Club Soccer Director 2021 4+

Puts Fifa to shame

Thoroughly enjoyed this game and currently fighting for a top 4 spot in the year 2039.

I thank the devs for going the extra mile with this game and not taking shortcuts. Compared to its competitors, the detail in CSD is what makes it stand out in the already saturated market of football games. Dare I say challenging FM in some areas.

There is still room for improvement, and here I address these issues.

The biggest issue I find is the transfer system. Despite it being fun and challenging, There’s a large financial discrepancy with the valuation of players. The AI charge extortionate prices, yet offer the smallest transfer fees that are insulting. You sell a player to a different club and instantly their transfer value multiplies, even if they have a 3 year contract with yours truly.

Needs more consistency with the option of loan to buy, sometimes don’t get the opportunity for this which is annoying.

Sharing an agent between yourself and player should help negotiations be smoother and easier. However Zhavi seems to hold a monopoly with like 70% of players represented under him, and he should want to make the deal. Similar to Wolves and Jorge mendes.

There maybe a few technical issues still but I am yet to play under the new update, but yeah overall must play game for any football fan.

Fun but fixed

Solid 3 stars for gameplay, has a great look and feel with nice interactions. Sadly whatever you do has little effect on your success. Having played over a dozen seasons including some restarts in ‘run your own club’ mode, from season 3 onwards everything seems to be run by algorithms and becomes effectively impossible. I’ve had 9 match losing streaks when each match my staff morale was good, team was ‘supportive’ overall rating was high and in match player ratings were higher than the opponents in every position yet still lost.
This is compounded with things like loan players getting injured and/or recalled, I had four in a fortnight, each was a direct replacement of the one before, makes it a bit of a joke unfortunately.
It gives you a bye in the first season which always is a success, but even ramping up your players and staff ratings and compatibility etc will have no positive effect on the slump to follow. There is probably some magic trick to unlocking how the game is designed to make you fail (hopefully not by paying for badges but a sceptic may suggest so) but if there a way is it isn’t logical and I’ve not found it. Super fun to start but becomes wearisome once you know your on a hiding to nothing from season 3 onwards.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review. What you do have a definite difference to success but football is about many factors and a bit of luck to go on good runs of form and get all players and staff happy and motivated. Bottom line is though as you said in your review even if you are flying weaker teams can still turn you over if you dont play your best or miss chances you would normally score etc. Your comments regarding injuries and loans, seem like a bad run, we test the game extensively and don't see many getting injured and recalled. It does happen obviously but its not as common as you think.

There isn't a planned slump in the game, the environment and the diversity of the club makes the game tough enough and we would never force losses or create situations where games were delibrately affected. My advice is join one of our unofficial facebook groups, there are tons of experienced players with good tips and advice to improve your progression in the game.

Many thanks for playing

So frustrating

In many ways this is the best football game out there BUT it’s so flawed.
I have given 5 stars but could as easily have been one star.
There’s no instructions.
You have enough points to take over small clubs but if you do well and bigger clubs offer you a job you have to buy points with real cash to get enough points to join a big club. I paid £3:99 to move up a league then I had to pay another £7:99 to move up again now it wants £19:99 just to move up to Celtic fc . It claims you can earn these points in the game rather than buy them BUT doesn’t explain how to !!!! It takes points away from you if your doing bad but doesn’t reward you them if you do good so after a bad season you would need to potentially pay £7:99 again just to stay in the same division.
If they could fix this one major flaw it would be An awesome game so I have given them 5 stars due to their potential in the hope they fix the point system flaw 😡