FIFA Manager 09 is a typical German soccer manager where the player is
responsible for the financial and athletic success of his team. As usual the
player has a lot of options to set which are located in several menu screens.
The main part of the screen is surrounded by statistics screens which tell the
most important facts without needing to navigate to the associated menu
screen.

On the athletic side the player’s most important decisions concern the lineup,
tactics and the training. In comparison to former instalments of the series
there are more possibilities to set individual tactics and the player are
rated with one to ten stars instead of one to five. On the financial side he
searches for sponsors, buys and sells players and expands the stadium
environment and the stadium itself, Here the most prominent innovation are
revised merchandise options. There are also several personal options, e.g. buy
status symbols, start a family or search for a new team.

The game basically features two match presentations with a few variations:
text mode and live calculation. In the completely revised text mode the game
describes the most important happenings in writing. The 3D calculated matches
now use the graphics engine of FIFA 09 and the player can reach all tactical
options during the match without needing to use a separate menu. The matches
can also be watched as “live ticker” which is similar to teletext or be
skipped altogether.

The player can either choose a club at the beginning of the game or play a
real career, meaning he has to work his way from a lower class to the top. An
important part of the game is the customizable difficulty level: the player
sets the difficulty for each aspect of the game separately and chooses which
aspects fall in his responsibility, e.g. only financial or athletic tasks.
Although the game features a full license, for the first time including the
third and fourth German leagues, the player can use an editor to change the
data.