Review: Football Manager 2019

Football Manager 2019 is a football management game. You will become the manager of a football club. Your job is to manage your club so it can be a reputable club in the world. You need to create a training schedule for your club, hire staffs that will help manage your club, buy and sell players, and many others. Be a successful manager for your club and gain a reputation for your achievements.

COMPLEXITY
This game has so many aspects to manage. That is what makes this game so complex, especially regarding football club management. First, when you start the game, you can choose how is your background? Are you already an experienced manager or just a new guy in football club management. Do you already have a license in coaching football or don't? Have you already been a manager of some football club or are you still unemployed? If you are unemployed, then what country do you want to seek your job? All that factors you have to determine before you play.

After you already have a club, there are many things that you have to manage in order to make your club succeed. You have to evaluate your club first, look at its training schedule, the team's squad and its society, what are their strengths and weaknesses, their tactics, staffs, and many more. After you evaluated all of them, you can determine what things that you should fix or enhanced from your club.

• Training: You can make a schedule what your club should do in a week. There are many training variations, such as general training, attacking, defending, technical, tactical, and many more, that is the general training. You can also set a specific individual training for your player, is it to improve his acceleration, marking ability, heading, finishing, and many more. You can set coaches to do your training. There are 3 categories of training that your coaches have to do, they are goalkeeping, physical, and general training. You can manage who will take care each of them among your coaches.

• Tactics: In this game, you can set your own formation, is it 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, or anything else. You can also set how your approach will be when you are facing your opponent team on the next match. There are so many tactic variations depend on the 3 situations, they are when you won the possession, when you lost the possession, and when your team is in the transition from attack to defence or vice versa. You can also make a scenario for your team. This scenario will set a tactic for your team once the situation is fulfilled without you need to change it manually when you are in the middle of the match. As an example, when you are losing 1 goal behind, you can order your team to have an attacking mentality and attack the opposition from the rear. Or when you are leading 1 goal ahead, you can set your team to have a defensive mentality and regroup when the possession was lost. You can also set a tactic where are your men will be in a corner or free kick situation. You also need to arrange who will take the set pieces and penalties.

• Staffing: You can search for staffs to help you in managing your club. There 3 categories of staff, they are the coaching team, recruitment team, and medical team. The coaching team is responsible for your team training. The recruitment team is responsible to find a new face that could make your team better. The medical team is responsible to take care of your injured players. You can decide how many staff that you need for your team and how are their skills based on your salary adjustment for your staffs because the more experienced your staff, the more payment that he would demand.

• Transfer & Contract: To sign a player or hire staff, you have to negotiate a contract with them. You can propose how much their salary and what bonus and clause they will get. But you also need to keep your budget safe so you have to be careful when offering bonuses and clauses for them. Other than that, you can also make an offer for your player a loan to another club or you can also buy/sell your player to another club if you intend to while their contract hasn't run out.

• Scouting: The players report that your scouting team has gathered will be seen here. You can look for an interesting player which you can decide to bring him to join your club from this menu. You can filter the list based on the condition that you want. From this menu, you can also make an assignment for your scouting team if you want to scout your next opponent or if you are looking for a replacement for your current player.

• Board: The board is your boss. They are the owner of your club. And as the owner, they can do anything they want, such as build a new stadium for the club, expand the current stadium, raise the transfer and salary budget, improve the training facilities, and many more. You can request one to them if you like to.

GRAPHIC

Not much to tell about the graphic of this game. It is because the game doesn't offer some sophisticated gameplay except when we are on a match only. All the time we spend on the management panel managing our own club. The animations of the players are so simplistic. You can't expect more like in the Pro Evolution Soccer or FIFA game. But if you compare with its predecessor, Football Manager 2016, then there are some improvements. It is a bit smoother than the previous one. On the match, you can see the spectators that are watching you. The number of spectators depends on your club reputation. The bigger your club, then the greater your spectators will be. You can also see them cheering when your club scores a goal. It is also the same with the stadium. The greater you upgraded the stadium, then the greater it will be when you see it on the match.

ADDITIONAL
Some other things that you should know about this game are:

• You have to maintain a good dressing room atmosphere and board confidence in you by winning matches. If the dressing room is not healthy, then your players wouldn't do their duty well in order to win the matches. And if you are losing most of your matches and failed to reach your club's objectives, then the board will lose the confidence in you and you could possibly be fired by the club.
• There will be a press that covers many of your decisions, such as when you are bringing a new player to your club, when you are quarrelling with your players or other managers, when you are fighting with your rival club, and many more. Sometimes, the press could also influence your club morale, it could make it better or worse.
• Sometimes, your players need to talk to you if they are having a problem that you need to solve and handle it.
• You can set your manager avatar to have your own face because this game can create a facial model from your own photograph.
• Honestly, there are still many things about this game that I haven't known it yet. It is because I haven't had time to try it and figured out how it works. This game is so complex although the graphic is so simplistic.

COMMENT
Football manager 2019 is a good game although the price is not cheap enough. And although this game always releases a new one every year, I could say that this one is worth to buy, on sale is better. Some people put a negative comment at this game because of how its mechanic system works, especially because when they are losing by a lower club while they are using a higher reputation club. But for me, it is normal and possible because that is football and everything can happen on football. This game gives you the feeling of how if you are a person like Arsene Wenger or Jose Mourinho. When you have already prepared your club well, there is still a possibility of losing the match. Even Manchester City could lose to Chelsea 0-2 while they are actually controlling possession on the match one week ago. In the end, this game will tell you how stressful it is to become a football club manager in real life.