Motivation

Mourinho: the best motivator around

This year, we have seen Football Manager take a shift. It’s a huge, huge shift away from the overwhelming importance of perfect tactics towards morale and motivation, and it’s not one that many agree with. It is not hard to see why FM has shifted; in the early years of FM, we often saw tactics that ripped the match engine to pieces and made victory a certainty. True, we see some tactics like that today but even the most inexperienced of tacticians can do well if they master the other parts of the game.

Of course this has upset the most elite FM players who are used to outsmarting AI managers by hitting the channels, or taking advantage of the wings, or exploiting the space behind their defence, but the game is much more rounded now, that much is unavoidable. Cleon, FM maestro from the SI forums, places management into three broad categories – motivation, players, and tactics – and claims, quite rightly, that if you master any two of the three, that you will succeed. Most of our readers, we expect, are interested in tactics and have a good grasp of that category, and by now are experienced enough to know what to look for in players, and so you guys should be doing fine. It seems many in the community have not yet adapted to the new-found importance of motivation – it is perhaps the most important of the triumvirate, and if you can get a good understanding of it, you will be wholly more dangerous.