Everything that will happen in the next 10 years of football, according to Football Manager 2018
Harry Kane, England, Arsene Wenger and more.
What will football look like in 2027?
Will Harry Kane have broken Alan Shearer’s Premier League scoring record? Will Arsene Wenger still be manager of Arsenal? And is an English team going to win the Champions League ever again?
If you’re too impatient to wait, don’t worry – Football Manager 2018 has the answers.
After simulating 10 full seasons in the new version of the football management game, which is released on Friday, here’s how the football world looked.
Does Harry Kane break Alan Shearer and Wayne Rooney’s goal-scoring records?
So does he manage it 10 years on? Crucially, in this sim Kane stayed at Tottenham for 10 more years, but scored 20 or more league goals in just three seasons.
As of June 26 2027, Kane was four goals short of Shearer’s record with 256 Premier League goals, having added a further five golden boots to his tally.
As for Wayne Rooney’s 53-goal England record? Kane obliterated it with 92 goals in 135 games – that’s an additional 80 goals for the forward.
What happens to Arsene Wenger?
But in our FM18 sim, Arsenal’s long-serving Frenchman went upstairs to take a director of football role at the end of the current season. That’s not to say the Gunners boss didn’t keep his managerial eye in, though.
Jorge Jesus then took the job, and was sacked just shy of a year in charge, then replaced for 14 days by caretaker Wenger again, before Tony Mowbray (!) was given the job.
Mowbray lasted almost two years before being sacked, with Wenger taking caretaker charge again for 15 days, before Heiko Herrlich (currently Bayer Leverkusen manager in the real world) came in. By 2027, Herrlich had been in the job over four and a half years.
Wenger in, Wenger out, shake it all about, eh?
Do Premier League clubs conquer the Champions League again?
Perhaps an up-and-coming Tottenham side will emerge, or maybe Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City will bring their stylish game to the European stage?
Not according to this FM sim.
What about the Premier League?
Elsewhere, things remained remarkably static with United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham continuing to dominate the top six throughout the decade.
Watford could be considered to have made a breakthrough with three top-six finishes in the five years leading up to 2027, while Brentford, Derby and Leeds all had brief spells in the top flight.
There were no dramatic falls from grace though, and no Leicester-like miracles – with the Foxes perhaps being the most high-profile team to get relegated in the decade, finally dropping to the Championship in 2027.
Does Neymar ever win the Ballon d’Or?
Winning FM18’s World Golden Ball award a decade into the future is Goncalo Guedes, pipping Mbappe and Paulo Dybala to the post.
Meanwhile Neymar never managed to win the award, finishing second four times, and third three times. Lionel Messi would not be dethroned by the Brazilian, winning six more, while Cristiano Ronaldo won none.
Do England’s youth convert their success to the senior stage?
Three World Cups and two European Championships take place in the next decade, but, according to this FM18 save, England won’t even reach a final.
Instead, the results looked like this:
World Cup 2018: Won by Spain (England lose 2-1 to France in the second round)
Euro 2020: Won by Spain (England are knocked out at the Group Stage)
World Cup 2022: Won by France (England lose 3-0 to Mexico in the quarter-final)
Euro 2024: Won by Portugal (England lose 1-0 to Portugal in the semi-final)
World Cup 2026: Won by France (England lose 1-0 to the Netherlands in the second round)
Manager Gareth Southgate left his England role in July 2020 after England failed to qualify from their group at the 2020 Euros, before Sean Dyche was appointed manager, a role he still held in 2027.
With that in mind, how did British managers fare?
How do local managers fare?
Well, currently there are nine managers from Britain and Ireland in England’s top division, while 2027 shows eight – not as big a decline as some might have feared.
They are: Darren Bent (Bournemouth), Scott Parker (Crystal Palace), Joleon Lescott (Fulham), Liam Rosenior (Huddersfield), Danny Cowley (Preston), Tony Mowbray (Stoke), Nigel Adkins (Watford) and David Moyes (West Ham). That doesn’t mean a glorious 10-year stint with the Hammers for Moyes – in this reality he only arrived there in 2026 having had another five-year spell with Everton in the interim.
Something of interest is that there are no managers from the British Isles at any top six club, although Mowbray, you’ll remember, did enjoy time at Arsenal, while Eddie Howe managed 216 days at Tottenham before being sacked.
