You always play the demo version if you choose 1-3 playable leagues.

[Polando]

I direct my post to all people complaining about the lack of realism of the game, complaining about boring entertainment, or too easy gameplay. Most likely, you chose too few playable leagues and unknowingly took away 90% of the essence of the football manager series.

What things are you losing? I will list the most important ones.
1. Easier to succeed in European cups. By choosing 1-2 playable leagues, I was able to report to the Champions League finals after 5 seasons, leading Guingamp, Valencienes or Mallorca. Why? Because I was playing against artificial rivals, without real players, the AI was severely handicapped at that time, the opponent's manager practically does not react to field events, he uses standard tactics and even battles with Liverpool or Bayern are not that difficult. If you play against a team from a playable league, the situation changes dramatically - their coach has a full squad at his disposal, conducts transfers, selects the right tactics, observes how you play and can react appropriately during the match. Then even battles with teams from Ukrainian or Scottish leagues can check the difficulties.

2. Transfer market.
It's something that always burns my eyes when I see my friends play in one league of their choice. If you run a league average, you take away the competition for the fight for wonderkids because only teams from your league enter the race, or PSG or Bayern sometimes make offers automatically (but it must be a really great talent for the AI to start for a moment). In one playable league, it is trivial to complete a squad full of super newgens, because they often leave their teams on a free transfer (we are talking about unplayable leagues). Leading Mallorca or Sociedad, after 4-5 years, I had a team full of talented Germans, Belgians and Portuguese who came to me for free, although half of Europe should be fighting for them.

And the real drama is running a weakling, for example, from the second French or German league, having one playable league - 90% of interesting talents from the other end of the world are eliminated, on which you can earn money in the future or base your developing team on them. You are then limited to your home league and if it is strong, few talents want to play for you, so you are doomed to buy mediocre and dropouts from better teams. Of course, you can then choose one playable league and a huge database, but then again we go back to the second problem - lack of transfer realism, because you and maybe another club from your league are fighting for a super talent from Poland, Colombia or Croatia.

3. Long saves. (For me, this is the essence of the whole game and the greatest pleasure)

You don't want to play in one selected league after a few seasons. At least I feel like I'm playing something between a demo version and an invisible wall separating me from the rest of the world, and whether I just won La Liga for the 5th time or just got promoted to the top league - the world outside the country where I play simply doesn't exist . There is no way to change to a foreign club when you feel that you need new challenges, there is no way to lead Betis Sevilla for 7 years, make it a dominator, and then go to Leverkusen and sign an inconspicuous 19-year-old Serb from your former club, whom you bought for two years ago, and you know from scout reports that this is the new Milinkovic-Savic. Or there's no way to manage Bari for 12 years, then Auxerre for 7, then make a European powerhouse with PSV and go to the semi-finals against Arsenal, which is run by an Italian who commanded your midfield in Bari and now in the pre-match interview he emphasizes how much you owes (I had this situation twice and both times I felt fulfilled as a virtual manager)

I could write even more, but I think you know from the above entry what I mean. If you have durable computers that can easily handle a 120,000 database, don't even think about it.

[DarJ]

While I completely agree with you we also have to acknowledge the fact that not every one has the machine to set up lots of leagues and even If they did not everyone has the patience for a longer processing time so I've always seen it as a trade of. Now can SI do something to make things better for people like that? Maybe but at the moment that is not the case.

I personally like to load a lot of leagues and I prefer that setup especially if you are a smaller club because everything becomes a competition from players to staff etc You will tend to dominate in Europe a bit less because other leagues remain competitive