October 2026
46 updates shipped in October 2026 — 21 new features, 9 balance changes and 16 fixes. FM Worlds is worked on continuously and the worlds stay live while it happens, so everything below landed in seasons that were already being played.
Tackles, interceptions and clearances
Every player now has his own tackles, interceptions, blocks and clearances in each match, and defenders are rated on them.
- How much defending a side does comes from the match: the more the other team has the ball, the more tackles and clearances there are to make. Who makes them depends on each player's position and his defending, so a strong defender wins clearly more of them over a season.
- Defenders and midfielders are rated on their own defending: the man who kept winning the ball rates higher than the team-mate beside him, even in a defeat. A defender who barely got involved while his side conceded four is rated accordingly.
- The match report's player table shows each player's tackles, interceptions, blocks and clearances, and highlights each side's best defender.
- Matches already played keep their numbers and ratings.
Players who were in the game twice
A few real footballers were in the game twice: once under a nickname and once under their full name, or under two spellings of the same name. Each world now has one of each.
- Where a world had both copies, the extra one is removed. If you signed him, the deal is undone and you get your money back; if you sold him, the fee goes back to the buyer.
- Where a world had only the extra copy, he becomes the real player and stays at his club on the same contract, wage and squad number.
- If a club of yours was affected, you get one letter in your inbox saying what changed. Nothing is posted in the news.
- The extra copies cannot come back into the game.
Match ratings rate the player, not the result
Player ratings now follow what each player did in the match, so a good performance in a defeat is rated as one, and your best players read as consistently good.
- Each player is rated on his own match: the chances he got, his shots on target, the chances he made, his goals and assists. Before, anyone who didn't score was rated almost entirely on the scoreline.
- The result still counts, but only a little. A beaten side's players are no longer pushed below 6 as a group, and a player who made chances or saves in a defeat can still earn a 7 or more.
- Goals let in are now counted once, against the goalkeeper and the defence, instead of three or four times over.
- A 10 is genuinely rare: one goal is usually worth about 8, a brace about 8.8 and a hat-trick about 9.2. Man of the Match adds a little less than before.
- Ratings from matches already played stay as they were.
Imported worlds get their cups in season one
Worlds brought over from another site played their whole first season without a domestic cup or a European draw. They now get both, like every other world.
- When a host starts an imported world, its cup draw and European draw are scheduled a day out, and the cups start after the league has opened.
- Imported worlds already playing their first season without cups get their cup draw within a day. Their European competitions, if already drawn, stay as they are.
- Hosts: the economy level (Rich, Standard, Tight, Poor) is on your world's Manage page, in the Starting budgets and economy card. It can be set until the world starts.
Duplicate players corrected, and no more "CUS" leagues
Some worlds still had a second copy of a real footballer playing for a club, often with a very different rating. Each one is now the real player, and worlds brought over from another site no longer show a code where the country should be.
- A duplicate becomes the real player in place: his real name, rating, attributes, positions and photo. He stays at your club on the same contract, wage and squad number, and keeps his appearances and history with you.
- If one of your players was corrected, or you had an offer out for one, you get one letter in your inbox listing who changed and how his rating moved.
- Leagues in worlds moved over from another site are called Division 1, Division 2 and so on instead of CUS Division 1, unless the host has already renamed them, and the CUS code is no longer shown as a country.
Fair deals and release clauses go through
The fair-play check was stopping too many honest deals and release clauses. It now steps in only where it is needed.
- A deal between two managers whose accounts are not linked goes straight through, release clauses included, however lopsided the season between the two clubs has been. The admins still see it afterwards.
- Where two accounts are linked, a deal at a fair price is checked and cleared automatically. Only the unclear ones wait for an admin.
- A release clause agreed weeks ago counts as a fair price. Only a clause set or changed in the last two weeks is checked like any other fee.
- Hosts of private worlds can switch the FMW trade checks off for their own league, under Manage. Public and official worlds always keep them.
More room in your wage budget
Small and thin squads were being refused even cheap signings because the wage budget only ever stretched a quarter past the wages you already pay. Every club now always has room to sign a solid player for its level.
- Your wage budget is your current wage bill plus a quarter, or plus 5% of your FFP cap (what your TV money and ground can sustain), whichever is more. A top-flight club always has about €80k a week or more of room, a lower-league club about €20k–€55k.
- Releasing or selling players to make room no longer shrinks the room you have.
- When a wage is too high, the message now tells you exactly how much you can add in one signing.
- The FFP cap is still the hard limit, and a wage budget set by your world host still applies as it is.
A club's full transfer history
A club's Transfers tab could leave out arrivals: it only ever showed the latest 60 deals in and out together, so a club that sold a lot had its signings pushed off the list.
- Arrivals and departures are now listed separately, and each shows its real number of deals.
- Spent, Received and Net now add up every deal the club has made, not only the ones that fitted on the page. Undone deals still don't count.
A player's potential is never below his rating
Some players showed a potential lower than their current rating, such as "79 - 73", after this season's rating update raised them past it.
- Every affected player now has a potential at least as high as his rating. Players under 23 get the same room to grow as any newly added player of their age; older players' potential matches their rating.
- Future rating updates move a player's potential up with his rating whenever they would otherwise leave it below.
- Breakouts and setbacks work from the corrected potential, and a setback still never takes a player's potential below his rating.
New signings give you time before asking for minutes
Players were complaining about their minutes far too soon: some new signings opened with "I didn't come here to sit on the bench" on the day they arrived.
- Nobody raises their minutes until about half a season has gone: 15 matches they were available for at your club, or half the season in a league with fewer rounds.
- A player who was unhappy about his minutes at his old club arrives with a clean slate.
- Only matches since he joined count, and games he missed injured never count against you.
Loan wages on the finances page
The finances page listed a player on loan at his full wage among your biggest earners, even when his parent club pays it.
- The list of highest-paid players outside your starting XI now shows what your club actually pays each player. A loanee whose parent club covers his whole wage no longer appears in it.
- Your wage bill, wages and expected balance were always right: you were never charged for the part his parent club pays.
Loans and pre-contracts, as in real football
A loan no longer stops a player's contract from running out, and it no longer stands in the way of a free transfer.
- A player in the last months of his contract can agree a pre-contract while he is out on loan, just as he could at home. Any club can offer one except the club that holds his contract, and that includes the club he is on loan at.
- Loaning a player out no longer calls off a pre-contract he has already agreed. When his contract runs out, he joins that club.
- A contract keeps running while the player is away. When it ends, so does his loan: he joins the club he agreed a pre-contract with, or leaves on a free unless his club has re-signed him. You can still renew a player while he is out on loan.
- A loan can't be longer than what is left of a player's contract. Loans that already run past the end of a contract simply end with it, with nothing to pay, while an obligation to buy that falls due as the contract ends still goes through.
Choose how fast AI clubs answer bids
Hosts of private worlds can now set how long a club with no manager takes to accept or reject a bid.
- Pick it in your world's rules on the Manage page: the standard 24 to 48 hours, or 12 to 24, 6 to 12, 3 to 6 or 1 to 2 hours, or a slower 2 to 4 days.
- The exact moment is still hidden and differs from bid to bid, and it speeds up with the world's pace like every other wait.
- On deadline day every bid is still answered before the window shuts. Worlds that leave it alone keep the standard 24 to 48 hours.
Sell a new signing once he has settled in
A player you bought could not be listed for sale until the next season, even after his settling-in period had ended. The settling-in period is now the only wait.
- A new signing still cannot be sold, listed or loaned out for about four weeks of game time (less in a faster world).
- After that you can list him for sale straight away, in the same season.
- The other fair-play limits stay: how many players you can buy from one club each season, the price cap on deals between two managers, and admin checks on suspicious deals.
Substitutes are no longer booked before they come on
When a substitute was booked, scored or got injured in the same minute he came on, the commentary listed it before his substitution, so he seemed to be booked before he had entered.
- Anything a substitute does in his first minute now comes after the line that brings him on. The match itself was always right; only the order of the commentary was wrong, and older matches read correctly too.
Between seasons, last season stays in view
When your league's season ends, you can still see how it finished and watch your last match while you wait for the new season to begin.
- Until the new season kicks off, the league table shows last season's final table instead of a table of zeroes.
- Your final league match stays on your home page, your schedule and your club page, ready to watch. Your league position isn't given away until you've watched it, and pre-season friendlies don't push it off your home page.
- Every league in a world now ends its season on the same day. In World Championship 1 the French and German leagues' next season has been spread out to finish with the others.
- A season is now played out before the next one begins: cup and European rounds still to play when the league ends are played in the break, and if they need more time the new season starts a little later. Pre-season friendlies stay before the opening day.
- The "Contracts renewed" letter now names the players who signed new deals.
More transfer market fixes
The second half of today's transfer clean-up: fewer deals that fall through for no good reason, fairer checks on swaps and loans, and a clearer record of every deal.
- A deal that hits a brief technical problem while it completes is tried again instead of being called off.
- Once a player has moved, bids that lost out on him stay closed and their clubs are told, instead of coming back to life.
- You can have one live bid for a player at a time. If yours is waiting behind another club's agreed deal, withdraw it before bidding again.
- Players offered in a swap are valued at what they are really worth when the deal completes, not at a stored figure.
- New release clauses can be set at up to three times a player's value, the same limit as a bid. Clauses already agreed stay as they are.
- A player whose contract runs out leaves without his old release clause or listing.
- The sell-on badge now shows on every player who carries one, not only on listed or injured players.
- Loans between managers now count in the fair-play checks, and every deal records who made it and when.
A safer transfer market
We went through every way a player or money can move between clubs and fixed the places where a deal could go wrong behind your back.
- A release clause belongs to the contract it was written into. When you buy a player, his old club's clause no longer comes with him, so the club that sold him can't buy him back by meeting it, and AI clubs can't call it on you. A player you release leaves without one too.
- AI clubs no longer sign a free agent you have won at auction or are still bidding for, and if a won prospect does slip away you get a letter saying so.
- When a deal is reversed and the selling club has already spent the money, the buyer still gets the full fee back and the seller owes the rest as club debt. Sell-on payments work the same way: the club owed a share is always paid in full.
- Taking over a club now cancels any deals the AI had agreed for it, so you can't lose a player to a sale you never made.
- A player whose contract is running out keeps it until an agreed transfer goes through, instead of the deal collapsing at the end of the season.
- Releasing a player now ends every offer for him, and resigning no longer wipes the record of the deals you made.
- A club can't take more than three players from one club in a season by agreeing several deals at once, and bids to AI clubs have the same maximum fee as bids between managers.
- If you renew a player who is out on loan, his loan club's wage bill no longer goes up: you can extend his deal on his current wage now and talk about a rise when he's back.
- Two clubs going for the same player at the same moment now see the usual "try again" message instead of an error page.
Morale recovers again
Player morale was meant to settle back toward normal between matches, and that recovery had silently stopped working — so a run of bad results kept dragging squads down until many players sat around 10/100.
- Morale now fades back toward a settled 70 between matches again, a little each day.
- Defeats no longer drag a squad below that settled 70. A win still lifts a player by 6 and a defeat takes it back, but a losing run on its own can't make your players miserable.
- What does push morale lower is personal: a player unhappy about his game time (the lower his concern, the lower he settles), a fine, a broken promise or a poor contract offer.
- Players the old problem had left very low have been lifted back to their normal level, so squads start from where they should be.
- The same applies to every club, human-run and computer-run alike.
Tougher on multi-account cheating
Running a second account to feed players or money to your main club is now much harder to get away with, whatever network or browser it comes from.
- Deals between two managers that move a lot of value one way in a season — big overpays, stars sold for next to nothing — now wait for an admin check before they complete, even if nothing else links the two accounts. Ordinary trading is not affected.
- The game recognises the same browser and machine across accounts much more reliably than before, so a VPN or a fresh login no longer hides a second account.
- Signups through VPNs, proxies and data centres, and batches of new accounts from one network, are flagged to the admins. Nobody is refused for using a VPN.
- The Privacy Policy explains exactly what is kept for fair play and for how long.
No more "Managers' duel" posts in the news feed
Every match between two human managers used to post a "Managers' duel" line to the world's news feed. With many managers in a world they flooded it, so they are gone — the old ones too.
- Your head-to-head record against another manager is still kept and still shows on both managers' profiles.
Money has to be earned, kept and paid back
After a full audit of the game's economy, money now works the same for every club and costs something to hold on to — so a rich club is rich because of the calls its manager made.
- Cup and European prize money now goes to whoever wins the round, human or AI. Until now only clubs with a human manager were paid prizes.
- Facilities cost money to run: every season a facility costs a twentieth of what it cost to build, paid a little each matchday with your stadium upkeep — nothing at level 1, €10m a season at level 5. You can step a facility down on the Facilities page to save the money.
- A matchday you cannot pay is now owed, not forgotten. The debt is paid back automatically from your next matchdays' money; until then you cannot sign anyone and your squad's morale drops a little each round. Your Finances page shows what you owe.
- A loan that is cut short cannot be agreed again between the same two clubs for 14 days, and deals between two human clubs far above or below a player's value are now flagged to the admins.
A club's transfers, arrivals and departures
The Transfers tab on every club page now splits a club's business into who came in and who went out, so you can see at a glance how a rival is building.
- Arrivals and departures sit side by side, each with its number of deals and what it cost or brought in.
- Above them: what the club has spent, what it has received, and its net spend.
- Free signings and loans are marked, and a deal an admin undid is struck through and left out of the totals.
Your club cards say which club needs you
If you manage several clubs, the cards on the Play page used to look the same whichever one was about to field a broken side. Each card now tells you what that club needs before its next match, and the whole card lights up when something does.
- A card lists what needs fixing: no lineup saved, a starter who is injured, banned for that competition or has left the club, a starter who will be tired at kick-off, a player you promised minutes who isn't in the side, or a player waiting for a reply. A club with nothing to do gets a small green 'Ready'.
- 'Last in' is now kept per club, so you can see which one you haven't looked at, and 'Next match' covers every competition — cup ties, European nights and friendlies included — turning amber with 'in 5h' once kick-off is within a day.
- The same check drives a banner on your dashboard in the 24 hours before kick-off, with a link to fix the lineup, and the 15-minute kick-off notification now says 'check your side' and names who's the problem.
- Cup finals and European nights now get that kick-off notification too. Until now only league matches did.
A cleaner turn of the season
We ran the first season ends on a copy of a live world before they happen for real, and fixed what turned up — from bookings that carried over to a pile of letters on the last night.
- Every player starts a new season on no bookings. A 'new contract' promise is now judged on the season his deal ends, so renewing just across the season end no longer counts as broken. The final league round no longer sends you about ten 'wants a word' letters about minutes nobody can give. Top of the Pile and Board's Favourite can't be earned off an empty table before a ball is kicked.
- Every division in a world now opens its next season on the same day, even when its league finished weeks earlier. Every manager gets pre-season friendlies again, against outside clubs too once the league's own clubs are booked up. A season end that is interrupted part-way now picks up where it stopped instead of freezing the world.
- Cup and European rounds left over from a finished season start on the new season's first matchday instead of being dated into the middle of next season. When an official match lands on a booked friendly, the friendly moves to the first free day for both clubs in the following week, and is only called off if there isn't one.
- A pre-contract keeps all its years when the two leagues finish on different days, a loanee plays out his borrower's run-in before going home, and a captain who has left the club no longer costs the side every match until the tactics are saved again.
Club money follows the strength of the league
Every top flight was paid the same TV money however good its clubs were, so wages came to about a quarter of a top-flight club's income and almost every club made a big profit every season. Money now follows the league you play in, and AI clubs stop sitting on fortunes nobody earned.
- A club's TV money is now set by how strong its league is: up to €1.1M a week in the strongest top flights, and never more than before in the lower divisions. League prize money also goes down the divisions, so promotion is worth having. Brand income for the biggest clubs stops at €150M a season, and shirt and sponsor money counts only the club's own players, not its loanees.
- AI clubs live within what they earn. Their wage room is capped at 65% of last season's income, a signing has to leave half a season of wages in the bank, and at season end an AI club pays its owner anything above two seasons of wages — so a job at an AI club no longer comes with a fortune it never spent. Human-run clubs are never touched by this.
- AI clubs at their wage limit can still sign squad players on squad players' wages, so their squads stay full instead of drifting down to twenty.
- The backers' safety net at season end now looks at the bank balance: a club with plenty of money is covered less, and one in debt keeps full cover. In the national open cup the gate is now shared 60/40 between the home and away sides, so a small club drawn away banks a real payday. The League Cup and the league stay home-only.
Emails while you're away, and news of your old players
A manager who stopped visiting heard nothing until his club was gone. Now the game writes to you — and it also tells you when a player you raised or sold makes news somewhere else.
- After four days away, and again after eleven, you get an email about your club: matches played, bids waiting, unread messages and your next opponent. It never includes a score or a table position, because those wait until you've watched.
- Three days before a club is released for inactivity you get a warning, and if it does go, a note saying which club it was and that your account, trophies and history stay. At most three emails per absence, and any visit resets the count.
- Every email has an unsubscribe link, and there's a switch for them in settings beside push notifications. They're in English for now.
- New letter: when a player you brought through the academy or sold moves on, or wins a trophy at his new club, his old club's manager is told. The trophy letter waits a few hours, so it can't spoil a final.
Talk to your players
The old one-click 'promise' gave a player a morale boost and a better role, and nothing ever checked whether he then played. Now you have a real conversation: you pick what to say, he answers from the facts, and promises are held to account.
- He raises what matters most: a promise you broke, his minutes against his role ('I've played 1 of our 6 games'), the last year of his contract, a serious bid you turned down, or being played out of position. You can promise him matches, a new or better contract, the armband, a better signing or not to sell him this window; tell him who's ahead of him; change his role; or let him go.
- He answers with his reasons. He accepts a better-rated rival and pushes back against a worse one, and a starter in his prime wants contract security sooner than a veteran does. Each promise is checked against what actually happens. Break more than you keep and he starts to doubt your word.
- Team meetings (career worlds): once a week you can address the whole squad, and the captain answers. Demanding more works with a squad rated above its league and backfires with one below it, and the same speech twice in three weeks has half the effect.
- 'Speak to him' on your player's profile opens the conversation. Every talk and promise goes on his History tab, visible only to you. Morale moves only in career worlds; in realism worlds a talk changes his concerns and his role.
Tiredness shown at kick-off, and a new Treatment Room
Squads looked more tired than they were: only the tactics page showed fitness as it will be at kick-off, while everything else showed it as of now, hours of recovery short. Every screen now uses the kick-off figure, and the Treatment Room has been rebuilt.
- The squad page, Treatment Room, dashboard and match preview all show condition at the next kick-off and say so.
- Pressing, counter-pressing, tempo, tackling, the one-click styles and training intensity now say how much faster or slower they tire your players.
- A new 'Rest tired players' switch on the tactics page swaps any saved starter below 75 at kick-off for a fitter player who fits the slot, and the match report says who was rested. It switches on by itself for a manager who has been away for 48 hours.
- The Treatment Room reads like a medical report now: a squad-availability bar, injured players as cards with a recovery bar and matches left, condition bars at kick-off, and the Medical Centre, suspensions and injury-prone players in a side column.
A young player's ceiling can move
In career worlds a player's potential could only rise, once a season. Now it moves the way a real career does — up through breakouts, and down through bad luck or lost seasons.
- Setbacks: a serious injury costs a player of 23 or under a point of potential (two for a very long one), and a season at 20–22 without first-team football costs one — a loan where he plays counts as football, and a player released at the end of his deal is spared. Never more than two a season, never below his current rating, and his manager gets a letter.
- Breakouts can now come at the halfway point of the season as well as at the end, at half the odds, and a top training ground with a development plan built for his position improves the chance. One breakout a season at most.
- Every rating change from development is now on the player's record, so it shows in Player changes and on his profile, and his Development tab shows his latest move ('+1 · 12 Oct').
- Old stars fall off properly: from 37 a season costs two or three points even for a player in good form. The development card's forecast now matches what a season really pays instead of jumping at the bar.
FC 27 comes to the player database
The game's ratings came from FC 26. Over the past fortnight they've moved to FC 27, and the 4,000 or so FC 27 players the game didn't have are now in.
- Realism worlds moved to FC 27's overall ratings on 5 October. On the 14th every world got FC 27's six headline attributes, and career worlds got FC 27's PlayStyles.
- Player profiles and the development card now show EA's own detailed attributes where EA rates them — a centre-back's real heading, not what a centre-back 'should' have. They're for display only for now; the match engine doesn't use them yet.
- About 4,000 newcomers and 86 clubs the game never had — Liga MX sides, South American cup regulars, 3. Liga and Ligue 2 clubs among them — were added with their squads. In most worlds that are already running, those players arrive as free agents instead.
- The same real footballer could exist twice, under two spellings of his name. The duplicates were removed and any deal paid for one was refunded, and no import or new world can add the same person twice again.
More for hosts: sack a manager, set the economy, fix the clock
Several hosts asked for the same things: a way to replace a manager without throwing him out, a way to make money matter, and kick-off times that actually follow their settings. All of it is on the Manage page now.
- Sack manager: a red button on the club page and beside Remove in Manage takes the club off him, with an optional reason. He stays in the world, out of work, and the sacking is pinned in the feed.
- World economy: Rich, Standard, Tight or Poor, chosen before the world starts. It scales everything the world pays out — starting budgets, TV, gates, prizes and the wage cap — but not wages, values or fees, so money in a Tight world really is tight.
- Kick-off times now apply to the season you're in, not just the next one: saving the rules moves every unplayed league match to your slots, never one that's already due. Hosts can also rename their leagues, set promotion and relegation from a card, and choose a 14-day inactivity limit.
- A world's owner can now start their own draft world from Manage, and its calendar moves forward by whole weeks so nothing is overdue on day one.
The Paper: write for your world
The news feed only carried one-line posts. Every world now has a newspaper that its managers write: a headline, a few paragraphs, and your name and club on the byline.
- Find it in the World menu. The front page leads with the week's most-reacted article, and readers can react and leave comments ('Letters').
- Any manager with a club in the world can write, one article a day. Text goes through the same filter as everything else public in the game, and each article gets a line in the world's feed.
- The host can take an article down, and anyone can report one.
- It looks like a newspaper too: a masthead, newsprint, drop caps and columns, in light and dark mode.
Clubs have supporters
A crowd used to depend only on the ground, the mood and the ticket price, so a club was exactly as popular in its tenth season as in its first, whatever it had won. Clubs now have a following that results build or lose.
- Every league result moves it a little — derbies twice as much — and trophies, promotion and relegation move it a lot: +6% for a title, +4% for a cup, +8% for promotion, −10% for relegation.
- It drifts slowly back towards the size of the ground, so success has to be kept up. Over ten seasons a dominant side settles near 1.8 times its ground and a struggling one well under it.
- The following scales the crowd for league, cup and European gates. A following the size of the ground changes nothing, so no crowd moves until results do.
- You'll find it on the club page under Supporters, with this season's change, and on the stadium card in Finances.
The Season Finale: a live end-of-season show
The Awards Gala is now a show the whole world watches together. One night at the end of every season, every trophy is handed out live, ending with the Golden Ball.
- Trophies from the bottom division up, then the cups and Europe, then the Golden Boot, Playmaker and Young Player, the managers' vote and the Golden Ball. The Golden Ball is decided half by the managers' vote and half by the season's numbers.
- Everyone is on the same beat: a three-minute lobby, then the live show. If you arrive late you walk in mid-show, and there's a chat room for the night and a replay afterwards.
- No spoilers: winners, letters and headlines go out only after the show has ended, not when the votes are counted.
- Trophy art, confetti and optional sound (off by default), and it works on a phone.
Match analysis: who made the chances, and where they came from
The Match Centre's shot map and heat map were drawn from a match's totals, not from what happened. They're gone. Matches played from now on record every chance — who took it, who made it and where it came from.
- Each player gets xG, xA, shots, shots on target, key passes and the points his defending and creative work added to his rating, in a table per side.
- A pitch graphic shows each side's chances by channel (left, centre, right) and by type — open play, counter-attack, set piece, penalty.
- The debrief now appears on every match report — league, cup, European, friendly and World Cup — and has new reads: a flank you kept conceding down (naming the full-back), a flank you never used, a set-piece threat, and being caught on the counter.
- Results are exactly the same as before: the analysis is worked out after the whistle and never changes the match.
Your own result waits until you've watched it
The game holds your latest result back until you've watched the match, but plenty of screens still gave it away — a headline above the Watch button, a table one click from the home tab, a points total on your profile. We went through every screen that can show it.
- Held until you watch: result headlines in the feed, every league and European table with its form and leaderboards, cup and European brackets, your club's schedule and last fixture, player rating bars, predictions, your profile record and head-to-heads, the board panel, badges, the finances ledger and the forum.
- Letters that give away your result wait until you've watched, or for two game days at most. Season-end letters, the sack headline and the title badge wait too.
- Predictions, the Fine button, press conferences and the next knockout round now all wait for the match to be revealed.
- Anyone who didn't play in the match sees everything live, as before.
A round of matchday, tactics and transfer fixes
A full audit of the match rules, tactics and transfer code turned up a long list of things that didn't do what they said. These are the ones you'd notice.
- Your named penalty taker now takes the penalties while he's on the pitch; if you bench him, a stand-in takes over. A player's rating luck is drawn fresh each match instead of following him for life, and development compares a rating with what his position normally scores, so full-backs no longer develop slower than attackers. A world that falls behind and plays several matchdays at once now rests players between them.
- The Medical Centre now cuts your own club's injuries instead of passing them on to the opponent. Fewer than eleven fit players is always a forfeit — the injured and banned never play — and an injury now counts down in any competitive match, not just league rounds.
- Wingers and wide midfielders are natural on either wing in any formation. Changing formation keeps your match plan instead of wiping it, and an attacking midfielder is offered attacking roles while a holding midfielder gets holding ones.
- The release-clause button shows what meeting the clause will cost, and a met clause ends every other deal for that player. An obligation to buy is paid in full or the player goes home. A parent club can re-sign a player it has out on loan, but a borrowing club can't change his contract. You can report a transfer that looks wrong, and appeal a trade that's been held.
Scouting is a department you run
Scouting used to cost credits, and a brief handed over ten names at once and threw the knowledge away when you dismissed it. Now you hire scouts, send them out and keep what they learn. Credits buy Gold only.
- Each week six scouts are available to hire. Experience decides how many players a scout finds and how good they are; Judgement decides how precise his reports are. Each has a home country where he works faster, and a weekly wage paid from club money.
- Send a scout to a country or the free-agent market with a brief — position, ages, maximum value, wonderkids or ready now — for one, two or four weeks, or have him watch one rival player until the report is complete.
- Reports are kept. Ability is exact once a player is fully scouted, but only a five-star judge gives you his exact potential. The Scouting Centre now sets how many scouts you can employ and how fast they work.
- The page has been redesigned with faces, progress bars and a verdict filter (Would start, Prospect, Squad player, Below your level), and a scout's last mission can be repeated in one click.
Cups and Europe spread across the season
Every cup and European round used to come a week after the last one, from the day the season opened, so whole competitions were over within weeks. They're now spread across the season the way a real calendar spreads them.
- The national cup runs from about a tenth of the way into the season to a final near the end, the League Cup finishes just past halfway, and Europe's group stage fills the first third with the knockouts from halfway and the final near the end.
- Sprint worlds now keep a free midweek day after every second league round, so every competition finishes within its season. A Sprint season with cups runs about eight weeks instead of five.
- Cup ties and European nights kick off at the host's evening slot in the host's timezone, not on the server's clock, and saving the rules moves the unplayed ones too. League tables now show promotion and relegation zones properly.
- Hosts can choose to send only each top flight's leading clubs to Europe, with the strongest outside clubs filling the rest of the draw.
Tactics rebuilt
Seven team instructions join the existing tactical settings, and every style now has others it beats and others that beat it. There is no single best set-up any more.
- New instructions: creative freedom, final third, on losing the ball, on winning the ball, defensive width, tackling and the offside trap. Each one is a trade-off, not an upgrade: tested against the presets, every option averages out close to even.
- Pressing, counter-pressing, a fast tempo and getting stuck in now cost fitness, and harder tackling means more cards.
- Thirteen one-click styles, including new positional play, direct wing play, low-block counter and high line and trap, tuned so each beats some and loses to others. Formations now have matchups against each other too.
- AI clubs now play with instructions that suit their style, and the tactics guide covers every new option.
The Feeder Club Network
Clubs can now form real partnerships with up to three feeder clubs and send their under-21s to them on pathway loans — with guaranteed football, recall at any time and a nudge when a youngster is ready to come home.
- A feeder must be in a lower division of your own pyramid, or abroad with a weaker squad. AI clubs agree on the spot; a human-run club is asked and decides on the Network page. Each feeder has one parent club.
- There's a yearly affiliation fee set by the feeder's division, from €300K to €2.5M a season.
- Pathway loans are for players aged 21 or under, for one or two seasons, as a Starter or in Rotation. An AI feeder really plays them: a Starter starts whenever he's fit, a Rotation player every other game.
- The Network page shows your pathway board with appearances, minutes and average rating, and the game tells you when a loanee is good enough for your first team.
Friendlies: any free day, at the time you choose
Friendlies sat behind the 24-hour rule although they cost no fitness, injure nobody and book nobody. Now a friendly can go on any day neither club has another match.
- Pick the day, then the hour: any whole hour from 10:00 to 23:00 in the world's kick-off zone, 20:00 by default, shown in your own time. The hour you pick is the hour you get.
- The allowance is unchanged: two per booking week, and Gold has no limit — so a friendly every free day if you like.
- Official matches always come first. Cup and European rounds are no longer moved to make room for a friendly.
- Friendly reports no longer describe injuries that never happened.
Live hub for every division, and a better 2D replay
The Live page showed only your own division and stopped at twelve matches. It's now a hub for the whole world, and the 2D replay has caught up with what the match report says.
- Tabs for 'All live' and every division. All live shows every match the world is playing, one section per division, cup and European competition, with your own match first. Each night has one chat room for the whole world, cup and European nights included.
- A tie decided on penalties now plays the shootout in 2D after the final whistle, kick by kick, with the running score and sudden death.
- 'GOAL!' now appears as the ball goes in, not minutes before, and the away side plays on its own flanks instead of mirroring the home side's.
A tired side plays tired, the bench is real, and reds count from the minute
A manager asked why a side at 70% condition beat his at 100%. It could, far too often. A batch of changes makes the match play by what you see — and by the Laws of the Game.
- Tiredness costs more as it builds. An 80-rated player at 90% plays like a 79, as before, but at 70% like a 75 and at 50% like a 69. A match now costs each player fitness in proportion to the minutes he played, so a sub who played 70 minutes tires and a starter taken off early tires less.
- The bench is real: you name nine substitutes, and only they can come on. Worlds still on the old default of seven moved to nine; a host's own choice is kept.
- A second yellow sends the player off at that minute and his side plays a man down from then on. A straight red only weakens a side from the moment it's shown, not from kick-off.
- A better goalkeeper is clearly better, and every rating point counts from 60 to 98. Cup finals and the continental final are played at a neutral ground with the gate split between the finalists, World Cup finals matches are neutral too, and a shootout stops at the kick that decides it.
Finances that show where the money comes from
Players told us the economy was walking clubs into bankruptcy with no warning, and that income looked like gate and TV and nothing else. The Finances page now shows each source of income and warns you before the money runs out.
- A season outlook opens the page: matches left, expected income, wages and upkeep, where the balance will end up, and the match where it would first fail to cover the wages — with the levers you have if it looks bad.
- Income is split by source: TV money, sponsorship and merchandise, and the home gate. Your sponsor also adds a quarter on top of every prize — league finish, cup rounds and European wins.
- Home cup ties and European matches now pay a real gate, domestic TV money follows the division you're in, and the biggest clubs earn brand income so a title favourite doesn't start the season losing money.
- Every kick-off time and deadline across the site now shows in your own timezone, so the dashboard header and the match card can no longer disagree.
New here? The game guides explain how all of this fits together, and the FAQ covers the short questions.
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