Best Football Games on PC (Free and Management)

The best football games on PC let you take your club, your country, or your brightest young prospect to glory, from near-perfect simulations to soap-opera storylines.

What are the best football games on PC in 2023? With only a handful of mainstream titles coming to mind, scratching that football itch can seem tough. Sure, FM is the undisputed king of the football management genre, and if you're after a more player-controlled relationship, it's hard to beat FIFA's superb matchday presentation.

What Are the Best Football Games on PC? Free and Management Titles Included

Whether it's an overlooked studio, an indie title, or a mix of different sports, there's a football game for every fan. To shine a light on these underrated classics, we've rounded up the best PC games for football fans.

Football Manager 23

We know we've spent most of this list trying to offer alternatives to it, but we think it's important to include Football Manager in case football game fans haven't already been sucked in by another addictive title.

One of the rare series that seems to get stronger with every new release, Football Manager is the top-tier football RPG that lets you drag an unlucky club like Blackpool or Bolton up to the top flight in a way that never feels entirely unbelievable. You scout star talents, arrange individual training programs, haggle over wages, and try to find the right words to lift your team when you're 2-0 down at halftime — find yourself celebrating and barking orders from the touchline just like a real manager.

If you're already deep into your FM23 save and looking for a different challenge, you can check out the best Football Manager 23 clubs to manage,the best wonderkids in the game and tactics on GamerPapers.

FIFA 23

Very few games can capture the ebb and flow of a real match like FIFA 23, and now that the PC engine has finally caught up to the current-gen consoles, the business side of things looks the part too. Whether you're building your Ultimate Team or building a legacy in Career Mode, FIFA 23 should scratch that football itch pretty nicely.

FIFA 23 hasn't changed much beyond an in-game engine upgrade, and as we noted in our FIFA 23 review, the developer clearly has one eye on next year, when the series will be rebranded as EA Sports FC. Still, few football experiences are as well-rounded as FIFA, so if you're itching to score some of the newly implemented power shots or find out just how tall the players really are, FIFA 23 is worth trying.

You can check out the best young talents in FIFA 23, the best players you can get in Career Mode and tactics on GamerPapers.

Football Drama

In this hugely entertaining Demigiant game, football meets real-time strategy and deck-based card battle gameplay. As Rocco Galliano, an existentially troubled head coach, you're tasked with turning around the fortunes of the ailing club Calchester United.

Doing so won't be easy. As in the old Telltale games, player choice is a huge part of Football Drama. You'll regularly chat with journalists, the club owner, crime syndicates, and even your cat at home, and the decisions you make during those conversations will have positive or negative effects across every part of your managerial journey. Argue with the man who hired you and you could get sacked just days into the job. Strike a deal with the mob to throw a game, get found out, and have the story leak to the press, and you could end up with an angry mob of supporters at your door.

Football Drama's turn-based match mechanics, combined with the use of "banter cards" you earn based on your interactions, can swing the outcome in your favor or against you, adding an intriguing layer to the FM-inspired match engine. Your team's stamina and card usage are crucial to winning matches, so applying them strategically in harmony will determine the difference between victory and defeat.

The matches and commentary can start to feel repetitive after a while, and despite Football Drama's narrative branching into massive arms, there are only seven endings to unlock. With its unique blend of gameplay, comedic humor, and literature-inspired plot, Demigiant's title is one you should check out.

Rocket League

This isn't your typical football game, but Rocket League is technically football-based thanks to its arcade-style soccer blended with rocket-fueled cars and vehicles.

There's a lot to like in Psyonix's popular game. The fluid, physics-driven mechanics are a joy, leading to varied, spectacular, and sometimes hilariously bad goals and moments. 3v3 matches are always intense, and results can swing one way or another depending on whether you're having a good session, who you're teamed up with, and, often, sheer luck over where the ball ends up.

Customization options let you build a car that's entirely your own, and there's a wide range of game modes to try until you find the perfect fit. Casual and competitive online matches, offline Season Mode, extra basketball- and hockey-like modes, and Mutator settings are just a few of the modes you can use whenever you want to mix things up and try something new.

Kopanito All-Stars Soccer

Ever wanted to see a refereeless game packed with superpowered players? Then Kopanito All-Stars Soccer will be right up your street.

Merixgames' football title hasn't been around much lately, but its cartoonish charm and skill-based gameplay mean there's still plenty here to enjoy. Regional tournaments and leagues, multiplayer support for up to five players, and four difficulty levels give you your money's worth, and there's even an option to turn your best goals and celebrations into animated GIFs to send to your friends.

Still, what really makes the game shine is its superpower abilities. You can teleport away from opponents, blast a super shot toward goal that clears every player (including the keeper) out of the way, and even use a magnet to pull the ball toward you. You'll feel especially satisfied once you've mastered the game's control system and finally beaten the game's toughest difficulty setting after weeks of honing your skills.

Football, Tactics & Glory

While it might look like an FM22 knockoff at first glance, there's more to Football, Tactics & Glory than that. Creoteam's original spin on the management-sim genre blends XCOM-style chess strategy with RPG elements, offering a fun yet realistic take on player development and tactical game plans.

Fully customizable player faces let you give your stars a bit more personality compared to FM22's dough-like regenerated faces, while mod support lets you add real-life leagues and tournaments to keep everything fresh. Add to that some Twitch integration, letting viewers interact with streamers, and your fans can play as big a role in your managerial journey as you do.

If you're looking for a cheaper alternative to FM22's in-depth mechanics, or a realistic football alternative to Blood Bowl, Football, Tactics, & Glory is a solid PC football game.

Online Soccer Manager

OSM is a football management game for PC and mobile in which you join a league with your friends, race through a season with your chosen team through transfers and player development, and try to reach your club's goals. Having grown massively in popularity over the last 2-3 years, OSM sees players trying to get good results especially with the counter-tactics they use against their opponents, and beating a friend gives you the extra pleasure of trash-talking them about it afterward. With new features continuing to arrive at a time when football games are booming, there's no doubt OSM will reach an even bigger player base over the years.

You can check out the best counter-tactics, the scout list, and the best players to use in OSM on GamerPapers.

Behold the Kickmen

Imagine a football game made by someone who has no idea what football even is. That game would be exactly like Behold the Kickmen.

A wacky football sim, Behold the Kickmen reinvents football by inventing something else entirely. With game mechanics like "kick harder" and "score a goal," this tongue-in-cheek affair takes a hilarious swing at football fanaticism.

There's a goofy story mode to keep you busy, and in the options you can enable a mode that turns things into a dystopian blood sport if things get a bit too serious for your taste. It's a shame there's no multiplayer, since consigning your friends to oblivion would be especially fun in blood-sport mode. For non-football fans who want to beat football at its own game, Behold the Kickmen is a cheap, fun, pick-up-and-play title.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2021

You can't talk about FIFA without mentioning its fiercest rival, Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series. PES 2021 doesn't offer any upgrade over the previous year, since the developers instead focused on building eFootball 2022. Unfortunately, eFootball 2022 wasn't the game fans were hoping for, quickly becoming one of the worst-reviewed games on Steam by 2023. It's arguably the last stand of a series that's been falling further and further behind with each new release (even if it's barely considered a game next to FIFA...).

Don't worry, though — the modding community has once again saved the day. Players sticking with PES 2021 have kept last year's game alive with custom kits and teams added by fans. For solo players, Master League remains one of the best single-player modes in any football game. In Master League, players control a football club over the course of several seasons. You won't just be dealing with transfers — you'll also need to build unique training programs for your players' development, which is especially crucial for clubs without a huge budget.