The creator of the original 1982 Football Manager is porting it to Steam, jokes it’s ‘the only Football* Manager coming this year’
Kevin Toms Football Star Manager boasts “absolutely none of the features” of modern gaming
The creator of the original Football Manager is re-releasing it on Steam, making a cheeky jibe at the current series in the process.
Kevin Toms, who created and programmed the original Football Manager back in 1982, revamped the game in 2016 and released it on mobile devices as Football Star Manager.
Now the game is getting a Steam port, which will be released on August 14, to coincide with the start of the Premier League season.
A tongue-in-cheek trailer released to promote the upcoming Steam version states that the game is “the original, the best, the only Football* Manager coming this year”, a clear reference to the cancellation of Sega and Sports Interactive‘s Football Manager 25.
It also jokes that Football Star Manager has “absolutely none of the features you’ve come to expect from modern gaming”, stating: “So, forget about your graphics card, say goodbye to your family and get ready to go back to where it all began.”
Kevin Toms’ Football Manager series ended with Football Manager 3 in 1992. When Sports Interactive split up with publisher Eidos and lost the naming rights to its Championship Manager series, the Football Manager name was resurrected with the release of Football Manager 2005. The series has since seen annual released up to Football Manager 2024.
After multiple delays, however, 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. News on the series’ return has still yet to arrive.
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”.
Meanwhile, Sega is bringing its own long-running Japanese 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, and is “powered by Football Manager”, though to which extent is unclear.
