You might remember that I reviewed Soccer Manager 2019 – a free-to-play single-player game currently available on Steam and other platforms – a couple of weeks ago. That game wasn’t very good, but plenty of you seemed to be interested in my review, which attracted nearly 100 unique views in its first 24 hours. For a relatively new blog like Fuller FM, those numbers are quite impressive.
Today, I’m going to be looking at the multiplayer game that spawned SM19. Soccer Manager Worlds is one of the biggest online football management games around, with over 1 million users logging in every month. I myself have been playing that game since 2007… but not anymore.
This is the story of what happens when a video game developer horribly neglects its most popular title.
THE GAME
First of all, what is Soccer Manager Worlds? Simply put, it’s a simplified, free-to-play multiplayer version of Football Manager – and unlike most muliplayer FM clones, it uses real clubs and players. Whereas FM rates players on several attributes, players in SMW are given simple ratings from 60 (for mediocre semi-pros) to 99 (Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi).
There are thousands of ‘game worlds’ to manage in, the most popular of which have well over 100 managers competing at the same time. A standard game world allows you to manage in one national set-up (an English Championship typically has five divisions based on real-life) or in a league of major clubs from around the world.
League matches are typically played on Saturday and Wednesday evenings, with cup matches being played on other days of the week. A season takes around four-and-a-half months in real time, give or take a couple of weeks.
Upgrading to gold membership (for a fee) allows you to play in Gold Championships, which have many leagues running at the same time and can house even more managers. It also entitles you to manage in the continental SMFA Champions Cup and SMFA Shield competitions in all standard game worlds. You can even manage a national team in the end-of-season World Cup competition.
Whether you want to win every trophy imaginable with Barcelona, or you want to simply take Braintree Town into the top flight, it’s up to you. In fact, you’re not just limited to one club at a time; you can manage multiple teams in multiple game worlds if you have the time and dedication.
EARLY PROMISE
I first came across Soccer Manager – as the game was simply called back then – when I was 16. I’d dabbled in several online football management games but never enjoyed any of them enough to stay for long. SM was a bit different; it was simple yet immersive, with an easy-to-use interface disguising what was a sophisticated game under the hood.
About a year later, in March 2008, I began my longest-running Soccer Manager career. Having taken charge of Millwall in Division 3 of a newly-created (and highly-populated) English Championship, I achieved back-to-back promotions to Division 1.
After taking quite a few seasons to establish ourselves in the top tier, we eventually won our first championship in Season 12 (in late 2012). We also won our second Champions Cup that season, adding to our first triumph from a couple of campaigns earlier.
Much of my success was down to signing young prospects on the cheap and then, when they’d developed into high-calibre players, selling them for large profits. Name any English wonderkid, and there was every chance that I’d signed them as a teenager before they hit the heights: Jack Wilshere, Kyle Walker, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, John Stones, Marcus Rashford… Jose Baxter.
Mind you, I did make the odd blunder. For instance, I remember bringing Robert Lewandowski to my Millwall team when he was a 20-year-old at Lech Poznań. 18 months later (still some time before he became a Bundesliga beast), I stupidly traded him to Ajax for a more experienced striker in Marko Pantelic. Who the hell was Marko Pantelic? Exactly.
My SM experience was generally blissful for about six years or so, even though the number of managers in my game world inevitably gradually declined. But then, so did the game itself.
THE DECLINE
In late 2014, Soccer Manager Ltd brought out a new single-player version of their multiplayer title. I played Soccer Manager 2015 for a while but quickly dismissed it as a poor man’s Football Manager. It was around the same time that the newly-rebranded Soccer Manager Worlds’ basic but attractive UI made way for a more modern yet somehow uglier interface.
Over the next few years, the developers continued working on subsequent versions of the single-player game to make them more enjoyable – and less of an FM rip-off. In doing so, though, they put SMW on the backburner. Hitherto regular game updates became more sporadic from circa 2015, and there have been no new updates at all since 23 November 2016. Two-and-a-half years ago.
This alarming neglect seemed to extend to SMW’s customer service, and how it handled the growing problem of managers taking charge of multiple clubs in the same game world.
Some time in 2016, I saw managers named John Wayne, Stanley Laurel, Gene Kelly and Robert Taylor take charge of clubs in my main game world. Either I’d suddenly stumbled into a bizarre world where actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age were coaching contemporary soccer clubs… or somebody was playing a silly prank.
I reported these managers as being multiple accounts from the same user, but the developers came back and said they’d found no evidence of this being true. History repeated in 2017, when I reported two managers with the same surname as well as very similar first names (Clement and Clément) – and virtually identical usernames. That was apparently not enough to prove the two managers were one and the same.
At that point, I went to Soccer Manager’s Facebook page and sent them a message asking if they would take any action against the managers in question. I never got a reply – at least not one that was from an actual human and not automated.
Visiting the Soccer Manager forums alerted me to other managers who’d had similar issues with reporting multiple accounts. And how did the devs respond to their concerns? They didn’t. In fact, there had been hardly any developer posts in the SMW sub-forums since the single-player game became more prominent.
Anger was growing in the SMW community, and it didn’t help matters when Soccer Manager released a third game – Football Clash: All Stars – in 2018. From what I could gather, it’s a five-a-side football/card/battle arena game designed mainly for gamers who think FIFA Ultimate Team is too high-brow for them.
I was also becoming increasingly disillusioned with SMW. I had stopped renewing my gold membership in 2015 (after five years) and was soon logging into the game only a few times a week. At its pomp, I would play at least twice a day, and I would have two or even three separate careers on the go.
I eventually went back down to just managing one club – Millwall. Even my longest-standing career was losing its appeal, though, with fewer and fewer managers gracing the game world.
The Hollywood actors and the Clements all went off their own accord, and before long, only TWO other active managers were left. One was managing Liverpool, and the other Tranmere Rovers. Inevitably, all three of us dominated the English Championship, though my Lions were still the team to beat (we went on a run of seven consecutive league titles until Liverpool took the next two).
At the start of Season 28, I told the other managers that I was planning to leave. That season ended with my Millwall team going unbeaten in the league to claim a record 11th Division 1 championship. We beat Liverpool 4-3 on the final day, which meant Tranmere – who also didn’t lose a league game – finished 2nd on 100 points (Jürgen Klopp will soon know the feeling).
My final list of honours with Millwall consisted of 12 league titles (the other coming in Division 3 in that first season), 5 English Cups, 9 English Shields (equivalent to the EFL Cup), 13 Charity Shields and 3 SMFA Champions Cups. After enjoying a virtual managerial career to rival Sir Alex Ferguson, the time has come for me to retire… but not before unleashing my hairdryer on the developers.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Over the past five years, I have watched on in horror as SMW has declined from a bastion of online football management games to a horribly neglected shell of its former self. Development has seemingly stopped, and more and more managers are deserting the game.
It doesn’t help matters that Soccer Manager’s customer service with regards to SMW is still non-existent. Let me sum up the situation:
- The SMW sub-forums are quieter than ever, and posts by developers are lesser-spotted than Saido Berahino goals.
- Emailing ‘support’ is pointless. SM say they’ll get back to you within 10 working days, but in truth, you might as well be talking to a brick wall.
- You can’t send messages to their Facebook page anymore.
- Even their Twitter account prefers to promote SM19, Football Clash, and their latest title – Soccer Manager Elite – rather than answer enquiries about SMW.
Frankly, it is a disgrace that the game is in its current state. As of last Sunday, I have now quit my Millwall team and deactivated my SMW account, formally ending my 12-year association with the game.
If you don’t play Soccer Manager Worlds, please avoid it like the plague. However, if you are playing today and share my concerns, then perhaps you should stop and let the developers know how you feel (provided they will actually listen).
Thank you for reading, and feel free to share this article if you want to get the message across.
Fuller FM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.