Squad, tactics & players

Reading the squad screen

Open Squad and tactics from the career office. The first eleven places are the starting side, the next five are the substitutes and the remaining rows are the rest of the senior squad. A footballer's place in this list is his place in the match group, not his permanent playing position. Select his name to open Player Info.

The information arrows cycle between the general squad view and the skill panels. Use them to compare players before making a change. A manager can arrange the team. A footballer viewing a computer-managed club can inspect the selection, but does not acquire the manager's authority by opening the screen.

An injured footballer and a suspended footballer have different reasons for being unavailable. Check Bans & fitness, and remember that a league suspension need not rule a player out of a cup. In a live match, a yellow-card marker also helps you judge the risk of leaving a player on.

Lst identifies a player’s transfer-list status. It is separate from injury, suspension or selection availability. Open the transfer profile to see the exact sale stance and asking price.

Building the formation

The formation board gives each of the eleven positions a place without possession and, if desired, a different place with possession. You can build familiar formations or an asymmetric system around your players. Cover the full width and leave enough protection behind the ball rather than judging a shape by its name alone.

1. Select the match group. Left-drag a player's name onto another player or numbered marker to exchange their places. Dragging one numbered marker onto another exchanges the players occupying those places.
2. Set the base shape. Left-drag a numbered marker to an empty position on the board. This is its position without the ball.
3. Set the attacking movement. Hold the right mouse button on a marker, drag to its intended position with the ball, and release. The white arrow shows movement from the defensive position to the attacking one.
4. Remove an attacking arrow. Right-drag back to its base position. Moving the base marker to a new empty location resets both positions, so draw a fresh arrow if you still want different shapes.
5. Check availability and balance. Keep a goalkeeper, use suitable sides and avoid leaving a whole area unprotected. A complete valid line-up is required before kick-off.

An arrow asks a player to travel to a position as possession changes. It does not teleport him there. A very long forward run may help the attack but also increases the ground he must recover when the move breaks down.

Team and player instructions complement these positions. Instructions belong to the tactical position: a substitute taking that place receives its instructions. Review them when changing the job a position is expected to do. Live formation and substitution changes are covered in Matchday.

Positions and preferred sides

Left, central and right are genuine parts of the role. A central defender may be comfortable centrally but less reliable as a wide defender. A left-sided forward may naturally approach goal from a different angle. Players can have more than one usable lane, and flexible footballers make in-match tactical changes easier.

Team Instructions and Player Instructions

Open Team Instructions on the formation screen for the shared plan. Open Player Instructions and select a numbered position for its individual duties. The pages are With ball, Movement, Without ball and, for team instructions, Marking. The goalkeeper has a smaller set of relevant choices.

Point at an option to read its short explanation. Use its arrows to change the value or select the value to see the choices. The defensive line uses a slider. Make all related adjustments, then choose Apply all. Cancel discards the current instruction edits. Reset team or Reset position puts that part of your draft back on Auto, which you must then apply.

Auto lets the coaching decisions respond to the match. At an individual position, it inherits the shared instruction where one exists. A fixed individual choice overrides the shared choice for that position. A fixed team choice stays in force when Auto adjusts other parts of the plan. The value shown in parentheses helps explain the current automatic or inherited choice.

Changes made in the career squad screen form the club's continuing plan. Instructions changed during a match are for that match and do not rewrite the saved career plan. Use Quick tactics or the live line-up to respond to a score, card or opposition change, then review the permanent plan back in the office if you want to use it again.

With ball: build-up and the next pass

These choices guide decisions when the opportunity is available. They do not guarantee an accurate pass, remove offside or make a blocked shot safe. A short passing plan needs nearby teammates. A direct plan needs players able to compete for or run onto the ball. A high tempo gives opponents less time to settle but can also ask more of the team's touch and movement.

Movement: making and filling space

Use these alongside the arrows on the formation board. If a striker offers wide, a teammate filling the centre can keep a target in front of goal. If both wide defenders overlap, consider which midfield or defensive positions must remain available after a turnover. A fixed movement preference does not cancel the need to react to the actual ball and opponents.

Without ball: pressure, depth and cover

Defensive line sets how far the back line pushes up, from deep to high. Its percentage is a preference along that range, not a percentage chance of defending successfully. A higher line supports pressure and reduces the space in front of the defenders, while leaving more space behind them.

Pressing height chooses where pressure begins. Pressing intensity chooses how strongly players close the ball carrier. Defensive width controls the team's spread, and Compactness brings its lines closer or allows more separation. These settings have different jobs: a compact low block is not the same thing as a narrow high press.

Aggression affects risk in challenges. Increasing it asks for more commitment and also makes timing and discipline more important. Offside trap asks the defensive line to step up together. Defensive cover balances protection behind the play against joining the attack.

Individual Marking favours zonal defending or closer attention to an opponent. Attacking set pieces chooses whether that position joins the attack, stays back or responds to the situation. Keep enough cover for a cleared corner instead of sending everyone forward simply because an attacking restart is available.

Marking: dealing with the carrier and the next receiver

The team Marking page brings together three shared defensive decisions. Double teaming chooses between pressing alone and adding a second challenger when needed. The helper can make the ball carrier's task harder, but leaves space elsewhere.

Passing options chooses whether available defenders screen passing lanes or stay more tightly on the goal side of possible receivers. Free attackers chooses whether teammates retain their zone or pick up an unmarked attacker. The first presser and central protection still have their own duties.

Auto can review how the match is developing and adjust instructions that remain automatic. It may keep a successful response or move away from an unsuccessful one. Explicit team and position choices remain your instructions. To diagnose a problem, first identify whether the danger comes from the carrier, the pass into an uncovered teammate, or space behind the line, then change the relevant instruction.

The player profile

Player Info brings together the footballer's identity, qualities, circumstances and career. Names in squad lists, search results, reports and youth lists are useful routes into the profile. The available actions depend on whether this is your own footballer, a player you manage, a player elsewhere or a national-team candidate.

The main view explains position and side, age, nationality, club, strengths and development outlook. Use Contract for salary, length and renewal, Transfer for possible moves and availability, Bans & fitness for physical and disciplinary status, and the statistics and career views to look beyond one match. A loan player's playing club and contract club are distinct and appear in the relevant views.

Your club does not begin with perfect knowledge of every player in the world. A newly discovered player can show only a broad first impression. Further information reveals estimated abilities and ranges, then a more detailed profile. A known identity does not imply known potential. Newly signed players also take time to become fully familiar through training and appearances. See Staff, scouting & information before comparing an estimate with the precise values of a long-established teammate.

Happiness explains the player's situation: results, self-confidence, playing opportunities, teammates, squad quality and wages can all matter. Open the full explanation before treating every unhappy player as a wage problem.

A human footballer also has Training settings, career choices and conversations. Managers have their own staff identity. My manager and the personal career history describe that part of the career separately from playing statistics.

Core player attributes and their effects

The player profile displays fourteen core ratings for physical and technical actions. Further playing tendencies influence the decisions made around those actions. Ratings are not isolated bonuses: several qualities, the player’s condition and the match situation can contribute to the same moment.

A forward still benefits from anticipation and agility. A defender still needs ball control. A goalkeeper’s distribution still benefits from shot power and control. The positional profile changes which combinations contribute most to the player’s overall ability.

Footballing personality beyond the profile bars

Players also differ in the decisions they prefer. A long-shot tendency changes how readily a footballer considers an effort from distance. Teamwork influences the willingness to combine rather than keep the ball. Attacking instinct and forward-running tendency affect positioning and the moment a player leaves the team shape. Vision helps a player recognise useful passing possibilities.

These qualities are visible across repeated decisions. Two players with similar core technique may still behave differently: one comes short and circulates possession, another attacks the space beyond the striker. One looks for a team-mate, another attempts more shots from range.

Career character matters away from the pitch as well. Adaptability affects the demands of moving abroad. Loyalty shapes willingness to commit to a club for longer. Financial ambition affects wage expectations. These do not make a player “good” or “bad”. They make careers, negotiations and squad building less uniform.

Ability, potential, reputation and performance

Current ability

A position-aware summary of what the player’s skills offer now. It is not a simple average of every rating: the qualities important to a goalkeeper are not weighted like those of a forward.

Potential

The player’s development outlook and room to grow. It supports progress but does not guarantee a final level or act as a hard appointment with the future.

Reputation

How established the player appears to the football world. It can lag behind rapid improvement or remain high while an older star begins to decline.

Match performance

What the footballer has actually delivered. Ratings build a longer-term judgement that managers can use alongside the underlying skill profile.

Potential is especially important when current ability remains below it. That gap gives training a more promising foundation, but age, practice and focus still decide whether the opportunity is converted. A talented player left without suitable training or meaningful football may develop more slowly than a less celebrated player used well.

For a human-controlled player, match performance also maintains a separate long-term assessment. The player’s rating is read in relation to the standard and average performance of the teams involved. That assessment changes gradually and contributes to team selection, salary, value, transfer interest, contract decisions and national-team selection without replacing the core attributes.

Form, fitness, confidence and morale

Fitness is the immediate physical condition of the player. Injury, match exertion and recovery affect it, and reduced fitness can lower the force, speed and control a player can reproduce. Individual form moves over time and represents whether the player is currently performing above or below his usual level.

Team form captures the recent rhythm of the side. Confidence and team morale describe the wider mental environment created by results, expectations and squad experience. A footballer’s match-day effectiveness therefore has a human context: the same skill profile can feel sharper on a good day and less assured during a difficult spell.

There is also natural day-to-day variation. This means the same player can enter two matches in slightly different condition even when his permanent skill ratings have not changed.

How match form changes performance

Permanent skills are the foundation, but a footballer does not arrive in exactly the same condition every week. Team form, individual form, confidence, morale, contract satisfaction and personal circumstances combine with variation for the fixture. League matches also have a home context. These factors can affect the two sides differently.

The effect can touch several qualities at once. A player may accelerate less sharply, retain less pace through turns, tire earlier or strike the ball less cleanly without his permanent profile having lost those skills. A good team can therefore have a difficult afternoon, and a weaker opponent can be unusually sharp.

The match context is prepared for the whole match squad. A substitute brings fresher legs, but still shares the team's circumstances and has his own form. Substitutions solve fatigue or a tactical mismatch more reliably than they solve every aspect of a collective poor day.

The same football conditions apply to human and computer teams. A favourite is not assigned a defeat in advance. Judge a run of results alongside opponents, roles, availability and match reports rather than assuming the highest ability total must win every time.

Automatic selection and coach assessment

The automatic manager first excludes players who are unavailable for the coming competition. It then creates a coach assessment from the skills important to each player’s natural role, current form, potential and retained match performances. Time since the last appearance is also recognised so that an unused player is not treated as permanently outside the squad.

For a human-controlled career player, the longer-term performance assessment forms a substantial part of the coach’s view. Strong or weak performances can therefore change automatic selection even when the visible core skills have not yet changed through training.

After the squad has been ordered, position and side suitability determine who fills each place in the formation. This is why a player with a higher general assessment may remain behind a specialist who fits the exact role and lane. Injured and suspended players remain visible in the squad screen but are not treated as normally available choices.