Our list of hardest teams to manage in Football Manager 2022.
If you are looking for useful ideas on how to make the most of the latest release from Sports Interactive, then we have a series of ideas waiting for you to explore. In this guide, we want to help you find a proper challenge; the kind of club that nobody succeeds at, even though logic says they should be successful. Who, then, are the clubs who will have you balding by your first winter break?
The hardest challenges to take on in Football Manager 2022
1. Athletic Club
Instead, the challenge here is facing the constant churn of stars leaving whilst keeping a new rotation of good talent coming through the system. This is a club that requires a huge focus not on who you want, but how you can get the most out of what you have. The main thing to note about Athletic Club is just how hard it is to build a genuine giant at this club.
This is a club with a huge support, but no real pathway to winning titles once again. This makes them hugely appealing in the eyes of many; a giant club with a massive challenge to overcome when you want to build a title-winner.
2. Sheffield Wednesday
You are taking on a big club with large expectations and a fan base to be proud of. The challenge, of course, is that you have limited (if any) recourse to actually look after your side. This makes it extremely hard to build the kind of consistent talent that people would want to see.
You need to juggle your ownership with fan expectation mired in the reality of a club with eye-watering debts and no real quality in the playing staff. If you can find any way to reasonably add to your team without spending, that is what you will need to do; there is no buying your way to success in this most challenging of saves.
3. Hamburg SV
They are a club with massive expectations but no money or route to making it happen. They change coaches with a finger click, and have a playing staff that is both overpaid and totally imbalanced. Building something meaningful here might just be your best work yet if you can pull it off.
Getting promoted alone is tough, but your expectations skyrocket upon reaching the Bundesliga once again. This will leave you in a massive fight for your own success, and is very likely to leave you with more than a few challenges to overcome.
HSV is a big club, but a very hard one to manage. Can you balance out the crippling expectation with the equally crippling financial situation? There is only one way to find out: start a save!
4. Red Bull Bragantino
You are quickly expected to be taking on worldwide clubs such as Flamengo and Sao Paulo for the league title. This means trying to make sure your stars stick around, which given your lack of prestige means paying a lot of money. This then creates a dynamic in the dressing room of others wanting money: if you cannot keep a key player, you need to sell them and face the wrath of the ownership.
This is a hard club to manage because the expectation is likely to outstrip the possibility at first. It can take a few years to build something meaningful here, but by that time most end up sacked. You have to do well from day one in a competitive league with a team not really good enough to win things; can you find a way to overcome that interesting shortfall?
Who will you try out first?
While most of us play FM22 to de-stress, some of us want a proper challenge that forces us to think. Well, the above four clubs offer some of the most confusing and downright challenging issues you could ever face in building a football club.
Pick up any of the above four clubs at your peril, and see for yourself why many see these as the black sheep of world football; they are avoided for a reason, after all!