Watching the game world develop is one of the major adrenaline rushes the Football Manager series provides. As soon as we got our hands on the Football Manager 2023 beta, we wanted to know how various leagues, competitions, teams, and players will develop within the game.
We ran an FM23 simulation lasting 20 seasons and there were plenty of interesting results, such as one nation’s complete dominance in both the Champions League and the Europa League.
International management was sadly overlooked by the developers, a matter you can read more about in our Football Manager 2023 review. Thankfully, we did not have to stumble our way through years of managing a nation to find out which countries prosper in the FM23 universe. We simulated 20 seasons and have five new World Cup champions to announce.
England has enjoyed its most successful international run in almost 60 years since Gareth Southgate took over the Three Lions. He has received massive criticism leading up to the 2022 World Cup, however, and fewer and fewer of his countrymen believe the cup is coming home this time. What does Football Manager 2023 have to say about this?
The 2022 World Cup simulation did not bring England its second-ever international trophy. Sorry, English fans. FM23’s prediction isn’t standing on very solid ground, though. The first in-game World Cup champion is Switzerland of all nations, which is highly unlikely to be replicated in real life.
The World Cup trophy didn’t travel to the English shore right away, but we didn’t say it never happened. We’re not sorry anymore, English fans. It is indeed coming home—not once, but twice. England won back-to-back World Cup tournaments in 2026 and 2030. The details make these triumphs sweeter as it was Germany on the losing end of the 2026 World Cup final.
Brazil got the short end of the stick in our simulated world. The most successful nation in the event’s history lost three finals in a row, beginning with one against England in 2030. In the meantime, Italy thrived in Brazilian misery. Italy defeated the South American nation in 2034 to equal their number of World Cup trophies, then became the undisputed kings of the World Cup with another victory in 2042.
That’s where our 20 years of Football Manager 2023 led us. Italy climbed to six World Cup wins, England brought the elusive trophy home on a couple of occasions, and Switzerland won more World Cups than Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, and Spain combined. This type of world development is the adrenaline rush we were talking about.
