Why is International Management an afterthought in Football Manager?

[D3an0mac]

This is something that has routinely bugged me over the years, why is International Management an afterthought in Football Manager?

• Often you see woefully odd choices take over big jobs. In several simulations I have seen the likes of Abelardo, Quique Sanchez Flores and Bo Svennson take over the England and Germany job despite very little success or a real affiliation with the countries. With countries who have a history of home grown managers, some of the people who takeover are baffling to me, especially when there are better suited options from a realism standpoint.
• There is nothing like Nation Vision, Culture, Year-5 years Plans etc. to give a national team a real identity. Very often managers get a tournament cycle before being binned off. To have options where you and the National FA has some form of autonomy over certain aspects would be interesting (picking players only based in our nation to improve domestic league quality, targeting players with second nationalities to build a better team, overseeing a playing style down through the age groups etc.). 
• You don't get things like team familiarity (which if you pick a consistent squad/team or have players who play together at club level etc), training to be able to really make an impact like you can in the club game. I understand it's a smaller time frame but surely there is a benefit into making this more realistic than players just being selected, play then leave. Being able to interact with club managers would be an interesting addition.
• Using the B Team functionality. In game you can never pick a B team to play another nation (unless it's a Gold Cup/Copa America type thing). For larger nations having this option would be an interesting addition.

Edited December 1, 2023 by D3an0mac

[D3an0mac]

Guess it's just me then 

[forameuss]

Nah, not just you.  It definitely is lacking.  But I suspect it's the same answer as why a lot of bugs still exist - they aren't considered higher priority than the things that do get more attention.  I expect the numbers of people who regularly and seriously use international management aren't high enough for them to go in and take a proper deep dive into the feature.

[Mobius]

4 hours ago, D3an0mac said:

Guess it's just me then 

I agree with you, but there isn't much for us to add to your thoughts. It's clear they aren't really arsed about international management as it's been the same for years.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Mobius

[JimmysTheBestCop]

I always here this high priority thing listed on this forum. 

Wouldn't it be great if we actually knew what si priorities were for the game. 

 

At least they communicated about unity for fm25 a good year before release. 

If only they could that about everything. They need to go on a communication team building camp. 

[alian62]

4 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

I always here this high priority thing listed on this forum. 

Wouldn't it be great if we actually knew what si priorities were for the game. 

 

At least they communicated about unity for fm25 a good year before release. 

If only they could that about everything. They need to go on a communication team building camp. 

I'm sure their priority is the English leagues . This is where it all started many many moons ago.  Since then it has expanded and went to the main European leagues , to South America,  Africa , Asia then Oceania . Oceania is probably lower priority than International.  Things might change from next year ??

[Mobius]

17 minutes ago, meadowsaaron38 said:

Isnt FM24 the first version we can manage under 18s or 19s or 21s or 23s at international level?

No?

17 minutes ago, meadowsaaron38 said:

Yes just you

Did you not read the other posts in the thread?

6 hours ago, forameuss said:

Nah, not just you

 

3 hours ago, Mobius said:

I agree with you

 

[phd_angel]

Don't get me started. International management in FM is a disgrace. Can't set training schedules, can't interact with my players, can't suggest training sites, can't do much of anything.

[tezcatlipoca665]

International management has never been any good even since the CM days, unfortunately. I'm really surprised SI hasn't capitalized on any World Cup buzz by now and created a theme around one of them to promote new features for it. I don't even mean a licensed edition either - they could just promote a generic World Cup theme with added features for international management that just so happens to be timed well before an upcoming tournament.

I don't get it. I'm guessing international management must be near impossible to get right or something. Either way, I don't care what the international teams do in FM because of how dull it is, and that's pretty damning considering I want to like it. I just skip ahead past the tournaments to the new season and don't check who won what.

Edited December 7, 2023 by tezcatlipoca665

[oche balboa]

I'm sure its getting a massive revamp with Football Manager 2025

[StewG]

If they would just add being able to rest players between games so I don't have to rotate my outfield ten every game, that would be nice.

[Carninho]

3 minutes ago, StewG said:

If they would just add being able to rest players between games so I don't have to rotate my outfield ten every game, that would be nice.

this is the biggest issue for me. you need to rest all the outfield players, so to get to the final of the world cup it means playing a 2nd 11 in 3 games along the way.

  

[jim owen]

I raised a post last year with loads of suggestions for international management which they said they were looking at changing, no changees this year, but hopefully next year. However i'm not optimistic, look at the bug section, most of the bugs in international remain "open", they don't even get put under review. The past meetings feature hasn't worked for international teams for about 3 years now

[Zapoleon]

The answer is probs pretty simple club management is by far the most popular game mode. So time energy and resources are spent there. Wouldnt shock me if something like 90 percent of the players only do club management. 

They look and use such data to decide where they focus their energy. 

That said I don't think there is any excuse as to why pretty basic features we already get in club management are not put into international management. 

[enigmatic]

International management is low priority because not many people do it as much more than an afterthought 

I actually like the "national vision" idea and the current training setup would translate quite well to international management even if it was a simple cohesion Vs fitness tradeoff, but at the end of the day it's low priority because not many people play it as their main game and those who do are mostly doing it to avoid stuff like dynamics etc...

[Dagenham_Dave]

8 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

International management is low priority because not many people do it as much more than an afterthought 

I wonder how much its low popularity is down to it being such a half-arsed game mode. Chicken and egg scenario. 

Although that said, in a game like this, it would be difficult to make international management something that would amaze anyone. There's not a lot to do day-to-day, there's no transfer market and a very low amount of fixtures each year. The only real excitement would be at a major tournament. I know international managers in real life spend their off time going to games up and down the country, scouting potential new caps, etc, but this isn't terribly interesting in FM. So, other than to jazz it up a bit, and add in training and interactions, what more can they really do with it? 

[enigmatic]

1 minute ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

I wonder how much its low popularity is down to it being such a half-arsed game mode. Chicken and egg scenario. 

Although that said, in a game like this, it would be difficult to make international management something that would amaze anyone. There's not a lot to do day-to-day, there's no transfer market and a very low amount of fixtures each year. The only real excitement would be at a major tournament. I know international managers in real life spend their off time going to games up and down the country, scouting potential new caps, etc, but this isn't terribly interesting in FM. So, other than to jazz it up a bit, and add in training and interactions, what more can they really do with it? 

I think the answer to the the chicken or egg situation is probably in your second paragraph.

I'd prefer it if international management had more features and less incoherent national vision, I'd settle for youth international management having fewer bugs, but at the end of the day lots of the stuff people play FM for is necessarily absent, and when I do try international management it's because I don't care about that stuff or would rather avoid micromanagement altogether. You actually can watch games every week if you want, but I bet not many people do...

 

[SergeiG]

International Management in FM is rubbish because most players don't care about it

[Colonel Tigh]

20 hours ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

I wonder how much its low popularity is down to it being such a half-arsed game mode. Chicken and egg scenario. 

Although that said, in a game like this, it would be difficult to make international management something that would amaze anyone. There's not a lot to do day-to-day, there's no transfer market and a very low amount of fixtures each year. The only real excitement would be at a major tournament. I know international managers in real life spend their off time going to games up and down the country, scouting potential new caps, etc, but this isn't terribly interesting in FM. So, other than to jazz it up a bit, and add in training and interactions, what more can they really do with it? 

Yeah this would be my biggest issue with it. A tournament takes about 2 seasons to process through. If you are a big nation then the qualifiers are boring squash matches. The actual tournament are fun but a tedious build up to it 

Whenever I have done international management I’ve always had a club as well to help pass the time until the tournaments 

Edited December 8, 2023 by Colonel Tigh

[vikeologist]

I've just done a lot of international management, because that was the only thing i needed to do in order to complete a challenge.

Disclaimer; this is all either FM23 or FM4 continuing a FM23 save. I'm just presuming that nothing is different if you start a fresh FM24 save.

Nations appoint ridiculous managers. Nations give the job to absolute nobodies. It would certainly make a for a more interesting game if there were fantastic managers to come up against, and they were in charge of your opponents.

the correlation between FA expectancies and being sacked is too basic. at a club, you won't be sacked for one bad result, but you can win every match for 2 years and have 1 fluky bad result in an early tournament round, and off you go. However, if instead of being sacked you resign, you can manage the same nation time ands time again. i ended up managing France and Belgium about 4 or 5 times each. I had to do this unrealistic thing, because I had things I needed to win. This is a tricky balance of course, because if the game was realistic, it would be incredibly difficult to win the major tournaments.

With most nations you can scout every single player for your nation in a few months. Maybe not if you have that national league loaded, but if you have a scout / coach with a good JPA there's no skill to selecting a team. At a club you might be in two minds about signing a player, but if a central defender is 175 cm tall, has a rubbish personality and hates big matches, but your scouting shows that he's clearly your top option, you're going to start him. should you? that's hard to say, because maybe he actually isn;t your best option, but with such a small sample size of matches, how can you tell? There's no obvious skill element to any part of international management.

The conversations with players about playing for the national team are tedious and illogical. there are players who realistically are never going to play for the national side they're committed to. that would be ok if there was better and more varied interaction. if you have a player that says, i know I'll never get into the French team, but I just don't want to play for any other team, that would be interesting. It would be interesting if there was a correlation between their personalities and whether they'll play for your nation.

There are times when the best players are not selected to start for national teams. i don't know why this is. fatigue?

There's just too many things that don't make sense and take you away from the realism of the game.

Edited December 8, 2023 by vikeologist

[BeeInExile]

As people are saying up-thread, there are elements inherent to international football (you can't sign players; there are few matches) that are always likely to make it a less popular game mode compared to the club game, so to some extent it's understandable that SI don't put so much energy into it.

However, there are a number of features that already exist in club football in the game that have not been added to international management for whatever reason. That I find harder to understand. These include:

A) training - at least match prep and resting

B) proper press conferences (surely international management should have these if anything should!)

C) interactions with your players (this is presumably not done because these are already imperfect and players of club teams would kick up a stink if their international players were always becoming unhappy)

D) job interviews

E) special shirt numbers ("the famous number 9 shirt previously worn by x etc. etc.)

F) Visions

 

Possible reasons for the above not being implemented:

A) may be hard for coding reasons somehow

C) may be judged not to be a good idea right now

 

The rest? I really couldn't tell you. We all know that SI plans years in advance the features they will implement in the future versions of the game. There is 100% chance that there was a meeting at some point in 2021 planning the headline features for FM23, and someone (probably in Marketing) will have raised making it an edition centred around international football, given the Qatar World Cup. I would genuinely love to know how to that discussion went, and why they decided against that approach. There may well have been good reasons! Hopefully one day we'll find out what those were. At the moment though it makes me extremely pessimistic that international management will ever be improved.

[Dagenham_Dave]

I'll tell you this, I bet the numbers who play international management are far, far fewer than those who played FM Classic (PC version) - And we all know how SI handled that. 

Not that I'm still bitter of course. 

Point being, if SI's reasoning for not making a better fist of International Management is that hardly anyone plays it, then just remove it from the game altogether (obvs still keep international teams and tournaments, just lose the ability to manage any of them) . I think I'd rather it wasn't there at all than the half-arsed effort that's currently in the game. 

[Wavelberry]

While I understand the point you're making and don't disagree that FM Classic shouldn't have been euthanised, International Management exists as a job and should be replicated in a management game regardless of whether a 'Classic' version exists of the game. Yes the numbers might be small but I don't think you could have a football management sim without International Management as an option because it is something that exists and affects footballers and the footballing calendar. The same cannot be said for FM Classic's influence on FM.

[forameuss]

The idea that anything that doesn't quite work as people want should just be completely excised from the game is mad to me.  I wouldn't even do that with the things that don't work correctly, let alone things that are fine and just lacking like International Management.

[Dagenham_Dave]

3 hours ago, forameuss said:

The idea that anything that doesn't quite work as people want should just be completely excised from the game is mad to me.  I wouldn't even do that with the things that don't work correctly, let alone things that are fine and just lacking like International Management.

Generally I would agree with this, but international management has little (if any) bearing on the main part of the game, ie you could remove IM and have the exact same experience you have now. Different if you were to remove, say, interactions because they aren't working 100% as they should. 

[forameuss]

17 hours ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Generally I would agree with this, but international management has little (if any) bearing on the main part of the game, ie you could remove IM and have the exact same experience you have now. Different if you were to remove, say, interactions because they aren't working 100% as they should. 

Those that want to play in international football wouldn't really have the same experience, would they?  Not being popular enough to prioritise over more important things (which I agree with and understand) isn't the same as no-one playing it whatsoever.  Wholesale removing things will never make any sense.

Edited December 9, 2023 by forameuss

[turnip]

I still recall, with fondness, the time I was managing Ghana in some random qualifier and finished a game with a player having a single-digit Condition. Ah, good times. 

[CLS]

International football is a much bigger part of the women's game than the men's. I'm seriously hoping it's getting a huge revamp next year to tie in with the introducton of women's football.

[grade]

That is what i'm expecting, but on the other hand, SI is going to do what they always want regardless how a select few feel or state on official forums.

If the numbers aren't there don't expect much change.

[Ranquelme]

Yeah, I wish it had more to it. Why can't we set training during tournaments for example? 

[D3an0mac]

On 07/12/2023 at 11:13, oche balboa said:

I'm sure its getting a massive revamp with Football Manager 2025

Yeah the revamp is to completely remove it 

"Less than 5% of users play it". What do they expect when they put 0 f'n effort into it. New game looks to be a massive disappointment

[fc.cadoni]

FM25 will be a football management game, without the ability to manage a national team. This is extreme. Out of any logic. Despite "5%" of people using it (in FM24?), they don't even understand why people does not use - participate at international management. Extreme.

[scythian12]

On 07/12/2023 at 17:13, oche balboa said:

I'm sure its getting a massive revamp with Football Manager 2025

This comment has aged like fine wine. 🍷

[qwerty22]

9 hours ago, D3an0mac said:

Yeah the revamp is to completely remove it 

"Less than 5% of users play it". What do they expect when they put 0 f'n effort into it. New game looks to be a massive disappointment

 Let's see how many users play women football on FM25 and then decide if it's worth it.

 

[forameuss]

10 hours ago, fc.cadoni said:

FM25 will be a football management game, without the ability to manage a national team. This is extreme. Out of any logic. Despite "5%" of people using it (in FM24?), they don't even understand why people does not use - participate at international management. Extreme.

They probably know very well that's the case, but their stats don't have context.  Are those 95% of people not using it because it's lacking?  Almost certainly not.  What percentage of people would move across and play it if it was made better?  What percentage would make it worth putting in what sounds like a huge amount of effort into getting the mode, especially when it sounds like that effort could risk other parts of the game?

Do I agree with them dropping it?  Personally, no.  Do I find the decision logical given what they've told us.  Absolutely.

30 minutes ago, qwerty22 said:

 Let's see how many users play women football on FM25 and then decide if it's worth it.

As someone who is very disappointed there is no international management, the inclusion of women's football brings far more to the game as a whole than international management would.  And that's putting aside any prejudices - hidden or otherwise - that peek through comments like that.

[Novem9]

7 минут назад, forameuss сказал:

They probably know very well that's the case, but their stats don't have context. Are those 95% of people not using it because it's lacking?

My vote would be somewhere around 0.00001%, but here's a concrete experience. I play journeyman, where the national team is one of the stages. Rise to the elite or pre-retirement, depending on context and manager. I avoided it in the last two FMs (for me 22 and 24), because it's so inconvenient that I just don't feel like wasting my time on it. Accordingly, I was one of those who whined for years about the need to improve international features. Removing it is not a fiasco in itself. But it raises questions, since SI knew about the upcoming challenge, but apparently did not prepare for it properly. Although, if you do not have time to improve your conveyor along a known path, it is obvious that when moving to a new track, you will face many force majeures.

[qwerty22]

5 minutes ago, forameuss said:

They probably know very well that's the case, but their stats don't have context.  Are those 95% of people not using it because it's lacking?  Almost certainly not.  What percentage of people would move across and play it if it was made better?  What percentage would make it worth putting in what sounds like a huge amount of effort into getting the mode, especially when it sounds like that effort could risk other parts of the game?

Do I agree with them dropping it?  Personally, no.  Do I find the decision logical given what they've told us.  Absolutely.

As someone who is very disappointed there is no international management, the inclusion of women's football brings far more to the game as a whole than international management would.  And that's putting aside any prejudices - hidden or otherwise - that peek through comments like that.

 

If SI answered to our feedback to improve international management, You wouldn't see the %5 number as you do now, It'd have also made it difficult for them to drop it as more people would take a challenge of guiding your country through world cup qualifiers or building a football identity for a nation which influences regens and maybe relationship between club and national team coaches.

You assume prejudice why?

Women football isn't that important to a lot of us and it's being shoved down our throats everywhere, Do I have to fake my love to it to look cool?

In FIFA they are adding women footballers in ultimate team and you play mixed games which in reality it would be very difficult for them to compete against professional men

I simply don't care about women football and would like to keep international management, It's a matter of preference no prejudice about it.

 

 

[grade]

I support any feature that improves not only what is key features of football world (International Management, Women's Football, Club football etc.) but also features that further the game playability of Football Manager.

I do not support, trying to include those feature while removing temporarily for whatever reasons, any of key features of football world. No matter how little percentage they show to justify it.

Edited September 5 by grade

[Clyde1998]

2 hours ago, forameuss said:

They probably know very well that's the case, but their stats don't have context.  Are those 95% of people not using it because it's lacking?  Almost certainly not.  What percentage of people would move across and play it if it was made better?  What percentage would make it worth putting in what sounds like a huge amount of effort into getting the mode, especially when it sounds like that effort could risk other parts of the game?

Do I agree with them dropping it?  Personally, no.  Do I find the decision logical given what they've told us.  Absolutely.

As someone who is very disappointed there is no international management, the inclusion of women's football brings far more to the game as a whole than international management would.  And that's putting aside any prejudices - hidden or otherwise - that peek through comments like that.

On the numbers using it, I'll reiterate what I said in the 'Development Update' thread:

15 hours ago, Clyde1998 said:

Only 5.6% of all PC saves have used international management, not 5.6% of players.

[...]

The terminology regarding international management, to me, implies if someone has five save games in a year and one of them involves international management, they'd be counted as five total saves and one international save, not as one person out of those who've played the game who's used the international management feature.

It suggests the number of players who have used international management at some point in FM24 is a lot higher than 5.6%.

People are conflating 'number of saves' with 'number of players' - a large amount of players have multiple saves in a single game year. Even if it's simply starting a new save once the database after the January transfer window is released.

I feel the 5.6% figure is being somewhat disingenuous, especially as the removal of Create-a-Club was based on 5% of total players having used the mode at some point in FM24. It comes across as trying to get people to make an apples and oranges comparison in order to justify removal of international management, even if it's simply for a single game, as the number of people who've played international management in at least one of their saves is a lot higher and would be harder to justify.

[Clyde1998]

I think the question that needs to be asked is what's actually needed to get international management up to a standard deemed suitable for the game?

The key things I can think of off the top of my head that I'd want in international management would be:

• Training - which would give coaches a purpose beyond player reports; would allow for better rest-recovery and for tactical familiarity to be improved.
• Better player interactions - being able to give players targets to get into the national team, etc.
• Club manager interactions - things like being able to ask why a player isn't getting game time, how a player is performing in club training, etc.
• More things to do outside of a international window - such as watching players in club matches having an in-game effect.
• Some sort of input in the FA - a boardroom-style request system for things like more youth funding (which could increase a country's youth level), balanced against the FA's financial power and recent success.
• More influence over U21/U19 managers - maybe a system to encourage them to call up specific players or types of players (big potential, highest current ability, players based in own nation, etc.).

The biggest issue I have with international management is players being tired when they get to internationals and staying tired for much longer than they would when managing clubs. I'm guessing that's down to the training being simulated in some way.

Simply adding training though would be a big improvement to the current system and that only needs to be the same system that's in the game for club management (with things like positional or trait training unavailable). I'm not a game developer, but surely porting across the club schedules and being able to assign coaches wouldn't take a lot of work relative to the scale of improvement it would make to the game or implementing something completely new.

The others I've listed are currently in the 'nice to have' category.

[Malicious Penguin]

I mean... maybe if they'd done any sort of improvement to international management over the last decade the need to remove it to revamp it wouldn't be necessary. 

[Overmars]

I think the necessary changes to make FM24 international management less frustrating were minor. SI had to fix the fatigue issue and expand training options, which don't sound especially complicated to change. Those minor changes "fix" that side of the game, but you can only improve it so much.

International management is never going to be amazing. It just isn't a big enough job for a daily simulation game. I think most people playing FM would still keep a club job while taking an international job because they know international management is only exciting once every two years.

[jim owen]

removing international management is removing half the game for me, i do two club saves (big and little) and two international saves (big and multi little) per year. FM25 will now be the first since FM13 i've skipped, unless the price is halved to compensate (which it wont be)

[tiago_wakabayashi]

I never understood why the international management had low attention by SI. With the success the new men's and Women's England generations I thought it would have more treatment but not, only some minor improvement that i don't see like this and yes fixes because are thing that should be in game a long time ago. 

A question that nobody replied till now is how will be the fm24 saves loaded in fm25 with international career in course? Then cant't follow with my Brazil? Will be I sacked against my will and an AI manager will take in my charge? If someone from SI can clarify it I would thank much.  

[forameuss]

59 minutes ago, tiago_wakabayashi said:

I never understood why the international management had low attention by SI. With the success the new men's and Women's England generations I thought it would have more treatment but not, only some minor improvement that i don't see like this and yes fixes because are thing that should be in game a long time ago. 

A question that nobody replied till now is how will be the fm24 saves loaded in fm25 with international career in course? Then cant't follow with my Brazil? Will be I sacked against my will and an AI manager will take in my charge? If someone from SI can clarify it I would thank much.  

Probably for the same reason they've cited for them removing it entirely this year.  It simply isn't popular enough for them to spend the amount of time they think it'll need to make it better.  You can give the chicken-and-egg argument that some like to say that far more would play it if it was better, but they still need to spend that time up front that they'd clearly rather be spent elsewhere.  It's disappointing - personally I liked international management - but it's the reality of working on something that has far more needing done than you have time to achieve.

As for the save transfer, they haven't actually mentioned whether it would be possible at all, so I wouldn't put all your eggs into that basket.  I could definitely see them dropping that given the sort of edge cases you're mentioning.  Nothing confirmed either way of course, I've no real idea.