Football Manager 25 might be dead, but this save will let you play it anyway

Let’s be honest, we’re all incredibly bored now, aren’t we? It’s day 10,245,634 of no new Football Manager and we still can’t see the end of this drought. The wait until Football Manager 26 in October or November might as well be a thousand years away with how slow time is crawling. And if you’ve been neck-deep in a Football Manager 2024 save up to this point, even you must be getting a bit sick of it. Maybe, just maybe, you’ve even thought about loading up EA Sports FC. That’s how desperate things are getting.

While we spend our time looking at awesome FIFA Manager mods to pull us out of out despair, some absolutely legendary members of the Football Manager community, all hope is not lost. Someone has built a stopgap solution so good it might just be the FM25 replacement you didn’t know you needed. It’ll plug the gap, spark some new excitement, and carry you through the barren months ahead. But what is it—and how do you get your hands on it? Allow me to explain.

The Football Manager 2024/25 save

One absolute legend of the community has crafted a custom save file that starts from the 2024/2025 season, meticulously updated to reflect real-world changes. Shared on Reddit, this save has been fine-tuned to emulate the next season within Football Manager 2024 (FM24), and it comes loaded with features to make it feel as close to FM25 as you’re going to get right now.

Here’s what’s packed in:

Realism Pack Integration – It makes use of Daveinc’s realism pack to boost authenticity. It’s the good stuff.

Comprehensive Database – Over 150 leagues and 250,000 players, making for a ludicrously deep and diverse game world.

Updated Season Data – Reflects the real-world 2023/2024 results across most leagues, giving you a proper starting point for 2024/2025.

Transfer Embargo – There’s a transfer embargo in place from May to February to lock in real-life squads, since all the big moves are already baked in.

All of this means the game doesn’t just look up to date… it feels fresh, new, and ready for another hundred hours of your life to disappear into.

To get going, all you need to do is pick your manager profile and your team. Everything’s already set up, though you can still tinker with league detail settings if you fancy.

Installation Instructions

Here’s how to install the save:

1. Download the Save File
   Use the provided link on Reddit to grab the file.
2. Locate the Game Folder
   Head to your FM24 directory, usually under “Documents” → “Sports Interactive”. You might need to enable hidden files to find it—here’s a helpful guide written by someone who definitely knows more about computers than I do.
3. Transfer the Save File
   Drop the file into the “games” subfolder within the FM24 directory (the one you just found in the previous step).
4. Launch FM24
   Fire up the game and load the save. Boom—you’re in the 2024/2025 season.

Final Thoughts

With such a massive gap between games, we’ve had to get creative with how we keep the Football Manager flame alive. Thankfully, this community always finds a way. Even before this unprecedented FM disaster, I had faith that someone, somewhere, would step up.

This is a community that’s run thousands of utterly bizarre simulations. A community of, let’s just say it, computer nerds with an unhealthy but glorious obsession for a virtual footballing universe. If any fandom was going to not only survive, but thrive, through a crisis like this—it was always going to be the Football Manager lot.