This anti-cheat is known to block older Denuvo drivers. Try exiting Vanguard from your system tray or uninstalling it temporarily to see if the game launches.
Denuvo requires certain privileges to load its driver. Running both Steam and Football Manager 2018 as an administrator can often resolve permission issues: football manager 2018 failed to start denuvo driver link
The error message "failed to start denuvo driver link" is a specific variant of this problem, often pointing to a failure where the game's executable cannot establish a connection to the protection system. This can be caused by several different issues on your system. This anti-cheat is known to block older Denuvo drivers
Click and select the folder where Football Manager 2018 is installed. Restart your PC and attempt to launch the game again. 2. Remove Conflicting Anti-Cheat Software football manager 2018 failed to start denuvo driver link