Football Manager 2024 Touch on Nintendo Switch – New Features Deep Dive

J. League makes Football Manager debut

FM24 Touch marks the long-awaited arrival of the J. League to the Football Manager series. 

Coinciding with our first official launch in Japan and officially supported by the inclusion of Japanese as an in-game language, Meija Yasuda Insurance Ltd J1, J2 and J3 Leagues are fully unlocked and playable. 

Whether you choose to take a side through the divisions to the top of Japanese football or jump into management at one of the country’s biggest clubs, the addition of 60 new teams gives you more choice than ever when starting your first FM24 Touch career.

Create winning Set Piece routines

The world’s elite clubs are always trying to find that winning edge over their rivals and one of their main focuses is Set Pieces – both being good at them offensively but also being organised in defence. 

For FM24 Touch, we’ve introduced a new Set Piece Creator that helps you to make a bigger impact at both ends of the pitch.

Your Assistant Manager will walk you through four key questions to understand your preferences and will use your answers to generate winning routines for every scenario. 

Each set piece has specific roles attached to it, with the players fulfilling these roles determined by their Attributes. For example, your tallest players are likely to be deployed as your biggest Aerial Threats, while those better at Crossing and Passing will be designated as your leading Creators. 

Practice makes perfect when it comes to set piece success, which leads us nicely into the next one of FM24 Touch’s key additions…

Boost Training Performances

Whether they’re established first-team stars or top prospects looking to get extra game tame, the training ground is where you’ll level up your team’s performances in FM24 Touch.

The Training menu gives you an oversight of your team’s recent performances day-to-day and lets you dictate what their focus should be for the following week. If you’ve got a big European game on the horizon you might want to sharpen up with some extra Defending, while if you’ve signed a new Central Defender that’s good in the air you might want to ramp up your set piece practice.

Attacking, Defending and Goalkeeping training units make their debut this year. These are the groups that your players work in during training and within the dedicated Units tab you’ll see their workload and the top five Attributes they’ll be working on in the next week. 

Your backroom team will typically shape these Units but that doesn’t mean you can’t customise them. In fact, doing this can be a real benefit – shifting your very promising young striker into the Defensive Unit could make all the difference to rounding out their Attributes and preparing them for the demands of elite football.    

Another route to helping make your wonderkids world-class is through the use of Mentoring groups, which have had a big uplift for FM24 Touch. 

Mentoring groups typically pair a couple of prospects with a senior player that can give them advice and support and off the pitch – the insights your captain can pass on are invaluable for the development of your young talents. 

Progress your club

Whether it’s a new stadium, a bigger transfer budget or better youth facilities, a redefined systems for making requests to your owners puts you in the driver’s seat to influence your club’s future. 

Housed in a dedicated tab in the Club Vision menu, you can add a contextual reason for why you want a certain project to go ahead. For those requests that are particularly pressing, you also have the ability to mark one per season as ‘High Priority’. 

It’s now easier for you to make your voice heard, so it’s up to you to make it count. 

Showcase your managerial personality

Having the right culture around your club is essential for driving success and key to setting that culture are your values as manager.

FM24 Touch gives you the chance to define the sort of boss you want to be in every career with the addition of a Manager Principles feature.

Once you’ve created your manager profile and selected your favourite club, you’ll be prompted to select three of these Principles from a list of 10 that includes things like Dedication, Resilience and Teamwork. Whichever combination you choose, they set the standard you expect your players to hit every day in training and during matches. 

These Principles are part of a wide-ranging new Dynamics system that gives you a better understanding of your players, their personalities and how they react to the managerial decisions you make. 

In order for your principles to have the desired effect on and off the pitch, you need to earn the Buy-In of your players. Buy-In indicates how much your players believe in your management and your managerial decisions.

The way you handle every situation will affect how much Buy-In your individual players have in you. As not everyone will be devoted to you straight away, so you’ll probably have to win a few of them round. When you’re faced with the big decisions, how will you handle them?  

Every player in FM24 Touch has an individual Mindset based on their Attributes and your squad’s overall combination of mindsets is key - giving you the challenge of managing a squad full of different personalities, from outspoken superstars to shy wonderkids.

Although having a variety of mindsets is a good strategy for having a successful team, possessing several players with similar mindsets can boost training performances. Generally, just like real life, you want as many positive influences around you as possible – they build a stronger squad atmosphere and deliver better Matchday results. 

Continuing your journey to the top

For long-term players, FM24 Touch marks a significant milestone because it’s the first in the series to allow you to carry forward save games from previous editions. 

Whether you’re one season in or have just won your third straight league title, this new ability allows you to bring forward a game from FM23 Touch and continue on your path to footballing glory. 

Most Authentic Matchday

Matchdays are where you get to experience the thrills and spills of life in the digital dugout. In FM24 Touch, those big moments look even better thanks to a range of visual upgrades. 

There’s a vast improvement to the way players move in our engine, from additional animations that improve off-the-ball actions to player rotations that will produce smarter, more effective attacks. Elsewhere, changes to ball physics and lighting level up the immersion and authenticity of every big game.  

Popularised across world football in recent seasons by the likes of Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola, a new tactical role has arrived in the shape of the Inverted Full-Back. This role gives you more creativity and flexibility between your defensive and attacking phases – can you make the most of it to secure those all-important three points against your rivals? 

What else to look out for in FM24 Touch

That’s not all - there are a number of other changes waiting for you to discover throughout every career.

Whenever you start a new save, you’ll have a choice of three game modes to work with - ‘Original’, ‘Real World’ and ‘Your World’. In Original, players will be at the clubs they play for in the current Football Manager database at the start of your game, reflecting the most accurate real-life data.

In Real World, players will start the game contracted to the clubs they were with on the real-life date your Career begins. They will then move to their new club on the same date as they did in real life.

In Your World, meanwhile, club squads and budgets will be set at the date your game starts, and only players who joined before that date will be at your club - with all future transfers (for Real World mode) cancelled, giving you the opportunity to change history.

Once you’ve chosen your preferred mode, you’ll need to create your Manager. Here, you’ve got even more customisations tools to work with, including a number of new outfits, hairstyles and accessories. Continuing our efforts to promote accessibility, you can also now add ability aids to your character. 

In the transfer market, you’ll face more battles in the transfer market following a series of changes to the way your opponent’s make decisions about player decision and squad building. Every squad rebuilding project will be elevated by the addition of football transfer marketplace TransferRoom as a new tool for offloading players. 

Celebrating your successes is what makes Football Manager so special and changes to the Dynamic Manager Timeline mean that more of your biggest moments are given the spotlight. Card designs are sharper, while new events like giving a player an international debut or making a record signing reflect the variety and uniqueness of every career. 

Start your journey to footballing glory

The arrival of the Meiji Yasuda Insurance Ltd J. League, a refreshed Set Piece Creator and enhanced Training are among the upgrades that level up the thrill of football management in FM24 Touch. Let us know how you get on with your saves on social media @FootballManager.