Will FM26 help women’s football grow?

Will a computer game help women’s football grow even more? Women’s football has already made some significant strides in recent years.

The most recent addition to the well-known Football Manager series, FM26, will be released this week, increasing the visibility of the female game and bringing up some undiscovered female talent.

19 million people have watched the previous edition of FM, which features you taking on the shoes of a manager, choosing a team, and trying to win.

The series’ roots date back more than 30 years to Championship Manager in 1992, but for the first time, FM26 allows fans to manage both women’s and men’s teams.

With 14 playable leagues spread out over 11 countries and three continents, it has a database of more than 36, 000 female players and another 5, 000 staff members.

The company behind it, Interactive sports, already share their extensive data on more than 700,000 male players with real-life clubs who have used it as a scouting tool for more than a decade.

“There were a lot of challenges around adding the women’s game to FM,” said Miles Jacobson, studio director of Interactive sports.

We’ve been working on scouting for the past 30+ years in men’s football, but we needed to start fresh on the women’s side to make sure there were experts in women’s football.

In the end, a large number of women’s football players assisted us because they wanted to make sure that women’s football was represented properly.

“Some pieces of information were difficult to find because, while data is prevalent in men’s football, it is not the same in women’s football, where it is frequently incomplete or missing.”

“Putting it all together was undoubtedly a challenge, but one that we took on,” said one participant, “we hope what we’ve created is useful in both women’s football and the game as well.”

The video game takes pride in having depth, realism, and authenticity, and new motion-capture sequences were created for FM26 to represent female players in the 3D match simulations.

Out of 20, there are a number of individual attributes that each person on the database has, ranging from physical statistics like pace, agility, and acceleration to abilities like passing ability and dribbling. It also exhibits traits like courage and composure.

We had a heated discussion about how to handle the disparities between male and female players in the stats, Jacobson continued.

We thought it unfair that the game’s fastest woman wouldn’t have a 20 rating for pace or acceleration, despite the fact that “the fastest woman in the world, as we know from world records, is slightly slower than the fastest man.”

We kept it a secret, they said. When it comes to playing characteristics, we contrast men with women and men with women. There is no difference between staff characteristics and “staff attributes.”

Mollie and Rosie Kmita, two former professional players, both participated in the game’s motion capture process, and Mollie believes being a part of the women’s team will inspire new players and educate the older ones.

Because it wasn’t for us to play football, she said, “I wouldn’t have imagined playing it growing up.”

We’ll see the effects of normalizing women’s football in the game, the author says.

The amount of information and knowledge a woman’s football player will gain from managing a women’s team is exciting for someone who has never before been interested in women’s football.