released later this year. They will be delivered a little later than we’d originally planned, but they’ll have exceptionally strong feature sets… albeit different to those we thought we’d settled on back in January when I completed my ‘dream feature set’."

Jacobson didn't call out Football Manager 2021 by name, but he did confirm that at least two Football Manager titles are coming, so it's safe to assume Football Manager 2021 is among them. In the same vein, Jacobson goes on to clarify that "we will once again deliver a set of games that provide hundreds of hours of entertainment and remain the best value for money on the market" and on "more platforms and more stores than ever before."

This is an especially welcome update given the scattered state of the games industry, as well as the unstable state of the sports industry. 

As Jacobson explains, "it doesn’t help that the world of football that we aim to simulate in our games is also in such a world of flux. Some leagues have confirmed their plans, some are still up in the air (although we are very much ‘in the loop’ with many of the possible decisions), the transfer window has moved in England at least, there are new emergency rules that may, or may not, be present next season." 

Here are the best upcoming games of 2020 and beyond. 

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Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.