How to Play FM Worlds

FM Worlds is a football management game that runs in your browser. You take charge of a real club in a shared world, pick your team, build a squad, and play out full seasons against other clubs — many of them run by other people. Matches kick off on a schedule whether you are online or not, so the commitment is small and the season is long.

This page walks through the first hour, in the order you will actually meet it.

1. Create an account

There is no guest mode — the game saves a career, so it needs somewhere to save it. Signing up asks for four things:

• Display name — what other managers see. Changeable later.
• Username — your permanent handle, 3 to 20 characters. This one cannot be changed, so pick carefully.
• Email address — you may be sent a confirmation link to click before your first login.
• Password — at least six characters.

Once you are in, you always land in the lobby. Everything else starts from there.

2. Pick a world

The lobby is called Game Worlds, and a world is a self-contained football universe with its own clubs, leagues, transfer market, calendar and managers. Nothing crosses between worlds. Each one tells you up front how many clubs are free, how many managers are already in, and which of two modes it runs:

• Realistic mode — squads mirror real football. Player ratings are maintained to match reality rather than drifting through a development engine.
• Career mode — the full management sandbox: players develop or decline based on how you use them, and facilities, training, scouting and the medical room are all live.

You can search, filter by whether a world has spots free, and sort by the busiest. If a friend is already playing, their worlds are highlighted. If someone has sent you a six-character join code or an invite link, that takes you straight into a private world.

3. Take a club

Inside a world you see its divisions, then a grid of clubs. Each card shows the crest, the key players in the squad, and the transfer budget you would start with. Clubs already run by someone are marked Taken; the rest have a green Take over button.

Clubs are first come, first served, with one exception worth knowing: if a manager has recently left a club, it does not go back on the open market. It opens a vacancy instead, and you apply for it along with everyone else — the board picks. That is covered in the league system guide.

You can manage one club per world, but as many worlds as you like. Take over, and a letter from your board lands in your inbox telling you what they expect from you this season. That expectation is real: it is what you are judged against.

4. Your first five steps

A short rail appears on your dashboard until your first match is settled. It is worth following — it is the five things that actually matter in week one.

1. 1
   Set your starting XI

   Drag your best eleven into the formation. The board colours each slot green, orange or red for how well the player fits it — get everything green and you have done most of the work. See the tactics guide.
2. 2
   Face the press

   A pre-match press conference. Your answers move squad morale, and morale measurably affects results.
3. 3
   Watch your first match

   Check the preview, then wait for kick-off. You do not need to be online for the match itself.
4. 4
   React to the result

   The post-match press room. Rally the dressing room, or take the blame — either way it lands on morale.
5. 5
   Make a signing

   Open the market and lodge a bid. The transfer guide explains what a club will actually accept.

5. How a matchday works

This is the part that makes FM Worlds different from a single-player game, so it is worth being clear about.

• Fixtures kick off on the world clock. League matches are Tuesday and Friday evenings, domestic cup ties on Sunday, and continental nights on Wednesday. Bigger divisions add a Saturday and some Thursdays.
• The result is computed at kick-off whether or not you are there. You cannot manage during a match, and there are no live shouts. Everything you want to happen has to be set beforehand — your XI, your instructions, and your planned substitutions.
• You never forfeit. If you set nothing at all, the game fields a sensible best eleven for you, goalkeeper included. Setting your own team is better, but missing a week does not wreck your season.

For fifteen real minutes after kick-off, the match is being played. Events reveal gradually, the table does not move, and every other screen deliberately hides the score. Matchday Live shows every fixture in your division on one screen with a shared clock — the closest thing the game has to a Saturday afternoon.

6. Real names, if you want them

FM Worlds ships with generic player and club names. You can load a community-made data pack to see your own naming instead — there is a one-click official pack, or you can import a file or a link, or build your own from the downloadable roster.

A pack lives in your browser only. It is never uploaded to or stored on the servers, and removing it puts everything back to generic names. That is how the game stays personal to you while staying clear of real-world naming itself.

7. On your phone

The game is fully responsive and can be installed to your home screen from your browser's own menu — it then runs like an app, with its own icon and no address bar.

There is exactly one notification: kick-off in 15 minutes, sent before each of your league matches, which is the last useful moment to change your side. It never contains a score. You turn it on in Settings, and it is the only thing that will ever reach you when you are not playing. On iPhone and iPad you need to add the game to your home screen first — Safari only allows notifications for installed apps.

Where to go next

That is the whole loop: set your team, play the season, build the squad, keep the board happy. From here:

• Tactics — the single biggest lever on results.
• Transfers — how to actually win a negotiation.
• The league system — promotion, cups, Europe and the calendar.
• FAQ — the short questions.