Sega Football Club Champions is a new free-to-play game ‘powered by Football Manager’
It’s the latest instalment of Sega’s long-running Japan-only series SakaTsuku
Sega has announced that it’s bringing its long-running football management series SakaTsuku to the West for only the second time.
Sega Football Club Champions 2025 is a free-to-play football management game coming to PS5, PS4, Steam, iOS and Android.
According to Sega, the game is “powered by Football Manager”, though to which extent is unclear.
“Sega Football Club Champions is the latest multiplatform football management simulator from SEGA,” the game’s description reads. “Play for free! Start off with a small club competing locally, and aim to take on the world.”
Despite the Football Manager connection in the English language version of the website, the Japanese version – which gives the Japanese title of Pro Soccer Club o Tsukurou! 2025 – reveals that Sega Football Club Champions is instead the latest entry in a long-running Sega football management series that dates back to 1996.
The Pro Soccer Club o Tsukurou series, better known by fans as SakaTsuku, started on the Sega Saturn and has mainly focused on managing a Japanese football team with the aim being to win the J-League.
Although there have been around 25 different SakaTsuku games over the years, only one main entry has been given a Western release in the past – Pro Soccer Club o Tsukurou! Europe Championship was released on the PS2 in Europe and Australia as Let’s Make a Soccer Team.
This marks a rare global outing for a long-running series, then, with the Japanese website stating: “The latest work of SakaTsuku is here! Now is the time to start a new journey.”
The latest entry will feature a Career Mode, where players “manage a team, call the shots on the pitch, and strive to build the greatest club of all time”, and a Dream Team Mode where PvP matches take place with players around the world.
According to Sega, the game will have an official FIFPro licence with 10,000 real footballers, including 1,500 from the J1-J3 leagues in Japan. The South Korean K League and Manchester City have also been licensed for the game so far.
Sega will conduct a Closed Beta Test on June 19-30 “with the aim of refining the game as much as possible prior to launch”. Players have until June 13 to apply for the test, with only 15,000 slots available.
News on the return of Football Manager has still to arrive. After multiple delays, Football Manager 25 was officially cancelled in February, with Sega and developer Sports Interactive saying its focus would shift to the next game in the series.
The game was set to be one of the most notable updates in the series’ history, mainly down to the inclusion of women’s football for the first time and Sports Interactive’s decision to implement an entirely new graphics system using the Unity engine, a move it previously said would mark “the starting point for the studio’s next 20 years”.
