Football Manager has revealed today that work is underway to add women’s football to the long-running series moving forward. While no specific date has been set on which yearly installment of Sega’s management sim the feature will debut in, the series is putting a flag in the ground to signify its intentions – although with a much less robust system of stats and player databases in the women’s game than the men’s, the process could take a few years to complete. I sat down with Miles Jacobson, the director of Sports Interactive, the studio behind Football Manager, and Tina Keech, head of women’s research on the project, to better understand the complexities of including the women’s game, and what inspired the timing behind the announcement.
“When we first started being asked about [including the women’s game], the answer back that I would give to people is ‘it’s not financially viable to do it’, and that's still the case now,” Jacobson says. “We do cost benefit analysis on a lot of the bigger features that we want to welcome. All games companies were businesses as well, right? But I was giving that answer for a few years, and then I sat down and was thinking about it a bit deeper one day. And [I] realised that until we actually do it, the answer is always going to be ‘it's not financially viable’, because it needs people like us to be doing this and putting our money where our mouth is to actually get rid of the glass ceiling that is in place for women's sport at the moment.We're being quite honest about that, because there's no point not being – we should have done it before. And I'm glad that my conscience took over so that we were able to turn around and start the project.
"This is the first time that we've spoken about a feature that is definitely not going to be in this year's game, it's going to be in a future game. But again, the reason that we're talking about it now is to put that stake in the ground. So we are doing it to make Tina's job easier of going out there and finding the researchers that are going to be driving this.”
Related: If The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Shocks You, You Haven't Been Paying AttentionTina Keech is leading the research into the various statistical databases that power Football Manager, and to hear her tell it, any and all help is welcome. “It's really painful, to be honest, painful,” Keech admits. There are several hundred sports stats agencies out there that keep up to the minute databases on world football, but they focus almost entirely on the elite men’s game, meaning Keech has to start completely from scratch.
“This is one of the reasons we are announcing it, because I need help. I'm calling out to every football fan out there, every women's football fan. Whether you're a fan, a player, staff, a club, a journo, or just someone who likes to go and watch football, get in touch with us. Come and help us build an incredible database. The data at the moment, even in the professional teams, is not great. And if it is there, it's not accurate, which is disappointing. But there are definitely people out there who have been keeping their own data. And they're the ones we want. We want them to help us, and we want them to be part of the team to build a great database. I know people that will just travel the country to go into different football grounds just to watch football. And whether it's men or women, they don't really care. Football is football. So yeah, it's a real challenge. But I have no doubt at all that we will get it, we'll build a database just like the men's one.”
While we’re still some way off equality between the men and women’s game, as the lack of databases – not to mention the monetary discrepancies – highlights, the two forms of the sport are converging. Football is football, after all. The BBC and Sky Sports have just struck a deal to show WSL matches, while former pros Alex Scott, Rachel Yankey, and Eni Aluko, plus Chelsea manager Emma Hayes, have all been part of the regular rotation of football pundits over the last season. Hayes, a fan favourite of ITV’s Euros 2020 coverage, has also been heavily involved in Football Manager’s initiative, having previously featured in the game herself.
“Imagine the co-commentary that Emma was doing during the Euros, and being able to have that in multi-hour conversations where you can ask her any question that you want to,” Jacobson says. “She will give you the answer in full football terms and terminology. We're a video games company, but we're also a football company. The level of detail that we're getting from Emma, we're able to learn so much from her, and other people as well. Emma is the person who's been out there talking about this publicly, but there are lots of other people behind the scenes that we’re talking to. But having someone as knowledgeable as Emma involved just makes our lives a lot easier.”
Access to football minds like Hayes’ is another reason why Football Manager has decided to signal its intent with the women’s game so early. “I'm spoiled rotten,” Jacobson says. “There are clubs that I can go to around the world that I can phone them up on one day and say ‘Hey, can I pop down to training the next day?’ And it's ‘Yes’, because they know that nothing will ever leak. We are ensconced in the football world in that way. We have a series called foot talks. So every month we get somebody from the professional game – we just had [Watford captain] Troy Deeney as a player, and we had [Burnley manager] Sean Dyche, we've had Emma do one of those as well.
"It's brilliant having Emma involved and she is probably the most high profile of managers in the women's game, but Emma's also been in Football Manager for a few years. If you think what she did during the Euros was good, her in real life is so much more awesome. She's an incredible person and a great advocate for women's football, this isn't someone that we're slapping on the sleeve as a cover star, she and many other people are involved in helping us develop the game.”
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