Introduction
In 2026 the cult CM 01/02 version is still playable and offers “lite” football manager games experience. A vital upside compared with other old versions of CMs and FMs is dedicated community of players who contribute to the game for 25 years. For example thanks to data updates you can play 2025/26 football season with contemporary teams and players who you root for! (or alternatively relegate the team you hate). Check out the preceeding article for more info on databases:
This article is a follow-up to Barcelona guide for 2024 update:
Squad
Compared with the previous guide, not that much changed in Barcelona team. Lamine Yamal is the biggest star in the team and Raphinha is a world-class forward reflecting 2024/2025 performance. Instead of going player-by-player I’d like to show you two players who weren’t obvious to make impact:
Marc Bernal is clearly a gifted played, but with relatively low Positioning value, which is crucial for a defensive midfielder or defender. For a bit higher up midfield position on the other hand, Off the Ball is rather low. Therefore I trained Bernal for left defender position, where with good motorics, decent dribbiling and other skills he is a backup for Balde.
Guille Fernandez (the man who I put on the right in the thumbnail, so that you wonder wtf is that) is a junior with great potential, but his outstanding attributes are matched with a couple of big lackings both in WB and Mid positions. The Wing Back is the better position of the two for this player in my opinion. With low Positioning the defensive line may be not that solid, but outstanding Passing or Crossing can contribute well to offensive.
When it comes to the overall squad shape, little changed compared with the previous update. DR is the weakest position if you plan to play it WB-like way; Kounde characteristics in Dec 2025 update are mainly defensive. SC lacks world-class player – Robert Lewandowski is a level below the top and likely in the last competitive season, while Ferran Torres is similar level, but worse 9.
Barcelona is already a world-class team, so spend money on players who would be a clear upgrade over what you already have. Don’t rush – if there is no clean transfer targets, just wait for your reputation to improve and target players to maybe become unhappy in their teams.
For this career I made following rule: I buy only players who have Spain as their first nationality. This way I hoped to see if maybe my team will get some extra cohesion benefits and also I wanted to avoid flooding my team with wonderkids, which happened quite often after a few seasons and made team lose its identity. At the start of the save I got Achraf Hakimi as interested with a transfer, but well… not Spanish first nationality.
La Liga & UCL
In spite of 2024/2025 La Liga win and UCL semifinals, FC Barcelona in December 2025 update is still the 2nd best team in LL after Real Madrid. I’ve run a few test seasons with handpicked Barcelona tactics & team selection and Real Madrid was still top 80%+ of time. Real Madrid is clearly overtuned compared with reality – that’s a team which you can peak as a new player to get “intro” difficulty level. Both teams usually finished with substantial point advantage over 3rd place.
La Liga in my experience is much easier than Premier League. There is less competition, managers more often pick questionable formations. Finally, the weather is most often hot and dry, perfect for a chill gameplay with one offensive tactic.
In the UCL the main contenders are Arsenal, PSG and Real Madrid. Man City also has top notch squad, but in my save… you will see.
Tactics & Tips
(tactic link, no With/Without Ball instructions) The use of Cross Ball for DL/DR depends on skills of players and whether ST has good enough aerial abilities. Use the arrows only if the player learned destination position. I started the season with Jules Kounde at DR before Guille Fernandez bloomed – for him the instructions would be no arrow and no cross ball. Sometimes I played Casado at DMC and de Jong at MC – no arrow to AM. Try to train your players new position to match the default scheme – e.g. I trained Gavi to AM.
Extra tips:
- Sometimes GK has a bad day. If you concede a goal after the very first opponent’s shot, consider a instant swap.
- Look at own players stats during match. Swap player if standing out in a negative way – not just having mediocre, but a bad game (in my career it was usually 6 rating + terrible success rate of passes/tackles and other stats). Otherwise it is better to wait for like 2/3 or more of game time, so that including condition players are direct upgrade over starting 11. Remember the replacement may also have a bad day!
- Don’t be afraid to set Intensive training in the fields which you find crucial in a given position. If players have condition issues, transfer them to No Training till they recover fitness.
Season 2025/26 Results
I’ve made only one transfer in the season, which was unhappy Fran Garcia from Real Madrid for 4.6M. He was a backup for Balde.
Flavours
We got into one UCL group with Man City, so on paper it looked like direct competition for the top slot. However, before the last round…
Kinda tempting to give reserve team some playtime againt Bodo/Glimt ain’t it? Maybe even check out goalkeeping skills of one of the strikers?
Wouldn’t be too fair to Pep Guardiola though, so after all played normal and…
Fair play got rewarded. With the “Only Spaniards” restriction I’ve posted for self, it would have been great to take the seat of Spain National Team manager. Underperfomance at World Cup 2026 would make it possible. However the things took an unpredicted turn…
Following terrible results, Luis de la Fuente got sacked at 21.3.26. Of course I applied for manager job, but my reputation wasn’t proven enough yet, especially given the competition. The new Spain manager is… Pep Guardiola, who resigned from Man City position. Spain didn’t qualify for WC 2026 already and it looks like the position wouldn’t be free soon.
The chain of big name manager swaps goes deep here. Diego Simeone becomes new Man City boss, Marcelino takes Atletico Madrid, Cesc Fabregas takes Villareal, Roberto Mancini takes Como.
It is a publicly known fact that arab sheikhs love football and especially El Classico games. Corruption in football? There is no direct proof, but some signs…
Further Career
Overall I’ve finished 3 FC Barcelona seasons so far. The current team lineup looks like this:
As you can see, the team is full Spanish right now and probably not even stronger than in the first season. New players are Unai Simon, Raul Asencio (sic!) who took Real => Chelsea => Barcelona route, Pedro Porro, Ander Barrenetxea and Samu Aghehowa. As for the test of national synergy I don’t see clear benefits – the team performs about as well as expected.
The quality of the team is high enough to consistently finish top in La Liga, but never unbeaten. In the international cups a lot depends on luck and raw quality of tactics used by opponents. In Season 2 the team won UCL, but lost in CdR to Real Madrid and in Supercup to Betis after penalties. In Season 3 we won CdR, but lost UCL semifinal to AS Roma and… World Club Championship to Palmeiras in the semifinals.
Closure
Hope you enjoyed this article and maybe it inspired you to play a new career in CM 01/02 with your favorite team. If you’d like to check out more about my FC Barcelona career, here is a save file after Season 3 (you need to have Dec 2025 Database and standard Nik’s Patchers 2025 up-to-year update applied).
Happy managing,
lerio2