How to play
You run one club. The league moves a week at a time, and it only moves when the managers do.
The week
- 1
Monday
The office. A word with a player, an answer for the board, the week set up before anybody kicks a ball.
- 2
Matchday
The eleven you saved takes the field. Watch it play out on the clock, or go straight to full time.
- 3
Weiter
German for “carry on”, and the one word we kept from the original. It ends your week. Press it when you are done.
Moving on
The league waits for you
A week ends one of three ways and your league picked one: when everybody has pressed Weiter, when a deadline passes, or whichever comes first. Nobody is ever left behind by longer than that.
The Tippspiel
Every week everybody tips the matches of their division before they are played. The exact score is worth three points, the right tendency one. The tipster table runs beside the league table all season.
Settings → When the week runs.
Finding things
The bar at the top
Your club is pinned on the left and never moves. That is the way back from anywhere in the game. The gear is pinned on the right. Everything between them scrolls sideways, and there is more of it than fits on a phone.
The amber dots
A dot means something is waiting. It never means you could go and look.
Squad — Somebody in your eleven cannot take the field. Leave it and the week will quietly replace him, which is not a decision you made.
- 2
Market — A player is at the table waiting for an answer. This is the one with a clock on it. Let it lapse and the club you outbid gets another try.
Press — The reporters are in the room until you turn up.
Office — The week is not open: no wages paid, nobody trained, no board review.
Your club
Squad and the eleven
Everyone you have and who is fit to play. Pick eleven and a shape, save it once, and it stands until you change it.
The pitch
Drag a man anywhere you like. Where you put him decides the role he plays; moving him about inside that role changes the picture and not the match.
Training and staff
What you drill decides what improves. Your staff decide how quickly, and how much of anybody you can see.
Filling a post
Each post has three candidates a month. A man has a quality, one strength and one weakness, and each moves one effect of his job by a tenth. He is paid what he asks, until his contract ends. Let him go earlier and you pay half of what it still holds. An assistant coach can take the training: a better one reads more of the squad before he decides.
Money
Where it comes from
Mostly the gate. A full ground on a Saturday beats anything else you can arrange, which is why the stadium is a decision and not scenery.
Tickets
Overcharge the terraces and they stay home.
Where it goes
Wages, every week, whether he plays or not.
Players
Signing somebody
Two halves. Agree a fee with his club, then agree terms with him, and he will haggle. Either half can fail on its own.
Bids
Sealed bids, opened at the tick.
The club talk
A player his club has not listed is bought at that club’s table. Its boss names a price and comes down with each of your five offers. Each refusal also costs patience, and a low offer costs much more. What he names, he accepts. When he walks out, he will not talk to you about that player for six weeks. A handshake places your sealed bid at that fee; a higher bid from another club still wins.
The match
A match plays at the league’s speed, which its founder sets on the team sheet. At half time you may talk to the team once. The break lasts 90 seconds, or ends as soon as every manager with a match running has pressed Continue.
Contracts
Renew in the final contract year, on the transfer market. Let one run out and the player walks in the summer for nothing.
Loans
For the season, with the wage split settled once. There is nothing else to agree and nothing to forget.
The academy
Six boys arrive and three can stay. How well you can tell them apart is down to your coach.
Private
Your salary
The club pays you by the week, into your own account. The sack pays half of what remains; resigning pays nothing.
Betting shop
The week’s matches, never your own. Stake up to one week’s salary per slip.
Standing
What you are worth as a manager: priced once a season, by results. The manager table never resets; it is the career.
Every section
What each pill in the bar is for.
- Office
- Monday: what the week cost, who is hurt, what the board thinks.
- League
- Table, results, scorers, your calendar and the tip sheet, one division at a time.
- Squad
- Your players, and the eleven that takes the field.
- Tactics
- The shape, the pitch and the instructions.
- Training
- What the week is spent drilling.
- Staff
- The people you hire to make everything else work.
- Finance
- The books: the gate, the wages, the stadium.
- Private
- Your own money: salary, the betting shop, the rich list.
- Market
- Buying, selling, loaning, the offers on your desk, and the scout with his reports on players who are not yours yet. The numbers are ranges because a scout estimates: a better scout starts narrower, and every week on your watchlist narrows his range further.
- Academy
- The boys coming through, and which of them you keep.
- Archive
- Past champions, your own record and the awards of every season.
- Press
- The reporters, on the weeks they are waiting. Every answer moves the dressing room, the board and the fans.
- Settings
- How the league runs, and how it looks to you.
Your own world
The game ships invented clubs. Real names, real clubs or a world of your own are yours to bring, as a file. There are two ways.
Names only
A name pack replaces names, short names, colours and stadium names and nothing else. It goes into a running league, under Name packs on the league page, and no result changes. The template below already holds every club and player of the five-country world: change the names, delete or keep the rest, upload it.
A whole world
A world is one JSON file with four lists: nations, competitions, clubs, players. It is the simulation itself, so it only fits a new league: New league, then Load a world of your own.
Start from ours
Download the five-country world every league is played in: 198 clubs, 46 matchdays. Change what you like. Give it its own id and name at the top of the file; the id is lowercase letters, digits and dashes.
What a player needs
Name, first name, nation, age, position (GK, DL, DC, DR, DM, ML, MC, MR, AM, LW, RW, ST), club, contract, value and the ratings from 1 to 99. staerke is the number that counts; the rest colour it. The hidden ones (potenzial, konstanz, ego, verletzungsanfaelligkeit) are never shown directly in the game.
What the upload checks
Every id appears once. Every club is in a competition. Every squad has at least eleven men. Whatever is wrong, the message names it and where.
Who it belongs to
An uploaded world stays with you. Only you see it until you share it by link. What you do with real names is your business; the game itself ships nothing licensed.
What it costs
Why it exists
I built this to play with my friends. Nothing out there was the game I wanted, so I wrote my own. That is still the whole reason it is here.
For now it stays free
Nothing asks you for money: every screen, every season, every league you are invited to. Nothing is held back, and no advantage for your club is for sale.
A tip buys nothing
It unlocks nothing and changes nothing about your club. It pays for the server. Give nothing and you play exactly the same game.
What could change it
Hosting costs money, and support costs me evenings. If either grows enough to feel, I will consider putting some functions behind a payment. You will read it here before you meet it anywhere else.
Stadium sound: the goal roar is from “Football Crowd – Goal Cheer – Southampton vs Hull” by Quistard, freesound.org, CC BY 3.0. The groan and the murmur are from a CC0 recording by Romainbehar, Wikimedia Commons.
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