Squad, tactics & players

Reading the squad screen

The squad list is both a selection board and a season summary. The first eleven rows are the starting side, the following five form the substitutes’ bench, and the lower rows contain the remainder of the senior squad. Selecting a row opens the detailed profile; exchanging rows changes the match group.

Sta

Status. An injured player shows the approximate weeks unavailable, a suspended player shows the matches remaining in the current competition, ctr marks a contract at or near its end, and unh marks a wage concern. During a live substitution this column displays fitness as a percentage.

Pos

The natural position code followed by the usable side letters: L, C and R.

AvR

Average competitive match rating in the current-season view. It reflects delivered performance rather than underlying ability.

gls / mat

Competitive goals and appearances in the current season.

val

Estimated player value in the current club and football context.

ctr

The contract is close to expiry or has expired and needs attention.

unh

The current wage is below the player’s expectation. The Contract page shows the requested wage.

The left and right arrows beside the table rotate between the general squad information and four attribute panels. Each panel uses the skill abbreviations explained below and in the reference chapter.

Building the formation

The first eleven positions on the squad screen form the starting team. The following places provide the substitutes from whom live changes can be made. Left-drag one player’s name onto another player or numbered marker to exchange their squad places. The game checks that the starting line-up is complete before a match can begin.

A formation is represented as roles and lanes rather than a named preset alone. This allows familiar shapes — 4–4–2, 4–3–3, a back five, a diamond — as well as asymmetric systems. What matters is that the responsibilities still cover the pitch.

Defensive and attacking shapes

Every numbered marker on the pitch can hold two tactical positions. Its ordinary place on the board is where the footballer operates while his team is without the ball. To change it, left-drag the marker to an empty place on the pitch. This sets the team’s defensive or base shape.

To give that player a different position when his team has possession, point at his numbered marker, press and hold the right mouse button, drag towards the intended attacking position and release. A white arrow remains on the board: its tail is the player’s without-possession position and its head is the position he moves towards in possession.

This allows a central midfielder to become an attacking midfielder, a wide player to join the forward line or a full-back to advance on only one side. To make both phases use the same position again, right-drag the player’s marker and release on its current base position at the arrow’s tail. If you later left-drag the base marker to a new place, both positions are reset to that place and the previous arrow is removed; draw a new arrow if the player should still move differently in possession.

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.

The player profile

The profile combines identity, football quality and career status. Name, age, nationality, club, position and side establish the player. Statistics separate the current season from the whole career and retain previous club, time at the present team, goals, appearances, ratings, international caps and international goals.

The Contract view shows wage, remaining length and renewal possibilities. Transfer covers value, interest and possible movement. For a human-controlled footballer, Training settings opens the personal +, 0 and − priorities explained in the training chapter. Bans & fitness shows competition-specific suspensions, injury time and physical readiness.

Happiness is an explanation, not merely a colour. A player may value being at a top club, enjoy strong team results, lose self-confidence, worry about squad quality, become frustrated by limited opportunities or feel underpaid. Those feelings form part of contract and transfer behaviour.

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 a team’s performance

A player’s underlying abilities remain the foundation of his performance, but they do not produce an identical version of that player in every fixture. The match calculation sits within a wider form and morale model that retains longer-term team form, individual player form, confidence, morale, contract satisfaction, personal circumstances and the psychology of the current fixture as distinct influences.

Before kick-off, the game creates a shared match context for each team from its longer-term team form and a fresh variation for that fixture. League matches also include home advantage. Each available player then receives a personal adjustment based on individual form, a smaller fresh variation and relevant personal circumstances. These separate layers are combined when the playing qualities for the match are prepared. A player does not need to be tired, injured or unhappy to have an unusually flat fixture.

The effect is deliberately broader than a single change to maximum speed. Speed, initial acceleration, agility, stamina, shooting, ball control, jumping and goalkeeping qualities can be affected by different amounts. When several physical influences point in the same direction, fast players can feel unusually heavy because they take longer to reach full pace, retain less speed while turning and tire more quickly. This can make a collective poor day much more noticeable than a small change to one ability would suggest.

The shared team context applies to the complete match squad before kick-off. A substitute enters without the match fatigue accumulated by a starter, but remains part of the same collective context and keeps his own personal adjustment. Bringing on a fresh player therefore restores fresh energy without creating a new match state for the team. This is why several starters and later substitutes can all appear affected during the same fixture.

The calculation is the same for human controlled and computer controlled teams. No special penalty is applied because a team is controlled by a person. Away league fixtures can feel different because home advantage is one of the inputs, while the opponent also receives its own independent team and player adjustments. A flat performance on one side can consequently appear alongside a normal or particularly sharp performance on the other. Unlike weather or the pitch, this team context does not have to affect both sides in the same way.

The purpose of the system is to preserve the uncertainty of football. A strong side should retain the benefit of its better players, but a match against a weaker opponent should not become a guaranteed result. Favourites sometimes lack their usual sharpness while underdogs approach the occasion with greater intensity. Match form allows that sort of contest to emerge from several persistent and fixture-specific influences. It does not select a winner in advance, and neither one previous victory nor the simple fact that a team is the favourite automatically triggers a poor performance.

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.

Why am I on the bench?

Work through the coach’s decision in this order:

1. Availability: check injury, fitness and the ban for the competition being played.
2. Exact role: compare natural position and left, central or right suitability with the place used in the formation.
3. Current evidence: inspect recent form and retained match performances rather than ability alone.
4. Competition: compare the other players who naturally fit the same place. A generally stronger footballer can still be a worse fit for that lane.
5. Time: continue training and make the most of later appearances. One strong or weak match does not instantly replace the longer assessment.

The coloured starting, bench and out-of-group indicators are explained in the career-player matchday guide.