The Manager's Primer

Your first week

The game runs on a daily clock. You set your intentions whenever you like, and the next daily update applies them and plays the day: your seniors on days 2 and 6, your youth team on day 4. A sensible first week looks like this.

1. Claim a club and do the takeover draft. Choose both squads' formations first: the draft sets them at once, and your inherited cohesion follows to the shape you choose. Then draft the profiles your formation needs. You have three attempts during your first three weeks, and each attempt redraws the whole core from fresh boards. Part 2
2. Set the week for both squads. Choose how hard it is and where the work goes. The default matches the AI clubs, a quarter of the work on tactics, which holds a squad near the norm. Light keeps your regulars free of injuries; normal costs one now and then unless you rotate. Part 7
3. Pick from the academy draft board. Each week with a free academy slot you see four 16-year-olds with the same hidden ceiling and different profiles. Take the profile your formation lacks; an empty slot earns nothing. Part 6
4. Check your XI and the sliders. Unpinned slots pick the best fit and account for freshness. The sliders start at the engine's calibrated values, so leave them for the first match unless you have a reason. Every slider except Risk acts in every match; Risk acts only if you are behind at the hour. Part 8
5. Read the first report. Open a few sequences, read the narrated lines and the probabilities listed under them, and look at the shapes each side stood in. Part 10
6. Change one thing at a time. When the same event keeps happening to the same players in the same situation, change one lever and read the next match for that event. Part 10
7. Look at your next opponent. Reports and recently fielded shapes are public, so read their last match the way you read your own. Part 10
8. Make the club yours. Design your badge and kits in Settings — curated shapes, patterns and colours, applied at the next update. Every club is born with an identity, and badges appear beside club names across the tables and match pages; every player carries a photographic face of his own.

The rest of the primer explains the game part by part. Which attributes matter where (Part 4) lists the attributes that decide each situation on the pitch. Terms are defined in the glossary at the end, and the current simplifications are listed under Known limitations.

A living world that ticks

xtboss is a football management game played against a living world: 744 clubs in a ten-division pyramid, almost all run by AI managers, a few by people like you. The world advances in daily ticks. You declare intentions (training plans, tactics, draft picks, transfer bids) whenever you like; the next tick validates them, makes them real, plays the matches and publishes the results. Nothing waits for you, and nothing needs you online at 3 a.m.

The ten divisions come in five twin pairs. Both divisions of a pair have the same number of parallel groups, and each pair has twice as many groups per division as the pair above it. Every group holds 12 clubs:

Each twin pair is one talent tier: the players who belong two divisions up are a class above yours. Money follows the same steps. Both divisions of a pair pay the same income, and it rises sharply from one pair to the next (Part 11).

Taking over: three drafts in three weeks

When you claim a club you may redraft the squad's core. The top seniors and academy players each present a board of four alternatives, every card with the same age, wage, contract and hidden ceiling as the original. The draft changes the shape of your squad, never its fortune. At least two goalkeeper boards are guaranteed per squad, and you pick both squads' formations. A formation chosen here applies at once, and the squad's inherited cohesion follows to it.

You have three attempts, to be used during the claim week and the two weeks after it. The first attempt is all or nothing: submit any picks and every core slot is drafted (anything you skip, your scout fills). From the second attempt every board also offers the player you already have, so you keep what you like and redraft only the boards you change. The boards are drawn fresh each attempt from the players you hold then. An attempt is spent only when at least one board is redrafted; formations alone cost nothing. A card inherits the original's fitness and injuries, and a redraft costs no cohesion. Attempts you have not used lapse when the window closes, and it never reopens.

Your club and your week

You run two squads of up to 30 seniors and 30 academy players, plus a wage budget, a formation identity per squad and a training ground. The club pages are your office: Overview (table, fixtures, pending changes), Squad/Youth, Training, Tactics (the laboratory), Matches (full reports), Transfers, and the Daily report, your club's news feed.

The week

Training runs as four lighter sessions on the match-free days; recovery and rehab run every day. A season is 13 weeks: 11 league weeks (22 senior rounds) and a two-week break in which the seniors rest and the youth Swiss steps up to three rounds a week, on days 2, 4 and 6.

The season turn. All of the season's business settles in one go on day 1 of the next season, the day the break ends: promotion and relegation, the group redraw, youth contracts repriced, 23-year-olds extended or listed, budgets enforced, the auction, and retirements. The break is your time to prepare for it, and your auction bids can be changed until that day.

Youth teams never play in the pyramid. All 744 academies play one global Swiss tournament: every week your youth XI meets an academy with a similar record that it has not faced. There is no relegation and no table to worry about; youth football exists to develop players and to reveal them.

Players: what you can see, and what you can't

Every player shows attributes (0–100). An outfielder is judged on twelve. A goalkeeper has four of his own and also uses five of the outfield twelve. They are passing (his distribution), composure (playing the ball under pressure), jumping (claiming high balls), speed (how quickly he sweeps, with rushing out) and teamwork (the organising voice that adds pressure near his goal).

No attribute is decorative and none does a single job. In the table, each attribute gets a plain line first, then the contests it enters for those who want the detail. The primer describes these mechanisms in words; the in-app Handbook is the full reference.

A goalkeeper adds four of his own, and they do not overlap. His own positioning is a goalkeeping skill, separate from the two outfield positioning attributes above.

Four things about attributes are worth carrying to a scouting trip:

• Positioning and speed are different signings. Positioning (offensive for a runner, defensive for a defender) decides when a player sets off; speed decides whether he arrives. Every race weighs them separately, and the same two attributes decide a defender's recovery run and an attacker's break.
• Two of them cannot be trained. Composure and teamwork grow only through matches played, never on the training ground. A gifted teenager can be coached into a passer; he can only be played into a calm one.
• Teamwork is read against the opponent. In its coordination contests it is compared with this opponent's teamwork, so the same squad can be well drilled against one side and ragged against the next.
• Aggression is free. It sits outside the strengths-and-weaknesses budget every other attribute is drawn from, so a fiery player paid nothing for his temper, and a calm one was not refunded.

In the report, “… times it perfectly and gets there first” and “… gets back and takes it off …” both describe the race in the figure below. A defender who reads the danger early does not need to be quick, and a quick one can survive reading it late. The same two attributes decide a recovery run, a race in behind, a loose ball and a byline chase.

Which attributes matter where

The table above goes attribute by attribute. This goes situation by situation: for each moment of a match, the attributes that decide it and what each one does there.

The hidden ceiling

Every player carries a hidden ceiling drawn from the world's talent supply: for every top-pair talent there are two of the tier below and four of the next. A 16-year-old's current ability tells you nothing about his ceiling. All academy entrants start at roughly the same modest level, and the ceiling expresses itself only through training and matches, along a hidden personal curve. Some spurt early, some bloom late.

Development, decline, motivation

Players do not improve by having birthdays. Ability moves through training, the main engine, aimed at a role's curriculum, and through matches, which develop the role actually played. Matches are also the only source of composure and teamwork: both are experience, banked match by match. Sometime in the mid-to-late twenties decline begins. Physique fades first, technique holds longer and the football brain endures longest, which is why veterans retrain into new roles. From then on, training maintains rather than builds.

Players also carry motivation. Playing regularly in a good side sustains it; sitting on the bench drains it — though a teenager tolerates the bench: the hunger for minutes grows with age and bites fully from about 20. A player whose motivation falls below a threshold walks away at the season's end, and the threshold is lower for a regular, so a benched veteran goes quickly and a playing regular hangs on.

Scouting: estimates, confidence and hidden potential

Every scout report shows an estimate of the player's ceiling with a confidence interval. At 16 the interval is so wide that the report tells you almost nothing. It narrows with evidence, and the two kinds of evidence move at different speeds:

• Matches are public evidence. Every appearance narrows the whole world's estimate, per role, so where you field him decides what the world learns about him.
• Training is private evidence. Your staff watch daily, so your own estimate narrows roughly twice as fast as the public one.

By 23 the estimate is exact for everyone, which is why the market opens then. Some things are never shown at any age: the shape of his growth curve and the age at which his decline will start. You infer them from what he does.

The academy and the weekly draft

Every week, if your academy has room, you receive a draft board: four 16-year-old prospects, pick one. The four differ in profile and best role but share the same hidden ceiling that week. There are no trap weeks and no jackpot weeks: the choice is always what shape of player you need, never a gamble on quality. Over time every club receives the same distribution of talent, so dynasties are built by developing and keeping, not by lucky draws.

AI clubs pick automatically. Your board waits, but an empty academy slot earns nothing, so dithering has a price. Four times a season a promotion window runs — and promotions are yours to call: queue players on the Youth page and the window lifts them while the senior squad has room. Nobody is promoted for you.

Training, wear and cohesion

Each squad's week is two choices. Load is how hard the week is, told by what it does to a regular who plays every match: Recovery (he starts every match well rested), Light (no injury risk, even if he never misses a match), Normal (an injury now and then, about once every two seasons, unless you rotate him) and Hard (about once or twice a season; a level for a squad that rotates, because a player who plays once a week carries no risk at any load). Where the work goes is a point between three corners: Technique (development toward each player's course plan), Fitness (stamina, and for finished players, slowly, the stamina ceiling itself) and Tactics (drills the squad as a unit: cohesion, with no load on the legs). The rest share follows from the two choices, and the page shows what the week does before you leave it. The default matches the AI clubs: a quarter of the work on tactics.

The day after a match is a rest day for every player who played: no training load and no training development that day. Regulars develop through their matches, the bench through every session.

The technique work goes into each player's course plan. By default he follows the role he covers; open him and the weighting itself is the surface: a role template fills the bars, a dragged bar makes the plan his own, and attributes he has finished or cannot grow are greyed and pass their share on. From 25 a player can be set against ageing, which targets what erodes once his decline begins. Where you field a player and where you train him are your two development levers.

Wear: the injury clock

Matches and hard training accumulate wear; rest recovers it. Wear quietly degrades match performance, lightly at first and steeply when high, and above a threshold every match carries injury risk: the more worn the player, the likelier and the longer the injury. The squad page grades the risk for his next match — none, low, medium, high — so the injury that still happens was your informed call; below the threshold there is no injury luck, ever. Injuries run short to medium (a knock, a strain, a hamstring, a ligament sprain — never a lost season), and in the last stretch of rehab a player becomes pinnable: pin him and he plays, at reduced sharpness and with a real risk of breaking down again. Rotation is the cure, and it costs nothing in cohesion.

Cohesion and the formation switch

Cohesion (0–100) is how well drilled the group is in the shape it plays. It adds to or takes from everything teamwork coordinates in a match: the offside trap, the back line turning together, finding the free man, the collective reading of passes. The norm is 75, close to where a squad that gives about a quarter of its week to tactics settles, and at the norm cohesion adds nothing. Below it the shared understanding leaks; above it the squad plays a little sharper, though there is less to gain above the norm than to lose below it. AI clubs keep a steady quarter of their week on tactics, so the league around you is drilled — a club you take over arrives at whatever its old regime had built, and your own week starts on the same quarter-to-tactics default as theirs.

Cohesion grows with tactics training, faster the further it is from 100, and it drops a little from every new arrival. Each formation keeps its own drilling. You switch in the tactics lab. Switching is free and takes effect at the next game update — but the cohesion on the pitch is the new shape's own: a brand-new shape starts at 0 and leaks until drilled, a shape you rested comes back at whatever it has left. Training builds only the shape you play; shapes resting in your repertoire fade faster than the active one, so breadth costs depth by itself — the club rotating three shapes is flexible but never as drilled as the club that spends every week on one. Rotating players within your squad is free.

Tactics: footprints, zone plans and four sliders

Your formation is the squad's structural identity: eleven role slots. The tactics lab draws each one as a footprint, the patch of pitch where that player receives the ball, duels and presses. The role fixes the footprint's identity: its line, its place and the way it moves between phases.

Each player then carries two dials that tune him within it. Attacking weight is how much of himself he commits forward: whether he joins attacks and how readily he tracks back. It is clamped to the role's own band, so no setting can turn one role into another. Effort is how hard he runs all match: closer to the next line, more ground covered, harder running when play breaks open and in the races onto balls into the box — and faster-draining legs after the hour. Where he anchors across the pitch, touchline or half-space, is the role's identity, not a dial. The dials for your eleven slots together are your zone plan.

The tactics lab draws all six shapes your team stands in, through view buttons grouped by side of the ball: build-up, vs mid-block and attack with it; press, block and deep block without.

Pressure on the ball comes from the defenders around it, mostly through their defensive positioning; the more attacking weight a player carries, the less of it he brings. Which attributes matter where (Part 4) lists who decides each situation.

Six shapes: build-up and two attacks with the ball; press, mid block and deep block without

A team owns six standing shapes in three pairs. With the ball it builds up against a press, attacks a mid block, or attacks a deep block. Without it, it presses, holds a mid block, or holds a deep block. Which pair is on the pitch is decided by where the ball is when a possession starts:

• Ball won in your own third (a goal kick, a ball won deep): you build up under their press. Every side meets the opponent's build-up with its press, its back line 46 metres from its own goal.
• The press played through: the match changes phase. The pressing side drops into its mid block (straight into its deep block if the ball is already in its final third) and you attack it in settled play. The mid block drops to the deep block once the ball reaches its final third, and the phase holds until the ball changes hands, even if you circulate it back deep.
• Ball won further up: settled attack from the first touch, against the mid block, or against the deep block if you win it inside their final third.

The same holds for them when you lose it, so a match contains six phases, three each way. Every back line stands at the height real teams keep in that phase — all six heights are measured anchors — and the Depth slider slides all six together, a couple of metres at most: a short side steps everything shallower, a long side sinks everything deeper, with the ball and without it.

Three lines in every shape. Each shape stands in three lines (back, middle and front) at the distances real teams keep in settled play. The phase's measured anchor places the back line, shifted a touch by your Depth slider; the middle and front lines follow at fixed gaps above it, and with the ball the front line stops about two metres short of their offside line. The formation decides who stands in which line, and with the ball the full-backs and wing-backs step up into the middle line. Within a line each role keeps a small place of its own: the defensive midfielder a few metres deeper than the central midfielder, the striker a little above the wingers.

A high-effort player stands closer to the next line in the direction of play, the more so the higher his dial. With the ball he covers much of the gap to the line in front of him (the front line edges toward their offside line); without it he drops only a short step toward the line behind. He only moves into free grass. When a team-mate already stands in his lane ahead of him, he stops at the distance real sides keep, so a high-effort wing-back with a winger in front of him holds back while one with an empty flank pushes on.

Without the ball the centre-backs hold the line that sets offside, and the full-backs stand a step above them: a metre or two in a back four, more for the wing-backs of a back five, and most when the side presses.

When play reaches a flank the whole back line slides toward it, so the ball-side full-back meets his winger near the touchline instead of holding the middle, and the far side opens accordingly. The deeper toward the byline the ball gets, the further the line packs into that corner — the byline pocket is the most crowded place to cross from, which is why the earlier ball from a step further out is often the better one. Three roles move on a diagonal, with the ball only. The inverted winger drifts inward toward the half-space and the edge of the box as the attack nears goal, the mezzala drifts outward into the channel, and the inverted full-back steps inward into midfield. High effort lengthens the diagonal.

Every shape also has its own width, taken from how real sides stand: narrowest when defending deep, widest when building through midfield. A back four is about 26 metres wide in a deep block.

With the ball the wide players stand where the ball-side full-back or winger really stands, so a back four is about 45 metres across when it plays out and a little narrower once the attack reaches the final third. A winger with a wing-back behind him stands in the half-space.

In the report, “… takes a touch and slows it down — the press is beaten, [team] drop off and [team] move up” marks the moment the match moves from the left panel of the figure below to the right one. The problem you are solving changes with it.

The four sliders

Every slider starts at the engine's own calibrated value, so an untouched panel plays exactly as the calibrated world does. Each one trades something for something else, and none has a "more is better" direction. Risk is the one that acts only in some matches: it does nothing unless you are behind at the hour (Known limitations). The texts below are the ones the tactics lab shows.

The lab

The tactics lab has two parts. Your formation and XI: the pitch draws every role's footprint through all six shapes. Tap a position to open its two dials on a floating card over the map; hold it to change the player. That is the whole per-player surface.

Team tactics: the four sliders, each opening into a plain-language note on what it trades, and three save slots — Custom A, B and C — that each hold a whole setup: the formation it was built for, the sliders, every player dial and the pinned XI. Save what you have, load it back later; loading a slot built for another shape switches the formation at the next game update, and the price is that shape's own drilling (Part 7). Reset takes the sliders back to the engine's calibrated neutral. The big map above is live in every view while you drag. The next opponent panel links to their public match reports.

Roles at a glance

Outfield roles group into five families by phase of play. What counts is fit: the game always rates a player against what a position actually demands, whatever the position is called.

Lineup pins fix players to slots; unpinned slots pick the best fit automatically, accounting for freshness. In the youth team, pinning also directs scouting: the pinned youngster is revealed at the role you chose. Every club's recently fielded shapes are public, so study your next opponent, and expect them to study you.

Inside the match

Matches are simulated action by action on a pitch grid over 90 minutes, in ticks of roughly six seconds, with one decision per tick for the side in possession.

The clock. A corner, a free kick, a goal kick, a throw-in, a kick-off and a penalty each hold the game for their real setup time: a corner about half a minute, a kick-off a full minute. A duel and a caught ball cost a moment too. Roughly a quarter to a third of the match is dead time, as on television, so each live action matters more, and the report clock shows the dead time as stoppage time.

Who decides each action. Every action is a contest between the players involved: the passer and his receiver against the defenders near the ball, the dribbler against the man in front of him, the shooter against the keeper. Their attributes set the odds of each step. A pass, for example, can be flagged offside, blocked, swept up by the keeper, cut out where it lands, overhit, or lost on the first touch or in the duel that follows, and the report names the player who decided it. Which attributes matter where (Part 4) lists the attributes situation by situation.

Two rules apply everywhere. First, attributes are read after fatigue (teamwork excepted, since coordination does not tire). Every player is at full strength until the 60th minute. From then on he plays at the level that a steady decline toward his full-time level would have reached at minute 60, which is two thirds of his total loss, and he stays there until the final whistle. Every outfield player carries the same load, including the pressing every side does against the opponent's build-up, and his stamina, compared with the other players in the match, decides how much of it he feels. The exceptions are the five high-effort players, who do not tire at all (Known limitations).

Second, every duel is a probability: close to a coin toss when the two players are level, close to certain when one is clearly better.

The pass: three gates in order

A pass can fail at several points. It can be flagged offside as it is played: on a ball in behind, the tighter the runner's race, the likelier the flag, and a runner who wins it comfortably is rarely caught. It can be blocked off the boot, swept up by a keeper coming out (a ground ball near his goal), or cut out where it lands. It can be asked to travel too far and die in flight, dropping loose and credited to nobody. Or the receiver's first touch fails under pressure and he loses the duel that follows.

Distance has a cost, the distance tax. The further a ball travels, the more of its quality it loses, less so from a good passer. A longer ground pass also crosses more defended ground, where it can be blocked, and how readily the defenders step into the lane is a contest: your passer and your side's movement against their collective reading of the game.

A high ball flies over the bodies in the lane, so for it the same contest is fought in the flight. A long ball struck under pressure is taxed as if it had further to go, the more so the less passing and composure the passer has. That is why a switch that is on for one side can be a giveaway for the other. Distance also has a hard end: beyond a certain range no pass carries at all, whoever strikes it.

A ball cut out is a ball won: the man who takes it plays on from there. A high press therefore does more than disrupt; it can hand you the ball in their half.

Duels, dribbles and the slow-dribble rule

Where a pass lands, the first contest is the race for the ball: the receiver's pace and offensive positioning against the nearest defender's pace and defensive positioning, and a better pass helps the receiver. If the defender gets there first, he cuts the ball out. If he reaches the receiver as the ball arrives, the tackle decides: the receiver's ball control, helped by a good pass, against the defender's tackling, and in the air both players' jumping as well. A beaten player may pull a shirt: the more aggression he has, the likelier, while composure holds him back, and the referee's detection rate decides whether it becomes a free kick or quietly works.

The defender in a duel is one named player, usually the one best placed and best suited to the contest: pace and defensive positioning to cut out a ball, tackling on the ground, jumping and tackling in the air. A well-drilled defence (better teamwork than the attack) sends the right man more often. The odds the ball carrier faces are that man's own, and the report names him; fouls and cards come from the duel that is played.

A dribble meets one defender at the zone it enters, and the tackle decides: the dribbler's ball control against the defender's tackling, while pace and positioning hardly change it. The more defenders there are around him, the more often a dribble turns into a duel and the likelier he loses control; his composure lowers both. Dribbling is also slow by design: one touch moves the ball one zone. Moving the ball far and fast is what passing is for. In midfield a take-on only buys a metre, and along the touchline every touch risks running the ball out for a throw-in.

The take-on with the most at stake is the one at their back line: ball control against tackling and positioning decides how much daylight a dribbler takes past his man (see Breaking the line, below).

Then it is a chase: every defender who can still catch him meets him in a duel where he catches him, each one closer to goal, and losing any of them loses the ball — sometimes off the tackler and out of play, so corners and throw-ins are born in these duels too. That is where to play a dribbler, and it is why a defence with men close together is far harder to run through than a lone defender with grass behind him.

The shot, and who the keeper is

Shots only exist inside a real envelope: close enough, at a real angle. The chance is location times shooter. Distance and angle dominate (that is the xG in your reports), multiplied by finishing. Pressure degrades the strike the same way it degrades a pass, and composure is what separates the striker who finishes with a defender in his face. Blockers in the lane raise the block risk; placement and calm lower it. A blocked shot goes behind for a corner about one time in four and otherwise stays in play as a loose ball. A save the keeper cannot hold goes behind for a corner more often than it rebounds. First-time finishes catch the keeper unset; a controlling touch gives him time to set his feet.

Scout keepers for the shots your division produces, and remember that distribution and sweeping differ between keepers too.

Set pieces

Corners and deep free kicks put a delivery into a packed box. The best leapers attack the delivery and the defence marks them; who reaches the ball is the same race as for any delivery, the duel at the ball is jumping, and then the normal header and shot models take over. Direct free kicks must beat the wall first, and penalties are finisher against keeper, nothing else.

Your squad decides its own takers: the best passer delivers corners, the best mix of passing and finishing strikes direct free kicks, the best mix of finishing and composure takes penalties, and the best leapers attack the box.

Throw-ins are taken by defenders and midfielders, so your forwards stay available to receive. Set pieces are a real reason to value jumping and a dead-ball foot in players you would otherwise pass over.

Deliveries into the box

A delivery is a ball from a wide channel in the final third into the central area in front of goal: the flank cross and the pulled-back ball. It resolves as one moment. First the delivery has to get away and through, and the crosser's passing is measured under the pressure of whoever is on him. A defender tight on him blocks more at source and makes the balls that get away worse, composure holds the delivery together, and a crosser left alone (after an overlap, or a clean run to the byline) delivers at his full quality.

Then the box resolves by assignment. Everyone who can reach the landing area races for it, attackers and defenders, from where they actually stand, in a window that includes the crosser's wind-up, because box runs begin before the ball does.

Markers take arrivals in order, the best cover on the biggest threat, and every arrival race runs at the player's own effort — a hard-running body on either side covers the ground quicker. The surplus attacker, the one nobody was left to take, tends to arrive clean, but only tends: teamwork on both sides sets the exchange rate between having the numbers and getting the free man. The finish belongs to the arriving player: a header lives on jumping and finishing, a first-time finish on finishing and composure, and a ball he takes down first on his ball control against his marker's tackling.

The two deliveries split on the offside law. A cross comes from behind or level with the box; its runners can stray offside, and a high line plays for that flag. A cutback is pulled back from the byline; its runners arrive from behind the ball and can never be offside. That immunity, plus the calmer touch a square ball allows, is what defines the cutback. From the byline inside the width of the box the ball is not always pulled back. It can be driven low along the six-yard line or lifted to the far post: a cross by shape, but one whose runners are level with the ball and cannot be flagged either.

In the report, “… whips in a good cross toward …” and “… pulls it back — a good ball to the runner arriving late” are the two deliveries in the figure below.

Breaking the line

The opponent's back line sets the ceiling for your attackers: no forward of yours stands beyond it, so that space has to be taken. Any arrival in the band at the line (a pass into it, a through-ball behind it, a dribble over it) starts a moment of its own, and the player has three choices: shoot from where he stands, try to get through — or lay the ball off: pull it back for a team-mate arriving late, or play the wall and take the return behind the line. What he cannot do is keep the ball there and recycle it quietly; the band is not a place to hold possession.

Centrally, getting through means taking on the line. If he wins, he runs at goal. The keeper comes to meet him once the ball is inside his range, and the shot happens where they meet, unless a team-mate has arrived unmarked by then and is squared the ball instead; team-mates run with every break. Wide there are more ways through: he can take the defender on, cut inside, cross early, or play in a team-mate overlapping outside him. And in either channel the layoff is live: the man who binds the line can pull the ball back for a team-mate arriving late, or play the wall and take the return behind the line.

Behind the line the chase does not stop at the first man. Every defender who catches the runner gets his own duel where he catches him, closer to goal each time. After a cut inside past the line, the chasers have kept running while he dribbled in, and the defender he has just beaten has to turn before he can follow. So a compact block with support close by is hard to run through and a high line with grass behind it is not.

Pace matters most in the widest breaks, where the race to the byline is decided in metres. A cutback needs someone who has already broken the line, which is the point of breaking it wide.

There are four ways to reach the byline: beat the man wide; take the blocking defender on the outside (he guards the inside, so that is a race rather than a duel); win the race in behind; or receive a ball played behind the line as you arrive. A run along the touchline does not have to go all the way: it can stop one row short of the byline, at the corner of the box, and deliver from there.

A ball that gets behind the line any other way, won there or played through, starts the breakout instead. The breakout also follows a turnover, when the side that wins the ball breaks against a team still standing in its attacking shape. It can end in one of eight ways: a one-on-one, a lay-off to a team-mate, a duel with a covering defender, a dangerous cross, possession kept in settled play, the ball lost to the counter-press, an offside flag, or a penalty when the caught runner is brought down in the box.

In the report, “At the last line, … stands … up and wins it” is a take-on lost at the line, and “… beats his man right on the line and drives in behind” is one that was won.

Tempo, the scoreline and where you lose the ball

Tempo has two sides: receivers face less pressure, because the defence is never set, and hurried one-touch receptions are fumbled more. It does not affect the keeper, who is beaten by moments such as a first-time finish, a rebound or a sweep he missed.

The scoreline bends both sides’ choices all match: a side in front protects the ball, a side behind discounts risk. The Risk slider adds its own response on top, once, at the hour: behind, more of your players commit forward; level or ahead it does nothing (see Known limitations below).

Where you lose the ball matters through the ball, not the bodies: a loss near your own goal hands the opponent play that starts there, and the players engaged around the ball are your counter-press while the deep bodies make the recovery. Who is deep is set by attacking weight — players committed forward by it are the ones missing from the recovery.

Reading match reports like a coach

What the report is, and what it is not

The report tells you what happened. It does not tell you what to do about it; that is your job, and the report is written so that you can do it. It shows the key events the engine produced, with the probabilities behind each step. It does not show every calculation, but every line names a real contest in the engine, so you can read it as evidence.

The method, in five steps:

1. Read one line.
2. Name the contest it describes. The phrase table below does that for you.
3. Look for the same type of event in other possessions and in other matches. Check whether it involves the same players and the same situation: the same channel, the same opponent, the same pressure, the same phase of play.
4. If it keeps recurring and the players and situations line up, you have a pattern rather than an accident, and the pattern is your diagnosis.
5. Pick one lever, change one thing, and read the next match for the same contest. If it is gone, you have learned something. If it is not, your hypothesis was wrong and you have narrowed the field.

Never coach from one event. A lost duel, a stray pass, a shot dragged wide: any single one can be variance. What means something is the same event recurring for the same player, in the same channel, against the same opponent, under the same pressure. That is a structure, and structures are what sliders move. Read the report down the page and across matches.

One sequence on the pitch

Every sequence in the full report opens on a pitch. The figure is one possession from a simulated match, Bergvik Athletic away at Älvstad FF: Bergvik win the ball with an interception in their own third, build up under the press along their left flank, and Fredrik Antonsen gets in behind the last line; his cross is headed away. The gold line is the ball's route through all four views: dashed for a pass, solid for a dribble, a thick hollow arc for a cross or long ball.

The first three views are the shape in each phase the possession passed through: both teams' average positions while the engine was in that phase, the defending side's pressure in front of its back line as shading, and the back line itself dashed. The fourth is the delivery: the players as the engine counted them when the ball was struck, the square it was aimed at, who marked whom, and each attacker's chance of the first touch. Only outfield players mark; when the keeper comes for the ball, his run is drawn on its own.

Read the three shapes in order and the possession tells its own story: the build-up against the press, the mid block once the press is beaten, and the deep block at the edge of the box (the “Vs low block” view). Then comes the delivery, where the positions are no longer averages but the bodies the engine actually set against each other.

Under the text of an opened sequence the report also lists, step by step, the chance each pass, dribble, cross and shot had of coming off and what it became, and, one click further, which attributes decided each step. A long run of steps that came off is a possession that kept beating the odds; a single step at a few per cent is where it was decided.

The phrases, and what each one means

The narrator has a fixed vocabulary. Each phrase below marks one mechanism, and the mechanism is explained earlier in this primer.

Every phrase above is quoted as the report writes it, with [name] and [team] where the report puts a real name; search for the words around them and you will find the line. Players are named as they are in your squad. The report does not say which slot or side a name belongs to, so read it with your team sheet beside you.

High line, press and block

These three words name moments of one shape rather than three settings. Every side meets the opponent's build-up the same way: if he wins the ball in his own third, he is building up and you are pressing, with your back line 46 metres from your goal.

He then either loses the ball there (under the press his passers lose quality, the more so the less composure they have, and their long balls carry less far), or he plays through the press. At that moment the phase changes: you stop engaging and drop into your block, and he attacks it in settled play until the ball changes hands again.

If he wins the ball further up, there is no pressing phase, because you are already in the block. So “high line” describes where your defenders stand in the block, “press” describes a phase that exists only while the opponent builds from his own third, and “block” is what you become once that phase ends.

For the side with the ball this means two separate problems, and solving the first does not solve the second. Escaping the press is problem one. Attacking a settled block is problem two, and it is a different game: the space behind is gone, the bodies are between you and the goal, and the ball has to be worked through or around them. A report full of “the press is beaten” next to a handful of shots describes a team that solves the first problem and not the second. Know which of the two you are failing before you touch a slider.

Possession and what you do with it

Read the summary as separate dimensions. Territory, progression, line breaks, entries into the final third, shots and shot quality are different achievements, and a side can win any of them while losing the rest. A team with two thirds of the ball and twice the passes can lose the shot count three to one: that is a side circulating in front of a block it never breaks. The question to ask is what you did with the ball: how far it travelled, how often it got behind a line, how often that produced a shot, and where your possessions kept ending.

A line can be broken four ways

“Through the line” names an outcome; the method behind it is what you can change. The ball gets behind a defensive line by a pass into the band, by a ball played behind it for a runner to race onto, by a take-on at the line, or by a combination, the one-two that leaves the marker on the wrong side. When you see a line broken, ask who broke it, how, why the line was open there, and what happened next. A side that breaks lines often and creates nothing has its problem after the break.

From report to decision

Do not change anything because of one failed action. Look for repeated failures of the same type: the repeated contest is the diagnosis, and the lever is your intervention. Read the table as a list of hypotheses to test, not as rules. Read your reports the way a coach watches film: ask which contests you kept losing, and who you have that wins them.

One worked example

You read: “Possession lost in the right-hand channel: the pass is fine but the receiver is smothered.” The report says the pass was fine, so the reception was the problem. Do nothing yet. Look for the same channel and the same receiver in the rest of the report and in the next match. If it happened once, it is noise. If it keeps happening, ask why that player is isolated: is he too far from support, is the tempo hurrying him into a first touch he cannot take, or is his marker simply better? Change one of those and read the next match for the same pattern.

The analysis view adds maps (touches, long balls, losses, regains), player ratings with the duels behind each one, repeated matchups, channels, the shot list with xG, a timeline in 15-minute windows, set pieces, the shapes each side actually stood in, and the coach's notes. Reports are public: reading a rival's matches is scouting.

Money and the market

Your income follows your division. Both divisions of a twin pair pay the same, and income rises sharply from one pair to the next. The budget covers only about 24 players at your level's going rate, while a squad holds 30, so every club has to mix stars with cheap youth contracts and bargains; nobody fields eleven full-price players.

Under-23s are paid one tier below the level they have shown so far, and repriced every season. That makes them the bargain of the game, and it also means a developing talent gets more expensive as he grows.

Where the market comes from

Four streams feed the transfer list: the age-23 rule (every youth contract ends at 23: the home club extends the player at his market wage if the budget has room, and a player more than one quality tier above or below the club's level, or one the club releases, is listed), academy players released unpromoted at 21, players clubs choose to list, and budget releases. The list grows through the season; the 23-year-olds and the budget releases join it at the season turn, just before the auction.

The auction: a descending clock with hidden bids

Once a season, at the season turn, every listed player is sold by a descending clock, the best players first. For each player the asking wage falls until it reaches the highest hidden maximum any club lodged, and that club signs him at that wage. Your bid is therefore the wage you pay if it is the highest: it is not trimmed down to just above the next-best bid. Your bid map is your complete statement — leave a player blank and your club bids nothing, declare no bids at all and your club bids on no one. A scout watch (roles, age, scouted level) flags matching listings in your daily report — public information only, attention rather than an edge. Bids are capped by your headroom (your budget minus your wage bill), you need a free senior slot to win anyone, a bid below 30 % of the player's going rate does not count, and a player nobody bids for leaves the game.

Letting players go

There are no transfer fees between clubs. A listed player leaves at the next update, freeing his wage and his slot, and is signed at auction by whoever wins him. You list to clear budget, open academy slots or cut dead weight, never for income. You may bid on your own listed player like any other club: list him to free his wage today, then try to win him back cheaper at the auction. A richer club can outbid you, and then he is gone. Listing a player under 23 also publishes your private scout estimate with him (Part 5).

Your first season, in ten lines

1. Claim a club and use the takeover draft: three attempts in your first three weeks, then never again.
2. Pick a formation and drill it. Each shape keeps its own cohesion: switching is free, but a new shape starts from 0 and resting shapes fade.
3. Set the week: how hard, and where the work goes. The default matches the AI clubs, a quarter of the work on tactics, which holds a squad near the norm of 75. Light keeps regulars free of injuries; normal costs one now and then unless you rotate.
4. Check the draft board weekly; pick for the roles your academy lacks.
5. Field your best XI, but watch wear: rotate before the injuries choose your XI for you.
6. Read your own match reports, then your next opponent's.
7. Use the player dials and the lineup pins to act on what the reports show you.
8. Give your promising youngsters minutes in the roles you want revealed.
9. Lodge auction bids before the season turn. They are capped by your headroom, and a winning bid is paid in full.
10. Remember that every youth contract ends at 23, your best 22-year-old's included. Plan for it.

Glossary

Short definitions of the terms this primer uses, with the part that explains each one in full.

Band at the line

The strip just in front of the opponent's back line. A ball that arrives there starts a moment of its own: the player shoots or tries to get through, and cannot recycle the ball. Part 9

Block

The shape a side defends in once the press is beaten or never started: the mid block while the ball is in the middle of the pitch, and the deep block at the edge of the box once the ball reaches the final third. Both stand at measured heights, slid a touch by the Depth slider — like the press, whose back line stands 46 metres from its own goal in every side. Part 8, Known limitations

Breakout

What follows when the ball gets behind a line other than through the band: after a turnover, or when a side plays through a press. It ends in one of eight ways, from a one-on-one to a penalty. Part 9

Cohesion

How well drilled a squad is in the shape it plays, from 0 to 100. The norm is 75: below it everything teamwork coordinates works less well, above it slightly better. Tactics training builds the shape you play, new arrivals cut every shape, resting shapes fade, and a brand-new shape starts at 0. Part 7

Cutback

A ball pulled back from the byline to a runner arriving behind it. Its runners can never be offside, and the square ball is easier to take first time than a cross. Part 9

Distance tax

What distance costs a pass. The ball loses quality the further it travels, less from a good passer; a longer ground ball crosses more defended ground, where it can be blocked or read; a high ball can fall short in flight; and beyond a maximum range no pass carries at all. Sides that move as a unit pay less of it against the same defence. Part 9

Five high-effort players

The five outfield players per side with the highest effort dials — untouched, the engine picks by role, wing-backs and central midfielders first — who stand closer to the next line, cover more ground and do not tire. Parts 4 and 8, Known limitations

Footprint

The patch of pitch the tactics lab draws for each role: where that player receives the ball, duels and presses in each shape. Part 8

Headroom

Your wage budget minus your current wage bill. Auction bids are capped by it. Part 11

Hidden ceiling

The level a player can reach with full training, drawn from the world's talent supply. Your scouts estimate it, with growing confidence, until he turns 23. Parts 4 and 5

Pressure

How much defensive presence is on the player with the ball. It comes from the defenders around him, mostly through their defensive positioning, and it makes every pass, touch and shot worse; composure is the relief. Part 4

Scouting confidence

The width of the interval around a scout's estimate: very wide at 16, narrowed by matches (for every club) and by your own training sessions (for your staff only), and gone at 23. Part 5

Season turn

Day 1 of a new season, when the break ends and the season's business settles: promotion and relegation, the group redraw, contracts, budgets, the auction and retirements. Part 3

Wear

Tiredness that carries over between matches. Matches and hard training add it and rest removes it; it degrades performance and, above a threshold, brings injury risk. Part 7

Zone plan

Your per-slot instructions in the tactics lab: each player's attacking weight (how much of himself he commits forward; more of it means less defensive presence) and his effort (how hard he runs all match, and how fast his legs drain), both set within his role's band. Part 8