As great a game as Football Manager is, some of the generated stadium names are a bit naff, aren’t they? If new stadia aren’t named after club legends (e.g. Alf Ramsey Park for Ipswich), they are usually given totally uninspired monikers (such as the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium… oh, hang on a minute).

Of course, these new stadiums can be renamed using FM’s in-game editor or a third-party program such as FMRTE. But what if you don’t want to fork out for an in-game editor – or, like me, you have absolutely no interest in using one?

Fortunately, there is a cheap alternative that is quite easy to learn, though some of you might not be too familiar with it.

If you use a real-name fix (such as the one on Sortitoutsi), you will probably know about LNC files, which are just text files with a different file extension. They can easily be created and edited using a basic text-editing program such as Notepad (on Windows) or TextEdit (on Mac).

LNC files allow you to change the names of any stadia in your game, as well as any people, competitions, clubs, and even nations. One of the great things about them is that they can take effect in existing save games as well as new ones.

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CHANGING STADIUM NAMES

1) First, go into your ‘Preferences’. On the Preferences screen, hover over the ‘Preferences’ tab on the top bar. In the drop-down menu, select ‘Interface’.

2) You will now come across a section titled ‘Appearance’. In that section, make sure that the box next to ‘Show screen IDs in Title Bar to assist skinning’. Then click on the ‘Confirm’ button at the bottom of the screen to confirm your changes.

3) Load your save game, if you haven’t done so already. Then find the stadium that you want to change the name of, and click on its name.

4) While on the stadium page, look on the title bar and you’ll see a small number in brackets (ID:98047448, for example). This is the stadium’s Unique ID number. Take a note of that number, because you’ll need it later.

5) Shut down Football Manager.

6) Find your Steam folder in your program files directory. Open that up and then navigate to:

\steamapps\common\Football Manager 2019\data\database\db\1901*\lnc

* This number should refer to the database version your save game was created on. For example, if you set up your save with the 1901 database loaded, you should make any name changes in that folder.

7) Within the ‘lnc’ folder, create a text file, and save it with the file extension .lnc. Do not save with the .txt extension, as FM will not recognise files with that extension.

In that LNC file should be a line of text using the following template:

“STADIUM_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “new stadium name” “language”

If you play Football Manager in English, the ‘language’ section can be left blank (i.e. two quotations marks with nothing in between). You only need to specify a language if you want the name change to take effect in a language other than English.

Now let’s assume I want to rename Bournemouth’s newly-built Steve Fletcher Arena in my Fiorentina save after another Cherries legend. In the LNC file, I would type this line of text, with the stadium’s Unique ID number in the relevant place:

“STADIUM_NAME_CHANGE” 98047448 “Juan Iturbe Arena” “”

Type out more lines if you want to change the names of multiple stadia, and then save your changes.

8) Restart Football Manager and load up your save game. If you followed the instructions correctly, the changes should take effect immediately.

If you’d prefer to watch a tutorial video on how LNC files work, Second Yellow Card created an excellent one for FM18. The instructions are basically the same in FM19.

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CHANGING PLAYER NAMES

You can also use the instructions above to change the names of any players and staff members in your save game. They will work for newgens as well as real people.

Why would you want to do this, though, when you can just nickname your players? I’ll tell you why. When you give a player an in-game nickname, that player is referred to exclusively by that name from then on. If that nickname is a rather long one, like ‘David Taylor-Brown’, the player will only be called David Taylor-Brown everywhere, even when it’s more appropriate to refer to him by just his first name or his surname.

This method actually allows you to change a player’s first name (David) and their second name/surname (Taylor-Brown) without having to use the flawed nicknaming function. This is exactly what Sortitoutsi do to change Oliver Kahn’s name from Jens Mustermann – and Niko Kovac’s name from Max Mustermann – in their real-name fixes to get around licensing restrictions.

You might want to rename your players after friends or work colleagues… or perhaps you want them to have more age-appropriate names. For example, I wouldn’t blame you for renaming your 16-year-old wonderkid striker if he’s been given the name Clive. Let’s face it; you don’t see many Clives in British schools nowadays!

Again, find the Unique IDs of any people whose names you want to change beforehand. Then, once you get round to creating or editing your LNC file, use the following template:

“CHANGE_PLAYER_NAME” Unique ID “First Name” “Common Name” “Second Name”

In this example, if I wanted to change my Fiorentina youth player Jamie Smith’s name to Fred Bloggs, I would type this and then save my changes:

“CHANGE_PLAYER_NAME” 1915562775 “Fred” “” “Bloggs”

And voila, ‘Jamie’ has a new name. As you can see, he is absolutely thrilled.

The ‘Common Name’ field can be left blank if you don’t want the person to have a nickname or pseudonym. If I wanted Jamie Smith – or, rather, Fred Bloggs – to have the nickname ‘Fredinho’ without having to set it myself in-game, I’d type:

“CHANGE_PLAYER_NAME” 1915562775 “Fred” “Fredinho” “Bloggs”

I don’t need to show you those changes. You should get the idea by now.

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CHANGING COMPETITION NAMES

Changing the long or short names of a competition is also rather straightforward. Just use the templates below:

“COMP_LONG_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Long Competition Name” “”
“COMP_SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Short Competition Name” “”

In this example, I will give the EFL Trophy a new name – one which is more befitting of its stature and significance:

“COMP_LONG_NAME_CHANGE” 1301429 “Pointless Trophy” “”
“COMP_SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” 1301429 “Pointless Trophy” “”

Now we just need the BBC to get the broadcasting rights, and for Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman to do the draws for the knockout rounds. Oh yes, and change the trophy to this. Then we’re really onto a winner.

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CHANGING CLUB NAMES

If you want to change the long or short-form names of any club in your game, use these templates:

“LONG_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Long Club Name” “”
“SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Short Club Name” “”

So let’s assume that Assem Allam finally gets his way and persuades the authorities to rename Hull City AFC, at least in the FM universe. In the LNC file, he’d probably type something like this:

“LONG_NAME_CHANGE” 665 “Hull City Tigers” “”
“SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” 665 “Hull Tigers” “”

Who cares about 115 years of tradition when it’s so easy to rename your club to whatever you want, eh? (Don’t worry, Hull fans. I changed it back immediately afterwards.)

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CHANGING NATION NAMES

For renaming nations, you should use the following templates:

“NATION_LONG_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Long Country Name” “”
“NATION_SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” Unique ID “Short Country Name” “”

Following a dispute with Greece, the country that we currently know as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is in the process of changing its name to North Macedonia. Let’s reflect that name change here:

“NATION_LONG_NAME_CHANGE” 781 “North Macedonia” “”
“NATION_SHORT_NAME_CHANGE” 781 “North Macedonia” “”

Good. Now everyone’s happy.

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I hope this guide has been of some use to you. If you have any questions or other comments about what I’ve just written, feel free to leave them below.