How to Play Entertaining Football in Football Manager

Here are four tips you can use and finally play entertaining football that your Football Manager board are asking.

Here are four tips you can use and finally play entertaining football that your Football Manager board asks.

How many times have you found yourself looking at your club vision, wondering how on earth you’re going to fulfil them? Or even worse, you’re halfway into a season, scoring for fun, but still, the board aren’t happy with the football being played?

For the last few FMs, I’ve been absolutely stumped by “play entertaining football”. My team scored goals and won trophies, and the highlights were entertaining to me, but still, I couldn’t satisfy the board. If this sounds familiar to you, this guide will point you in the right direction to keep the board happy and get the fans into your stadium.

1. Dribble Less

Entertaining football is about keeping the ball moving. Think about Guardiola’s Barca, Wenger’s Arsenal, the late-00s Spain, all teams who passed teams to death. The best team instruction to encourage this in Football Manager is dribble less. If your players aren’t allowed to dribble so much, they’ll be forced into passing and moving. This makes the ball do the work, keeping your opposition guessing and drawing defenders out of position, opening up spaces for your more creative players to exploit.

2. Shorter Passing

You’re encouraging your players to pass the ball more often, next you need to tell them how you want them to pass. If you’re trying to encourage entertaining football, you don’t want your players lumping constant long balls forward. A target forward is a very handy and under-used player role when used correctly, but sadly the boardrooms of Football Manager don’t think it equates to entertaining football. Short, frequent passing is absolutely crucial to entertainment and satisfying your board requirements.

3. Work Ball Into Box

This one just makes sense when paired with the other two. You’re telling your players to pass the ball more and to keep their passes short, so you’re really limiting their options for long-range passes into the danger areas. Work Ball Into Box can look very different depending on your tempo, but it always results in players working to create the best opportunities rather than resorting to long shots. Not only does this mean the players keep the ball moving while looking for an entry pass, but it creates high xG opportunities in the box, making your strikers’ jobs easier and scoring plenty of goals to get your fans off their seats.

4. Low Crossing

Finally, just to compliment and really tie everything together, keep your crosses on the ground. With the other instructions, you’re really defeating the point of having a target forward, looking to win aerial battles against defenders, and to aim whipped crosses at. Low crossing improves the effectiveness of a quicker striker with good movement. With working the ball into the box, this makes low crossing incredibly effective and increases the likeliness of cut-backs and square passes across goal for easy opportunities for your striker.

I hope you find this guide helpful, and use these tips to develop a tactic that will score you points with the board, fill your stadium, and have commentators clamouring to tell you how great your side is.

READ MORE: Football Manager Game Guides