by MaddFM.
How has it been a year already?! Steam tells me I am just shy of 1,000 hours of FM23 gameplay, and having had two thoroughly enjoyable long-term saves this year (Haarlem Globetrotters + Il Regionnaire), choosing a Player of the Year for this cycle will be no mean feat and considering the variance between each save, I have decided that this warrants both a Player of the Year and a Young Player of the Year award accordingly.
Young Player of the Year
Having gone through 8 seasons at HFC Haarlem in the Netherlands and considering the Dutch league is a thriving place for producing and developing young talent, there are a number of nominees who are worthy of this award including the likes of Brais Ruiz, Danilo Veiga, Zhuang Hui and a player whom I feel I was one of the first to discover in FM23 and became the inaugural player profiled for our Wonderkid Watch series, Maurice Krattenmacher, who we signed for just €800k and quite conceivably could have ended up our Player of the Year had he not moved on to Young Boys for €15m two seasons later before a €40m mega move to Bayern Munich.
That means we turn to another player who to this day I haven’t spotted in any other FM23 saves, and one whom we discovered while on a glorious scouting mission through the obscurity of the Croatian football league. His name? Well...
Ooohhhh, he’s Majić, you knowwww…
Toni Majić, the Croatian Creator. Aged just 16 at the start of the game, Majić looks reasonably promising in Dinamo Zagreb’s U19 side without hugely standing out and likely often goes under the radar in most people’s saves. One of things I do in most saves is manually scout and comb through specific clubs and leagues within select nations with Croatia being one at the top of my list, and in FM23 we were rewarded in the year 2027 when we stumbled across a 20-year-old Majić still in Croatia, wherein we agreed a loan-deal initially with a €2.9m optional fee should he prove to be as Majić as we hoped.
Majić he was. 17 league goals and 9 assists in his first season helped us to finish 6th in the league and earned him the Eredivisie Footballer of the Year award. We mainly deployed him as an Inside Forward on the left but he was as impactful as any striker and was the difference maker on several occasions not to mention rising to the occasion in big games when needed. What’s interesting in addition to his high attributes for Flair, Dribbling, First Touch and Pace is that he also has strong Composure and Off the Ball which makes him a highly effective Inside Forward either in terms of goal-creation or direct goal threat cutting inside.
2030 Profile - some improvement 🔥
Needless to say we activated his release clause and after 4 seasons Majić had racked up 32 goals and 23 assists in 87 appearances for the club, consistently scoring above a 7.2 average rating and one of the key figures in driving us to achieve back-to-back 3rd place finishes in the Eredivisie before the save ended - suffice to say he is definitely deserving of my FM23 Young Player of the Year accolade.
Player of the Year
While the Haarlem save was full of wonderkids, my Regionnaire save at AC Milan is definitely the one where my Player of the Year nomination will originate. I spent three seasons at the Rossoneri converting them to a local-only squad and transfer policy, by the end of which we won the Serie A and Coppa Italia double and this was largely down to the performances of a number of players (but one in particular as we will discuss imminently). The likes of Federico Dimarco (LWB) and Giorgio Scalvini (BPD) were outstanding throughout the save both defensively as well as contributing to our attacking output. Tomasso Pobega was a surprise star player once we moved him from DM to AMC after which he racked up 26 goals and 22 assists in just over 80 appearances, while the emergence of Cesare Casadei in our last two seasons (after we retrained him to be our main striker) also put him in with a shout as he bagged 45 goals and 13 assists in 75 appearances across all competitions.
But none of those players made as big an impact as one man in particular - a player who was the lynchpin of our tactical setup, the quarter-back of our first XI and ultimately became captain as we led Milan to Scudetto glory. That player is of course Sandro Tonali, which will be no surprise if you follow my blog, Twitter or have heard me wax lyrical about him on the 5 Star Potential podcast.
Tonali at the start of FM23
After settling on a 4-2-3-1 formation, we decided to pair a defensive Anchor (originally Bennacer, then Rovella & finally Locatelli) with a Segundo Volante on Attack duty (Tonali) knowing that FM actually recommends deploying one with the other in-game. As Tonali became more and more comfortable in the role, what we observed is that he was literally EVERYWHERE on the pitch - almost like a mixed hybrid of a Defensive Midfielder, Roaming Playmaker and CM-At all in one, whereby depending on the circumstances, Tonali would adapt to whatever was needed and seemed to morph into multiple roles throughout the 90 minutes both defensively and in attack.
Not only would see see Tonali operating in the half-spaces and making challenges in the DM strata - he also would press high, intercept and win the ball back in the opposition half as well as making surging runs into the box, from which he frequently got on the scoresheet for Milan throughout our three seasons there.
Over the course of 3 seasons Tonali contributed 22 goals and 21 assists from the Segundo Volante position which we have to remember is a Defensive Midfield role. Of course being a set-piece specialist helps; we had Tonali taking free-kicks, corners and penalties however that said, of those 22 goals scored, only 8 of these were from penalties or direct free-kicks with the rest coming from open play.
The icing on the cake? Tonali also had a few bangers in his locker which you absolutely love to see in the Football Manager match engine 🔥.
Tonali was instrumental in our double-winning third season at Milan chipping in 12 goals, 9 assists and a 7.32 average rating. During our time at Milan we added traits such “Plays One Twos” and “Tries Killer Balls Often” to his existing traits of “Dictates Tempo” and “Tries Long Range Passes”, and by the end of the save his Pace, Off the Ball, Vision, Positioning and Long Shots attributes had all improved as well as evolving from a “Hard Working Midfielder” to a “World Class Midfielder”, repeatedly attracting interest from the Premier League which is no surprise considering where he has ended up in real life. One thing is for sure - having been a wonderkid in multiple previous versions of FM down through the years, Sandro Tonali has certainly lived up to his potential and is without doubt my FM23 Player of the Year.
2025 Profile
Arrivederci Sandro - see you in FM24 👀.
Thanks for reading.
Check out the full breakdown of both Madd’s saves over at MaddFM.com where you can find all of his Football Manager content. Also, if you fancy writing about your FM23 Player of the Year, drop us a line on Twitter or reach out to MaddFM directly.
