Yeah this is what I love, I'm a huge football manager fan as well and its great to that, way more fun that just playing as a top team. You can build up a team in FIFA 12 but not in the same way, for the me the only way you can do it is by buying and then selling players off for a profit and then slowyl rebuilding your team. However, its not very realistic and its very basic. At the minute in my FIFA career I have brought Swindon Town to the Premier League and I'm in 2017/18 season, it was quite fun but gets pretty boring and like I said the realism just isn't there, it should be very difficult and take much longer than that.
Although I guess the other way of looking at it is, FIFA is for the gameplay and if you want a deep career then just stick to football manager.