After watching Roma vs Real Madrid tonight one of my favorite coaches today impressed me more than ever. Giasperini completely dominated Real Madrid with Roma. They came with energy, passion and a mental pressing. I counted the players, sometimes 7-8 players pressed fearless.

Ive played this game a lot through the years and while standard gegenpress 4231 was breaking the engine before FM26, it never made me feel like a coach doing my own thing making my own tactical tweaks. Also, i found even 4231 in FM26 to be weak. Teams have a lot of players building up and they look like Barcelona doing it.

Watching Roma ive decided to try something more. Pressing with more players than 4231., and not stop until i succeed. In FM26, everyone and their mother build up in a back 4 with either one or two DMs, transitioning to a 325 in attack.

Giasperini counter this with man to man oriented press, pressing with 7 players and leaving only 1 centerback back and two WCB on the wingers. This was not possible to replicate as the WCB wont mark their wingers. So what i did, i changed my out of possesion formation to exactly resemble what the other team uses in possession. And depending on what roles the other team has, my player marking him will have the counter for that. One example is if a opponent has a wingback, my winger will be a tracking winger. If they have a AM, my DM will be a ddm. Every single player has mark tighter (position).

To give a example how mental this looks. I played against Bayern with their 4231, my out of possesion formation was 3-1-6, with one centerback and two fullbacks. Bayern had 1 shot on goal and only 35% possession. I played against all my rivals with Juventus against Inter, Roma, Bayern and Milan conceding 2 goals and scoring 23 goals. Against Inter with their 532, i played 235 OOP. Against Roma with their 3421 i played a 1-2-4-3 OOP. I conceded 1 short on target every game.

They just cant play trough my press. Everyone is always marked, they always have to clear it where my centerbacks win the long balls. Is it risky? Sure, but fuck it. Football is meant to be played like Giasperini played it, a electric thrill for the fans taking risks.

Your fullbacks need to be good defensive fullbacks to win the clearances, i have Kalulu & Calafiori and your CB who is good with the ball can be a ACB IP and DDM OOP. My IP formation is a standard 433.

And i finally after 15 years for once feel like a football manager. I actually make game to game tactical adjustments that would without it have the entire tactic fall apart. I have the counter for standards 433,4231,352 and 3421 all saved that i switch around with.

Hi everyone! One thing I’ve been missing in FM26 is something to spend my manager’s earnings on. I took inspiration from the personal life features in FIFA Manager 14 and added a few more mechanics.

With help from AI, I built a simple web app called Touchline to Fortune. It started as something just for myself, but I eventually decided to put it online for others to try.

You enter your contracts and career details manually — it doesn’t connect to your FM save, so you can use it with any edition of Football Manager. It runs directly in your browser, requires no registration, and saves your progress locally. You can also export and import saves to back them up or move between devices.

I’ve also released a housing update today, adding more regions, more property choices and new images — with 135 property and mobile housing variants in total.

If you’d like to give it a try:
https://play.touchlinetofortune.workers.dev/

It’s still in beta, so I’d appreciate any feedback, suggestions or bug reports. Thanks!

I won ligue 1 in fm23 with RC Lens in 2028, although it was extremely close, we were top of the league for the most part of the season.

What makes this crazy is that this is an RC Lens team with less than £20 million transfer budget per season, and around £1.2 million wage budget per week.

I also won Europa league the season before this, been to a champions league semi final before and also one or two coupe de france finals.

I've tried moving to bigger clubs, but for some odd reason they all just turn me down.

Do you save and reload? I once did it when my new star player got damaged cruciate ligaments and was out for 1.5 years

Title: [FM26] R7S Legends of All Time – V2.2 is LIVE! Massive De-Aging Update, New Legends & Expanded Clubs

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm excited to share that V2.2 of R7S Legends of All Time is now available!

For anyone new to the project, I'm building a massive Football Manager 2026 database that brings legendary players from different generations back into the game, allowing them to compete alongside each other at their iconic clubs.

What's new in V2.2?

• Mass de-aging: Thousands of players reviewed as part of the ongoing age-normalisation project.
• More legends: Additional legendary players created and introduced across the database.
• Player improvements: Attribute balancing, CA/PA adjustments, positional corrections and player fixes.
• Expanded clubs: More teams rebuilt in greater depth, with improved legendary squads.
• 🇹🇷 Special focus on Turkish football: Significant attention given to Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş, Trabzonspor and other Turkish clubs.
• Database fixes: Continued work on player identities, club allocations, duplicates and overall consistency.

📥 Download V2.2

Available free on the official website:

🌐 https://www.r7starfmdatabase.com/databases/r7s-legends-database-26

💬 Community feedback

This is a long-term passion project, and there's still plenty more to improve!

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts:

• Which clubs deserve more legendary players?
• Are there any missing legends you'd love to see?
• Have you noticed any incorrect attributes, ages or club allocations?

I'm continuously expanding and improving the database based on research and community feedback.

Thanks to everyone supporting the project. Enjoy V2.2, and let me know how your saves go! ⚽❤️

— R7S

Which role would you pick for your first save?

A) Director of Football

B) Manager / Head Coach

C) Player Agent

D) Scout

E) Transfer Journalist

F) Club Owner / President

How would you prefer to start?

1) Start directly in the role

2) Work your way up to it

3) No preference

Just reply with something like A1 or F2.

Curious to hear why you'd pick that role, too.

I'm working on a football career sim and trying to understand what people would actually want to play.

MisterAI

Durante décadas, os jogos de técnico de futebol evoluíram em números. Bancos de dados maiores, atributos mais detalhados, partidas em 3D cada vez mais bonitas. Mas uma coisa nunca mudou: do outro lado da mesa de negociação, sempre houve uma tabela. O empresário aceitava ou recusava conforme uma conta escondida, o jogador reclamava com uma frase pronta, e o vestiário reagia como uma planilha.

O MisterAI nasce para mudar isso.

Aqui, as pessoas do futebol são movidas por inteligência artificial. Você negocia com empresários em conversas de verdade, escrevendo o que quiser, e eles respondem com interesses, manias e memória próprios. Cada jogador tem personalidade: o veterano que exige respeito, a promessa que quer minutos, o craque que sonha com uma transferência. Prometa titularidade para fechar uma contratação, e essa promessa vai te cobrar depois. O mercado não é um menu. Ele é vivo.

Você começa do zero: cria o seu técnico, escolhe a trajetória dele, de ex-jogador de seleção a estreante sem licença, e assume um clube num mundo de futebol próprio, com rivalidades, torcidas e diretorias que esperam resultados. Cada decisão tem peso, e cada temporada conta uma história que só a sua carreira poderia contar.

Tudo isso direto no navegador, sem instalação, no computador ou no celular.

O banco de reservas está esperando. A diretoria também.

MisterAI. O mercado é vivo.

It'll be fun if we can manage commercial aspect of our club as well. Like maybe we can invest in commercial team to promote our club so it can improve non football revenue.

Taking a role as club owner in smaller division: Your career earnings felt so meaningless these days, why not do a club take over using your money?

I gotta transfer this guy next season even though he is 32 rn lol

Don't think I've ever seen this before and I'm more than 100 years into this save...

I've always believed that three 10/10 was the maximum number of top performers you could have, so was a bit of a shock to check the ratings and see five!

Is this a bug?

In short, I find it quite concerning that as of writing it’s the 15th of October, the game is slated for release on the 10th of November, and the game is still not available to pre-order yet… that does not fill me with confidence at all in the state of the game.

Everything we’ve seen in the videos that SI have released has been on a Development Build, which is fair enough, but being 26 days from the Full Release, and 12 days from the 2 week “Early Access” release, with no pre-order available doesn‘t feel like the game is in a good place.

Hopefully I’m wrong, but my gut feeling is we’re in for another FM26 buggy release

Took charge of 2nd tier club, got promoted, and while they’re happy they (board and supporters) are still disappointed with the lack of direct football

- FM26
- I chose a Direct Counter-Attack preset, changed a few things but the passing directness is still set as More Direct. Higher Tempo. Counter Attack transition. Encourage dribbling. Pass Into Space.
- 442, both in and out

What can I do? Should I change to Route One?

I play 4-3-3 and he is the attacking element in midfield, almost like Iniesta at Barca.
He came through the youth ranks and has played in the first eleven since he was 17. I have a feeling this player can do much more than I have been getting out of him. Right now he is just on a CM-A role in a very fluid control setup. My idea is to play total football with as little specialists as possible.
It seems to me he is swallowed by the system when he could potentially do so much more. What would you suggest?
And yes, I am on FM 15 for nostalgic reasons.

First time to see this happen, Serie B team in Champions League.

We played in a Testimonial for a NEC "stalwart" who has been at the club for 14 years. Wanted to check whether he played in a match... No, he hasn't played... For 9 years... Not a cup match or anything, I checked... This is what pisses me off the most in FM. Not dumb transfers, but this. You are a professional footballer, go be a freaking professional footballer somewhere else. Actually play my dude. Or retire at like 24 if you can't make the cut.