Zek

Right, I had already forgotten about that. I think that was FM19, the first year the German leagues were licenced. Maybe SI thought the national team was included too, but had to patch it when it turned out it wasn't. The latter is just speculation on my part, however.

That's very likely. On the picture of Grealish's attributes (first page of this thread) you can see in the yellow cards section 'UEFA Champions League'. Things could obviously always change, of course, but personally I don't think it will in this case. Currently on mobile, so can't directly show you.

Yes, they've already been working on FM24, probably since before FM23 was even released. I think FM24 will be the version that introduces women's football and be the new features headliner. It seems like the right time to introduce it, right after the World Cup and when every European club is required to become a professional team if they want to play European football. I also think that's why the new FM23 features have felt a little underwhelming, most of the development time went into finishing working on women's football. If I remember correctly, FM18 did the same thing where its only new feature was the social feed and then FM19 came with the tactics and training overhaul.

It's due to licenses, but I think it's interesting to note the J-League actually used to be in FIFA (but isn't in FIFA23) while the LigaMX and the Brazilian Série A (FIFA has been using fake player names for Brazil for years, however) aren't in FIFA23 this year as well due to an exclusive deal with Konami, yet those are in FM23. It makes me a little worried the latter two leagues will eventually get removed from future FM titles too. Removed as in they aren't playable without the use of an editor, I meant.

I like Versus Mode but I think the mode could be even better if the following things are added: 1. Let us be able to set up the groups/KO draw and fixtures ourselves. 2. It doesn't make sense league games are always played in the home team's stadium, even when teams only play the other teams once, while KO games are always played in some random neutral stadium, even when there are two legs. At least give us the choice if we want this to happen or not. 3. Make it possible to watch games between AI teams again. When the mode was still part of FMC/FMT you could, so why can't we do that anymore? 4. Make national teams available from the start, although I understand if licensing is the issue here.

Oh, it's playable, my apologies if you misunderstood. It's just as in this picture, in-game it combines the two years, incorrectly showing the 2021/22 edition was never played. Pretty sure it does because of those two years are set wrong in the previous pic. Both editions show up correctly in-game when those years are correct too.

The 2021 Johan Cruijff Schaal doesn't appear in-game. It does in the pre-game editor, but aside of the winner being set incorrectly (it says Ajax beat PSV when the opposite happened), the reason it doesn't show in-game is because of what year is set in the yellow and brown boxes. Yellow should be set to 2020 and brown to 2021.

The main reason is there's still no mandatory promotion/relegation between Keuken Kampioen Divisie (Tier 2) and Tweede Divisie (Tier 3). It's supposed to be introduced next season, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was postponed for a few more seasons once again. In the past decade it has been postponed again and again. Not many clubs from the top three leagues have much interest in promotion either. The Dutch FA also owns the licence rights for the teams in Tier 3 and below, whereas the licence rights for the top two tiers are owned by two different partnerships that aren't owned by the Dutch FA. The Dutch FA is really touchy about the licences, hence the Dutch NT coach being named Jan Jansen since FM13 or so and the FIFA and PES games in the 2000's either not having the Dutch NT in the game at all or having fake names. So SI may consider it's not worth getting those licence rights, even if they wanted to.

The Johan Cruijff Schaal data of last season is wrong but it also seems to be bugged. The data that has been inserted (by pre-game editor) has Ajax as winners and PSV as runner-up which should be vice versa, but the game doesn't recognize the data and now only shows the 2021 JCS has never been played. I assume it has to do with the editor having set the wrong years for the data as shown in the picture:It shows up correctly in-game when you change the 2021 to 2020 and the 2022 to 2021. Also, Pascal Jansen's history says he became AZ manager in 2018 when it should be 5 December 2020.

I think the reason why Latvia's highest tier has been playable and fully licenced in the vanilla game since last year is because their FA provided all of the information and licences themselves, so there's always the chance other FAs will do the same thing in the future. I could be wrong about the first part, however.

I finally had the time to check but in FM21 they had the real groups. And iirc they also had the real groups in FM19.

I think Van Ginkel is overrated. Van Ginkel is not the player he used to be because of those injuries he's had, especially on the physical level. I also think Guti is a little underrated, as PSV's results improve (read: they stop being flip-floppy) when he's on the pitch. Same happened last season. Ihattaren has a Balanced personality, he should have a less professional personality as continuously eating fastfood, not showing up to individual training, taking months to be match fit and hanging out with the wrong crowd doesn't sound like a balanced personality to me. But that might have been done because of licensing issues, however. The Top Goalscorer Award should be named the Willy van der Kuijlen-trofee, like it was in FM21. Toon Gerbrands is actually not a director at NAC, just an (external) advisor who doesn't have an official job. Van Nistelrooy's milestone page says he became PSV manager in 2021, but this should be 2022.

The World Cup has actually the real groups and fixtures. Neat.

The history page of every domestic competition, except for the KKD, seems to be missing the 2021/22 data, as well as the Manager of the Year Award for the Eredivisie (should be Arne Slot). Jurrien Timber is shown as the winner of last season's Golden Boot, this should be Cody Gakpo.

FM22 was a good FM, but FM23 will be a beta FM.

Look who's teasing:

Manchester City is fully licenced. And Juventus is fully licenced again as well. What blog? And if their stadiums have FM ads, I think it's safe to say Leicester and Brentford will be (fully) licenced too. I think Leicester was fully licenced in a previous FM version too. Was it FM21? But I guess we're just waiting for the official announcement of the partnership.