Put off by the complexity of modern football manager simulations? Wind back the clock and enjoy this new take on Kevin Toms’ original Football Manager, by the man himself.
Back in the 1980s, before Championship Manager, Player Manager, Football Director, even before Brian Clough’s Football Fortunes, there was one management game for 8-bit and 16-bit platforms: Football Manager.
While the name might have been picked up in response to some contractual shenanigans between unrelated game publishers in the early noughties, the memories of the original Football Manager lived on. Over the past few years, Kevin Toms has been working on a revival of his original game, posting updates on social media, and releasing it on mobile devices.
Original Football Manager revival comes to PC
Well, now the game is heading to desktop computers.
Now titled Football Star Manager (or Football * Manager) for obvious copyright reasons, the game is coming to Steam in August 2025. The game boasts the following:
- Classic simplicity with subtle depth: Manage your club across four divisions, with promotion, relegation, domestic cups, and European cup competitions. There’s a transfer market, tactics to set, player fitness-wise decisions, and club finances to balance — all designed to be quick to learn but hard to put down.
- Match highlights: Stylised, text and graphic match highlights reminiscent of the original 8-bit title. It’s charming, easy to follow, and still engaging.
- Customisation & roster controls: Rename teams, edit kits, or retitle players. Player ratings consist of skill, fitness, and age. Aged out players retire or decline, while younger talent can improve season by season.
- Strategic decisions: Purchase loans to fund signings, manage morale boosts (twice per season to lift spirit), bid on players with risk/reward valuation, and navigate transfer valuations that fluctuate with division status.
I’ve got a copy of the original game loaded up on the BBC Micro next to me. Back in the 1980s, I played the game quite a lot on the Commodore 64, regularly doing badly. Later, between getting an Amiga 500 and a 600, I picked up Football Manager 2 on disk for the C64, but didn’t spend quite as much time on it.
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One thing I will always remember about these games, though, is the incredible success of Port Vale, a minor team from Stoke-on-Trent that has never had any real-world success. Only in video games!
New Football Star Manager trailer
Someone has done a great job with this trailer:
I think that captures it perfectly, don’t you?
Kevin Toms Football Star Manager arrives on Steam on August 14, 2025, and you can wishlist it right now.
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Christian Cawley is a writer and editor who covers consumer electronics, IT, and entertainment media. He has written for publications such as Computer Weekly, Linux Format, MakeUseOf.com, and Tech Radar.
He also produces podcasts, has a cigar box guitar, and of course, loves retro gaming.