EA Announces FIFA Manager 09 News

Armchair gaffers will be glad to hear that EA's football management sim will be returning this season with FIFA Manager 09. This seventh installment in the series (including the early Total Club Manager games) will be coming out on the usual PC platform during the autumn of this year.

The series will return with what is now indisputably the most graphically detailed 3D match engine of any football management sim on the market (since Codies' LMA Manager was put on an indefinite hiatus for PC and consoles last year).

EA assures us that the sound, graphics, and AI of the 3D match engine have been improved over the last twelve months and there's even a new Match Prediction Tool being shipped with the game. Using this feature, players can put a team together to reflect a real world match-up, assign form and fitness values to members of the squad, and then try and predict the outcome through FIFA Manager 09's simulation.

Another new feature for this year's game is the addition of a youth transfer market, which is helped along by the total list of 25,000 players in the game. Over a third of these players will sport player photos, while the game also features 1,500 clubs from 33 countries. Further additions and tinkering can always be made with the editor as well.