FM Worlds is a free online football management game played in the browser. You take a club in a shared, persistent world, pick your tactics, build a squad in a live transfer market, and play out full seasons against clubs run by real people. These guides explain how each of those parts actually works — the rules the match engine follows, not general football advice.
Most football management games ask you to learn their systems by losing to them. We would rather just tell you. Everything below is written from the engine itself: the actual penalty for playing a right-back on the left, the actual price a computer-run club accepts, the actual number of minutes a nineteen-year-old needs before he improves. Where a number matters, it is here.
That openness changes how the game plays. Once you know that most team instructions are goal-difference neutral — that going more attacking raises your opponent's chances by exactly as much as your own — the decision stops being “which setting is best” and becomes “do I want variance right now”. That is a better question, and it is the one the game is built around.
If you are brand new, read How to Play and stop there — it covers your first session end to end. Come back for the rest when a specific thing confuses you. If you have managed here for a season or two, the tactics and transfer guides are where the points are actually hiding.
From signing up to your first result: creating a manager, claiming a club, and what to do before the whistle.
Formations, mentality and match instructions — how the engine reads your team sheet, and where points are actually won.
9 min readWindows, bids, wages and deadline day. How to value a player, win a negotiation, and stay inside the budget.
9 min readWorlds, divisions, the fixture clock, promotion and relegation, cups and continental nights — how a season fits together.
8 min readMinutes, age and potential: how footballers actually improve here, why the youth team matters, and when to sell.
8 min readFacilities, training, scouting, the medical room and the board — the season-long work that happens away from matchday.
8 min read