The Football Manager Star System is lying to you – here’s why you shouldn’t trust it

Everyone treats the star rating system in Football Manager like it’s gospel. When my scout brings me a player with a four-and-a-half-star rating, I have to sign them at all costs. And when a player dips below three stars, you immediately start thinking about the quickest way to get them off your wage bill. But what if I told you the star rating system isn’t telling you the full truth?

We’ve all had players who perform way above—or below—their star rating. That one two-and-a-half-star player who somehow ends up with the best average rating in the team, outperforming the unknown wonderkid you splashed £90 million on just because of his high rating.

Just like we found out with Football Manager’s attributes, all of this suggests that the star rating system isn’t as reliable as it seems, and it needs to be scrutinized carefully. So, let’s dive into it and uncover the truth.

What is the Football Manager Star Rating System?

If you’ve played Football Manager for any period of time, you already know what the star rating system is. But if you’re completely new, here’s a quick explanation.

In Football Manager, star ratings are an assessment of a player’s current and potential ability, ranging from half a star to five stars. These ratings are relative to your squad’s overall quality. That means a player might have different star ratings at various clubs, depending on the level of the team. A three-star player at Crawley Town could be a one-star player at Manchester City.

Sounds simple, right? Well, not quite.

Star Ratings Don’t Accurately Reflect Current Ability

Popular Football Manager YouTuber Zealand has already exposed how unreliable the star ratings are when it comes to evaluating current ability.

Take this screenshot (below): as we can see Kingsley Coman and Manuel Neuer both have a current ability of 162. But their star ratings? A full star apart.

In Football Manager, a full star is supposed to be a big deal. Even a half-star difference is often enough to convince someone to sign—or ignore—a player. So, the fact that two players with the same ability have such different star ratings is a major red flag.

It doesn’t stop there. Noussair Mazraoui and Konrad Laimer also have the same current ability, yet their star ratings differ by half a star. You could argue that factors like form and training performance influence these ratings, but Zealand’s screenshot was taken at the very start of the game. So, those factors shouldn’t even be in play yet.

If the star ratings don’t accurately represent current ability, surely they’re better at predicting potential ability? Well… no. In fact, it gets even worse.

Potential Ability Star Ratings Are Even More Inaccurate

Things get even crazier when you look at youth academies and their potential star ratings. At Bayern Munich, the highest-rated youth prospect, Arijon Ibrahimović (no relation to Zlatan), has five-star potential.

Based on that rating, you’d assume that if you developed him perfectly, he’d reach the same level as Bayern’s best players—someone like Harry Kane. Except, that’s not the case at all: when Zealand checked his actual potential ability, it was 145.

To put that into perspective, 145 is lower than the current ability of the worst player in Bayern’s first-team squad, and it gets even worse.

A random youth prospect further down the list, with just three-star potential, actually had a higher potential ability than the so-called “five-star” Ibrahimović. Now, you might be thinking: “Well, maybe the staff member rating these players just isn’t very good at judging potential?”

Nope. Zealand changed the staff member to one with maxed-out scouting stats, and the star ratings were still a complete mess. No consistency, no logic, just chaos. The weirdness only continues when you change a player’s current ability. When you do this, it also changes their potential star rating—even though their actual potential ability stays the same.

In short: Star ratings are inaccurate and influenced by way too many factors to be trusted.

How This Affects Your Game—and What You Should Do

So, what does this mean for how you play Football Manager?

1. Stop relying on star ratings.
They’re just an opinion, not a fact.

2. Focus on attributes.
The only thing you can depend on 100% is a player’s attributes. Look at their stats—do they have high values in the areas you need? If you’re looking for a winger, can they dribble and cross? If you need a centre-back, do they have good positioning and tackling?

3. Consider intangibles.
Scout reports can tell you important things, like whether a player is consistent or if they perform well in big games. From personal experience, players with high work rate and determination almost always outperform their star ratings.

(Football Manager secretly loves a workhorse.)

4. Be cautious with potential ability.
For some players, you can use media descriptions like “wonderkid” to get an idea of their potential. But for most young players, as Zealand showed, potential star ratings are wildly inaccurate.

This might seem frustrating, but it actually makes the game more realistic. In real-life football, predicting young players’ careers is a lottery. If Football Manager was too accurate, the game would be much easier—and much less fun. Embrace the chaos.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of complexity within every Football Manager game, and the inconsistencies with the game’s Star System shows that you can’t only rely on a single system to max out your team with the best possible players. You need to combine everything: stars, hidden attributes, current ability ratings. Any possible stat you see, you should be weighing up alongside another.

It turns out that it’s quite a bit of work to make sure that your team is as primed as they should be for whatever league you’re in, but that’s the fun. Everyone loves a challenge, and FM has a lot. Just like a real footie manager, you have to earn your success.