Football Manager 2024 Console Review

Let’s revisit my most favourite of urban legends. 

A wife wakes up in the middle of the night: it’s 4am. She notices her husband isn’t there. She goes downstairs and sees her husband in the living room dressed in a suit with a carnation in his pocket. She says “What are you doing?” He says “It’s the FA Cup final. You have to make an effort”. He points to the TV and Football Manager is being played. End of story. 

There is something about this franchise that turns grown adults into addictive managers, happy to spend thousands of hours grinding away for glory. Well, it’s a new year and that means it’s time for a new version. Let’s suit up and take to the dugout of Football Manager 2024 Console. 

Intentionally, I haven’t played a Football Manager game for a couple of years. But prior to that hiatus it has previously been my dark companion for years now; on tours, sitting in airports, shacked up in hotels, and in-between jobs. I have started and restarted iterations of this franchise countless times, always becoming addicted. And I don’t really know why, for it’s a strange experience, kicking back, watching numbers play out in front of you for hours on end. So it was with a bit of fear that I loaded up Football Manager 2024 Console on Xbox Series X|S. It didn’t take me long before I was completely hooked. 

I am going to assume that you have played a Football Manager game before. If you haven’t your goal is to take any team you want, from any league in the world, and bring them success in the footballing world. You do this by selecting the right formations, the right tactics, buying and selling the right players, getting the right backroom staff, dealing with the press (not necessarily the right press), managing your finances, and generally keeping the board happy. For newbies, it will seem like a lot to do and a bit of a nightmare. But veterans of the scene will be able to absolutely fill their boots. 

At the start of each season you get objectives to head towards; like finishing in the top half or playing attacking football, and then it’s away you go. 

The new additions to Football Manager 2024 Console are worth covering. There is a new set piece creator where – if you can understand the explicit workings of how to bend it like Beckham – you’re going to get much joy. It seemed to me to be very daunting to begin with, but after a bit of playing around with it, I started to see results. The transfer market has had a bit of an overall too; promising to be fairer and more intuitive. The training and leveling up of your pros and prospects comes with more options in terms of the level of detail, in case you want to be across the board in all aspects. Also, interactions with the players are much more detailed; you can set each other goals for how you want to progress and move forward. 

To be honest, I have looked at all these details for this review, but I like to delegate and generally leave most of the intricacies to my assistant manager. I much prefer focusing on picking the team for the match ahead, adjusting the tactics and taking in the odd press interview. But for others, these new options will feel like gold dust. And, as you may expect, when kicking off in Football Manager 2024 Console, all the real-world transfers from the summer reflect what’s happening in the game. Oh, and crossplay is enabled between PS5 and Xbox for the first time. 

There are also improvements to the lighting found in Football Manager 2024 Console’s visuals on match day, as well as tweaks through the menus. And as a player coming back to the series for the first time on console, it does feel very intuitive. Far from a complete engine overhaul I did notice little changes in the animations and the way the highlights worked. 

So Football Manager 2024 Console is the franchise version you’ll want to play on your Xbox. A brand that I still adore, every time I think I’m out… they pull me back in. There’s next to no chance that you’ll be able to fire up FM24 Console and not allow it to get its hooks into you, even if the core mechanics are still very much the same. 

The reason for that? Football Manager 2024 Console Edition allows you to create a story of your own, dealing with your destiny across one club or many, all as you get to oversee every last detail. 

The main thing though? You might just get to the FA Cup Final and be able to dust down your suit and wear it with pride.