Fifa 20 career mode: New features revealed as players can create female managers for first time

Changes have been made to make career mode players feel valued, EA Sports said

A player competes on in the group stages of the FIFA eWorld Cup Grand Final, at the O2 in London on August 2, 2018 (DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)

Fifa has revealed sweeping new changes to its career mode, adding a host of new features to a part of the game that fans often feel is neglected.

EA Sports is gradually showing off the new updates that will come with Fifa 20, which is due to be released in September. And the latest reveal shows off the game's career mode, where players can take the job of a manager and take their team to glory.

The new updates are "focused on bringing more depth and authenticity to the game", according to EA Sports, and add new changes that largely add realism off the pitch.

Chief among them is new ways to design the manager as he – or now she – appears in the game. As well as adding options to let players choose the body type, skin tone, clothing, and hairstyles of the character, players can also create a female manager.

Until now, players were forced to use a man and could only choose from a very limited number of different clothing options. Players were also forced to stick with the choice they had made at the beginning of the game, but can now make alterations through the season.

Other new features let players have more of an impact on their team off the pitch. Players will be able to decide how they behave in places like press conferences and one-to-one chats, as well as who they pick for the squad, which in turn will change the team's morale and how they play.

The feature appears to work similarly to a long-time part of the Football Manager series: players choose from a variety of responses in pre-match interviews or things to tell players, and that will then gradually change how those players feel.

Those kinds of changes will also alter how players progress, and how their overall rating improves or falls. EA Sports said that "every choice" will affect players' abilities, from whether they are shortlisted for transfer to what wage they are paid.

EA Sports also said that it will take the vast amount of data generated as people play the game and use that to decide how the story progresses. Journalists might make reference to the number of goals scored in a match during a press conference, for instance.

"These are not just general story lines that we put together to mimic authenticity," it wrote in a blog post announcing the changes. "These are stories built based on player progress which each player will be able to interact with and influence the morale of the team and their standing as the team’s manager."

There will also be a new visual look, which brings the branding of whatever competition you are playing in – the Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, La Liga, MLS, Champions League or Europa League – to the career mode too.

As well as the headline changes, there will be a new set of environments and smaller updates added to the game.

EA Sports said it had added the new features after listening to "the feedback coming from our players in the past years" and they had been made "to ensure that FIFA 20 will mark an important milestone not only for FIFA in general but especially for Career Mode fans".