Football Manager developer on how Netflix and Prime documentaries have influenced the game

Football Manager 2022
(Image credit: Sports Interactive)

The developer of Football Manager says that a new wave of football documentaries could have a "really interesting" impact on the series.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Nic Madden, match producer at Sports Interactive was asked whether programs like Amazon's All or Nothing series or Netflix's Sunderland 'Til I Die had been discussed as a potential future mechanic for the games.

Madden said "I imagine that would be a full can of worms, in a good way! It'd be really interesting actually, it'd be a good design project for the design team. We certainly have watched a few of these documentaries and have said 'okay, there's some particular shifts that we can make here', or maybe it's 'oh, we haven't actually got this fully accurate'."

"These documentaries are a learning opportunity for any football fan, but I love watching them. The new ones are really good, but even some of the older ones, like [2011's QPR: Four Year Plan], they're crazy. Crazy but funny. In that humor, it would be really interesting if we could do something similar in Football Manager."

Football Manager has a history with these sort of documentaries as well. In 2020's All or Nothing: Tottenham, then-manager Jose Mourinho's desktop featured the Football Manager 20 logo, implying the special one spent his time away from being a real football manager by being a virtual one instead, something that Madden says was "quite nice to see."

To check out our entire Football Manager 2022 review, be sure to head back to GamesRadar+ tomorrow.

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Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.