FM24 Turkish League Foreign Player Rule Update Request

Dear Sortitoutsi Team,

I have purchased your paid data update for Football Manager 2024 and have been actively playing a career in the Turkish League. However, I noticed that the foreign player rule in the Turkish League is not updated correctly in the later seasons of the game. This issue significantly reduces both the realism and the overall enjoyment of the game.

The main reason I purchased this data update was to have a more realistic experience while managing in the Turkish League. I have been waiting for a fix, assuming an update would be released soon, but unfortunately, no such update has been made available yet.

Therefore, I kindly request that you update the foreign player rule for the Turkish League as soon as possible. If you do not plan to address this issue, I would like to request a refund, as the product does not meet the expectations set by its description.

I look forward to your response.
Best regards,

As the person that did the recent Turkey update, I can advise that the foreign rules and the new Super Cup format are two outstanding tasks that I intend to correct. To be honest, I made notes about these but whilst doing the initial file, I simply managed to forget. I would be hopeful of circling back around to it and producing an updated version within the next week or so.

If you wish to seek a refund, there is a dedicated thread for requesting those. So if you ultimately choose to request one, please go to https://sortitoutsi.net/content/57415/all-issues-with-premium-membership-post-here.

@Tuna457 - just a courtesy update. Firstly, to confirm, the Super Cup format (that I mentioned in my previous post) is something I had already taken care of. So that is in the current version.

Additionally, I have been working on the Turkish squad registration rules. I think I have got this right, certainly for the top two divisions, but I wanted to check:

Süper Lig: for the first in-game season (i.e. 2025/26), there is a total squad size of 28 players. Of those, 14 are permitted to be foreign players, although two of those 14 must be under-23. There are no restrictions around the use of foreign players in the matchday squad. From the second season (i.e. 2026/27) onwards, the same rules apply, however at least 4 of the 14 foreign players must be under-23.

TFF 1. Lig: there is a total squad size of 26 players. Of those, 8 are permitted to be foreign players. In the matchday squad, there can only be 6 foreign players on the pitch at any time.

TFF 3. Lig: there is a total squad size of 25 players. Of those, a maximum of 5 can be 25 years or older.

I have just uploaded the revised file into the Data Update - it should be part of tomorrow's scheduled release onwards.

I currently have left the TFF 2. Lig squad rules as they are because I could not find any clear sources around these. My understanding is that in the TFF 3. Lig there has been quite a radical rule change around squad registration rules (https://fifpro.org/en/who-we-are/fifpro-members/fifpro-europe/hundreds-of-players-in-turkiye-protest-rule-changes), but the article only refers to some of the changes in detail. If you, or anyone else, is able to direct me to a source for these rules, I will happily reflect them into the Data Update - what I have included for now is the best representation I could from clear source material.

Hello, thank you for your response. You can access the regulations for the TFF 2nd and 3rd Leagues via the link below. 

https://www.tff.org/default.aspx?pageID=133

That's really helpful, thanks - I've managed to get those translated and so the rules are crystal clear. I'll get those amended ASAP and reupload a new file.

I'm really looking forward to it. I definitely have no intention of requesting a refund because I'm having so much fun playing Football Manager

Hello, in the update, Beşiktaş does not have an obligation to buy Orkun Kökçü.

@Tuna457 - just thought I would circle back and confirm, as of about 5 minutes ago, I have now uploaded the latest version of the Turkish league file to the Data Update. This should be available from tomorrow's download, onwards.

Specifically, I have now also added the transfer limitations that are in place for 2. Lig & 3. Lig clubs, as follows:

• For 2. Lig, clubs can have a maximum of 25 players aged 21 and over registered to their club at any one time (note: this is not the same as how many can be registered for a competition - this is overall limits of players who are owned by the club)
• For 3. Lig, club can have the same maximum of 25 players aged 21 and over registered to their club at any one time; however, of these, only a maximum of 5 are able to be aged 23 or over. The real-life rule is 25-years-old or over, but there is no way to replicate this, so I have used 23+ as the closest age to reflect this rule.

The squad registration rules for each of the Super Lig, 1. Lig, 2. Lig & 3. Lig are also matching the real-world rules.

Thak you for everything. I will check these rules.

Hey buddy, you got the rule wrong. The rule says that of the 14 foreign players, 2 must be under 23. But in your version, 4 players have to be under 22. Both the age and the number of players are wrong. Can you please check and fix it? I'm having to abandon the career I started for the second time because the rule is different from the original, and it's frustrating me. Please be more careful.

In terms of what I can see implemented - and this is based on what I am looking at in-game and also what I can see from the Pre-Game Editor, it looks like it is implemented as follows:

Season 1 (in-game, that's 2023/24, but it represents 2025/26 in real-life): Maximum of 14 foreign players in the squad, with a maximum of 12 of them being born before 01-01-2001. So that's two foreign players allowed to be 23 or over as of 1st January 2024 in-game.

In season 2 (in-game, that's 2024/25, but it represents 2026/27 in real-life): Maximum of 14 foreign players in the squad, with a maximum of 10 of them being born before 01-01-2002. So that's four foreign players allowed to be 23 or over as of 1st January 2025 in-game.

Now, that all being said, I've read back on the published rules and I can see that the age-checks are a year out. So that definitely needs to be corrected/offset by a year. I will absolutely do that. I will assume I misread that when I was first consulting the rules, so obviously I can only apologise for that.

In terms of you citing that the number of players is incorrect - that is not my experience from testing in-game. I can see it clearly allowing 12 foreigners over the set age limit in the first season and 10 in the second season…which I believe is the correct development over the first two game years.

Further to the above, I've now amended the configuration of the file to offset the age limit by one year. It will be available in tomorrow's update, onwards. This brings it in-line with the real-life rule as documented by the Turkish Football Federation's documentation.

I have not amended the numbers of players as these appear to be correct in all of my tests across multiple years. I have also provided an equivalent update in the FM24 League Updates thread (https://sortitoutsi.net/comments/get/841625). It would be great if any further discussion could remain in that thread as it makes it easier for me to stay across it all.

Hey my friend, the salaries and contract durations of newly transferred players are incorrect — most of them have only one-year contracts. When their contracts expire, they leave their teams, which really affects the realism of the game. Are you planning to fix this? The incorrect salary amounts aren’t a big issue, but the short contract durations seriously impact the gameplay experience.

Can you provide some examples? Contract durations are driven by the updates submitted by the community.

We would expect contract durations to reflect real-life contract lengths…unless you are playing with the ‘no date changes’ update. What I mean by that is that a player whose contract expires in 2026 in real-life will expire in 2024 in the Data Update, by default…because this reflects a ‘one-year contract’ from the point we are in right now. As I say, examples help.

If it is these two-year-offset contract lengths that are the thing that disrupts your immersion, you should disable the +2 years file in the Data Update or use the ‘No Date Changes’ update. However, there is an argument to say that a player with a contract until 2026 who signed for a club (in real-life) in 2025 shouldn't have a three-year contract at that club…as that is not realistic. Indeed, that is the argument behind the way the Data Update works.

There is nothing specific about the way contracts for players in the Turkish leagues are configured versus other countries.

Just to revert back to this again - it could be an issue with load order of files, at your end. The Data Update has been restructured a few times, recently (in terms of filenames, for various, valid reasons) and there was a period of a couple of days (albeit some time ago now) where the default load order was causing an error to contract lengths.

If you get a chance, please share a screenshot of how your enabled Editor Data looks in-game (the step where you choose the DB to use and, underneath that, tick the Editor Data files you want to use). Seeing this order will tell me whether your files are in a certain order which is causing the ‘short contracts’ issue.

The fix would be an easy one - which is just to conduct a clean install of the Data Update. But I appreciate depending on what else you might be using alongside, that may not be as easy as ‘deleting all files’ so I'd rather provide that advice once I have a clear view on what you're using.

Just to underpin all of that: there is no fundamental issue in the Data Update, nor has there been at any point (other than that two-day period I mentioned that happened some time ago). But it is possible that reinstalling over the top of a previous version, at a specific time, may mean there is something we need to troubleshoot to get you up and running.