Your career: player, manager & founder

Choose the career you want to live

After selecting the football world, Career kick-off asks how you want to take part. This choice decides your responsibility, not just which camera or controller you use.

The club-management screens remain football decisions in every managerial role. Match control is a separate choice, explained in Controls. A team-control assignment and an individual-player assignment do not give two independent uses of the same device.

For a first player career, choose a profile and club that give you a realistic route to minutes. For a first managerial career, inspect the squad, finances and vacant staff positions before making expensive changes.

Creating your identity

Enter the person's first and last names, age, nationality and appearance. For an individual footballer, choose goalkeeper, sweeper, defender, defensive midfielder, midfielder, offensive midfielder or forward, then the preferred left, central or right side.

The position shapes the starting skill distribution and affects how coaches fit you into a formation. Nationality determines international eligibility and the domestic or overseas context of a move. Hair and skin are appearance choices. They do not buy football ability.

Choose a starting club if you want to begin there, or choose No team for an unattached start. A manager needs a nationality for a meaningful clubless start too. Look at the final summary before continuing, especially when you have changed between an individual role and a whole-team managerial role.

An individual footballer can normally begin between 16 and 40. The realistic youth route for a single-player career uses ages 16–21. The player-manager's individual playing route allows the wider range. Managerial roles use an older starting range, and the creation screen keeps the age within the range for the selected role.

Your path to the pros

The individual start now offers named profiles before you commit to the career. They combine present ability, development outlook and reputation into different opening challenges.

The more developed profiles are different starting circumstances, not rewards to unlock. Select the story you want to play. A raw talent joining a top side can spend time on the bench even when his future looks excellent.

Your chances in this football world compares the chosen profile with the active clubs. With a club selected, the forecast becomes Your prospects at… and can show an intended role, expected appearances and starts, and direct competitors. Without one, it describes the range of clubs where the player could compete for the first eleven.

These are forecasts based on the opening squad, not contractual promises. Injuries, form, tactics, transfers and the remaining fixtures change opportunities. Use Start with this profile after reviewing the trade-off between a famous destination and a genuine chance to play.

Ability, potential, reputation and difficulty

Choose your own exposes the individual starting values. They serve different purposes.

Ability

The intended present standard. The player's position determines how the detailed core skills are distributed.

Potential: dynamic

The development outlook can change gradually with performances in their football context.

Potential: fixed

The selected potential remains the development reference. Performances still matter to the separate career assessment and selection.

Reputation

Your starting standing in the football world. Raising it does not directly increase the fourteen core skills. Same as ability begins from the generated playing level.

Difficulty

For dynamic potential, changes how demanding the interpretation of performances is. The scale runs from very easy through normal and hard to nightmare. It is not a promise of an easier opposition team.

The realistic youth route uses the normal positional generation and a dynamic development outlook. It skips the free adjustment of these starting values. At the generated-player review, Re-roll creates a different detailed distribution while keeping your creation choices. Continue accepts the displayed footballer.

Training develops the actual skills. Ratings build the longer-term judgement of your performances, and dynamic potential may also move over time. The training chapter explains why an excellent match does not immediately award a skill point.

Beginning without a club

An unattached start gives you a person with a career to build. It does not guarantee that a famous club wants him. Read the welcome message and use the outlook to judge what level is realistic.

As a footballer, you can receive opening offers or take the initiative. Browse a suitable club, open Team information and choose Offer my services. The club considers its squad needs, your qualities and the financial context. Follow My transfer interest and the news for replies. Keep training and consider a club where minutes are plausible.

As a manager, open the Job market to follow vacancies and applications. When club approaches are allowed, an unemployed beginner can receive a modest first chance. Your own reputation is distinct from a famous club's reputation, so a first appointment is a foundation to build on.

A player-manager needs an offer for that combined role. A plain playing contract places you under the club's head coach. It does not make you manager merely because you selected a player-manager ambition earlier.

Using the career office

The office combines the next event, current news and routes to the club. Squad and tactics opens selection, My player or My manager opens your identity, and Offers brings decisions together. Youth players, Team information, Finances, Calendar and Player search provide the main management paths.

The other side of the office opens League tables, League results, Cups and tournaments and Topscorers. Names and rows in those views lead to the clubs and footballers behind the result.

Use Next unread and Details to read news. Training reports, coach feedback, transfer replies, contract proposals, board messages and tournament events can require different actions. On matchday, the next-fixture information distinguishes human players in the starting eleven, on the bench and outside the match group.

Continue to the next day moves one day. Continue to the next event advances to a relevant stopping point. In a shared career, Continue to the next player hands over to the next participant. Read time-sensitive offers before advancing past their final day.

Select your name in the office header to open your personal career history. This brings together your playing and managerial chapters without reducing a manager's career to the statistics of a footballer.

Earning your place as a player

A computer coach selects for the upcoming match using football quality, position and side suitability, form and availability. Reputation and a human player's accumulated performances help shape the judgement, but a stronger overall profile does not guarantee that he fits every vacant position.

Your current situation may be first-team regular, rotation player, substitute or emergency option. Read the coach's feedback after matches and when your selection changes. A return from injury makes you available again, it does not automatically displace the current starter.

If you are on the bench, Play from substitution lets you join the visible action if the coach sends you on. A full match can also be watched, and result choices remain available where appropriate. The coach may never need to make that particular substitution. Matchday explains the playing and calculation choices in detail.

Spend your minutes helping the team: sensible positioning, completed passes, useful support runs, chances created, defending and discipline contribute to the match assessment as well as goals. The feedback is intended to explain your actual performance, including goalkeeper and substitute contributions.

Speaking to your coach

Your relationship with the coach grows with your standing and performances. Some discussions require trust and have a pause before the coach will consider another one. The message explains whether you need to establish yourself or give a previous discussion time to play out.

From a teammate's profile, Speak to coach opens Discuss a teammate. You can praise how you combine, argue that he deserves more trust, raise a concern about his contribution or withdraw your previous opinion. The coach can agree and consider it in selection, or tell you that he judges the performances differently.

Criticism, particularly of a rival for your own position, needs greater standing. A conversation is a football judgement rather than a command to remove a teammate. At a loan club you speak to the coach responsible for the team you are currently playing for.

For a footballer elsewhere, Recommend lets you explain why he may help: a useful partnership, a trusted former teammate, immediate strength, future potential or a reason to scout him. The coach may monitor him, request a report, add him to the shortlist, explore a move or decline the suggestion. The club still judges the football and finances.

If your own opportunities remain limited, the coach can invite a meeting. Fight for my place, Consider my options and Respond later are your responses. Considering your options does not itself transfer you. A personal Request a transfer or Request a loan is a separate discussion, covered in Making your own move.

Coaching career rules

Choose the managerial rules while building the football world or open the gear in the Transfer centre and select Managers. The rules stay with this career and apply to its human participants.

New careers begin with All managers and Applications and club offers selected. You can choose a different kind of career before starting. A protected manager can still make a voluntary move when opportunities are allowed. A club founder has a permanent place at his own club's helm.

An older save that has never made this choice asks you to review it before continuing. Read and confirm the offered rules. Changing the opportunities rule does not turn an unfinished application into an appointment, and own-club contract renewal remains a separate matter.

Finding and applying for a managerial job

1. Open the Transfer centre and select the briefcase for the Job market.
2. Choose a country and division as you would in the league tables. Review the current managers, their clubs and job security.
3. Select a Vacant post. Choose Apply as manager, or Apply as player-manager when your career permits it.
4. Continue the career and await the club's response. Applications & offers keeps applications and replies together.
5. Open a contract offer before its deadline. Review the role, pay, duration and any transfer or coaching compensation.

An employed incumbent is not a vacancy simply because his job security is low. A club can fill an opening with someone else, decline your application or find that circumstances have changed. You can have applications to more than one club, but only a completed agreement makes an appointment.

Your coaching reputation develops from your record and the football level at which you worked. It is separate from the reputation of the last club you managed. Titles, promotion, opponents and sustained results give that record context. An unemployed manager can seek an appropriate new start even after an unsuccessful spell.

Reviewing a manager or player-manager offer

The offer clearly identifies the role. A Managerial offer is a coaching job. A Player-manager offer lets an active footballer lead the side while remaining available to play. A Playing contract is a footballer's agreement under another head coach.

Read Manager's salary and, where relevant, Playing salary separately. The offer can also show a player transfer fee, coaching compensation and the contract term. Use Squad and Team information to inspect the offering club, then return to the same offer before accepting or declining.

Accepting a pure managerial role ends an active playing career. The review tells you this before signing. If you want to continue playing, choose a suitable player-manager opportunity instead.

A player-manager move has to satisfy the playing side as well as the coaching appointment. An open transfer window, a suitable contract, squad room and a still-available post can all matter. An active loan or a permanent move already made that season can prevent the combined move. The offer alone changes neither your club nor your job.

The board, job security and a difficult season

Job security describes the board's current backing, while Reputation describes your wider coaching standing. A secure job at a small club and a high-profile reputation are different achievements. The board considers results in relation to the club, opponents and your record rather than judging every defeat identically.

When dismissals are allowed, a sustained poor run can bring a warning and then stronger demands for improvement. Long losing sequences increase pressure. Successful work at the club can give you more patience, but it is not unlimited protection. Improved results can restore the board's backing.

Read the news instead of treating one security percentage as a fixed countdown. The board gives an opportunity to respond before a sporting dismissal. If your job ends, your personal career can continue through the job market. A former player-manager may still have a distinct playing situation to resolve.

With protection enabled, the board stands by your place in the dugout. A founder retains his own club. Those choices are legitimate career settings, so pick the level of job pressure you want before judging the challenge.

Founding and building your own club

In an eligible division's team-selection view, choose Found a custom team in this division. Enter the new name and choose starting funds. The club takes a place in that league by replacing an eligible non-human club, rather than becoming an extra exhibition side.

The opening funds become the club's money for building the team. You still have to manage fees, wages and ongoing expenses. Review the first team, recruit where necessary, offer suitable youth players professional contracts and inspect the staff overview. A new club can begin with its support posts unfilled.

The founder keeps a permanent place at the club's helm. On the football side, the club competes within the selected world's league and cup structure and develops its own reputation, support, finances and history. Promotion is earned through results, and a larger starting account does not replace the need for a complete squad.

Use Team information to review the identity and kit colours, then set the formation in Squad and tactics. A careful first season balances a playable senior group with enough money left for wages and the backroom team.

Several people and changing participation

Player options manages participants in the same saved world. You can combine rival managers, several footballers, or a manager and human players at the same club. Use the participant's own club, role and control assignment deliberately.

Each person needs the intended device on matchday. The game reports conflicting assignments so that you can keep an existing assignment or reserve it for the new one. Team control and control of a fixed footballer are distinct, and two people sharing team control should each have an appropriate assignment.

In the office, continue to the next player to pass responsibility on. The football world, results and calendar are shared. One person's transfer decision or managerial appointment can therefore affect other human careers in the same save.

Observer mode runs the same world without a personal appointment. World news, tables, results and history let you follow it, and Add participant provides a route into a playing or managerial career later. An observer is not given a club's private administrative rights just by browsing its information.

From footballer to coach, and retirement

A long playing career can create later coaching opportunities. Experience, performances and reputation help a footballer build a modest coaching standing. When the career rules permit and an appropriate post is available, clubs may offer a player-manager role or, later, a pure managerial role. It is a possible progression, not a guaranteed reward after a fixed birthday.

For voluntary retirement, open My player > Contract and choose End playing career when available. Read the confirmation before committing. The action is unavailable during an active loan. A player-manager retires as a footballer while continuing as the club's manager. For a pure player, ordinary voluntary retirement ends that human playing career. Accepting a pure managerial appointment is a different route that can continue the same person as a coach.

Career history retains the chapters already lived: former clubs, appearances, goals, international records, awards, appointments and managerial achievements. Your new role continues the person's story without turning earlier playing statistics into coaching results.