Sports Interactive is adding women’s football to its Football Manager series

Sports Interactive and Sega have announced that a multi-year project is now underway to bring women’s football to the Football Manager series.

Instead of creating a standalone management game for women’s football, developer Sports Interactive plans to fully incorporate it into the main game. This will allow players to seamlessly move between managing men’s and women’s clubs.

“We have NO interest whatsoever in making a standalone women’s football version of FM. What we are doing is adding women’s football to FM… one sport, one game,” Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive, said. “We know that adding women’s football to FM is going to cost in the millions and that the short-term return it delivers will be minimal. But that’s not the point. There’s no hiding that there’s currently a glass ceiling for women’s football and we want to do what we can to help smash through it. We believe in equality for all and we want to be part of the solution.

“We want to be a part of the process that puts women’s football on an equal footing with the men’s game. We know that we’re not alone in this – the historic TV deal that Sky and the BBC recently agreed with WSL in England is proof of that – but we intend to do everything we can to get women’s football to where it deserves to be.”

The development team is working to represent these teams “as authentically as possible and with the level of realism and attention to detail that the series is renowned for.” No date has been set for when women’s football will be added, but the developer stated that it aims to get it done “as soon as realistically possible.”

Football Manager 2021 is available now on Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.