Football Manager 2021 will be released this year but ‘later than originally planned’

“Games will be on more platforms and available on more stores than ever before”

Sports Interactive has confirmed plans to release Football Manager 2021 games later this year, although it will do so later than originally planned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an update on the game’s website, Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson said moving the entire team to remote working had been ”a huge challenge”, while the disrupted football calendar has also resulted in complications for the developer.

“What I can confirm today is that, despite all the problems going on in the world, there will be new Football Manager games released later this year,” he wrote.

“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’.

“It has taken a monumental effort to make this possible. The flexibility the team have shown through this period has been incredible; we’ve been changing scope, both upwards and downwards, on an almost weekly basis (and often as a result of changes in people’s personal circumstances).”

Football Manager 2020 released on November 19, 2020 with eco-friendly and recyclable packaging, “an industry first” according to Sports Interactive. Football Manager 2020 Touch and Football Manager 2020 Mobile launched on the same date.

“Our games will be on more platforms and available on more stores than ever before when they’re released later this year but, with regards to features and release dates, it’s a little too early for us to talk about the specifics right now,” Jacobson said this week.

“Please cut us a little bit of slack and rest assured 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 something to help you escape from the real world at the moment, at least for a while.”