Football Manager 2024 is now out of early access and has been fully released. Enjoying it so far?

This short post is just letting you know about some FM24 editor files that I have created. They add extensive competition data to virtually every national team in the game, 1,000+ European clubs, 250+ South American clubs, and 200+ clubs from North and Central America and the Caribbean.

If you’re the kind of FMer who loves to have as much depth and history in the game as possible, then please read on, because these add-ons might just be for you.

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WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Football Manager is a great game, we all know that… why else would you be reading this? Very few sports management games can even match the sheer scale of its database, which now includes over 600,000 players and staff, and countless teams and competitions.

One of the few areas where FM is perhaps lacking depth, though, is on team competition histories. There are particular problems with the tournament data when it comes to national teams.

One particular problem is the lack of consistency when it comes to research. While some nations like England have fairly accurate histories detailing their performances at past major tournaments, others like Spain are missing significant data. Many nations don’t have any past tournament data at all.

Another case of inconsistency is that the World Cup’s last 16 stage has been assigned many different names in the original database. Belgium have regularly been knocked out at the ‘Second Knockout Round’, which is called the ‘First Knockout Round’ on Italy’s history page, while Chile have exited three times at the ‘Eighth Round’ and Romania once in the ‘Sixteenth Round’. Meanwhile, Germany were eliminated from Euro 2020 by England at the ‘Eighth Final’.

You might even notice several data errors. According to FM, Greece’s penalty shoot-out defeat to Costa Rica at the 2014 World Cup was at the Quarter Final stage, rather than the last 16 (or whatever you want to call it). Team records from the 2022 World Cup are also missing from the original FM24 database, including Morocco’s historic run to 4th place.

Like so many annoying FM bugs, these issues have gone unfixed for years – and frankly, contacting every national team researcher to point out the many mistakes in their data would be far too laborious. There must be a better way.

That is where my “International Team Competition Histories” mod (or ‘ITCH’ for short) comes in.

Back in 2014, I started creating my own data files from scratch. Using Wikipedia and RSSSF for reference, I added data for every nation’s historic performances at the qualifying and final stages of World Cups and other international tournaments. My mods were designed to be as CORRECT, COMPLETE and CONSISTENT as possible.

At first, I made all my changes manually in the database, working around the existing data. Then a very helpful chap named Gaz taught me how to edit much more efficiently using Microsoft Excel and XML files. I now completely erase all national team data from the original database on the FM Editor before inserting my own, which is done automatically.

I released my first version of ‘ITCH’ on the Steam Workshop for FM15. I also released updates under the ‘FMUpdates ITCH’ banner for FM16 and FM17, the latter of which got 1,500+ subscribers. ‘ITCH’ returned under the Fuller FM banner for FM19 and has been going ever since (apart from skipping FM20).

Around 53,000 database changes have been made on the latest version of ‘ITCH’, adding historical data from over a century’s worth of international competitions.

I’ve also brought out a couple more mods, which both debuted in FM21, and which add continental competition histories to clubs in Europe and the Americas.

“European Team Competition Histories” (‘ETCH’) adds every team’s complete records in UEFA club competitions, dating back to the first European Cup in 1955/1956. This covers the qualifying and final stages of the Champions League, the Europa League and the Super Cup, along with the now-defunct Cup Winners’ Cup and Inter-Toto Cup.

‘ETCH’ is even bigger in scope than ‘ITCH’, adding competition histories to more than 1,000 European clubs, and making around 86,000 changes to the database.

“Americas Team Competition Histories” (‘ATCH’) is a similar update that covers every CONMEBOL and CONCACAF club competition since 1960. The Copa Libertadores, Copa Sudamericana and CONCACAF Champions League are all covered, along with several smaller or now-defunct competitions.

‘ATCH’ adds competition histories to over 500 clubs from across the Americas and the Caribbean. Around 32,000 database changes have been made on this update.

I appreciate that these cosmetic edits won’t appeal to everyone. This update is mainly for those football history buffs like me who want just a little bit more depth in their FM24 save games.

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DOWNLOAD LINKS

If you’re interested in adding these updates to your next FM24 save game, you can find the links below. Most of you are probably running FM24 from Steam, in which case the best way to add these updates is to subscribe to them from the Steam Workshop. This will automatically download them to your ‘editor data’ folder.

I’ve also included a direct download option, which is mainly for those of you who run FM24 from the Epic Games Launcher and cannot access the Steam Workshop. However, you will have to manually move these files into your ‘editor data’ folder for the game to find them.

ITCH: International Team Competition Histories (Steam Workshop / Direct Download)

ETCH: European Team Competition Histories (Steam Workshop / Direct Download)

ATCH: Americas Team Competition Histories (Steam Workshop / Direct Download)

(Remember: you cannot add these files to an existing save game. You must start a brand new save to see these records.)

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If you have any questions about addons, feel free to leave a comment below. Don’t forget that you can also follow me on Twitter, Threads and Bluesky.