Top Football Manager 2024 - Manage Dream Team 2024

Join the vast community of soccer managers worldwide and construct your squad of eleven soccer superstars!

Welcome to Top Football Manager 2024

Have you ever envisioned leading a team of eleven soccer stars determined to become champions? The new free soccer club simulation game named Top Football Manager 2024 empowers sports enthusiasts like yourself to take control! Engage in bidding wars and scouting missions for top-tier players, assemble and train a squad with unique abilities, experiment with strategies and formations against real adversaries globally, and witness the game unfold through live 3D simulations.

EXQUISITE GAMEPLAY

Immerse yourself in the captivating 3D graphics of Top Football Manager and a robust gaming engine that breathes life into your coaching dreams. Witness breathtaking matches unfold in real-time while you manage your eleven players or place bets on league matchups. Each goal marks a significant stride towards your quest for success.

MANAGE & TRAIN YOUR ATHLETES

As the head of the club, you'll explore various formations, tweak player line-ups and tactics during gameplay to counter your opponents. Identify a promising player to nurture into a star with unique skills to clinch victory in crucial showdowns. Construct a team of champions to ascend the rankings.

SCOUT FOR STAR PLAYERS

Scour the market for players to fulfill your team's requirements. Compete against rival soccer managers to secure talented prospects, sign standout performers through agents, or enlist scouts to discover budding talents whom you can mold into future legends. Offload players who no longer align with your strategic vision.

IMMERSIVE MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCE

Go head-to-head against real rivals from across the globe in league matches. Give your team a distinctive flair with officially licensed jerseys from prestigious leagues such as the Premier League, La Liga, Primeira Liga, Bundesliga, and MLS. Expand your circle of friends, exchange gifts, and enhance team cohesion through friendly matches. Establish or join a Football Association to reap additional rewards.

Football Manager 2024: A beginner's guide to FM24

By Alex Mitton

Published Jan 24, 2024

Football Manager 2024 is one of the most detailed sports games in the world. It might not have the graphics - unlike one of its main competitors, EA Sports FC 24 - but it makes up for it with detail in almost every league in the world. As one of the most polished games in the world, it has detail that expands on every single page. You can analyse players just like a scout or performance analyst in real life, allowing you to fine-tune your team to meticulous detail.

However, if you are just stepping into the world of Football Manager, it might seem confusing. There's so much detail - which is perfect for hardcore gamers - but it can be overwhelming if you don't understand the basics. Even choosing a team can be a struggle, particularly if you don't have a favoured club. You can choose from the state-owned wealth of Newcastle United and Manchester City or opt for a non-league in England, working your way through the leagues until you become champions of Europe. The options are endless - and that's just the start of the process in Football Manager.

Due to this, here at GIVEMESPORT, we have produced a beginner's guide to Football Manager 2024, outlining everything you need to know about transfers, scouting, formations, tactics, teams to manage and more.

Transfers and Scouting

Transfers are one of the most important parts of FM24. You could be the greatest manager in the world - just like Pep Guardiola - but if you don't have the players to perform, then you're not going to succeed. If you're managing one of the biggest clubs in the world, you can sign absolutely anybody, knowing you have the financial power to lure people to your club. It's daunting, but there's a simple process for beginners.

The most important thing is to sign young players - or wonderkids, as they're called within the Football Manager universe. Players who are under the age of 21 are often cheaper but, more importantly, continue to improve after you sign them. Signing a player who is 30 might seem clever under the first inspection, yet they will demand high wages and an expensive transfer fee. Considering players start to decline once they reach 30 in Football Manager, it's not a wise financial move to sign them.

To find wonderkids, it's best to utilise your scouts. Each team has them - the bigger the team the more you have - and they search around the world to find the best talents for you. For beginners, this is often done via AI, which sets specific positions and areas that need improving. It's simple and pain-free, allowing you to ease into the game comfortably without the stress of manually scouting players. They will produce a list of players who they think will fit your team; it's then up to you to make a decision and make an offer.

To help you out in the wonderkid market, GIVEMESPORT previously produced a range of articles for the best youngsters in each position. Striker is often the most important position on the pitch, proving crucial as you look to find a last-minute winner. GIVEMESPORT worked out the 10 best wonderkid strikers in Football Manager 2024 to help you out without the process of scouting.

5 best striker wonderkids

Formations

In FM24, there are 12 set formations you can choose from. You can go bold and create a custom formation, but - as you're a beginner - it would be best to choose from a formation that is tried and tested.

As outlined below, the 4-2-3-1 DM AM Wide is one of the best formations in Football Manager 2024. It provides width with two wingers, security in the middle of the park with two midfielders and a playmaker, whilst also offering defensive stability with two centre-backs and wing-backs. It's nothing fancy, yet perfect for people who are just starting the game.

Roles can easily be changed; you might want to go to a five-at-the-back formation if you're facing a world-class team, but that's easy to do with set formations. The options are already presented to you.

Every Formation

Tactics

Tactics combine neatly with formations in Football Manager. What roles you play will depend on the formation, whilst what formation you use will depend on the tactical style you want to implement. There are 10 tactical styles to choose from in Football Manager, all of which can help transform your team.

The best and most overpowering tactic is 'Gegenpress'. It suggests that your team presses high up the pitch with aggressive and expansive football. Imagine Jürgen Klopp's style of play at Liverpool. It allows you to quickly ease into the world of FM24, knowing the 'Gegenpress' system created by AI will be good enough to win matches on its own. From that point onwards, you can tweak your system, but finding a system that you are comfortable with early on in your journey is crucial - 'Gegenpress' is exactly that.

Every Tactical Style in Football Manager 2024

Teams to manage

Choosing who to manage in Football Manager can be a challenge, particularly if you don't have a favourite club. However, to put it simply, clubs fall into one of four main categories in FM24:

   - Financially powerful clubs - the easiest clubs to manage. The best in the world that can dominate teams with money.

   - Mid-table security - comfortably stay in the Premier League but struggle against the likes of Man City.

   - Fallen giants - relegated to the lower leagues in their country and must find a way back. They have the support to drag you over the line.

   - Non-league obscurity - a random, and often unknown, club that has to work its way from non-league to the heights of the Premier League.

As a beginner, the easiest category to start with is with a financially powerful club. Teams such as Man City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain have the power to dominate clubs on the pitch and in the transfer window. It will help you ease into the universe of Football Manager, knowing you have a squad full of world-class players to carry you over the line, even if your tactics aren't spot on.

Coaching

Last, but not least, coaching is an important aspect of FM24, which can easily seem complicated as soon as you delve into it. However, there are ways to ease into it simply. With limited knowledge of FM24, it would be best to let AI (your assistant manager and coaching team) take control of general training - and potentially individual training.

With general training, AI will organise each week into different sessions, focusing on a broad range of areas to improve tactics. For example, if you have a cup final coming up, they will do a training session on penalties - in the case of a penalty shootout. They struggle to focus on specific areas where the team is struggling, but - as a way to ease into the world of FM24 - it is effective.

With individual training, it can also be set for the AI to complete. They will give each player individual training programmes to complete alongside general training. These suggestions are specific, and they will help players improve certain stats. These recommendations can be made by yourself manually, but letting the AI take control will simplify the game for you in the opening weeks.

A Guide to Better Defending in Football Manager 2024

Extra Time: Guides18.01.24 - Ihor Crusadertsar

Football’s greatest teams are built upon strong defensive foundations and the same is true in Football Manager 2024.

It might not be the most glamorous part of tactical creation but putting together a solid defensive shape and figuring out what your players should be doing when they don’t have the ball is integral to the success of your latest FM24 career.

In this guide, Ihor Crusadertsar takes a deep dive into the player positions, formations and Attributes that will help you defend better in FM24. 

All good defences start with a plan

Whenever you’re creating a tactic in FM24, you should go into the process with a plan of what you want to achieve with the tactic. You don’t need to know all the details straight away but you should already have thought about how you can get the best out of your key players, how you’ll create goalscoring chances and how you want your team to line up defensively. 

It’s also worth remembering that even if you have the best players in the world, they can’t do everything and expecting everyone to give 100% offensively and defensively is not the best use of their skills. Ultimately that means you tend to either go Very Attacking in your Mentality, which will likely mean you score a lot but also have several 4-3 and 5-4 scorelines. Or, you can go for something less risky and more balanced and win most games by a one or two goal margin. 

My personal approach to tactics has always been more defence-orientated because if you only need one goal to win a match, I’d rather my players focused more of their efforts on trying to prevent the other team from scoring. 

With that plan in place, it’s now time to focus on the elements that we can control to help your team stop chances and defend leads better in every game. 

Use deeper player positioning to your advantage

Top coaches often talk about finding the extra player in the attacking phase of the game but this applies to defending too, as positioning your players on the pitch in a way that gives you a numerical advantage in the areas where you want your players to defend the hardest and gain back the ball is an important principle.

So, for example, if you had a number of tall, aerially adept Central Defenders in your squad, why not keep a lower defensive line and use the Invite Crosses tactical instruction to funnel your opponent’s attacks out wide. This approach works even better when you use a three-at-the-back formation. 

Deeper positioning and formations with three central defenders are naturally more conducive to good defending because they mean that you’re placing more bodies in the areas where the opposition will have their most dangerous attacks. 

However, this is not the only way to get good coverage in the defensive areas. One of my favourite defensive shapes is a simple 4-4-1-1 with the two central midfield players operating slightly deeper in the Defensive Midfielder strata.

Setting up a team like this gives you better control when you’re in possession but more protection defensively when the ball is lost. With the new positional rotations for FM24, the player in the 10 position will effectively become another striker when you’re attacking, making it more of a 4-4-2 formation.  You can also take advantage of these positional play changes by making one of your defensive midfielders a Segundo Volante, a versatile role that will offer more offensive support when you have possession. 

Again with this 4-4-1-1 shape I’d recommend using the Invite Crosses and Trap Outside tactical instructions, as these will force the opposition out wide and you can use the touchlines as an extra defender. 

Now the supporting structure is in place and some thought has been given to the attacking options in the team, it’s now time to focus on the key Attributes you need for your central defenders and full-backs. 

The key Attributes for better team defending

When assessing your own squad or delving into the transfer market to acquire some new defenders, the important Attributes you need to look for, beyond the obvious things like Tackling, Positioning and Jumping Reach, are Mental Attributes. 

From my experience, three absolutely essential Attributes for your defensive midfielders and Central Defenders are Anticipation, Composure and Concentration. 

Anticipation is a measure of a player’s football intelligence and their ability to read situations within a match, reflecting how well they can predict and react to the movements and other actions of both their teammates and opponents. So, as you can imagine, it’s pretty crucial to all players and that’s why almost every player role in FM24 has Anticipation listed as either a required or important Attribute. Simply put, a defender could have fantastic Positioning but if their Anticipation is bad, they won’t be able to convert their good initial position to a clear defensive action like a block, interception or tackle as the attack progresses.  

Next up is Composure, which defines a player’s steadiness of mind and ability to make smart decisions on and off the ball. From their in-game descriptions, Composure and Decisions are quite similar Attributes but, to me, Composure is more important as it’s more appropriate in reflecting the kind of decision-making that happens all the time in the mind of a player engaged in defending.

Defensive decision-making does not happen in a vacuum. It is done in the context of very stressful, high-stakes situations, such as defending against an opponent who is actively trying to get past you and score. Composure measures how unaffected a player is by this mental pressure while making a decision or performing an action. 

The third of these key Attributes is Concentration, which is defined in FM24 as “the player’s mental focus and attention to detail on an event-by-event basis”. In my head, I’ve always thought of Concentration as the mental equivalent of Stamina, as the better their Concentration is, the more likely they are to defend at the top of their abilities for as long as possible. As defending is something that happens for the whole 90 minutes of a match, this is particularly important. 

Although not as central as the three outlined above, there are a few other complimentary Mental Attributes that you should consider. 

Finally, there are a few complementary mental attributes. 

Players with high Teamwork Attributes will follow your tactical instructions better, which makes your life as a manager easier and helps with defensive structure as they’ll be more disciplined and attentive to their duties. 

Work Rate is useful too as it governs how hard a player works in both offensive and defensive situations, or more specifically, it is the player’s “willingness to work to his full capacity, going above and beyond the call of duty.” In the context of defending, it means that the player with high Work Rate who starts in a more advanced position will be more willing to drop deeper to close down opponents ding is a constant process throughout or try to regain the ball. 

Determination is always good to have for any player as it influences all situations on and off the pitch.

Looking at Physical Attributes, there are three key ones: Strength, Jumping Reach and Stamina. Strength is simply a measure of how well a player can exert their physical force upon an opposition player. It affects how likely a player is to succeed in physical situations such as: shielding the ball from an opponent while standing or dribbling, tackling, marking an opponent, or competing for the ball either in the air or in open play on the ground. No matter how technical your opponent is, they can still be outmuscled by a more physical defender. In any team sport, strength and size matter. 

As outlined with Concentration earlier, Stamina is vital because defending is a constant process throughout an entire match. If you use a Gegenpress tactical style, which is very aggressive defensively with a high line, your players will need the energy to keep going throughout the match because when they drop off, that’s when gaps appear and your hard work could become undone. Stamina is also important if you’re the weaker team in a match and you’ve got less of the ball, as your players will have a lot more defensive work to do.

With these tips for having a defensive plan for building your tactics, some optimal formations to use and a focus on the key Attributes needed for successful defending, you should have some stronger ideas on how to make your team better defensively in FM24, no matter what style of football you want to play. 

Happy managing, 

Ihor Crusadertsar