Football Manager‘s long-running “pace is king” debate has flared up again after FM content creator Zealand dropped a new experiment video built entirely around speed, and the results have the community questioning FM26‘s match engine all over again.
In the video, Zealand takes over Wolves and builds a team that ignores technical and mental ability in favor of pure acceleration and pace. His only rule: sign the fastest players in the 500,000+ player database who don’t already play in a top-five league.
That leads to a surreal squad: a Mexican goalkeeper with 16 pace, another with 17, a center-back at LA Galaxy, and a Russian-based winger, both with 20 pace, and wide players like Joseph Paintsil and Norman Campbell sitting on 18-19 pace. The slowest outfield player has 17. The tactic itself is intentionally basic and bare bones — a default assistant-made system with four attackers — to let the physical attributes do the talking.
Early on, the results are chaotic but undeniably effective. The comically branded “Track FC” survives a brutal opening against Manchester City, beats Spurs away with nine men, and strings together wins over Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, and others. They briefly climb as high as fifth in the Premier League, while Paintsil finishes the save outscoring Liverpool icon Mo Salah, averaging roughly a goal a game.
The FM Community Reacts
That’s more than enough ammunition for a fresh round of soul-searching on r/footballmanagergames. One popular thread brands the match engine “placebo,” arguing that community testing going back to FM24 shows only a handful of attributes meaningfully matter — with pace and acceleration far ahead of the rest. Others pile on training, calling “quickness and rest” the only true optimal schedule and suggesting that FM‘s apparent complexity is all smoke and mirrors.
However, some pointed out that the results of the experiment don’t prove that FM26‘s match engine is “broken,” per se. Some point out that assembling a team full of sprinters is an extreme edge case that no normal save will replicate. Others argue that the real issue is that AI managers don’t adapt to weaknesses and obvious gimmicks, allowing one-note performances to perform at too high a level for too long.
Either way, there is a meta in FM26. And until SI either nerfs it or makes the AI more adaptable, it’ll continue to be exploited by a segment of players.
