{"id":585021,"date":"2026-07-14T10:58:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/585021\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T10:58:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:58:18","slug":"football-manager-spin-off-could-help-clubs-find-the-next-messi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/585021\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Football Manager\u2019 Spin-Off Could Help Clubs Find The Next Messi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lionel<\/p>\n

FMDB Pro allows pro clubs to search for new wonderkids<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

For years, it\u2019s been football\u2019s worst-kept secret: professional clubs quietly mining the Football Manager database to help them unearth soccer\u2019s wonderkids. Now it\u2019s a secret no more, with the game\u2019s makers turning that very database into a professional recruitment tool. <\/p>\n

FMDB Pro<\/a> contains 760,000 profiles of players (male and female) and staff from around the world, all researched by the same team of 1,600 evaluators that provide the data for the long-running video game. Sports Interactive, the game\u2019s makers, claim it\u2019s \u201cthe biggest database in the world\u201d for this kind of football data, and it\u2019s already being used by more than 40 clubs to help with their real-world recruitment. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite the transformation for a game that started life more than 30 years ago, coded by two teenage brothers in their bedroom. <\/p>\n

Finding Eligible Players <\/p>\n

One of the biggest recruitment challenges football clubs face now is restrictions on international signings. In the post-Brexit era, English clubs have much tighter criteria to meet if they want to sign a player or staff member from Europe, for instance, but the FMDB Pro database includes a Governing Body Endorsement calculator that provides an estimate of whether that person has the necessary number of points to come and work in England. <\/p>\n

That kind of data isn\u2019t only of interest to English clubs. \u201cIf you\u2019re a foreign-based club and you want to see whether your players are eligible to sell into England, this kind of data is invaluable there as well,\u201d said Whitby. <\/p>\n

Data on players with multiple nationalities is also incredibly valuable to national teams, especially smaller countries that don\u2019t have a huge pool of players to pick from. Richard Trafford, Sports Interactive\u2019s director of business development, cites one example where a nation asked them to find players who would qualify to play for them. \u201cIt was quite a small nation,\u201d he said. \u201cWe found an extra 5,000 for them that they didn’t know about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Business?<\/p>\n

In an industry awash with money, particularly when it comes to recruiting players<\/a> that can cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is there a chance that the FMDB Pro spin-off will end up becoming a bigger business than the game itself? <\/p>\n

Sports Interactive had a turnover of around \u00a372 million ($96 million) in 2024, which was the last year in which there was a full game release. Trafford was coy about how big an opportunity FMDB Pro may prove to be. \u201cTo be completely honest, it\u2019s a little bit unknown,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Trafford claimed the business was already profitable, with about 40 clubs already signed up. \u201cPricing is relatively bespoke,\u201d he added. \u201cDepending upon what the club wants and levels of access: whether they want Europe or England or the world or women\u2019s football or they\u2019re a national team, it\u2019s very different. But we think that this is going to fill a really interesting gap in the market. Nobody actually does this on this scale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FMDB Pro allows pro clubs to search for new wonderkids Getty Images For years, it\u2019s been football\u2019s worst-kept…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[18,1015,248486,248485,19,17,248484,82],"class_list":["post-585021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-eire","tag-europe","tag-fmdb-pro","tag-football-manager","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports-interactive","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116917982061163429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}