Football Manager Battle of the Best – Simulating 2025’s Best XI vs 2015’s Best XI

It’s a question you always debate with your friends – have footballers got better or worse? Part of us thinks intuitively that football must have got to a much higher standard. When you watch a clip from 2003 of players just hoofing the ball from one end of the pitch to another, it seems obvious. But then you look at Ballon d’Or lists from 10 years ago and you can’t help but think footballers have lost a bit of their X-Factor. Up until now this has been pub chat you could only have hypothetically.

However, I’ve managed to actually put this to the test – to find out once and for all whether the best footballers have got better or worse. Using FM editor’s magic – I’ve been able to play a dream XI from 10 years ago (Football Manager 2015) and put them against the best XI currently. Interested to see what happens? Step right this way.

For more epic simulations, read about our transfer simulation of every single 2025 transfer for the game.

Getting the dream XI

First, FM editor (legend, make sure you follow him) helped me get the best XI from 2015 and play them against the best XI from 2015. The FM 2015 dream XI is: Manuel Neuer, Marcelo, Thiago Silva, Sergio Ramos, Dani Alves, Toni Kroos, Luka Modric, Andres Iniesta, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Lionel Messi.

Whilst the FM 2025 dream XI is: Gianluigi Donnarumma, Achraf Hakimi, Ruben Dias, Antonio Rudiger, Nuno Mendes, Federico Valverde, Rodri, Pedri, Mohamed Salah, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

I’m sure there will be disagreements over individual players that should be in either XI, but this is what I went with. I think it’s a pretty good representation of the best players in each position from both time period.

Making their attributes accurate to their peak in 2015

I then went through each player and made sure they had accurate attributes. Because obviously a lot of these players will have had a monumental dropoff physically. Come on, Dani Alves is now 42-years-old. So I googled each of their profiles and made sure they were accurate to that exact time period. You can see a few of them below if you’re curious:

The game

So here we go – the best of 10 years ago vs the best of right now. Is one clearly better than the other? Or is there a nostalgia bias, or a recency bias? Let’s find out!

Both teams will be facing each other with a 4-3-3 and the exact same basic high-pressing tiki-taka tactics. These are meant to be the best of the best, so we’ll just go for pretty standard dominating tactics.

And immediately the Football Manager 2015 dream XI go ahead! And obviously it’s that man, Lionel Messi with the opener. This version of Messi was a scary beast and he’s showing it here. Funnily, he’s one of the only players who could probably play in this game with the 2015 and 2025 version of himself.

But the Football Manager 2025 dream team strike back almost immediately. Federico Valverde with an absolute screamer. Honestly, that goal would win the Puskas Award in a match that had nothing riding on it. Let alone one of the most important games in football’s history.

From that point onwards, the Football Manager 2025 dream XI start to dominate and make their dominance count. Valverde gets another goal (he must enjoy big games) and later in the game a Thiago Silva own goal makes it 3-1. The 2025 XI were quite clearly superior to the 2015 XI.

Results

I was a bit worried this was a one-off result. Maybe the tactics just favoured the 2025 side. So I gave each of the teams less high-pressing tactics for the next match. And this is how it ended.

Quite clearly the 2025 XI is a level above the 2015 XI. But what can we take from these findings? Firstly, I think it clearly shows the dominance of physical stats in Football Manager. Players like Andres Iniesta have incredible technical attributes, but they’re quite small and weak. In 2015 you wouldn’t be able to get near the ball when they have it. But in this game, the physical attributes so much. Federico Valverde was an absolute monster in both games, and his physical attributes are incredible. If you wanted to analyse it more deeply, you could suggest that players these day might not have the star quality they used to, but when it comes to ability and effectiveness they’re right up there. What else would you take from these findings? Let me know in the comment section! And let me know any other experiments you would like me to do!