How to play

How time works here

The world runs ONE ROUND PER REAL DAY, resolved overnight at 3am your league's local time. A season is 38 rounds - about six real weeks - and everything else keeps that clock.

A "week" in the game (injuries, wages, development) passes every real day. "Fit in 5 weeks" means fit in five real days.

Your own fixtures never resolve without you - they wait, as games in hand, until you play them or the season-end sweep settles what's left.

Miss a day? Nothing punishes you. The world moves on and your club is exactly where you left it.

Welcome, gaffer

You manage a football club. Set your team up, play matches, and shout from the touchline to change how your side plays. Your club lives in the cloud - sign in on any device and it's there.

Every club starts with the same money and the same income: no rich clubs, no bought titles, nothing to buy with real money. Ever.

A practice game, right now

Ten minutes spare and you just want to watch your team play? Open the PLAYER LOUNGE and hit PRACTICE GAME at the top. You choose how good the opposition is - anything from 1 to 100 - and you get a made-up side at exactly that level, in black, called Player 1 to Player 16.

Every one of them carries that same number in EVERY attribute, and that is what makes it worth doing: nothing else is varying, so whatever happens out there is down to your side and your setup. Try a 20 to watch your shape work. Try a 90 to find out where it breaks.

It uses your real squad and your real team setup, nothing is at stake - no injuries, no morale, no record - and it works with no connection at all, because the opposition is built on your own device.

The office

Home base. Your teams on the left, everything needing your attention on the right - injuries, results, transfer offers, a league match ready to play. The bottom bar reaches every part of the game: the Player Lounge, the League table, Honest John's Market, the Scout's desk, the Season planner, Finances, Settings, Help and the Replay of your last match.

Four of those - Market, Scout, Season planner and Finances - open 44boots.com rather than a screen in the game, and so do Set pieces and Training from the cards in the office. That is deliberate: they are long sortable tables and long reports, and a browser has always handled those better than a hand-built list on a phone. You are not asked to sign in again - the game hands the browser a one-use pass that lasts a minute, so you land already logged in.

Watching a match

Matches play out live in 3D. The camera follows the ball; players show their name above and shirt number on their back. GOAL, FOUL and INJURY flash up as they happen.

Tap MENU (bottom centre) any time - the match plays on underneath. From it: SHOUT to change how your team plays, SUBSTITUTION, ZOOM, and EXIT.

The real rules apply: five subs per match across at most three stoppages, half-time free. Leaving a match early is recorded as a 1-0 defeat - only quit if you mean it.

Shouts from the touchline

Tactical stances persist until you change them: Mentality, Pressing, Tempo, Width, Directness, plus Overlap, Tighter Marking and Stay Back.

Motivational shouts move your team's BELIEF - Encourage and Praise lift it safely; Demand More! fires up strong characters but can rattle fragile ones; Calm Down cools rash tackling; Focus sharpens finishing for a spell. How well a shout lands depends on each player's character.

Rally calls are short bursts with a countdown: Push Up!, Get Stuck In!, Waste Time!

Every shout answers you. A strip appears under the scoreline naming what you just did and what it actually changes. Top right is the BELIEF bar - your team's live confidence, red when heads have gone down, green when they are flying. Encourage and Praise lift it, conceding drops it, scoring lifts it sharply, and it drifts back to normal by itself. Belief feeds how bravely players commit and how cleanly they execute.

Timed calls sit under the bar with the seconds left on them: Push Up, Get Stuck In and Waste Time run 75 seconds, Focus and Calm Down 90. When the chip goes, the effect has gone with it.

Setting up your team

TEAM SETUP is your tactics board: drag shirts to set each player's home position, click two players to swap them, pick the bench and leave the rest in reserve. Shirt numbers are yours to assign.

The SANITY CHECK points out anything daft - keepers up front, injured men in the XI, a better player idling in reserve - without changing anything. Injured players show in red and are automatically replaced on match day if you leave them in.

The league

Take over a struggling club and it becomes YOURS, renamed to the team you registered. One round resolves per day; YOUR fixtures wait for you. When the world reaches one, a LEAGUE MATCH READY card appears in the office - play it live with your real squad. The result counts, the table moves.

Everyone here is a professional

There is no quality gap between divisions. A squad in League 2 and a squad in the newest division at the bottom are both full of professionals; the difference between them is how well they are MANAGED, not the raw material they were handed.

So promotion doesn't buy you better players - it puts you among better managers. Individual players still vary hugely, and a rare gem can appear at any club in any division, which is exactly what makes your scout and Honest John worth their money.

Amateurs are the exception: your U16 academy and the Sunday XI sit well below the professional standard. Closing that gap is what the pathway is for.

Reading a player

Attributes run 1 to 100. Above 85 is exceptional even among professionals; 65 to 84 is a genuine strength; 45 to 64 is the solid professional middle; 30 to 44 is a pro's weak area - he is still a trained athlete. Under 30 means an amateur: a kid, or one of the Sunday lads.

Character attributes - Professionalism, Ambition, Loyalty, Temperament, Dirtiness - are NOT quality. They describe who a man is, and they matter as much as his feet: they decide how he answers a shout, whether his head is turned by a rival club, and how he behaves when a game turns nasty.

Everything about a signed professional is public - every attribute, his wage, his contract, his value. Only your judgement of him is yours alone.

Money: the rules

Money is counted in DOSH, written with the club currency mark: a D struck through twice. Every figure in the game - balance, wages, values, transfer fees - is in Dosh, and there is no other kind of money anywhere near this game.

Every club receives the SAME income every matchday - champions and strugglers alike. There is nothing to buy with real money and no way to gain a financial edge. Savings come from running the club well.

The FINANCES screen is the club's truth: balance, income, wages, kit costs, across the Mens, Womens, U16 and Sunday XI sides plus your staff. Mind the ratchet: a raise lifts what a player believes he's owed forever; a cut banks Dosh at the price of his morale.

The season planner

In the PLANNER you offer 30-minute availability slots - repeating offers like "weekday lunchtimes" or one-offs - and the game matches your free times with human opponents'. Propose a shared slot, they accept, and the kick-off is booked SHARP. Bookings go at most a week ahead and cancel free until an hour before.

Whatever you don't play, your deliberately dozy assistant handles - no substitutions, no shouts. Turning up is always the stronger play.

The player lounge

Every manager, one shared board. Posts expire after 12 hours - the room stays current. Pinned notices come from the game itself.

Tap OPEN TO A FRIENDLY NOW to join the waiting list; tap someone else's entry to start a casual game with a 60-second countdown. Official friendlies (one per day) sharpen your under-21s, move morale, and risk the odd knock.

Honest John's transfer market

Signed professionals move through the MARKET, and every deal goes through Honest John, the game's agent. Sound a player out - openness, likely fee, likely wage demand - then bid. The fee tracks the contract: long deals cost a premium, final-year players go cheap, and a sounded-out player's head gets turned.

Ask John about a player and you get a READ, not a number: whether the man is settled, underpaid, unhappy or ambitious; what his club would listen to; what he'd want in wages and years; and his verdict. He is called Honest John and he means it - when a deal is over the odds, or the player simply will not come, he tells you so, even though saying it costs him his own five percent.

Fee agreed, you talk personal terms against his self-worth. John takes five percent and everyone pretends not to notice.

Offers for YOUR players arrive at the top of the market screen: accept the fee, push back with a counter, or reject it outright. The AI clubs shop as well - they re-sign their own stars and come knocking for yours, so nobody farms them for free.

AI clubs play the same market: they renew their expiring stars mid-season and will come knocking for yours - offers land in your office and are answered in the market screen. Renewals live there too: a new deal always costs a raise, and the ratchet remembers. The window is open for most of the season and SHUT for the final week.

Everything about a signed professional is public - attributes, wage, contract, value. Only your judgement differs. Unsigned talent is another matter, and that is what your Chief Scout is for.

Scouting: the find, the trial, the report

Your Chief Scout spends the season watching football nobody else is watching. A good one turns up six to eight names in a season; a poor one about half that. He knocks rarely, and that is the point - this is not a shop window.

Open THE SCOUT'S DESK and you get his opinion in full: every attribute, as a plain number. No ranges, no fog, no guessing game. What varies is how CLOSE those numbers are, and the screen says so in words at the top. An excellent judge lands within a point or two; a poor one can be fifteen out in either direction. Treat them as a steer, not as fact.

Then it is your call. OFFER A TRIAL and the player joins TRAINING - not a team, not the squad list, no wages. A week or two later the Head Coach files his report: the MEASURED attributes, exact, plus how good the player could eventually become. That ceiling is the thing actually worth having. Trialists are raw, and most of them start well below your first team.

Now SIGN or RELEASE. A signing joins the side that fits: sixteen and under go into the academy on no wage, women into the womens first team, everyone else into the first team on a modest three-season contract. The first team still holds 22, so if it is full you must move someone on before you can sign - the same rule as promotion. Turn someone down and they go back into the world, where a rival's scout may well find them next.

Three players at a time can be in training, so a trial is a decision rather than a conveyor belt. And your scout is a person: pay him properly and his eye is worth having - the Finances screen shows his Network and his Ability, Character and Potential Judgement.

Live matches and your connection

YOU MUST ENSURE YOU HAVE A STABLE INTERNET CONNECTION WHEN PLAYING A GAME. Your connection is your responsibility, from kick-off to final whistle.

Human-vs-human matches run DEVICE TO DEVICE: both phones (or PCs) simulate the identical match and stay in perfect sync. No server sits in the middle, which is why it is fast and free - and why your connection matters.

In a match that counts, disconnecting means you LOSE it - and there are NO reschedules, ever. Any rematch rule would let a losing manager fake a drop and cheat their way out of a result, so the rule is blunt on purpose. Casual lounge games carry no such sting - if a link drops, the match simply carries on locally and counts for nothing, as casual games always do.

If BOTH managers drop out of a recorded match, neither result stands: the fixture goes back to the world, and the overnight formula settles it like any unplayed game.

Both players must be on the SAME build of the game to play live - the lounge will refuse to link mismatched versions. If it does, update from the office card or this site and try again.

Your phone will not fall asleep on you during a match, a replay, or while you are sat in the lounge or the planner waiting on a kick-off. Everywhere else it behaves normally and dims as it always would.

Playing a rival LIVE

When your league fixture is against another manager, you don't play their ghost - you play THEM, live, with both devices running the identical match in step. Agree a kick-off time in the planner first; from five minutes before, the fixture offers CONNECT FOR KICK-OFF.

The start is SHARP: connect early and the countdown holds until the agreed second. If your opponent never appears, you get the option to play their side under AI management and the result stands. If NEITHER of you appears, the fixture goes back to the world and is settled overnight by the formula.

Both managers must be on the same build of the game - the lounge and the planner will refuse to link mismatched versions. Update from the card in your office.

The end of a season

When the final round has been played - plus a few days' grace for games in hand - the season closes itself. Anything still unplayed is settled by the world, the table goes final, and the champions are announced in your inbox and in the lounge.

Where the pyramid has a division above or below, the top three go up and the bottom three go down. Champions of the very top division stay kings of the hill - there is nowhere higher to go.

Then contracts tick down a year. AI clubs quietly re-sign their expiring men; a player YOU let run out of contract walks for nothing. Renew him in the market before the season ends, or lose him for free. The new fixture list is drawn overnight and it all begins again.

The pathway

Your U16s develop fast under a good coach; the Sunday XI hides the odd gem. Promote a 16+ player to the first team from Finances - the first team holds 22. A promoted Sunday man is replaced automatically; the pub always provides.

Strips, sound, replays and settings

The STRIP DESIGNER (in Settings) sets your home and away kits. If your opponent's colours clash on match day, the away side changes, as the Laws intend.

The match has a voice: a light touch as a player dribbles, a firmer strike on a pass, a proper thump on a shot - and the crowd when one goes in. There is no music. This is a simulation, not a jukebox.

Every match records itself - REPLAY plays back your most recent game, kept on your device and in the cloud, so you can play on the phone and rewatch on the PC.

The game speaks English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch. Tap LANGUAGE in Settings to choose one - the screen changes as you tap, and the choice sticks on that device.

Leave it on AUTOMATIC and the game works it out for itself: first the language you signed up in here on 44boots.com, then your device's own language, and English if we don't speak yours yet. Sign up in Dutch and the game arrives in Dutch, whatever your phone is set to.

Your club in a browser

Everything at 44boots.com/manager, behind your normal sign-in: Office, Squad, Market, Scout, Set pieces, Training, Season, Finances, Staff and Club.

It is the same club either way. Redesign your corner routine in a browser at lunchtime and it is what your side does on Saturday in the game. The screens that matter minutes before kick-off - team setup, the lounge, the match itself - stay in the game, where they work with no signal.

Set pieces and the training week

A corner routine is a NAME, a delivery, and a job for each position - who attacks the near post, who gambles at the far post, who drags his marker away, who puts it in. Every job names a POSITION and never a player, so a substitution inherits the job instead of quietly breaking it.

Designing one is not enough. Every routine has a FAMILIARITY, and it only climbs when you drill it on the training ground - and it rots when you do not. You get five sessions before a match and so does everybody else, so five on corners means no fitness work, and the legs will tell you about it on Saturday. Nobody can buy their way past that.

Never opened the training screen? Your coach runs a modest week of his own rather than letting the side forget how to take a corner.

Your backroom staff

Three jobs: head coach, chief scout, physio. Pay them more, pay them less, sack them or replace them from the STAFF page.

THE COACH IS A CEILING. However often you drill a routine, it only ever gets as sharp as the man teaching it - a journeyman tops out around two thirds, a proper coach takes you past ninety. More sessions cannot fix a poor coach; only a better coach can. A better scout, meanwhile, does not just find better players, he gives you a TIGHTER answer about them.

Sacking costs eight weeks' wages and a new man wants four weeks up front. Neither is free, and since every club earns the same money, a brilliant backroom is paid for out of the same pot as your players. A thin squad with a great coach is a real strategy, and so is the reverse.

How players get better - and older

A player improves towards a peak in his mid-twenties, holds that level for a few years, then falls away - and the fall speeds up the further past it he goes.

What fades is PHYSICAL: pace, acceleration, stamina. What he can DO with a ball barely moves, because a first touch is a habit and not a muscle. What he KNOWS keeps improving into his thirties. That is why a goalkeeper lasts and a winger does not - the keeper's game rests on reflexes and reading the play, and those mostly stay.

Nobody's peak is the same. It is rolled once, for life, and a body that ages well peaks later. Living properly and being well coached stretch the good years, but not for ever.

Potential is what a scout RECKONS, not a wall. A well-coached player can quietly go past it.

Where the adverts come from

The boards round the pitch carry real advertising, and where you told us your club is based decides which ones you see - an Essex manager gets Essex firms.

That is the whole of it. No advert, sponsor or hoarding touches anything the match engine reads. Nobody's team gets better because somebody bought a board, and nobody can buy an advantage here at any price. The advertising is what keeps the game free forever.

The clock, and added time

The scoreboard reads like a real one: 00:00 to 45:00, then 45:00 to 90:00, and past those while the referee's added minutes are played. How long a half actually TAKES is up to you - Settings offers 1 to 10 minutes - but the clock always speaks football.

And it never stops. Not for a throw-in, not for a goal kick, not while they are celebrating. A real clock does not, and one that does is the quickest way to be reminded you are watching a simulation. The referee lets it run and keeps his own book instead: a few seconds for a foul, most of a minute for an injury or a substitution, longer for a goal. At the end of each half the board goes up.

It is his judgement, not a stopwatch. Two identical halves get different boards, a busy game can bring six or seven minutes, and a quiet one can get none at all.

The weekly maintenance hour

Every week the game closes for one hour, 10:00-11:00 UTC, so we can work on it without surprising anybody. No fixture can ever be booked inside that hour, so you cannot lose a match to it. This website stays up throughout and tells you when we are back.

Your club, everywhere

Sign in once and stay signed in. Play on your phone or on the Windows PC build - same club, same matches, kept on your account. The PC comes as a proper installer or a plain zip, whichever you prefer.

When a new build is out, an UPDATE card appears in your office. On Windows the game now fetches and installs it ITSELF: tap the card, watch it download, tap again to restart into the new build. Nothing goes near your browser, so there is no security warning to argue with. It checks what arrived before it touches your install, and if anything is wrong it leaves your working copy exactly as it was.

Forgotten your password? Tap FORGOTTEN YOUR PASSWORD? on the sign-in screen, or go to 44boots.com/reset, and we email you a link to set a new one. The link works once and lasts an hour. Nobody here can look your old password up and read it back to you - passwords are stored scrambled, so setting a new one is the only way in. Doing so signs you out on your other devices; sign back in there with the new one.