Upcoming version of Football Manager will get women’s football

Football Manager is getting women’s football sometime in the next few years. It’s not a separate game; the female players are added to the main games. Female players will not yet be present at the release of Football Manager 2022.

The developer says behind the scenes been working on the addition of women’s football for ‘some time’. However, the addition is a ‘difficult’ task, because many parts of the game have to be adjusted. For example, the developer cannot simply replace male players with women, he says, because certain player characteristics must be given different scales.

Sports Interactive cites the example of player height, which is used by the engine to calculate shots on target. If the keeper is smaller, shots from players are aimed higher. Since women are on average shorter than men, the height scale that Football Manager currently uses would not work for female players.

In addition, Sports Interactive wants to conduct motion capture sessions with female players in order to make the animations correct. These mocap sessions have been made more difficult by the corona pandemic, says the developer. Finally, the text of the game must be adjusted and women’s football works differently on the transfer market, for example, than in men’s football.

Adding women’s football to the game will cost millions, according to the developer, while the expected return will be small. Sports Interactive says that women’s football is not added for the money, but to help break the glass ceiling within women’s football. Against Eurogamer says the developer that women’s soccer will not be included in the release of Football Manager 2022, but that it may be added with an update.